average human’s Reviews > Avada Kedavra > Status Update

The food was deposited in their cells magically three times a day— it was the same thing every time:

Oatmeal and water for breakfast.

Oatmeal and water for lunch.

Oatmeal and water for dinner.

The oatmeal tasted like nutrition potions and the water tasted like copper.

It was monotonous.

It was dreary.

It was maddening.

And it made Lucius regret every decision he had ever made.



Thursday, January 14

Nothing stirred up the excitement of the dementors more than the distant cracking on the far shore that indicated new prisoners were being brought in.

New minds to torment. New memories to drag up. New joy to steal. Occasionally, though not recently, it even meant a new soul to suck out.

Lucius pitied whoever the new arrival was, but not nearly as much as he pitied himself.

The dementors sudden presence in the corridor that held Lucius’ cell caused him to cringe against the back wall, as far from the seeping chill as he could get. He should have known that the new arrival would be placed in his relatively empty corridor, the last two inmates on his block had been recently kissed, their shells tossed in to an unsecured unit to be disposed of once they ceased breathing.

Lucius had been relieved when they had finally been kissed; Azkaban was never silent, but it had been mercifully more quiet once his corridor held only him. A luxury he would now lose, apparently.



The new inmate did not immediately start screaming. They barely made any noise other than a surprised ‘oomph’ as they were carelessly tossed in their cell by whatever unlucky auror drew the short-wand on delivering them to the island. In fact, Lucius may never have realized his new block-mate’s identity until he heard a very distinctly twangy voice crudely saying:

“What the fuck just happened?”

Lucius closed his eyes, horror crashing in to him harder than any dementor could bring.

Merlin and Morgana, no.

“Potter?” Lucius hissed through the charmed bars. He tried to crane his neck around to see more in to the cell that was now occupied, but the inmate stood out of his eyeshot. “Is that you?”

Potter’s distinctive voice floated back to him, “I- yeah. It’s- it’s me. Hey.”

Lucius groaned, all sense of decorum fleeing him at the confirmation of his worst imaginings. He hit his head on the bars, welcoming the dull ache to take away the anger and ache building in his chest.

“You unforgivable moron,” he hissed acidicly. “Who will protect Draco and Cissa now?”

“I- I don’t know,” Potter whispered back. The boy sounded confused, distraught. Lucius was not in a forgiving mood though, as his mind thought of his son.

“Why are you here?” Lucius asked sharply.

“Someone killed a student,” Potter said. “It wasn’t me though.”

As if every inmate did not say the same thing.

“I’m sorry,” Potter said softly when Lucius did not respond to him after a few minutes. “Hey, M-Malfoy, are there a lot of dementors here?”

“Hundreds,” Lucius said flatly, hatred for the boy burning inside him. “I hope they make you truly miserable, Potter.”

Lucius imagined that it would take days to break Potter. Weeks, even. Perhaps even a month or more of the dementor’s auras forcing themselves on the strong willed, fierce, unimaginably powerful leader of the Grey Wixen Party. He found that it was not an unpleasant thought, imagining the day when Potter began weeping or screaming as the other inmates eventually did. Potter left Lucius to rot in this prison, and he left Draco and Narcissa without his powerful protection.

Lucius would wait for Potter to break, and then he would bask in the perfect revenge of it.



Lucius overestimated the length of time it would take Potter to begin breaking.

He very grossly overestimated the time it would take.

It took less than a few hours after the dementors first began circling the boy’s cell for Lucius to hear Potter make a terrible noise of distress. Lucius stuck his face against the bars, hoping to catch sight of Potter’s breakdown, but he could scarcely see more than Potter’s back against the bars with his head tucked between his knees. There were two dementors outside his cell, undoubtedly enjoying the fresh emotional climate that Potter brought with him.

Lucius scoffed and sat back, watching the moon in the sky as his only ability to track time within this hell.

The moon had barely moved from its position, it was now partially hidden behind a tree on the distant shore, when Potter spoke.

“What are you doing?” he whispered.

Lucius had been prepared to ignore him, yet the compulsion to needle him struck rather violently. “Waiting for your inevitable breakdown,” he sneered. “Inevitable means certain to happen, if you were unaware.”

Potter made a sharp huffing sound. “I was aware,” he said. “You- you don’t like me much, do you?”

“You were meant to protect Draco,” Lucius said simply. “You have failed and left my son alone.”

“He has S-Snape,” Potter stammered after a few minutes through chattering teeth.

Severus would never wield the type of magical and political power that Potter did. Severus was a brilliant man, strong in his own right, but Lucius counted on Potter to protect his son.

“A poor substitute,” Lucius spat. “Though I suppose if you ever see the light of day again, you’ll be as worthless as any other inmate; weak and pathetic. Pity.”

Potter made a small noise, and Lucius shifted so he could see the moon if he looked one direction, and the boy if he looked the other direction. Currently, as the moon was attempting to hide, it was more entertaining to see Potter curled up in to himself.

“I can’t cast anything,” Potter said quietly. “It’s- it’s just not listening to me. My magic, I mean.”

“Idiot,” Lucius said coolly. “This entire island is warded against wandless magic.”

“But- but Sirius became a d-dog, didn’t he?”

“Sirius is an animagus. Sirius simply channeled his inner magic to transform, you daft boy. A werewolf would transform within a cell as well. In fact, Greyback is here somewhere. Perhaps he’ll find you on the next full moon.”

Even a werewolf could not break through the bars, but Potter didn’t need to know that.

Potter didn’t say anything for a long moment, Lucius heard him make a small noise and then it was silent once more.

Lucius scoffed and turned back to the window.

Potter was a moron.



After some time of watching the sky and thinking of his wife and child, Lucius stood to move to the cold slab with the thin blanket that they called a bed. He wouldn’t sleep, he never did during the nights, but the blanket offered a small amount of comfort while he suffered through the sounds of the other prisoners crying.

Lucius made no noise when he cried.

He couldn’t bear the shame of it.

He did wonder if Potter would cry; he ventured to guess that he would, based on the small sounds he had already made thus far.

The great Harry Potter, the strongest magical prodigy since Merlin himself, and the boy couldn’t handle more than five hours in Azkaban before snuffling.

Pathetic.



Potter did cry that night.

At first, he attempted to muffle it, but, as the dementors presence grew, so did the volume of Potter’s cries.

And it was horribly, nauseatingly, pathetic.



“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please. I’m sorry. Mum, please. Stop, please. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mum. I’m so sorry. Sev, help, please.

“Shut up, Potter,” Lucius groaned. The incessant cries and wails were tearing at him. How dare Potter get himself thrown in prison, leaving Lucius’ family so vulnerable, and cry out for his dead mother? How dare he cry for Severus, who was undoubtedly crying for his boy as well?

It was disturbing.

“Who... M-Malfoy?”

“Of course it is me,” Lucius grit out irritably. “Quit whining.”

“‘M s-sorry.”

Terrific.

Potter developed a stammer.

The boy was blessedly quiet for a while, leaving Lucius to force down the oatmeal and water that appeared in his cell in relative peace.

Then the blasted dementors rounded their block again. Lucius could hear their rattling breaths in the corridor, he could peer through the bars and see them gathered in front of Potter’s cell. Even from his position, he could feel their freezing effects on his insides. And eventually, as the dementors clearly thrived on torturing the boy, Lucius could hear Potter once more through the rattling breathing.

“Stop,” Potter pleaded, a plaintive whine to his thin voice. “Please, p-please, stop.”

Lucius ground his teeth. He rolled his neck. He even attempted to muffle the childish cries coming from Potter’s cell with his hands over his ears, but eventually he broke.

“They won’t stop, Potter,” he called to the boy, less harshly than intended. “They’re playing a game with you. They enjoy dragging up your worst memories and trauma.”

What trauma Potter had, Lucius did not know. And he preferred it that way. Otherwise, he had to listen to a boy the same age as his Draco being tormented by the foulest creatures on the earth while he cried over a sordid personal history.

It was discomforting, realizing that Potter did not have a history of luxury and love as Draco had.



Lucius was able to ignore Potter for quite some time, his attention focused solely on the sun whose rays never warmed the Island of Hell that he was stuck on. Potter’s quiet cries were mixed in with a melody of cries and screams from other prisoners, Lucius preferred that. Easier to pretend he couldn’t distinctly distinguish Potter from the others that way. Lucius was even able to curl up on his side and close his eyes, seeking out rest for a few hours until his next meal was delivered.



He had no idea how long he had been able to sleep, but, judging on the suns position in the sky, he believed it hadn’t been long, before something woke him.

No.

Someone.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Potter was going to go utterly mad.

Which... which meant that Lucius’ closest friend, his brother in all but blood, would lose the child he so clearly adored.

Lucius scooted over by the bars of his cell and twisted his neck to try and spot Potter.

“Potter,” he called down to the shivering boy curled in a ball. “Quiet down. You have to calm down.”

Potter’s body wracked with a sob, and Lucius could see him shifting to a more upright position.

“That’s it, Potter,” he called to him. “Sit up and calm yourself.”

Potter’s voice was hoarse when he eventually spoke. “W-what day is it?” he whispered.

Lucius refrained from scoffing, though he did roll his eyes. “I have no idea,” he said. “What day were you arrested?”

“The-the fourteenth. I think?”

Lucius closed his eyes for a moment as he thought. “Then it is likely the sixteenth,” he said. “You’ve been here for two nights.”

He believed.

Time occasionally managed to slip by at times; Lucius would blink and suddenly the sun would be gone and his dinner tray cold on the floor before him. Other times, Lucius would watch the moon for days, and it never moved.

It was difficult to track days at Azkaban.

Even as Lucius attempted to harden his heart against Potter, it was quite tragic that Potter apparently had enough traumatic memories in his lifetime to be so quickly broken by the dementors who continuously came back to feed on him.

Dementors loved to draw up a persons worst memories, distracting the person with the darkest moments as they sucked the happiness from their soul. If they were continuing to draw themselves to Potter, then the boy must have quite the terrible memories inside him.

“I- I have a potion I n-need,” Potter said softly. “On the tenth. D-d’you think they’ll l-let me have it?”

Lucius did scoff at that. “You killed a student, you will likely not be getting your potion.”

“Oh.”

‘Oh.’

Lucius leaned back against the wall now that Potter was silent once more. There was not a lot to do in Azkaban, and by that he meant: there was nothing to do in Azkaban. Which left Lucius with unlimited time to think.

“How is Draco?” he eventually called down to Potter’s cell, interrupting the muted sniffles he could hear coming from the boy.

“Draco?” Potter repeated. “Good, I guess. He’s- he’s hap- happy, I think. I saw Cissa too, over the holiday. She’s good too... if- if you were wondering.”

Lucius closed his eyes and imagined his wife. His lovely, beautiful, brave wife. So dedicated to their family. So dedicated to him.

“Thank you,” he told Potter.

There was nothing more to be said.

Lucius closed his eyes once more and drifted away to a reality that did not include a young man attempting to stifle his sobs because Lucius so cruelly told him to be quiet.



It was not Potter who woke him this time, rather it was the popping sound of dinner being delivered to his meal that woke him. Lucius had drank half his glass of water and a decent amount of the oatmeal when he realized he could no longer hear Potter at all.

“Potter?” Lucius called down to the boy. “Are you eating?”

Nothing.

Lucius moved so he could press his face against the bars and look for him. Potter was in his cell, curled up against the wall with his head tucked between his knees, as he had been since the night he arrived, an uneaten tray beside him.

It wasn’t Lucius’ problem if Potter chose not to eat.

It wasn’t.

Would Severus treat Draco like this? If it were reversed?

Possibly.

...

No. No Severus would not.

Severus would be civil to Draco, at a bare minimum. He would convince him to eat and attempt to assist him in maintaining his sanity.

Lucius sighed at his own sentimentality.

“Potter,” he called as loudly as he dared. “You have to eat. The taste won’t improve any once it’s cold.”

Potter didn’t move, yet Lucius was certain he was awake.

“Potter!” he said sharply. “Wake up and eat!”

“Go away,” Potter finally replied, his voice a whisper that Lucius had to strain to hear. “You aren’t real.”

What?

What in Merlin’s name did the boy just say to him?

“I’m not real?” Lucius repeated. “Potter it has been three days, surely you haven’t already lost your mind entirely?”

Potter said nothing.

“Wake up and eat, you stupid, insufferable, chaotic, brat!” Lucius yelled sharply. “Right now, Potter, eat!”

Potter stirred, his hands twitching from their grip on his trousers. “Snape? Is that you?”

...

Sure.

Why not?

“Yes,” Lucius said, attempting (poorly) to mimic Severus’ silky drawl that Narcissa once (irritatingly during a spat early on in their marriage) referred to as ‘as enticing as dark chocolate’. “You need to eat, Potter. Drink the water. Now.”

It took a minute, Lucius had been prepared to snap at Potter again, call him a brat or a dunderhead or some other Severus type of insult, but then Potter lifted his head and reached out slowly, shakily, for the glass of water.

“Excellent,” Lucius coaxed him gently from his cell. “The food now too, Potter. Pretend it is something you enjoy.” He recalled Potter once served disgusting, greasy, pizza at an alliance meeting. “Pizza, perhaps.”

Potter started and his hand shook, slopping water down his front as he audibly took a gulp. “D-Dray?” he whispered, his eyes wide as he took in Lucius now. “Dray?”

For the love of Merlin...

Do not let ‘Dray’ refer to Lucius’ son.

“Yes,” Lucius growled through grit teeth and a clenched jaw. “It’s me. Eat, Potter.”

It was perhaps mildly lucky that Lucius was in a cell, he may be tempted to snap the fool boy’s neck otherwise.

Draco was a strong name with ties to his Black roots. ‘Dray’ was scarcely even a noise.

How dare Potter rename his son?

Arrogant.

But Potter picked up a spoon, and Lucius felt as if his duty to Severus had been served, so he scooted out the boys line of vision and attempted to sleep once more.



As time wore on, Lucius discovered that he truly hated Harry Potter.

He hated Potter for being arrested and leaving his family alone.

He hated Potter for breaking up the monotony in the most harrowing way possible.

He hated Potter for his damn ‘trauma’ that continuously drew dementors to their block.

Mostly, he hated Potter for making it so difficult to hate Potter.

Life was particularly cruel to Lucius, it seemed.



“D-Dray, come back,” Potter cried one morning, sobs audibly wracking his body. “I’m sorry, p-please, I’m so sorry. Don’t d-die, please. Please. Please. Pl—”

“I’m not dead,” Lucius snapped, unable to bear hearing Potter plead for his son’s continued life. The boy had a knack for disarming him. “I’m resting, Potter, as you should be.”

“Dray?” Potter breathed. “Didn’t th-they kill you too?”

Had Potter always lived on the precipitous edge of madness, simply waiting for a breeze to push him over the edge?

“No, they did not kill me,” Lucius said. “They did not kill you either, merely arrested you. Have you ate today?”

Potter laughed, causing goosebumps to erupt on Lucius’ arms at the unstable sound.

“It’s poison,” Potter whispered in a conspiratorial tone that bounced around Lucius’ mind. “Or piss,” he laughed again, a cackle to his tone now.

Lucius hated Potter.



“LEAVE HIM ALONE YOU CRETINS!” Lucius foolishly shouted at the dementors one night. “YOU’VE BROKEN HIM! STOLEN HIS SPIRIT! WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT?”

They didn’t respond to Lucius, they largely ignored him. Lucius had led an easy life up until he joined the Dark Lord, he had no true memories of terror to pull up.

Potter though, by the Gods they seemed to enjoy tormenting that boy.

Some time later, when the sharp coldness of the dementors receded and the dreary chill of Azkaban settled over them all, Potter coughed.

“M-Malfoy?” he whispered, his voice cracking and weak. A harsh difference from the soft and dangerous tone Lucius used to hear come from the commanding boy. “‘M alive. I th-think.”

That drove a snort from Lucius, one that Potter would likely never recall to report to anyone of importance. “Unfortunately for us all,” Lucius drawled, his tone lacking any bite and sounding almost fond.

An absurd concept. Since Lucius hated Potter.

“I hate it here,” Potter confided quietly, pitifully. “Every- every thing I’ve ever d-done wrong. ‘S all here, isn’t it?”

Lucius had no idea how he was meant to interpret what was a nonsensical statement in the midst of Potter sounding mostly lucid, so he merely hummed.

“I hate it here.”

“Everyone does,” Lucius murmured, too softly for Potter to hear.



Potter screamed as Lucius watched the moon and silently cried.

Potter’s scream was sharp; sharp enough to cut glass and stab Lucius’ chest over and over. Eighty years from then, Lucius would still hear Potter’s scream in his nightmares.

Lucius would remain in Azkaban for years longer if someone would only retrieve Potter.

...

Because Potter was terribly annoying.

“Can you see the stars, Potter?” Lucius called to him, his voice a mere shadow to Potter’s endless scream of hurt. It seemed to help, sometimes, Lucius speaking to Potter. It occasionally soothed his screams to the much quieter mutterings and mumblings of a madman. “I cannot see them, but perhaps you can. Draco was named for the stars, you know. Narcissa hopes he’ll one day name his children for the stars as well, do you believe he will? Luna was also named for the night sky as well, wasn’t she? Draco, the star. Luna, the moon. What do you believe they would name their children?”

Potter’s scream had tapered off when Lucius said Luna’s name. “Lue, run,” he said. “Run, Lue. Run. Run. Run. Run.”

Perhaps the screams were preferably to the mad ramblings that left an ache in Lucius’ chest.



Potter seemed incrementally more sane during the day lit hours. Lucius oftentimes successfully cajoled him in to eating and drinking, and Potter would stammer through stories to Lucius as if he were Draco.

“‘M so cold,” Potter said one morning, his chattering teeth proof of his words. “D-Dray, are you c-cold too? You can have my bl-blanket.”

Had Potter just admitted to being cold and offering up his only protection against the cold in the same sentence?

“Keep it, Potter,” Lucius told him with a heavy sigh. “Tell me something that makes you happy.”

It was another trick Lucius began to utilize when Potter stopped recognizing him as a different person from his son. Listening to Potter ramble on about flying and dueling was a tolerable way to waste a couple of hours between the dementors rounds.

“Fred,” Potter whimpered softly. “I m-miss him. Do- d’you think he’ll come soon?”

“I hope so,” Lucius said truthfully.



Lucius couldn’t resent the boy for sleeping, but dear Merlin, he would never successfully scrub Potter’s nightmares from his consciousness.

Potter cried for his mother.

He apologized to his mother.

He sobbed Severus’ name, apologies rolling off his tongue in a constant stream.

Potter yelled out to his lover and his friends, begging them to be safe. Begging them to live.

It all painted a harrowing picture of a rather haunted young man. Potter fears his mother, fears she would hate him. ’Don’t go, mum. I’m sorry. Don’t leave me. I’m sorry.’ Potter respects Severus, counts on him for protection, craves his pride and affection and fears his abandonment. ’Sev, I’m sorry. I’m not lying. Please, please, Sev, help me. Don’t go.’ Potter reveres his friends. Cherishes them as they belong to him and are his to protect. ’Go, Lue! Save yourself Theo! Sue, I’m sorry.’

Lucius purposefully forced himself to not think of Potter’s other nightmares, the ones that caused him to whimper and beg some invisibly entity haunting him to ‘stop’ and informing them that ‘it hurts’.

The more Lucius learned about Potter, the more he wished he didn’t.

Lucius never asked to know these things about Potter.

He is unlikely to ever forget them now that he knows them.

“‘M gonna die here.”

Lucius stared up at the stone ceilings, allowing the small drip to fall carelessly on his foot. “You believe so?”

“I was always ‘sposed to die,” Potter said, seemingly not hearing Lucius’ response. “In a cupboard. In a dumpster. In a graveyard. Now p-prison.” Potter let out a peal of mad laughter that no longer caused Lucius to shiver, as accustomed to it as he now was. “For the bullet I didn’t shoot. ‘S karmic, Dray.”

“Ironic,” Lucius corrected him, his heart heavy. “You meant ironic, Potter.”

“No,” Potter whispered, “it’s karmic. I d-deserve it.”



When Potter’s broken cries assaulted Lucius’ ears not long after that conversation, Lucius fought back with a soft lullaby he used to sing to Draco.

”You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
you make me happy when skies are grey.
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you,
so please don’t take my sunshine away.”

Potter’s ragged breathing seemed to steady out after that.

Until, of course, the dementors came back again.



“Potter,” Lucius called, as became his custom when a meal tray arrived, “you must eat now. Drink your water too, brat.”

Potter hissed at him, sibilant noises that he slipped in to on occasion.

“Now, Potter,” Lucius snapped. “Eat. Drink.”

“I c-can’t,” Potter whined. “He’s in m-my head, Dray. Whispering. Make him go. ‘M not his. ‘M not.”

“You make him go,” Lucius called back, now unfazed by the same sentiment Potter continued to share in his relatively lucid moments. Someone was always in his head, it hurt, Potter hated it. “Think of your friends. Your broomstick. Your Weasley.”

A despicable choice for the future Lord Potter-Black, but as Potter would likely now never win a war, Lucius supposed a Weasley boy was an adequate lover for a broken man.

Potter hissed some more.

Lucius firmly told him to eat, using the same tone he’d once used to tell Draco that, no, he cannot have a pet dragon no matter how much he whined.

Although, Lucius also bought Draco a plush dragon instead and he praised Potter when he saw the boy lift the cup in his ever-trembling hands and ignore his oatmeal.

He’d always been an overly indulgent parent.

***

Lucius used to be able to track time in Azkaban. He could watch the moon rise and fall, watch as it chased the sun in a never ending race.

Of course, Lucius also used to believe that Azkaban was monotonous and dreary.

So perhaps he had went mad even before Potter’s arrival pushed him in to it.

It was certainly madness that made Lucius envision a spot of pink out of the corner of his eye one day when the clouds in the sky masked his only ability to mark time.

...

Pink?

Lucius twisted around, craning his neck uncomfortably to look towards the far end of the corridor.

It was not madness, it was Narcissa’s niece, Nymphadora. The young witch strode purposefully down their block, her eyes burning with justice and rage even from the distance Lucius saw them, as she and a young man in Potter’s alliance, Abbott, went straight to Potter’s cell.

Oh thank Merlin.

“Where are you taking him?” Lucius hissed to the witch when she threw Potter’s cell door open.

“Home,” Nymphadora said simply. She lifted her auror badge secured to a chain around her neck and flashed it in Lucius’ direction. “He’s been cleared of all charges.”

Lucius let out a sigh of relief to see Abbott and Nymphadora prop Potter up between them and stride up the corridor. Potter paused as they passed Lucius’ cell and stuck his hand out.

“‘M gonna get you out,” he whispered hoarsely.

Lucius looked at the young man who was nearly unrecognizable. Gone were Potter’s mischievous and cunning eyes, gone was his confident smirk of constant amusement, as if he were aware of something terribly humorous that no one else knew of. He looked gaunt; hollow and empty.

Lucius had never known anyone to break so quickly, so completely, within Azkaban.

It caused an ache in his chest that he was too saddened to be resentful over.

“I believe you believe that,” Lucius said diplomatically. He reached through his bars and squeezed Potter’s offered hand briefly. “Go home, Harry.”

Potter nodded weakly and allowed Nymphadora and Abbott to lead him from the prison.

Lucius watched him go with a bittersweet taste in his mouth. As much as Potter very desperately needed out of that prison, Lucius would give almost anything to be going free as well.

***

Lucius had his wish granted before the sun was able to fully rise the next morning.

He could feel it, he could sense the rush of magical power that cleared the dementors from his block. And, aside from Potter, there was truly only one wizard capable of such a showing.

Lucius bowed his head deferentially as the cold aura that promised pain if he misstepped even slightly appeared silently before Lucius’ cell.

“Lucius,” the Dark Lord said, his high pitched voice cold and bordering truly furious, “where is Potter?”

“Potter, my Lord?” Lucius prevaricated, feeling the first droplets of sweat he’d felt in months well up on his forehead. “He was released, yesterday, I believe.”

The fury of the Dark Lord increased to the point where his magic was forcing itself inside Lucius, freezing his lungs, chilling his heart.

“Who released him?” the Dark Lord hissed. “Who, Lucius?!”

“The aurors, my Lord,” Lucius cried out, struggling to draw in the air required to speak. “They said he’d been cleared of all charges.”

“I WAS MEANT TO FREE HIM!” the Dark Lord screamed, sounding truly mad. “I PUT HIM HERE AND I WAS MEANT TO FREE HIM!”

Lucius cringed away slightly, preferring the chill damp of the Azkaban walls to the cold fury radiating off the wizard before him. He murmured an appropriately reverent noise of agreement, unsure why the Dark Lord would want to free a broken boy from prison after placing him there, but unwilling to question it either.

“Lucius, rise now. Retrieve the others. We leave immediately,” the Dark Lord snapped. “We will stop by Thicknesse’s home on our way back to Macnair’s Manor and I can discover why he freed my consort.”

...

Had Lucius gone as mad as Potter?

“Your- your consort, my Lord?” Lucius asked hesitantly, fear racing through his veins for daring to question what he thought he heard.

It was a mad thought to have, undoubtedly a side-effect of prolonged exposure to both Potter and the dementors, but Lucius imagined Frederick Weasley’s gobsmacked expression at hearing the Dark Lord claim his partner in such a way.

It was only his overwhelming fear that kept him from laughing at the mental image.

The Dark Lord was in Lucius’ face in an instant, his red eyes flashing with danger and his lips pulled back in a feral snarl. “Potter is mine,” he hissed in Lucius’ face. “Retrieve the others. Inform them that we will have a meeting upon our return.”

“Y-yes, my Lord,” Lucius stammered, craning his head back to get away from the fearsome wizard before him. “I’ll go now.”

The Dark Lord took a step to the side, allowing Lucius to scamper around him, cringing away from touching him as if an erroneous house-elf.

“Lucius,” the Dark Lord called as Lucius all but ran down the corridor.

Lucius turned around immediately, dropping his head in a bow. “My Lord?”

The Dark Lord’s voice was thoughtful, curious truly. “How was Potter? While he was here? When he was released?”

Lucius considered it and then attempted to word it in a way that he... thought... perhaps... the Dark Lord wanted to hear.

“Utterly broken, my Lord,” Lucius said truthfully. “The dementors broke him.”

The Dark Lord’s scream of rage sent Lucius flying down to corridor, eager to escape him and complete the task he had been assigned.

Apparently, that had not been the answer the Dark Lord desired, despite his own admittance at putting Potter in the prison.

And, as he gathered up the followers of the Dark Lord in their various cells, Lucius could not help but believe that he had missed quite a bit in his imprisonment.

Perhaps, if Severus did not die from the grief of his legally proclaimed heir becoming entirely mad, he could ask him at some point what exactly had shifted in this war after Lucius’ imprisonment.

He would likely also ask about Potter’s health, when he could.

Blasted boy.

65%

Monday, February 2

Harry was going to die in Azkaban.

He had accepted that already.

One day, someone would say ‘whatever happened to Harry Potter anyway?’ And someone else would laugh about how the dementors ultimately killed him.

That was really the last mostly rational thought Harry had.

Everything after that was merely a mishmash of events he couldn’t be entirely sure happened in his past, events he couldn’t be entirely sure weren’t happening at Hogwarts now in his absence, and a smooth voice speaking to him in nonsensical words that occasionally included the word ‘Draco’.

Draco was important, Harry was sure of it. But then Harry wasn’t entirely sure that he was Harry. Was he Draco? What made him believe Draco was a person?

Was he a person?

Or was he just misery? A ball of magical misery being held underwater, struggling to breathe?

He didn’t really want to breathe anymore anyway.



“Harry? Harry, can you hear me? I’m here to take you home.”

Harry laughed and curled in himself more tightly. He didn’t have a home. Everything was cold. Harry never had a home- he only dreamt that. This was reality; this cold, aching, desperate sort of loneliness.

Everything else was only a dream.

“It isn’t a dream, I swear it. C’mon, Harry, come with me. Don’t you want to go home? Go to Severus and Sirius?”

Had he always argued with himself in such a feminine voice? He struggled to remember, but he was certain that at some point of his life he had wanted to sound masculine. Why did he sound so girly now?

“You aren’t arguing with yourself. Pick your head up, please. I don’t want to touch you if I don’t have to.”

What a daft thing to say. Harry wasn’t a person, capable of being touched. He was...

Something else entirely, probably.

“Just grab him, he’s out of his mind,” someone snapped. Someone that sounded more masculine, thankfully. Harry wasn’t entirely sure he was a person, but he did know that if he was a person, he’d like to sound masculine when he argued with himself.

The masculine voice chuckled, and Harry felt someone strong, someone with large hands, grip him.

Did that mean he was a person?

If he was, he didn’t want touched.

If he was, then Harry desperately wanted touched.

“Let go.” Harry pulled weakly against the grip, knowing in his heart it didn’t matter. He couldn’t put together any puzzles, the pieces weren’t even there anymore.

“I’m going to take you home, to Susan, to Fred,” the masculine voice whispered as Harry felt another arm wrap around him. “Come on, Potter, don’t you want to go home? Go see your friends, your family? They’re waiting for you.”

“They’re d-dead,” Harry cried. He looked around a bit and realized that he’d somehow dreamt up a vision of his friend Johnny and Snape’s friend Tonks. Why he dreamt those two, instead of Fred or Susan or Theo, he’ll never know. “They’re all dead!”

He saw them die. He was certain of it.

Susan bled to death from a curse on her arm. Luna drowned in a lake. Fred had been bitten by the same snake that killed Trent and Hermione with just a look. Theo’s father killed him, transfigured him in to a bone and buried him. Snape was struck down by Timmy.

Harry watched all of their deaths over and over while someone whispered to him that they didn’t have to die, that he would save them.

How could he save the dead?

Draco was the only one left. The only one who talked to him sometimes. The only one who cared about him.

Harry didn’t want to dream of Tonks and Johnny, he wanted to dream about when his friends were alive and they loved him.

“We aren’t a dream,” Tonks told him with sad eyes that made Harry cringe almost as badly as the feeling of their arms under his. “They aren’t dead. Nobody is dead. You’ll see Fred and Susan and Theo soon, I swear. This is real, Harry.”

Was Harry speaking out loud?

He didn’t understand the rules to these dreams.

This felt much more real than the ones of Lily Potter kicking him as he laid on the floor, broken and bruised. But those dreams had felt more real than the ones of Snape sneering at him, spewing every bit of hate that he could think to use to inform Harry that not only had he made a mistake in being in his life, but that Harry’s entire life had been a mistake.

’It would be better if you were dead. You are a plague.’

And then Harry died.

So now he just wasn’t really sure if his imagination had gotten better or worse.

“Dear God, is it really that bad here?” Johnny murmured.

“Depends on your life story,” Tonks said softly.

Tonks and Johnny drug Harry from his cell, exactly as Harry dreamt that his friends had done, and Harry paused as he saw Draco sitting in a cell.

Which really solidified the whole dream aspect because people didn’t hate Draco like they did Harry; Draco would never be in Azkaban.

“‘M gonna get you out,” Harry told him. He tried to grab him, to drag him with his rescue team, but Draco just shook his hand and released it.

“I believe that you believe that,” he said. “Go home, Harry.”

Even dream Draco didn’t believe Harry anymore.



“This is going to be really unpleasant,” Tonks said when Harry was blinking through the burning light of what he thought might be the sun.

“Everything is,” Harry murmured. He tried to lift a hand, to shield the sun from burning his eyes, but it wouldn’t cooperate. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to dream a different landscape. Somewhere sunny, but not bright.

Just... warm.

“His place or Hogsmeade?” Johnny asked.

Harry didn’t think he was talking to him. Even in his dreams, people didn’t ask him questions. They just did whatever they wanted.

Harry could never be stronger than them.

He could never be free from them.

“Harry, do you want to go home, or do you want to go to my home in Hogsmeade? I’m not doing whatever I want, you just aren’t exactly helping me much.”

Harry wished he’d dreamt of Fred instead of Tonks. Fred would know what Harry wanted without him having to decide on his own. And Tonks... Tonks should be with Snape. Sleeping on Harry’s couch and making Snape smile.

“Scary to imagine, Snape smiling,” Johnny snorted. “His place then? I can take him, if you want to go get Snape and the others.”

“I’ll take him,” Tonks said. Her slim arm tightened around Harry’s torso. “You take the bag of his belongings, go to my place and floo Sev, let him know we’ve got him. Harry might not want you touching him once he realizes he isn’t dreaming.”

Daft thing to say. Harry died a long time ago. He’s just been dreaming ever since. And even his dreams hated him, because Harry was suddenly lurched forward, twisted in the air, and his lungs were shut down as he was forced through a straw sized tube.



When Harry hit the ground, it hurt. And that ache caused a small amount of the fog in his head to lift. His hands were on the ground, and it wasn’t cold and smooth, it was cold and wet. Which was a shocking change from how it had always been.

“Up you get,” Tonks said, grabbing Harry’s arm and lifting him to his feet. “C’mon, Harry, Fred’s inside.”

Tonks was a liar.

Fred died almost as long ago as Harry did.

Except... Oh.

Harry was swaying on his feet and saw a spot of red on the endless scene of white and his frozen heart beat just once.

“Harry!”

Harry’s dreams were finally cooperating with him, at least a little bit, because Fred was running to him.

“Don’t grab him,” Tonks snapped when Fred stopped in front of Harry and Harry could examine him closely. In his other dreams, Fred’s eyes were never so blue. He had never been so pale, and worried. In his dreams, Fred always smiled.

He liked it better when Fred smiled.

“Dreams?” Fred reached out slowly and traced the side of Harry’s face with his fingers, drawing a needy whine from Harry who desperately leaned in to the touch. Had anyone ever touched him before he died? Or had that all just been fantasies he dreamt up as well? “You’re not dreaming, darlin, this is real.”

Harry laughed, causing Tonks to flinch and Fred to step backwards. “Nothing is real,” Harry said. He dropped his head, feeling the visual change of everything in this dream to cause him to be abruptly exhausted.

“Is he- is he asleep?”

“I have no idea.”

“Was it horrible there?”

“You don’t even want to know. Help me get him inside.”

Harry felt himself being drug through the snow and then—

“Warm,” he whispered. When was the last time his dreams were warm? Even with Tonks around, this was a real improvement to all his recent dreams.

“What’d you do to him?” Fred asked as he helped drag Tonks up what felt like a set of stairs.

“Slept on his sofa once, apparently,” Tonks sighed.

Fred chuckled, “That’ll do it.”

Harry ignored them and focused on the pleasant smells surrounding him. All his other dreams smelt like mildew, sweat, and copper. This one smelled like citrus and jasmine and treacle.

As far as dreams went, this one was nice. Nobody was dying. Nobody was drowning him. Everything smelt good. And it was warm.

His overall pleasure at his dreams being a bit more pleasant increased when he was plucked up in a pair of citrusy scented arms and laid on a soft and fuzzy surface.

“This is real, love, you’re home now.”

That was just the sort of thing that his dreams always said, right before they stabbed Harry in the chest with an ice dagger.

“Nobody is stabbing you, just rest, darlin. You’re safe.”

Harry laughed at such a stupid thing to say, then he fell asleep.

”Dear God- what happened to him?”

“He’s mad. You didn’t see him, Sev, he was talking to the walls. Screaming at them. Crying. It was horrible. He thinks this is all a dream.”

“Don’t call him fucking mad, Tonks. It’s just the dementors, they- they kill him.”

Harry floated in a peaceful sort of slumber- if this was still death, it was much better than it used to be.

You cannot die, little Horcrux. You can never die. Live now. Live and come to me. I will keep you safe.

Aah. Not death then.

Just more dreams.

“Harry, wake up. You are at home, you are safe.”

It was hard, but not impossible, to laugh in his dreams. Harry humored his imagination and opened his eyes.

This was both better, and worse, than the cold dreams. This one was warm, it smelled good, it had everyone Harry cared about in it, but they looked all wrong.

His mind really had cracked.

“Nothing is cracked,” Susan said quickly, reaching out to him then dropping her arm before she reached him.

People didn’t touch Harry.

He didn’t like it.

He didn’t deserve it.

Even in his dreams.

Come with me, I will give you all the things you deserve.

“Death?” Harry hissed back to the only living friend he had left. The only person who didn’t die in his dreams, over and over. Someone who swore they would save him.

The world.

Harry shook his head. He didn’t deserve the world. That was mad.

“Who’s he talking to?” Sirius asked Snape.

Why’d he sound so panicked?

“Damnit,” Snape swore and after a moment, a glass bottle full of something lavender colored came flying to him. “His occlumency barriers are shot.”

“You can’t just drug him!” Fred cried.

Why did people keep acting like anyone couldn’t do anything they wanted to him anytime they wanted?

“I am not doing ‘whatever I want to you’,” Snape said, his dark eyes soft and pitying. “This is for your protection, Harry. Goodnight.”

Harry blinked twice. He felt something spelled directly in to him. It made his eyelids droop and his torso go slack.

And then he was asleep again.

Had he ever really been awake?



When Harry woke next, it was dark. Which made sense. What didn’t make sense, were the men seated on a little green sofa that was pulled up beside his bed.

It was supposed to be further away, Harry was certain of it.

“I moved it,” Sirius said, stretching from his tense position on the sofa. “I’ll put it back.”

Was everyone legilimizing Harry or were his thoughts pouring out like little thought bubbles? He’d seen that, once, in a comic book.

Maybe Harry was in a comic book now. He wouldn’t be Superman, with his muscles and his justice. Harry would be Lex Luthor with his force fields, his weapons, and his desire to burn the earth to ashes.

“You are speaking aloud, and you are not a comic book villain,” Snape said. He leaned forward and raised his hand to Harry’s forehead, placing it there softly and causing Harry to tilt his face up to keep his hand there. “Do you know where you are?”

“M-my room—”

“Excellent.”

“—in Hell, I sup-suppose.”

“Not so excellent then,” Sirius said, frowning at him. “Harry, Pup, you’re at home. You’re not dead, or dreaming.”

Harry was sick of this annoying change in his dreams. They didn’t usually spend their time convincing him of his continued life, they just died or killed him.

If Snape and Sirius were going to kill him, he wished they’d get on with it. His head ached fiercely.

“We are not here to kill you,” Snape said. He pulled his hand away causing Harry to let out a pathetic noise of unhappiness. Snape sighed and put his hand back on Harry’s forehead and carefully shifted from the sofa to the edge of Harry’s bed. “Would you like a potion for the headache?”

Harry humored them, as it was sometimes easier to do in these dreams.

“No,” he said quietly. “It’ll g-go away.” Harry looked around and felt ice freeze in his chest. “Dray? Where’s Dray?”

“Draco?” Snape asked. “He is downstairs with your other misfits, would you like Black to go retrieve him?”

“He’s in p-prison,” Harry told him. “‘S cold there. He hates it.”

“Draco’s downstairs,” Sirius said slowly. “I swear, I just saw him. He was gathering drinks and snacks for your friends.”

“HE’S IN PRISON!” Harry screamed. “DRAY! DRACO! DRAAAAY!” He tried to get up, but Sirius held him down, causing Harry to thrash and scream more. “SAVE HIM! DRACO! DRACO!”

The door to his room burst open, and someone blonde with pointy features and soft hair stepped in, his wand drawn. “Harry?”

Harry went still. His heart beat quickly beneath Sirius’ hands. “Who are you?” he whispered.

The pointy bloke with the wand looked from Sirius to Snape to Harry with his brows so high on his forehead, Harry couldn’t find them beneath his hair. “Draco?” he said.

As if Harry was meant to believe someone who couldn’t even remember the right lines to his speech.

“Harry, this is Draco,” Snape said slowly, bending over to put himself in Harry’s line of vision now. His hand moved from Harry’s forehead to his cheek. “He is here. Not in prison.”

That wasn’t Draco.

“Yes I am,” the imposter said slowly.

Harry could prove it.

“You are my sunshine, my only...”

The imposter blinked at Harry for an impossibly long moment before he opened his mouth and sang the next word, “Sunshine.” The imposter looked at Snape and Sirius and shook his head. “My father,” he said. “Harry wants my father.”

Then he walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.

“Lucius?” Snape said quietly, applying a bit of pressure to Harry’s cheek bone with his thumb. “You want Lucius?”

“You make me happy, when skies are grey,” Harry sang. He thought he sounded like Dray, smooth and soothing, but Snape’s flinch told him otherwise, so Harry quit singing.

“Someone kill me,” Harry whispered instead. His breath was filled with wheezes and his chest ached as badly as his head. “If you k-kill me, I’ll reset.”

Nobody killed him.

Sirius sat on one side of the bed and stroked Harry’s hair while Snape sat on the other side and held his face. They communicated silently over Harry’s head so he closed his eyes and did his own silent communication.

Why won’t they kill me?

They will eventually. Come with me. I will never allow you to be killed.

“Then you d-don’t have what I n-need,” Harry whispered.



When he woke up next, he was reset.

It was bright now, and unbearably warm.

Not unbearably, actually. Harry was drenched in sweat, but his bones were still cold. The ice in his blood was still flowing through his veins, causing goosebumps to erupt on his arms.

He turned his head, looking for the source of the heat, and met blue eyes.

“Hi,” Fred whispered.

This was the best dream yet.

Harry reached out to touch Fred’s face, knowing he wouldn’t be able to, and let out a surprised gasp at feeling his soft skin beneath his hand. Fred closed his eyes as Harry’s tentative fingers explored his face, causing Harry to frown. He wanted Fred’s eyes to be opened, he wanted to see those blue eyes that never came through his dreams just right.

Not like they were now.

“This isn’t a dream,” Fred said, opening his eyes and causing Harry’s frown to fade. “If anyone would be dreaming here, it would be me anyway, love. Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you? How much I worried that I’d never see you again?”

Harry understood. That was how he felt when Fred died. “When I d-died,” he whispered knowingly. “Yeah.”

Fred’s eyes swam in Harry’s vision, a film of wet muddling up the blue that Harry wanted to see so badly.

“You aren’t dead,” Fred said quietly. He reached up and ran his hand through Harry’s hair, driving out another desperate noise of need. “You were in Azkaban, and now you’re home. You’re alive.”

“They’re lying to you,” Harry breathed. “T-time to wake up, Fred. You’re d-dead.” Harry swiped the tear off Fred’s cheek. “Dream something b-better.”

Fred tilted his head forward until his forehead was touching Harry’s. “I don’t know how to help you,” he said in a harsh whisper.

You can’t save the dead.

“You aren’t dead,” Fred said.

Harry just laughed.

They’d find his body in Azkaban soon.

The two of them laid there for a while. Harry recommitted himself to memorizing the freckles on this Fred’s face. One of his dreams had a freckle-less Fred and it had disturbed Harry nearly as much as the giant snake ripping his throat out, so he hoped to memorize these markings now so his other dreams would follow suit.

Eventually the soft sound of a door opening had Harry clenching his eyes shut, memorization be damned.

They were back.

Which meant that Harry’s peaceful dream of lying in a bed with Fred would end soon and either Fred would be killed right in front of him or Harry would be killed by Fred.

That’s how they always ended when the dementors came around.

“Nobody is going to kill you and nobody is going to kill Fred.”

Harry flinched while he waited for the room to freeze and the scene to reset.

Anytime now...

Harry shifted uneasily when the temperature didn’t change any. He opened his eyes slowly and saw Fred still right in front of him. He picked his head up and saw Theo and Susan beside his bed, a large tray covered in stacks of various foods in Theo’s hands.

“There are no dementors here,” Theo said quietly. “There is food though, are you hungry?”

Harry laughed, causing everyone else to flinch. “It’s poison,” he told Theo. “And you’re a bone. I saw you. Abracadabra, bone of the brother, buried in the forest.”

“Theo is not a bone, he isn’t dead, and nobody is buried in the forest,” Susan said. She sat on the edge of the bed and grabbed a piece of toast off the tray and held it out to Harry. “This isn’t poison, I swear.”

Yeah, Harry was going to believe a ghost.

“For fucks sake,” Susan sighed. She took a bite of the toast and swallowed it before Harry could stop her. “Can ghosts eat toast?” she asked him. “Here,” she held it out to him, “it’s good. Mavis made it.”

Harry sat up and snatched the toast out of her hand before throwing it as far as he could. “I k-killed you,” Harry told her, “don’t m-make it worse.”

“Sirius was fine when he was released!” Susan cried, throwing her hands in the air, catching Harry’s attention.

Did Susan always sparkle?

“Sirius isn’t Harry,” Fred said. “And yes, it’s her arm, the fancy gold one. Remember, darlin?”

Harry shook his head and inched backwards until he was sitting against the post of the bed. “Ghosts don’t sp-sparkle,” he said. “Draco?”

“Draco or Lucius?” Theo asked Harry. “Who do you want?”

“I hope they m-make you truly miserable,” Harry murmured. He leaned forward then smacked his head back on the metal post repeatedly. “Get Draco! HE’S COLD! THEY’RE KILLING HIM!”

“You go get Snape, Fred and I are going to get Lucius, apparently.”

“You can’t yank him from his position as a spy because Harry’s lost his marbles!”

“HE DID NOT LOSE HIS MARBLES, THEO!”

Harry never had any marbles.

Someone laughed, and they sounded hysterical, so Harry hit his head one more time before it went black.



Did you die too?

I can never die. I am eternal. We are eternal.

Why didn’t he understand that Harry didn’t want to be eternal?



“Potter, wake up.”

’What makes you happy?’

Harry struggled to swim to the surface, opening his eyes with a loud gasp. “Dray?”

“Lucius,” Draco corrected him with a heavy sigh. “Sit up. Eat.”

Harry looked around, trying to find the dementors, and slowly moved in to a sitting position when he only saw ghosts.

“They aren’t ghosts, idiot,” Draco said. “Here.” He handed Harry a slice of toast and Harry was struck with the feeling that he had dreamt this exact scenario recently.

“You did not dream it, it happened,” Draco said. “Apparently moments before your friends decided that I am of more use as a nursemaid than a spy.”

“Snitches get stitches.”

“Quite,” Draco agreed. “Eat, now.”

Harry looked between the toast in his hands to Draco to the ghosts filling the room then back to the toast. “They’ve p-poisoned it.”

“It’s poisoned to keep the dementors away,” Draco whispered. “Eat it.”

The ghosts never helped Harry before, but maybe they were doing him a favor in exchange for killing him later. Harry took a bite and chewed it as he stared hard at Lupin, who was standing between Sirius and Snape at the foot of his bed.

“I d-don’t dream ab-about him.”

“Why would you?” Fred grinned from the side of Harry’s bed. “He’s no one special.”

Harry nodded in agreement and squinted hard at the tall woman with the blonde hair and the grey eyes. “Or her.”

“That is your cousin, Narcissa,” Draco told him. “My wife.”

Harry laughed, spraying a bit of the toast still in his mouth on his lap. “Cissa is married to Lucius. Lucius is dead.”

Draco rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and then turned to the wall of ghosts. “I don’t know what you expect here, he’s broken. They drove him mad.”

Harry nodded in agreement again. He’s always been broken. Everyone knows that. They remind him right before they rip him in half.

“He wanted you,” Snape told Draco. “And, as you have already made more progress than the rest of us have, I believe he is fixable.”

Harry laughed. “You can’t fix the d-dead. You live for a little bit, then you g-get killed, then you’re a ghost. Abracadabra!”

“Every time he says that, I expect one of us to fall over dead,” Theo said.

“That’s how rabbits come out of hats when you have magic,” Harry told him. “You can’t kill a ghost.”

“You have magic, Potter,” Draco said. “Eat and perhaps it will come back eventually.”

That was a dream. Warmth in his chest that spread to his fingers, eager and happy to do his bidding. Just a dream.

“Eat,” Draco snapped. “Now.”

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Susan snapped, her eyes looking like the fire that killed her one time.

“Oh?” Draco raised a brow at Susan then looked at Harry, who was absently eating the toast as he waited to see if ghosts could kill Draco or not.

They hadn’t, not before, but dreams and ghosts didn’t follow scripts. They didn’t know the right lines.

A bit like Harry back when he’d been a person.

“‘M tired, Dray,” Harry said. He sagged back against the pillows and watched Draco carefully. “Wake me up when they come b-back?”

“The ghosts or the dementors?” Draco asked.

“The ghosts d-don’t leave,” Harry said.

“The dementors then,” Draco said. He smoothed Harry’s fringe off his forehead and pushed his head down to the pillows. “Sleep, you madman. I will wake you if the dementors come back.” Draco got to his feet and turned to Snape. “Perhaps we should talk.”

“Perhaps we should,” Snape agreed, his eyes trained on Harry.

Harry caught Draco’s sleeve before he could leave. “You make me happy, when skies are...”

Draco looked down at Harry and his face went abruptly red. “I hate you,” he told Harry. He flicked his hand irritably towards the doorway. “Everyone else, go.”

“Mm, I’ll stay, thanks,” Fred said. He slowly pulled Harry against him and that was why Harry would rather dream about Fred than Tonks. He didn’t have to tell Fred what he wanted. He just knew somehow.

“Everyone else,” Draco snapped. He waited until the others left with small smiles and quiet snickers then. “You too, Severus. I’ll not humiliate myself in front of an audience.”

“He isn’t real,” Harry told him, “he’s just a ghost.”

Draco scowled and Snape smiled and conjured a chair to sit in.

“I should obliviate you,” Draco told Harry. Harry just waited, certain that he’d give in like he usually did when Harry was being haunted by ghosts. And he did, after another heavy sigh and a dramatic roll of his eyes.

Harry closed his eyes. Warm in Fred’s arms. Content by Draco’s song. Confused by it all.

Were the dementors on break? Did dementors take smoke breaks? Sirius took smoke breaks. Harry should smoke. Maybe they’d let him leave his cell if he did.

Sirius left his cell. The dementors killed him, they stuffed his soul in to a dog, and Sirius left. Then he took all the smoke breaks he wanted.



”I don’t know what to tell you, Severus, he just screamed.”

“Why does he want you though?”

“Perhaps because we are prison mates. Or he decided he hates me and desperately wishes for the Dark Lord to kill me.”

“His occlumency barriers are shot. We would have had to pull you regardless. It was only a matter of time before the Dark Lord discovered your true alliance through his mind.”



Did you steal my follower, Little Horcrux?

I didn’t do it.

I am not angry, you clever boy. Imagine the following we will have when we are partnered together.

I don’t want followers. I want my friends back.

They’re dead. I am all that is left. You and I, forever.



“You’re trash,” the woman said. “Disgusting! I died for you?”

“I’m sorry,” Harry told her. He looked up at her through the iron bars and felt like her green eyes were direct knives in to his chest. “Mum, I’m sorry.”

“You’re no son of mine,” Lily sneered. She turned to leave him in his cell and spat angrily over her shoulder. “I should have let you die.”

As much as Harry didn’t want to see her glaring so hatefully at him, he also didn’t want her to leave him alone. “Mum, please, I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’M SORRY!”



“That’s the saddest damn thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Lucius said it was a frequent nightmare in Azkaban. Harry believes she would hate him.”

“Use the stone! Bring her back, or whatever it does. Let him talk to her.”

“Excellent idea, Nymphadora, I’ll bring back the spirit of a dead woman while Harry believes he is being haunted by ghosts. Truly, how did you pass the auror exams?”

”With my good looks, obviously. Not that it matters now, eh?”

“I apologize. I am... stressed. I do understand the sacrifice you made to retrieve him, Abbott as well. I suppose a thank you would be wildly understated?”

“A bit, yeah.”



“Harry, wake up please.”

Harry unscrewed his eyes and nearly smiled to see who was haunting him now. “Lue.”

Luna smiled and climbed in his bed, curling in to him like a cat.

Cats aren’t ghosts.

Which meant this was a dream.

“Isn’t all of life a dream?” Luna hummed in to Harry’s chest. “What would make you wake up?”

“I can’t wake up,” Harry told her. “You’ll be gone and they’ll be there.”

“The dementors.”

“Yeah.”

“What if you woke up and they were gone?” she asked him. She pulled herself out of Harry’s grip, causing an ache in the hollow spot of his chest where he used to have a heart, and peered up at him earnestly. “If you were awake and there were no dementors, what would happen?”

“Then...” Harry tried to puzzle through her riddle. “Then I’d be dead?”

“How do you know if you’re dead?” she asked him softly. She lifted her hand and hovered it above his cheek. “Can dead men feel touch?”

“No,” Harry whispered. “You can’t touch a ghost.”

Luna’s hand came close enough to Harry’s cheek for him to feel the heat and a needy whine to escape through his teeth.

“If I touch you, and you feel it, does that mean you’re not dead and I’m not a ghost?”

“It... m-maybe,” Harry allowed, tilting his face to reach her hand. She moved her hand though, keeping it tantalizingly close without making contact.

“But then how do you know this isn’t a dream?” Luna said. “Tell me, Harry, and I’ll touch you.”

“Dementors?”

“I need a different way,” Luna whispered. “Think, Harry. How do you know I’m not a dream?”

“Dreams can’t hurt,” Harry said after thinking it over for a while, “not really. They hide the p-pain, Lue. They bury it in the forest with Theo’s b-bones.”

“Dreams don’t hurt at all,” Luna agreed seriously. “Sorry, Harry.”

Harry didn’t know what she apologized for, she didn’t even kill him yet, but then she pulled her hand back and abruptly slapped him in the face.

Someone howled from the foot of the bed, “Don’t hit him!”

Harry blinked though as Luna’s hand now cradled his stinging cheek. “I’m n-not dreaming?”

“No,” Luna smiled, but it was all wrong because she was also crying. “Can you feel my hand?”

“Yeah,” Harry breathed.

“So I’m not a ghost. You’re not dreaming. Then what’s going on?”

Aah.

Someone did their job wrong and Harry snuck in to Theo’s afterlife.

“Wrong,” Luna told him. Her soft thumb stroked the skin under Harry’s eyes. “If this was the afterlife, wouldn’t James Potter be here?”

Harry looked around carefully.

Theo. Susan. Fred. Sirius. Lupin. Snape.

“M-maybe?” Harry told her, uncertain and nervous now. “He d-doesn’t like Snape.” He probably wouldn’t like Harry either, so maybe he was hiding.

“But he likes Sirius,” Luna said. She grabbed the other side of Harry’s face and turned him to face Sirius. “Remus too,” she said. “If this was the afterlife and Sirius and Remus are here, wouldn’t he be with them?”

That... yeah, that made a bit of sense.

“Exactly,” Luna said encouragingly. “Okay, think, Harry. If you aren’t dead. I’m not a ghost. This isn’t the afterlife, and it isn’t a dream, then what’s going on?”

He had no idea.

“You’re alive. You’re home. You’re safe.”

What a mad thing to say. Luna always said mad things though. Harry used to love that about her, back when he’d been a person.

“Go,” Snape sighed. “Let Lupin try.”

“I’ll be back,” Luna said. She kissed his forehead and slid off Harry’s bed, leaving him bereft and cold.

Harry watched the others follow Luna out the door, leaving him alone.

Alone with Lupin.

“Don’t go,” Harry cried, struggling to climb out of the bed and follow the others. “Come back! LUE! COME BACK! HE’LL KILL ME! LUNA! LUNA! PLEASE! I’M SORRY! I’M SO SORRY! HE’S GOING TO HURT ME!”

“Harry, I’m not going to kill you,” Lupin said lied. “Please, Harry, I swear to you. I will not hurt you.”

Lupin held his hands up and came to the side of Harry’s bed, but that was worse. Much worse.

“STOP! LUNA! LUNA HELP! PLEASE! I’M SORRY! Go away,” he snarled at Lupin as he took another step towards Harry. “Don’t- don’t touch me!”

“I won’t,” Lupin said. He took a step away from Harry’s bed and kept his hands up by his shoulders. “I will not touch you, at all.”

God Harry was so sick of being lied to. He didn’t know what this was anymore, but he couldn’t take the lies.

“I’m not lying, Snape. Please, come back,” Harry cried out. His legs were snarled by a Grindylow and he couldn’t get out of the water. “Fleur, help. I’m sorry! Fleur! SAVE LUNA, FLEUR!”

The Grindylow abruptly freed Harry’s legs and he hit the floor with a harsh thud that knocked the wind from his chest.

“Are you alright?”

“You lied,” Harry whispered. He closed his eyes as Lupin grabbed his arms, lifting him to his feet. “Liar. Liar. Liar. L—”

“Get out,” a sharp voice snapped after a door bounced off a wall. “Go, Lupin. You have made it worse.”

“I... Severus, I don’t think I can help him.”

Nobody could.

There used to be pieces of Harry that could be glued back together, leaving scars as proof of his brokenness, but then the dementors ate the pieces this time and coughed up dust.

You can’t glue dust back together.



“What do we do, Snape?”

“I... I truly have no idea.”

“I know a healer, on the Janus Thickey Ward, Healer Strout. I could... I could talk to her, see if he could go there?”

“Piss off, Black. We are not sending him to St Mungo’s. The Dark Lord would find him and kill him.”

“What do we do then?”

“We... We arrange for someone to keep an eye on him. We send the students back to Hogwarts. Perhaps if there are fewer of us around, he will stop thinking he’s being haunted.”

“So we need babysitters?”

“We do.”

”Not Moony, maybe... Fleur? Harry was crying for her earlier. And Fred. Cissa and Tonks?”

”It is better than nothing. You and I will fill in between classes, I suppose.”

”I hate this.”

”It is not ideal, no.”

***

It was dark out.

Which Harry preferred.

The darkness was real, it wasn’t a dream.

Nobody would dream of darkness. They dreamt of magic and friends and food that wasn’t poisoned. They dreamt of flying broomsticks and potions and happiness.

Harry looked around and furrowed his brows. He didn’t usually dream about his room, so quiet, either, but...

”Are you real?” he hissed to the snake curled up on the foot of his bed.

The snake lifted its head and flicked its tongue out. ”I am.”

“You’re lucky then,” Harry told it. ”I’m not.”

“You are.”

The snake didn’t understand, but they usually didn’t.

Harry slipped away from the ghost sleeping on the sofa, the ghost sleeping on his bed. He let his fingers linger on the red hair on the pillow beside him.

It didn’t matter what everyone said. They could claim Harry wasn’t dreaming all they wanted, but they could be lying. If it was a dream, then that’s exactly what they would say.

Harry snuck out of the room on light feet, instinctively knowing where not to step to prevent creaky floorboards from waking anyone, and made his way to the front door. He breathed in the cold air, so different than it used to be, and looked around for a proper tree.

There.

He quickly made his way to the tallest tree in the forest that surrounded the house and climbed up it. He relished the rough feeling of the frozen bark beneath his fingers as he climbed higher and higher. Harry was carefully stepping out on a branch a good distance from the ground when someone hollered at him, causing him to lose his footing and crouch down to maintain his balance.

“What are you doing?” Sirius yelled up at him. “Pup, it’s freezing out here. Come inside.”

“You aren’t real,” Harry called down to him, shaking his head furiously, sick of being tricked. “You’re a d-dream and I need to w-wake up!”

“And breaking your legs will prove you’re awake?” Sirius asked, his voice difficult to distinguish over the wind.

Or was it the wind talking to him?

That was a possibility.

“I have to wake up,” Harry said again. He got to his feet and carefully edged down to the spot he wanted to fall from. “You’re not real!”

Sirius sighed. He pulled his wand from his pocket and stepped backwards from the tree. “Go on then, jump,” he said. “If this is what it takes to convince you that you’re awake, that this is real, that you’re alive, then do it. Jump, Harry.”

Harry was more certain than ever that he was dreaming or dead now. Everyone in his dreams always wanted him to hurt.

They wanted him dead.

It was a blow, to have it confirmed, but Harry should have known.

He held his arms out at his side, wondering if flying in his dreams would ever feel as good as flying used to be when he had been a person, and then he let himself fall forwards.



Everything was a bit different after that.



“I can’t believe you jumped,” Sirius chuckled as Harry winced and pulled at the hair on his legs.

“I cannot believe you let him,” Snape scowled. He gently grabbed Harry’s hands and moved them away from his legs. “Regrowing bones is painful, you know that, quit making it worse, brat.”

“I figured we could keep telling him that he wasn’t dreaming for God knows how long, or we heal a few broken bones,” Sirius shrugged. “This seemed quicker. I just didn’t expect a compound fracture.”

Harry listened to them bicker for a few minutes as he studied Snape.

“I did-didn’t do it.”

Snape immediately ended his bickering with Sirius and turned to Harry. “I know that,” he said quietly. “Crabbe did it. Not you.”

“You didn’t b-believe me, when they arrested me. Or...” Harry felt a small wave of fuzziness hit his brain. “Or was that a dream?”

“It was real.” Snape cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. “I did not believe you. I am unsure if an apology is sufficient, but I do apologize.”

“You gotta admit, Pup, they did a hell of a job of framing you,” Sirius said with a frown. “And you were planning on killing him. You can see why we didn’t believe you.”

“I don’t care if you didn’t b-believe me,” Harry told Sirius. His voice felt hoarse all of a sudden as he tried to speak around the lump in his throat. “I lie to you all the time. But not you,” he told Snape. “I n-never lie to you.”

“I would have been in the same position, made the same decisions I did, even if you did kill him,” Snape said. He leaned forward and reached for Harry’s arm, but Harry jerked it away this time. No matter how much he craved feeling someone’s touch to remind him that he was real, he didn’t want Snape’s right now. Snape looked mildly sad at Harry’s rejection, but he cleared it away quickly. “You supposedly lying to me did not impact any of the events that followed. I did not leave you there because I believed you deserved it.”

“But you d-didn’t believe me,” Harry said flatly. “Dream or real?”

“Real,” Snape said. “You have lied to me in the past, you know.”

“When?” Harry demanded, an itch of unhappiness prickling his eyes and his mind. “When have you ever asked m-me something and I lied right to your fa-face?”

“Barty Crouch Junior.”

Harry sifted through his memories, attempting to sort through what was real, what he dreamt, and what happened. “I told you I’d t-tell you about it w-when I could,” he said slowly, his face scrunched up in careful concentration. “I d-didn’t lie.”

“Hunting for Black.”

Harry’s eyes flicked to Sirius uncertainly, the nagging thought that this wasn’t real striking him once more. “I d-don’t remember hunting for Sirius,” he said. “In Hogsm-m- Hogsmeade? With- with Tonks?”

Snape sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. “The summer before your third year. You told me you were with Susan and Amelia, and you were actually apparating around the country, hunting for Black.”

“I don’t- I don’t remember that.” Harry panicked. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m—”

Sirius reached out for Harry this time, rubbing his arm soothingly.

“You were in the midst of a manic upswing, calm yourself,” Snape said. “I do not hold it against you that you lied to me then. I doubt if it was your intentions.”

“Sirius,” Harry looked up at Sirius desperately, “dreaming?”

Sirius abruptly pinched Harry’s arm, hard. “Not dreaming. Not dead,” he said.

Harry’s eyes welled up with tears- something he attributed to the pinch on his arm and not the punch to his gut- and he nodded gratefully to Sirius before turning back to Snape.

“I didn’t do it.”

“What was I meant to think, Harry?” Snape snapped, jumping to his feet and running an aggravated hand through his lank hair. “You were missing. You told Granger and Susan that you were going to kill him. You have surpassed even my own body count, Harry! What was I meant to think when the boy was found, shot in the chest?!”

“YOU WERE M-MEANT TO BELIEVE ME!” Harry screamed, the raw ache in his throat reminding him that this wasn’t a dream at all. “I’M YOUR SON! YOU’RE MY DAD! YOU WERE MEANT TO BELIEVE ME!”

~Sirius blinked up at the ceiling, forcing back the tears that threatened him as Harry sat on his bed, his leg bones regrowing, crying about how Snape didn’t believe him.

Crying how Snape was his dad.

He needs a dad, buddy, he thought up to James. God knows I wish it were you, but Snape’s better than no one.

Sirius fancied that he felt a bit of a warm breeze ruffle his hair in the windowless room.

He also fancied that it was James reassuring him that he understood.~

Snape stopped his irritated pacing and stared down at Harry, his eyes wide with some sort of emotion that Harry was too tired to understand.

“Harry, I—”

“Was that all a d-dream too?” Harry asked, uncertainty causing his voice to shake. “You and I, a dream?”

“No.” Snape’s voice was confident and he strode over to Harry’s bed, knocking Sirius’ hand aside and grabbing Harry’s arm firmly. “That was not- is not- a dream. You...” Snape glanced subtly at Black then apparently decided to pretend he didn’t exist. “You are my son, Harry. I should have believed you when you said you did not do it.”

Harry released a heavy sigh. “I don’t have to go b-back. Real or dream?”

“Real.”

Chapter End Notes

Up Next:
Severus Snape vs Potter Madness, which is infinitely more difficult to defeat than Potter Luck.

68%

Sunday, February 8

Severus slipped in to Harry’s bedroom, carefully and quietly kicking the door shut behind him so as to not upset the tray he carried.

“‘E eez sleeping,” Delacour whispered. She was seated on the side of Harry’s bed and had a book closed in her lap. Severus squinted at the book and felt his stomach clench at the title, The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Delacour followed Severus’ gaze and picked the book up as she got to her feet. “‘E seems to enjoy Meester Malfoy’s singing, I zought ‘e may enjoy zis too, non?”

“A thoughtful gesture,” Severus whispered. He sat the tray down on the table beside the sofa that had found a permanent home beside Harry’s bed. “How did he sleep?”

“Not well,” Delacour said, frowning down at Harry. She reached out and brushed his hair off his forehead. “‘E cried.”

“He does that,” Severus said, attempting to sound unaffected by the news that his stoic and strong sixteen year old child was still crying in his sleep. “I will take over for today, thank you Miss Delacour.”

“Of course,” Delacour said. She grabbed Severus’ arm gently as she moved to leave the room. “‘E will get better, eet eez simply too much right now.”

Severus inclined his head and Delacour left the room on quiet and graceful feet.

His heart believed that Harry would improve, that this madness was healable, but the back of his mind worried that it was all for naught, that Harry was too broken this time, too far gone.

Severus removed the lid from the tray and moved the two plates of breakfast to the table. He poured two glasses of coffee and added extra sugar and milk to Harry’s, as he used to prefer it. He also poured Harry a glass of water, hoping he could at least force some healthy fluids in the child.

“Harry, wake up,” Severus called. He inched the table backwards, preferring it to not get toppled when Harry woke up, and then rubbed Harry’s thin arm gently. “Wake up.”

Harry sat up with a jerk and a gasp, as was now his custom, and his eyes flicked erratically around the room.

“You are at home, you are not in Azkaban. Lucius is asleep in Narcissa’s room. Fleur went home to William. Frederick is at his shop and will return later. Draco, Luna, Theodore, Susan, and all the other misfits are at Hogwarts and will be here for lunch. Black is asleep in the sitting room. Am I forgetting anyone?”

“Tonks,” Harry whispered, his eyes still looking around frantically. “Where’s Tonks?”

“Nymphadora is asleep in my room,” Severus told him. He readjusted the furniture then moved to the sofa. “Eat, now.”

Severus took a small bite of eggs, modeling calm and normal behavior for Harry to mimic. Harry watched him warily and then slowly moved to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. It was devastating, seeing Harry appear so fragile, so cautious.

Severus much preferred the rambunctious and chaotic young man he’d once been.

Harry reached for his fork then hesitated. “It’s p-poison,” he said. He looked up at Severus with wide eyes, “Real or dream?”

“Dream,” Severus assured him. He took another bite and swallowed it quickly. “This is just breakfast, there is no poison in it.”

Harry nodded and took a small bite of eggs, his trembling hand knocking half of it off his fork before it even made it to his mouth.

“What would you like to do today?” Severus asked him. “We could go flying, or go out back and duel, or anything you would like.”

As long as it involved leaving his bedroom and was followed by a shower, two things none have successfully been able to get the child to do so far.

“I...” Harry trailed off as he grabbed the blanket behind him and wrapped it firmly around his shoulders. He then stared at the wall over Severus’ shoulder, chewing his lower lip, until Severus decided that he was not thinking of an activity to do and had instead lost track of the conversation altogether.

“Harry,” he said, drawing those hollow eyes towards him, “what would you like to do today?”

“Nothing,” Harry said dully. “D’you have t-to teach?”

“I do not,” said Severus. “Today is Sunday, I am free to do whatever you please all day.”

“Right.”

Severus refrained from sighing and instead nodded toward the copious amount of food on Harry’s plate. “Eat.”

Harry picked his fork back up and took another small bite of eggs. Severus ate with him in silence for a while, subtly watching as Harry continuously looked around the room.

For ghosts, probably.

He also continued to look for dementors.

Because Harry was utterly mad and Severus had no true idea how to fix it. Admittedly, he had hoped Lupin would be of some assistance, but Harry had been alone with Lupin for less than five minutes one afternoon and delved in to a full blown panic attack, so he was as useless as he had always been. Lucius had been mildly useful, thus far, and at least enabled them to find the trick to getting Harry to eat- barking it as an order, apparently.



”I don’t know what to tell you, Severus,” Lucius said. He stretched his legs and conjured a mirror before grimacing at his reflection. He undid the band of leather holding back his hair and then conjured a soft-bristled brush to sweep it back in a more elegant look. Even with his hair more orderly, Lucius looked ragged, nearly as bad as Harry did when he had returned. Though, since Lucius went from Azkaban to Macnair Manor to being ‘relieved of his position’ by Nymphadora, Susan, Frederick, and Charlie, it was unsurprising that he was less disheveled than Harry who had not moved from his bed since his own retrieval.

“I do not understand how you got him to eat when the rest of us failed,” Severus said with a hint of bitterness in his tone.

“I merely employed the same tactic I did in Azkaban,” Lucius said. “He would not listen to reason or logic and I could hardly allow him to starve himself, could I? I simply ordered him to do it, and he complied.”

“Harry never listens!” Severus yelled, exasperated and exhausted. “In fact, he thrives on disobedience!”

Lucius grimaced and poured them both a drink. “You weren’t there,” he said solemnly. “It was... disturbing, to put it mildly.”

Severus threw the drink back, grateful for the burn in his throat. “I do not understand the Dark Lord’s plan with him either,” he admitted. “He wanted Harry in Azkaban only so he could free him?”

Lucius’ grimace twisted to a look of disgust. “He tortured Thicknesse for allowing Potter to be released. His ‘consort’, he called him. I believe his intention was to make Harry feel indebted to him, and become a legal fugitive, in one fell swoop to convince him to join him.”

“Thicknesse did not ‘allow’ anything,” Severus said with a tiny and proud smirk. “Nymphadora took Harry’s exoneration paperwork and released him herself.”

“My God,” Lucius laughed lightly. “No wonder you’ve become besotted with the witch, you’ve always preferred them with some fire, haven’t you?”

Severus refilled his drink and refused to respond to such an asinine statement. Though, yes, it was particularly endearing the way Nymphadora returned from Germany and immediately stole Harry from Azkaban without fear of the repercussions. She had been fired, Abbott as well for accompanying her, but she believed it had only been a matter of time before she would have to resign anyway, as tenuous as her ability to remain free of the imperious curse or murder had become.

And, as the Italian Contessa ensured that Harry’s innocence was proclaimed in every magical media outlet across the globe, there carried little to no risk of Nymphadora or Abbott being arrested themselves. As Nymphadora told Scrimgeour when he fired the two of them, they had merely been releasing an innocent prisoner.

Losing Nymphadora and Abbott from the auror department, and Lucius from his position as a spy, were blows to their ultimate cause, but Harry came first.

Always.

“‘His consort’?” Severus said suddenly, repeating Lucius’ queer phrasing. “The Dark Lord called Harry that?”

“He did, it was... perhaps more disturbing than Potter’s endless nightmares,” Lucius said slowly. “I don’t understand what caused his shift from wanting the boy dead to wanting him to become his partner, but... but something has changed, Severus.”

Severus hummed in acknowledgment and quickly drank down his second and final drink of the night.

He only knew of one thing that could shift the Dark Lord’s priorities to capture rather than death.

Some way, somehow, he discovered what Harry was.

And Severus heavily doubted that it was a change for the better for Harry.



“Eat, now,” Severus snapped at Harry, refocusing on something he could work on, as opposed to the ever mounting pile of things he could not. “Drink your water as well.”

Harry complied meekly, an uncomfortable state to see the child in.

Harry Potter was not meant to be meek.

“Flying,” Severus decided abruptly after Harry ate a small amount more of his breakfast and drank half of his glass of water. “We will go flying today before your friends arrive for lunch.”

“I’ll f-fall,” Harry said softly. “Can you fall from a broom if you’re a ghost? Do I need a broom if I’m a ghost? Dementors can fly.”

“You are not a ghost,” Severus said patiently. “And I will not allow you to fall.”

Harry looked surprised at Severus’ response, which likely indicated that at least part of his statement had been internal thoughts as opposed to a purposeful reply. Harry pinched his arm and shook his head. “Do I- I have to?”

“No,” Severus sighed. “You do not have to. We can do something else. Perhaps play cards? Or chess?”

Harry shrugged and pushed his plate away. “I’m tired.”

“You slept fourteen hours,” Severus said gently. “Go shower and we can play chess.”

“You don’t have to. He can’t make you. Yes he can. They can do whatever they want. You know that.”

Severus had actually been planning on forcing the child in the shower, as he once had with relative success, though he would not now as Harry watched his hands warily and muttered to himself.

“Sleep then,” Severus said, his heart heavy and his mind sluggish with exhaustion. “Eventually, you will need to leave this room.”

Harry ignored the second part of Severus’ statement and immediately moved back to lay on his pillow and wrapped himself more firmly in his cocoon of a blanket. He blinked at Severus, his eyes wide and hazy. “If I close my eyes you’ll kill me, real or dream?”

“Dream,” Severus said quietly. “You are as safe with me as you have always been.”

Harry laughed, a disturbingly mad sound, and closed his eyes.

And Severus was left watching the child pretend to sleep rather than rejoin the world he now feared.

“Hey.” Frederick poked his head in the room a few hours later. “Is he asleep?”

Severus saw Harry’s tiny flinch beneath the multiple blankets he buried himself in. “No,” he told Frederick. “He is simply refusing to participate in life.”

Harry mumbled something indecipherable and Frederick came in the room with a soft look on his young face.

“Hey, darlin.” Frederick perched on the side of Harry’s bed and immediately began stroking his tangled hair. “Rise and shine, love. Let’s get dressed and go for a walk, hmm?”

“You’re dead,” Harry whispered. “The snake bit you. They b-buried you on Christmas Eve.”

Severus winced as Harry confused Arthur Weasley’s death with Frederick, but to Frederick’s endless credit, he maintained a soft smile and gentle touch.

“Dream,” Frederick told him calmly. “I’m alive and so are you. I’m going to pick you up so you can get dressed, then I’m going to help you move downstairs and you can have mini treacle tarts with hot chocolate for lunch while our friends come over and hang out. Okay?”

“See if you can convince him to shower,” Severus murmured when it appeared as if Harry would comply with Frederick’s carefully worded demands.

“Harry, darlin, do you want to get a shower?”

Harry’s hand snuck out of his blankets to grip Frederick’s wrist. “I’ll d-drown, they’re going to d-drown me again. Abracadabra, I’m dead.”

“Nobody is going to drown you,” Frederick said. “That was a dream, love. You can swim.”

Harry’s eyes flicked towards Severus uneasily. “If I can swim, then I’m not a ghost?”

“Correct,” Severus said. “Go shower, Harry. You will not drown and nobody will kill you.”

“Up you go now, love,” Frederick said cheerily. He grabbed Harry and moved him to an upright sitting position. “Can you walk to the loo?”

“You’re not allowed to leave your cell. Only for smoke breaks if you’re a dog,” Harry muttered. He looked up at Frederick and chewed his lower lip for a long moment, struggling to word something. “Can I have a smoke b-break?” he eventually asked.

“We aren’t allowed to smoke inside,” Frederick said in a conspiratorial tone. “Let’s get you a shower, then we’ll go out back and take a smoke break, alright?”

“Alright,” Harry agreed quietly.

Severus would gladly purchase Harry all the tobacco he now so peculiarly desired if it meant he would voluntarily leave his room.

Harry moved to stand, still wrapped in his blankets, and swayed quickly towards the floor. Severus caught him and stood him up as Frederick quickly unraveled the sheets and blankets that were tangling his legs.

“Careful,” Severus said, holding his arm steadily. “Let me assist you.”

“I’ll do it,” Frederick said. “Harry, I’m going to pick you up and then I’m going to carry you to the loo. You’re going to shower, then we’re going to go track down Sirius and get a fag before we go outside.”

Harry did not respond, but he also did not struggle when Frederick scooped him up in his arms and headed towards his attached restroom.

“I’ll just be downstairs,” Severus called uncertainly towards the restroom. Frederick nodded before he kicked the door shut behind him. As soon as Severus heard the water begin to run, and Harry bagan to babble incoherently, he sighed and slipped away.



“Fred with Harry?” Black mumbled, sitting up on the sofa and scrubbing the sleep from his face with his hands as Severus took a chair beside the staircase.

“He is,” Severus told him. “He is assisting Harry in showering, then I believe they are coming to find you for a ‘smoke break’.”

“What?” Black looked up and curled his nose at Severus. “Harry wants to smoke?”

“Apparently.”

“Do I... do I tell him no?”

Severus scoffed. “If it gets Harry to shower and go outside willingly, I will personally attach a veranda to the house for him to do so.”

Black shook his head again, more in confusion than refusal, and got to his feet. “I guess I’ll just floo home real quick. And... and go get a pack of fags.”

Severus waited until Black had entered the floo before he buried his face in his hands and allowed his expression to crumble.

He had no idea how to fix this, and the longer it lasted, the less hope he had that it was fixable. A petty bitterness welled up inside him as he was forced to acknowledge that Frederick, Lucius, and Black had done more for Harry’s recovery than he had so far.

Some ‘dad’ he was proving to be.

An absurd title that the mad child gave him in the midst of a terrific guilt trip as he sobbed that Severus had not believed him when he protested his innocence in Albus’ office. Severus was unsure what his opinion had mattered, considering that Harry would have been arrested either way, but it had clearly mattered quite a bit to Harry.

’YOU’RE MY DAD! YOU WERE MEANT TO BELIEVE ME!’

Clearly Harry’s madness was mildly contagious, as Severus felt the side of his mouth curl up and a blossom of warmth to develop in his chest as he replayed Harry’s shout of distress.

“Sev? What are you doing?”

Severus lifted his head and schooled his expression into a more genial one as he took note of Nymphadora coming out of the library dressed in one of Severus’ shirts and a pair of sweatpants. “Nymphadora,” he greeted her calmly. “I am waiting for Harry to get done showering.”

“Did you convince him to shower?” Nymphadora asked as she abruptly draped herself across Severus’ lap.

“No.” Severus refrained from scowling, a task he accomplished with little struggle, likely due to Nymphadora’s easy and never-ending affection. “Frederick did.”

“Well, he’s not screaming, so I suppose that’s an improvement,” she said softly. “He’s getting there, Sev. Don’t give up hope. We’ve done impossible things before, haven’t we?”

Severus tilted his head to hers, attempting to draw in her optimism.

They had accomplished the impossible. Severus discovered Death’s Cloak, Nymphadora found that Grindewald had the Elder Wand, and, in a stroke of pure luck, they realized that they had the Resurrection Stone.

Severus had merely been in his office, throwing things in frustration the day before Nymphadora returned from Germany, and a poorly aimed jar knocked Barty’s hollow book from his shelf. Severus had only opened it to give himself more of a reason to be distressed; he had not expected to find the symbol of the Hallows on the obsidian ring that still held a horcrux.

It had heightened Severus’ belief that the items carried immense magic. Barty had found the ring on accident in the first place. It was as if the Hallows wanted to be found. As if they wanted to be reunited by a single Master.

It had given him a surge of hope to see the carving on the stone of the ring. Hope that swelled when Nymphadora returned the next morning and immediately went to Azkaban to retrieve Harry.

Hope that evaporated as it became clear the extensive damage the dementors did on Harry’s psyche.

“We have,” he agreed. “Yet, we still have an impossible task before us.”

“The wand or your son?” Nymphadora murmured as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

She was quite clingy. It was a trait that Severus begrudgingly appreciated.

“Both,” he said baldly. “We have no leverage to convince Grindewald to give us the wand, no proof that he still has it, and... and I worry that Harry is irreparable,” he added in a guilty rush of breath. “He has always struggled with mental health, what if this was one break too many? What if—”

“Shut up.” Nymphadora silenced him with a hand over his mouth. “You’re so stressed. When’s the last time you slept? For more than two hours?”

Severus raised a brow.

“Oh.” She grinned and removed her hand from his mouth. “Go on then, lie to me. Tell me how you slept last night, when I know you didn’t. Or the night before, when I know you didn’t.”

“Unemployment does not suit you,” Severus drawled. “Perhaps you should seek out a new job. Rosmerta has always complained about needing an assistant.”

“Is that your way of saying I’m driving you crazy as I mooch off you and Harry?” she said with a challenging smile. “I like to think—”

What she liked to think, Severus did not discover because he saw the floo flare green and he abruptly shoved Nymphadora off his lap and on to the floor.

Black stepped out of the floo and shot a curious look at Nymphadora before looking up to Severus, who raised a brow and dared him to comment, before he snorted and shook his head.

“Play with fire and you’ll get burnt, Tonks,” he laughed at Nymphadora. “Harry still in the shower then?”

Severus listened for the sound of water running upstairs as he shamefully assisted Nymphadora to her feet. She rolled her eyes at him before primly taking the chair beside his.

“It sounds as if he is finished,” Severus said. He turned to ascend the stairs, to check on him, but Black bounded ahead of him.

“I am useless,” Severus scowled as he sank back in to his chair.

“And an arse,” Nymphadora helpfully added.

And an arse.

When Harry eventually descended the stairs, pale faced, wide-eyed, and faintly trembling, he looked leagues more like the boy he used to be.

Until he opened his mouth and began mumbling.

“They can’t transfigure your cell to look like your house. They don’t know where you live. It’s a secret.”

Thankfully so. Otherwise the Dark Lord would undoubtedly be well aware of Harry’s location as Severus was entirely confident that the hissed conversations Harry held at night were not with himself.

“This is not a cell, and we’re going outside,” Frederick said lightly.

Severus narrowed his eyes at Frederick’s wet hair and held him back a moment as Harry made to follow Black to the back door.

“Did you believe that it was a proper decision to climb in the shower with him?” Severus hissed.

Frederick rolled his eyes and pulled his arm from Severus’ grip. “Don’t be bloody disgusting,” he hissed right back. “I only got in because he was crying that he was drowning. Trust me when I say that there’s never been a less sexual situation of my entire life.”

Severus stepped back, once more ashamed of himself, and allowed Frederick to catch up to Harry and Black.

“You’re doing great,” Nymphadora said lightly as she stepped up to his side. “Really, I think all you missed was pushing Fred on the floor to really get your point across.”

Severus lips twitched as he looked down at her playful smile. “Shut up.”



Harry and the others came back inside, smelling strongly like tobacco smoke, only a moment before their sitting room was overran by teenagers. Nymphadora winked at Severus then immediately made herself scarce, as did Black, leaving Severus to oversee the chaos.

Mostly to ensure that the teenagers all followed his stern orders to not discuss anything related to the war efforts, as Harry’s mind was glaringly open at the present time.

“Harry!” Susan cried happily once she spotted Harry frozen in the doorway. “You’re awake!”

“Am I?”

“You are,” Luna told him. She dropped Draco’s hand and stepped directly up to Harry and hugged him tightly. Harry, who Severus had always known to despise physical touch to an extent, seemed to relax in Luna’s arms. “How are you?” Luna asked him softly.

“Confused,” Harry said. His eyes kept flickering to Draco. “Draco was never in Azkaban. Lucius was. People don’t hate Draco. Draco would never be arrested.”

“People don’t hate you either,” Theodore told him as he carefully drug Draco out of Harry’s direct line of sight.

Harry looked startled and looked from Theodore to Frederick now. “Did I say that or is he in m-my head?”

“You said it,” Frederick told him.

It was admirable, the way that Frederick remained patient even when Harry sounded entirely mad.

“Come sit,” Frederick said. He pulled Harry gently by the arm and led him to the center of the sitting room and waited for Harry to pick a place to sit. Harry hesitated, looking at the furniture distrustfully before eventually sitting exactly where he had stood- the middle of the floor.

Harry’s friends did not acknowledge that this was a bizarre place to sit as they arranged themselves around him on the furniture and other spots on the floor. Frederick sank down behind Harry and wrapped him in a loose embrace.

“We miss you terribly,” Granger said quietly with a small smile. “How are you, truthfully?”

“Cold,” Harry said. “‘M always cold.”

Once again, before Severus could raise his wand, Frederick did. He silently twitched his wand at his side and brought a thick yellow jumper flying down to stairs towards him.

“Better?” he murmured after casually assisting Harry in putting the jumper on, acting as if it were the most normal task in the world to do so.

Harry pinched the wool between his fingers and nodded absently.

Trent Bailey cleared his throat and gave Harry a bright smile. “You missed it, Harry, we went to Hogsmeade yesterday, for Susan’s birthday, and guess what?”

Harry didn’t appear to hear him for a long moment as he continued playing with the wool between his fingers, but Frederick nudged him and Harry looked up to Trent. “What?”

“Charlie came,” Trent said eagerly, “and he gave Susan roses and she blushed.”

Harry looked between Trent and Susan for a moment. “Charlie’s going to kill you,” he told Susan quietly. “He’s going to kick you until you die again.”

Granger and Longbottom, who had not been exposed to Harry before now, looked startled, though the others hardly reacted.

“Charlie isn’t going to kick me and I’ve never died before,” Susan said. “That was a dream.”

“N-no.” Harry pulled harder on the threads of his jumper and shook his head. “That m-man is dead, I saw it. I’m not lying. I’m not.”

“He is dead, but Charlie didn’t kill him,” Fred said. He grabbed Harry’s hands and held them still. “Nobody thinks you’re lying.”

The silence that followed was nearly tense and uncomfortable enough to drive Severus from the room.

It was Zabini who broke it eventually as be slowly got to his feet with an easy smile. “Well, I was promised lunch. I’ll go see if Mavis needs assistance. Ron, Draco, come help?”

“Yes,” Draco sighed, jumping to his feet quickly with a grateful smile. “I’d love to.”

Harry watched the three boys leave with a frown before turning to his other friends and ducking his head. “You guys don’t have to b-be here, I know I’m dust,” he mumbled.

“You aren’t dust,” Susan said, immediately sliding to the floor and scooting beside Harry. “You’re confused, which is understandable. The boys are just ridiculous.”

Harry nodded, but he kept his comments to a bare minimum as the others spoke tentatively about their day-to-day activities. He became slightly more animated when Ronald and Draco returned with trays covered in sandwiches and Zabini floated a tray of mugs filled with steaming cocoa to the sitting room table.

“Drink,” Frederick said, snagging a cup and handing it to Harry. “It’s hot chocolate, which you love, and it is not poisoned.”

Harry watched Frederick take a long sip of his own drink before relaxing slightly and drinking his.

“Did you guys win the m-match?” Harry abruptly asked Ronald after he put the mug down and absently accepted the sandwich that Longbottom handed him.

“Er... no matches until next month, mate,” Ronald said with a shrug. “We’ve been training though, don’t want to be out of shape when we face Hufflepuff, do we?”

Harry seemed to freeze with the crust he picked off his sandwich halfway to his mouth. He spun his head around and fixed his eyes on Severus. “What d-day is it?” he asked.

“Sunday, the eighth of February,” Severus told him promptly.

Harry closed his eyes for a moment. “I can’t have m-my potion on the tenth because I killed a student?”

“Incorrect, you will be taking your potion on the tenth as always,” Severus said, once more thanking any deity in the sky for not allowing Harry to suffer withdrawals on top of the unique torture of dementors. “You also did not kill a student.”

“And you didn’t believe me?”

“And I did not believe you,” Severus agreed, nodding his head slightly. “Eat, now.”

Harry’s eyes slipped over to Draco. “Your dad isn’t d-dead. He’s not in p-prison.”

“No.” Draco cleared his throat. “He is either upstairs with my mother or hiding from us somewhere else. He doesn’t much like children.”

Severus snorted, as did a few other children, as Draco’s factually spoken statement eased the remaining tension from the room.

Severus and Harry both did a lot of listening as the students chattered on about their inconsequential lives. Granger talked about their transfiguration course. Trent and Ronald discussed their girlfriends, though apparently Trent had two witches vying for his affection and it had caused a rift within his circle of third year friends. Theodore and Zabini discussed the overall mood of Slytherin House as the other students proclaimed Harry’s innocence and wishes for him to return.

Nobody mentioned the Dark Lord, Albus, or the war in general and Harry did not ask.

A small mercy.



When the students finally left for Hogwarts, Harry sighed heavily and sank back against Frederick’s continued embrace.

“I want to go,” he said quietly. “Am I exp-expelled?”

“Nope. Just healing,” Frederick said gently. “Once you’re done healing, less confused at least, then you can go back to Hogwarts if you want.”

Harry nodded, seemingly accepting Frederick at his word. He then turned around so he was facing Frederick and squinted at him for a long moment. “You can-can’t come back though, can you?”

“No.” Frederick ran his fingers through Harry’s hair gently and gave him a smile. “But it’s nearly summer break. So soon you’ll be stuck with me again.”

For some reason, this made Harry glance down toward his hands, which made him frown. “Are we...” Harry shook his head in either irritation or confusion, Severus was unsure which. “We- you... did you take my ring back?” he asked with a bite of accusation to his tone.

Which lifted Severus’ heavy heart quite high.

“It’s with your stuff in your room,” Frederick told him with a wide smile that told Severus he was not the only one relieved to hear Harry sound a little more like himself. “Summon it, darlin.”

Severus watched carefully, holding his breath to see if Harry would.

“I can’t,” Harry whispered shakily. He snaked one hand beneath his other arms jumper sleeve and Severus would be willing to bet he had pinched himself. He looked over towards Severus, “The d-dementors took my magic. Real or dream?”

“Dream,” said Severus. “Your magic cannot be taken.”

“Will you summon it?” Harry asked him.

“No, you do it, Harry,” Frederick cut in. He moved his hands from Harry’s arms to his face. “Please?”

Harry continued looking up in Frederick’s face as he stuck one trembling hand out to the side. “I want my ring,” he whispered.

Severus could have danced a jig when a small piece of metal came whirling down the stairs, flying past Severus, and smacking itself in Harry’s palm.

“Let me,” Frederick told him with a look so joyous it could have powered fifty patronus memories. He grabbed the ring from Harry’s palm and carefully slid it back on his left hand. “Good job, darlin.”

Harry gave him a small smile in return and Severus felt himself fill with good will towards Frederick.

Even if the dratted boy did take Harry back upstairs when Harry said he was tired and once more left Severus useless.

***

“How is Harry?” Minerva asked when she stopped by Severus’ classroom on Wednesday morning.

“How would you be if you had been wrongfully imprisoned and tortured by your worst memories for weeks?” Severus sneered, frantically searching his desk for his second years’ essays. He knew he left them right in the center of his desk when he left. He’d intended to grade them last night, and wound up having a spat with Harry and falling asleep on his bedside sofa.

Where the hell were those dratted essays?

“Argh!” Severus threw an ink pot in frustration and then felt that frustration increase as he now had no essays and ink was all over the cauldron for the front row of students.

“Looking for something?” Minerva asked.

Severus looked up at her, truly for the first time since she entered his classroom, and saw her waving a stack of parchment. “Are those my essays?” he asked.

“They are,” she said. “I found them on your desk and took it upon myself to grade them for you.” She put the stack back on his desk and gave him a wry smile. “I even attempted to add your pithy comments in the margins.”

Severus scoffed as he flicked through them quickly. “Thank you,” he said genuinely. “I apologize, I am—”

“Stressed, over worked, under appreciated?” Minerva suggested.

“All the above,” Severus sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and fruitlessly attempted to stave off the migraine he felt growing.

Minerva pulled a potion vial from her pocket, a pain reliever from the Hospital Wing, and slid it across the desk before taking the seat in front of it. “I take it that Harry is not doing well?” she asked gently after Severus hastily downed the potion.

“We had a disagreement before he went to sleep last night,” Severus said. “He wants to come back to Hogwarts, I do not believe he should return just yet.”

“Why ever not?” Minerva asked, scandalized. “If Harry wants to come back, shouldn’t he do so?”

Severus rolled his eyes up to the ceiling as he considered a tactful way to describe the current situation. “Harry is not quite himself,” he said carefully. “He would undoubtedly be setback quite a ways by a hasty return.”

“Severus, we could make accommodations for him,” Minerva said. “What could we do to assist him in making a return to his rightful education with his friends?”

“He...” Severus sighed and gave Minerva a defeated look. “He frequently asks if things are real or a dream, you would all undoubtedly hear it multiple times.”

“Understandable,” Minerva said with a small nod. “What else, Severus?”

“He stammers, quite a bit now,” Severus said. “He flinches when doors open. He shakes. He wears layers and layers of clothing. He frequently thinks out loud and is then surprised to have done so.” Severus sighed and cradled his head in his hands. “He shouldn’t come back,” he groaned, “it would be a mistake.”

“Severus.” Minerva moved to stand beside him. She placed her hand on Severus’ back, between his shoulders. “If he wants to return, then perhaps this is for the best. It would be an adjustment, but not an undue one. Hogwarts was his home, once, perhaps it can be that again.”

Severus laughed, sounding nearly as hysterical as he felt. “His home?” he sneered, lifting his head to give Minerva an incredulous look. “He’s been expelled. Attacked. Belittled. Hated. He’s nearly died here. He was arrested here. You believe that Harry will ever see Hogwarts as a safe haven again?”

“There must be a reason he wants to come back,” Minerva said calmly, unfazed by Severus’ histrionics. “We will work with him. I’ll speak with Horace and Filius. This can be a safe place, Severus, we will ensure it is.”

“I will consider it,” Severus said as the bell rang, signaling the impending arrival of a dozen dunderhead students. “Thank you, Minerva.”

Minerva gave Severus a rare and warm smile. “You frequently go above and beyond for Harry and for our other students, isn’t it time we did it for you both as well?”

Severus returned her smile slightly as he cocked a brow at her. “Harry has also picked up smoking.”

“Well...” Minerva cleared her throat and gave Severus a stern look over the top of her spectacles. “I will certainly not be enabling that.”

Chapter End Notes

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Harry’s pretty sure that this was a Mistake (with a capital M).