“Harry, are you happy living with your aunt and uncle?” asked Mrs. Spencer, his primary four teacher.

She had followed him after school let out and spoke to him now as he waited for Aunt Petunia to come pick him and Dudley up. Harry opened his mouth to speak just as Petunia’s car pulled up. She locked eyes with him and he saw the threat there clearly.

“It’s great, I love it!” Harry told the teacher with false enthusiasm. “Bye, Mrs. Spencer!”

“Bye, Harry,” she said with a worried frown.

Harry ran to the car and jumped in the backseat. As soon as the doors were closed, Petunia whirled around and glared at him.

“What were you talking about?” she demanded. “Were you gossiping about us with your teacher?”

“No! I swear!” Harry pleaded. “I didn’t tell her anything!”

“Don’t you lie to me, boy,” Petunia snapped. “You just wait until your Uncle gets home. He’ll teach you to tell tales about us to teachers.”

Sure enough, that night Vernon had come home and heard all about how the ‘little freak’ had been talking to a teacher. It was one of the greatest offenses – talking to an adult, especially one in a position of authority, without a Dursley chaperone. And he had deliberately avoided being anywhere near Dudley while waiting in the parking lot. He got ten lashes of the belt on his back for it and no dinner that night or meals the next day. Harry was just glad it wasn’t the weekend, then Vernon wouldn’t be so lax.

Memory flashed through Harry’s mind, forcing him to relive those moments, the ones he hadn’t been present for. The memories came in snippets, showing just the important parts, and were connected to each other by the barest conscious thought. As Harry was forced to recall the punishment for talking to an adult while alone, he wondered why there hadn’t been a punishment for talking to Hagrid, with whom he’d been alone for most of a day.

He got off the train and walked back to Number Four after leaving the giant, amazed at all the wondrous things that had happened. Inside the house, his relatives were sitting stiffly in front of the telly and barely acknowledged his arrival, allowing him the chance to deposit his new things in his new room – under the bed so it didn’t get mixed up with Dudley’s broken toys. His stomach rumbled and he walked back downstairs to get started on dinner.

Vernon was waiting for him.

“If you think we’re going to let you off your punishment just because that freak told you a nice fairy tale, you’ve got another thing coming. Strip.”

Twenty lashes all up and down his back, including his bum and thighs, then ten on his chest. No meals except breakfast for the rest of the summer. No talking.

It had been his worst punishment yet.

-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-

Severus watched, frowning deeply, as Potter whimpered. He had been lost in memory for almost twelve hours now – it was obviously something that had been waiting to happen since the killing curse, and it was admirable Potter had been able to hold it off long enough to get to Weasley. The man felt bad for Potter; casting the killing curse, finding out his best friend is a traitor, reliving all his worst memories, then having to wake up and face whatever news Dumbledore had.

If it were up to him, Severus would have given the boy a break after that first one.

The Killing Curse, even compared to the other Unforgivables, was insidious. In order to cast a spell of such power, a spell of death, the caster had to give up a part of himself, a part of his soul, his humanity. The stronger the spell, the greater the sacrifice, and it would take a very great sacrifice to get rid of Voldemort. Potter had just lost a rather large piece of himself.

The boy twitched on the bed, jumping in a way that reminded Severus of someone struck in the back. His curiosity getting the better of him, Severus took Potter’s face in his hands and turned it to him so he could look in his eyes without leaving the chair. Taking a deep breath, he let himself sink into and past curse-green eyes.

Again, he found himself facing the mad, whirling ribbon of memory, with echoes of violence, pain, anguish, hurt, hate, and loss pounding against his ears. Unbelievably, it was louder, stronger this time, so strong that, before he knew it, Severus found himself unable to keep his hold on the outside world. Before he knew it, he’d been sucked in to the vortex, surrounded entirely in the Potter’s least pleasant memories.

Lovely.

As it was his curiosity that got him into this mess, he decided to satisfy it. What secrets would Potter’s hidden thoughts and memories reveal?

After the second scalding (by water Potter had boiled himself), third attempted strangulation and tenth beating, Severus couldn’t stand it anymore. If he'd had a body, he would have thrown up by now. He had to get out, but the whirlwind wasn’t showing any sign of letting him go back to the real world. So he only had one choice. Gathering his energies from where they oscillated wildly around him – in tune with his emotions – Severus pushed, as he had done before, going deeper. The conscious was in too much turmoil to even attempt to expel him, and he dove easily into the unconscious.

It was so peaceful, comparatively, that the legilimens almost stopped there. But he knew better; the unconscious was treacherous, because there were no points of reference, neither for the invading mind or the host mind. This meant that a legilimens could easily get lost, unable to find his way back, while the host mind would be unable to expel him – unable, in fact, even to detect he was there. So, Severus searched purposefully, looking for that dratted cupboard door.

Finally, a tiny spot of white became apparent in its contrast to the ubiquitous blank darkness.

‘Any port in a storm,’ he thought cynically, swimming toward it. The door swung open at his barest touch and he closed it again behind him.

“What are you doing here?”

-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-

Aunt Petunia was mad- No, she was beyond mad, she was livid. Harry had been told to prepare triangle sandwiches for the tea party that afternoon. He had forgotten that he wasn’t to waste the good butter on anyone but family and business guests. Now there wasn’t enough left over to make both Dudley's two ham sandwiches as well as dinner.

“Boil water for the tea,” she ordered, her mouth taut, lips pressed into a line, nostrils flaring with each pinched breath.

Harry, five years old, hastily complied, filling the kettle and placing it on the stove to heat while he tended to the biscuits. He was on the other side of the kitchen when the water reached a boil, and Aunt Petunia nonchalantly lifted it from the burner and walked over to Harry with unnerving calm. The child waited, hardly daring to breathe, as he instinctively knew this was not going to be good. Aunt Petunia held the kettle out to him and he reached to take it.

She tipped the kettle, pouring boiling water on his hands.

That evening, Uncle Vernon gave him five lashes for screaming.

-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-

“James?” Severus asked incredulously, raising an eyebrow at the lone boy lounging on the cot.

“The one and,” he motioned to the otherwise empty cupboard, “only. Now, I’ll ask again: what are you doing here? Seeing if you can find some weakness of Harry’s to exploit?”

Severus considered his situation. He wanted out of Potter’s mind, James wanted him out of Potter’s mind, and James actually had the power to expel him.

“I suggest a compromise,” he said silkily, “if you tell me why you did not merge like the others, I will leave quietly.”

“And if I don’t?” James demanded. “What’s to stop me from just forcing you out?”

“Well, trying to force me out when I am unwilling may disrupt Harry’s conscious, may even permanently damage his Memory,” Severus bluffed. “However, you answer that one question and I will go quite willingly.”

James rolled his eyes, but his exasperation seemed tired and false to the professor.

“Someone has to make sure things go as smooth as possible,” the boy replied.

“You can’t stay here forever, James,” Severus pointed out.

“I know that!” snapped James. “I’ll go when Harry’s ready. If I went right now, I’d just make things worse.”

The professor considered him for a moment. James was afraid, that much was easy to see; Severus didn’t blame him, either. Who knew what sort of an experience it must be for an alter to merge with its host? But as he locked eyes with the boy, who raised his chin in challenge, he knew James wasn’t lying. As soon as Harry was ready, James would abandon his post and give up his closely-guarded portion of Harry’s memories. He nodded in acknowledgment, and James nodded back.

The next Severus knew, he was back in the hospital wing chair.

It was another day and a half before Potter finally ran out of memories. Severus pointedly did not spend every waking moment with the boy during that time, but instead organized a series of shifts with Granger, Molly Weasley, Minerva, and Lupin – all of whom were quite willing, even if they did look at him as though he’d grown another head when he suggested it. Among the five of them, they managed to always have someone there in case he should wake up. It was purely by chance that Severus was the one on duty when it happened.

The event was disappointingly anticlimactic.

After three days solid of groaning, fidgeting, sweating. Of eyes rolling sightlessly, of cringing from phantoms. After three days of this, Potter blinked, sighed, turned over and went to sleep.

Severus dearly wanted to throttle him.

On the positive side, though, at least now they could safely leave him alone in Madam Pomfrey’s tender care. He had a pile of unmarked essays that required his attention.

-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-

Harry woke slowly, blinking the vestiges of sleep from his eyes. The Hospital Wing was blurry and dim with early evening. A dark shadow sat near him, hunched over the bedside table as though reading something on it. As he shifted and squinted to see better who was with him, the shadow jerked sharply, apparently surprised to find him awake. A hand reached for Harry’s face, and caused such a sudden surge of adrenaline and a strong desire to flee that the boy flinched twice – once from the adrenaline itself, and then again in surprise that he’d even had that reaction.

“Mr. Potter, do contain your revulsion at least until you have taken your glasses back,” said a familiar sneer. Harry flushed when he realized who was with him.

The Gryffindor swallowed his earlier reaction and took his specs from the outstretched hand, returning them to his face. Rather than look his Potions Professor in the eye, Harry examined the tabletop as he had been intending to do in the first place. It appeared, from the long rolls of parchment with many red marks, that Snape was grading essays.

This was such an odd sight to see that Harry momentarily wondered if he had simply imagined himself waking up, and in truth he was still dreaming. Then his entire body twinged with momentary pain and that theory went out the window.

“Are you well, Potter?” Snape asked with a sharp look.

“Just a few aches,” Harry answered quietly.

“Undoubtedly from the multiple Cruciatus curses you suffered and the various other mindless stunts you pulled,” growled the professor, reached into his robes and pulling out two vials. “Take these, they should take away any nerve damage and help with the passing moments of pain. Any muscle aches you have will be taken care of with a day of bed rest and a week of light activity.”

Harry nodded vaguely as he downed the vials of potion. Both were horrid, but not as bad as Polyjuice or Skele-Gro, which he now vividly remembered taking.

“Now, the headmaster requires our presence in his office,” Snape continued, standing.

“I thought I was supposed to stay in bed,” Harry cheeked. Snape glared at him, but Harry thought he could see a faint glimmer of amusement in the man’s eyes.

“If you do not feel up to walking, Potter,” Snape drawled softly, “I would be quite glad to levitate you through the halls.”

“No! Thank you, sir, that’s quite alright,” Harry stammered hurriedly, stifling a grin of his own at the satisfied smirk Snape shot at him.

His legs were a bit unsteady, but Harry would have died before he let himself be levitated around the school. Luckily, ahead of him, Snape kept their pace slow enough that Harry didn’t have to worry about tripping over his own shaky feet. The revolving staircase was quite welcome, in Harry’s opinion, as he wasn’t entirely sure he could have lifted his legs that many times without help.

The door to Dumbledore’s office was open when they arrived, and the aged wizard was sitting behind his desk, playing with a piece of string. Harry thought he remembered girls from his primary school enjoying something similar.

“Hello Harry, Severus,” the headmaster said cheerfully. “It is wonderful to see the both of you up and about.”

“Albus,” Snape acknowledged with a nod, eyes never leaving the string. Finally the professor’s shoulders seemed to twitch as he resigned himself to an unpleasant task. “What, may I ask, is that?”

“This?” Dumbledore held up the colorful circle suspended by both hands. “Why it is a strand of yarn with the ends tied together.” Snape’s lips pressed into a thin line at this highly unsatisfactory answer, but the headmaster continued without prompting. “Muggles have invented a number of ingenious ways to manipulate sting for entertainment. Look!” Dumbledore maneuvered his fingers through the string deftly, then held up the new geometric tangle. “I made a teacup!”

Snape twitched again, and Harry found himself shaking with silent laughter, even as he took a seat in one of the many overstuffed chairs.

“Now,” the aged wizard began again, vanishing the string with a casual wave of his hand, “I believe we have some matters to discuss.”

The potions professor finally seated himself, regarding the headmaster with blank attentiveness. Harry wondered what this could be about. He had defeated Voldemort, what more could there be? Was there yet another shoe waiting to drop? He dearly hoped not. All he wanted now was to finish his sixth year and enjoy his summer break – hopefully away from the…them.

“The first bit of business to get out of the way is filling you in, Harry, on what you have missed,” Dumbledore said, leaning back in his chair and looking more relaxed than Harry ever remembered seeing him. “On the morning of the…I hesitate to say ‘rescue’…perhaps ‘fracas’, yes. On the morning of the fracas, approximately fifteen minutes past dawn, I received an owl. Your snowy – Hedwig, I believe – had flown here from the Shrieking Shack with a message written by one Hermione Granger.” The headmaster pulled a small scrap of paper out of thin air and passed it to Harry.

There, in Hermione’s familiar, obsessively neat scrawl, was written ‘Harry and Professor Snape are being held in the dungeons of Caer y Twr castle in Wales. Please hurry. – Hermione Granger’ He almost laughed. The average person in a rush would have written something along the lines of ‘Harry & Snape – Caer y Twr castle Wales’, not caring about grammar or fragmented sentences; the average person, but not Hermione.

“Curious as I may have been as to where she got her information, I nevertheless aligned my priorities and called as many members of the Order who could be spared. They, in turn, helped gather the Auror division for an attack, saying the Dark Mark had been seen on Angelesey Island. Caer y Twr castle was a known Death Eater stronghold during the first war, so it took little convincing to get two Auror squadrons to join with us in the attack. Four portkeys were authorized, but I had to make one more so that everyone fit – the Ministry is constantly overestimating the number of people who can crowd around one small object.

“While I would have wished to have come there straightaway myself, I could not leave the school without transferring authority to Professor McGonagall, which held me back for almost half of an hour. By the time I arrived at the castle, the battle was well under way. The Death Eaters had been caught completely by surprise, giving our side a huge advantage, and I made my way quickly down to the dungeons. By the time I arrived, all the Death Eaters were incapacitated, but you, Severus, and Voldemort were long absent.

“I managed to track you magically to the courtyard, where the body of Voldemort lay, but was quite distressed when I found neither of you there, but could only hope you had returned safely to Hogwarts.”

Harry looked down, remembering the sheer panic of those moments when he had realized that Ron was going after Hermione, and he was the only one who knew where the redhead’s loyalty lay. He had acted without thinking, and put both himself and professor Snape in danger.

A firm hand on his shoulder halted Harry’s self-remonstrations. He looked up to see Snape glowering at him.

“Any man with half a soul would have done the same were his family threatened,” the professor growled stiffly.

Harry blinked, confused at the unexpected source of praise, then nodded and turned back to Dumbledore, feeling a little better. The headmaster’s eyes sparkled mysteriously at him.

“I spent the next quarter of an hour helping the Aurors and Order members bind the last of the Death Eaters and prepare transport to the ministry, but as soon as possible I found a floo-connected fireplace and transported myself here, only to get a call a moment later from a frantic Poppy requesting my presence in the hospital wing. At the time of my arrival, you and Severus were both still unconscious, so I retrieved Mr. Weasley and took him to my office for questioning.”

“What did you find?” Harry asked, sitting up straight in his seat.

“It took quite a bit of prodding, but I managed to discover that Mr. Weasley was fed a dose of the Questus Exulcero potion – do you know what that does?”

Harry thought a moment, then nodded, feeling his heart sink a little at the implications.

“Do you know when?” he croaked.

“Alas, I am afraid that he was confunded soon after taking the potion,” Dumbledore admitted sadly. “His own story of how he came to wear the Dark Mark is contradictory of events as they actually happened.”

“I think…I think it was at the beginning of the summer,” Harry said hesitantly. “He sent me a couple of letters that had parts scribbled out, but I could still make out the words, and they…weren’t friendly. I bet he spent most of the summer learning how to hide his…newfound hatred for me. We’ve had a couple arguments since term began, but he’d always back off the next day. He never used to do that.”

“That fits with what I learned,” Dumbledore said with a sigh. “Apparently, Mr. Weasley was having regular contact with Pettigrew, and it is likely he who kept Ronald from betraying himself.”

Harry started to tremble with anger. That rat! he thought fiercely. How many people must he take from me? After having his memory stirred up, the loss of Sirius and the pain of knowing his parents were betrayed by a close friend both felt new, raw, like fresh stab wounds.

The adults allowed him a few moments of silence to pull himself together, sensing clearly how unbalanced the news had made him. It took several deep breaths, and likely a few crescent-shaped cuts in his palms, but he finally managed to push back the blinding hatred that had coursed through him at the very mention of his family’s betrayer.

“Now that we have that out of the way,” said Dumbledore, sounding considerably more subdued than he had when Harry and Snape had first entered, “Severus here asked me a question the night you fell into memory, and I feel I should answer it as best I can. Severus told me what he had learned about your mental state, but please understand it was only for the best of intentions.”

Harry nodded, unconcerned, then started when Snape and Dumbledore both blinked at him in surprise. “I never actually thought he’d keep it from you,” he admitted with a shrug.

Dumbledore took this in stride and returned to his oration; Harry didn’t dare look at Snape. He supposed the man must be rather put out that he had kept Harry’s past secret for so long without needing to, but in truth, Harry felt deeply strengthened by the knowledge that he could trust Snape, even to the point of keeping things from the headmaster.

“Yes, well,” Dumbledore went on, “after Severus informed me of the circumstances and filled me in on what occurred when you cast the killing curse at Voldemort, he asked me if I knew what had happened; specifically, he asked me what ‘It’ might be.”

Harry almost leapt to his feet in shock. The old professor before him sounded very much like he had an answer, something Harry himself had desired for years.

“It is my belief that It was created when Voldemort’s killing curse hit you when you were a baby. Your mother’s protection defied the curse’s intent, preventing it from taking your life, but the curse’s natural darkness and destructive nature would not be turned aside. Instead the curse tore off a part of your soul and merged with it, deep inside your subconscious mind. This initial fragmentation could be what weakened the cohesiveness of your mind enough for the later alters to appear in times of stress.”

“So all this time, I’ve had the Avada Kedavra…hidden inside me?” Harry asked, feeling nauseous at the thought.

Dumbledore nodded; Harry felt like he might throw up. “However,” the old man cut in quickly, “when you cast the curse at Voldemort, what came out of your wand was not just magic, but also a part of your soul. It was, I believe, that same curse that Voldemort cast upon you, made of his own magic and part of your infant soul, fed by pain, suffering, and dark magic until it was strong enough to overcome its maker.”

The Gryffindor’s head shook slowly as he took in this new information, then a bight smile spread across his face; the first he had worn in a very long time.

“I remember…how it felt to have It inside,” he said softly. “I have felt so much lighter since waking, which I thought was odd, because of Ron. But it turns out I feel lighter because It is gone, pulled out by its very roots, like a festering weed in a garden. I don’t know how much longer I could have survived with It – or how long I would have wanted to – but without it, life seems good and long.”

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled brightly and Snape gave a satisfied sigh as they stood to leave. Harry knew he was far from whole, his emotions were in turmoil, Ron still hated him and bore the Mark with pride, and there were several things left unfinished.

But for once, he felt sure that everything in the world would eventually turn out alright. And that was a new and refreshing idea.