Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize, and even things that seem original were more than probably inspired by other authors.

"Are you so scared of us that you only have guts to go for the mudblood?!"

If asked, Harry would have claimed temporary insanity. It was the kind of bloody stupid taunt that would achieve nothing, except for maybe making their captors laugh and hurt Hermione. And yet, unbelievably, Bellatrix fell for it. The woman was crazy enough after a decade with the Dementors that she really bought the desperate and frankly pathetic gamble. She started raging over Hermione being "a pathetic, useless mudblood" and there being "no point in treating her like an actual threat".

As he was led to whatever room they had repurposed as Bellatrix's torture chamber on Malfoy Manor in place of Hermione, Harry glumly reflected that, despite -well, actually, because of- his scheme working as intended, he was going to get an earful from his friends. He actually managed a wan smile at the thought while they pushed him none-too-gently onto a chair. It figured that a trio of self-sacrificing Gryffindors like them would be so frustrating. If that last-ditch attempt to get Hermione out of the torture -and it really hurt, Bellatrix's reputation was well-earned- had failed, they would have shrugged and patted him on the shoulder. "Nothing you could do, mate. You knew not even the Malfoys would fall for that" "Honestly, Harry, what did you expect? I'll overlook it just this once because you were clearly very distraught, but I expect you to never again use that word. Understood, Harry James Potter?"

But it had worked. He was strapped to a chair while Bellatrix hurled curses and insults at him in equal measure. So of course he could almost see them already, tear-stained and furious. That thought coincided with a particularly painful curse and Harry's grimace deepened. The mental image of a red-faced, crying Hermione raging on him for his "saving people thing", his choices and the use of "mudblood" -that she would add out of her usual need to be thorough on her rants- was honestly more painful than any torture he had been subjected to.

That thought made him blink and almost-snort incredulously. Not because upsetting his friends bothered him more than physical pain -he had known that about himself for a while now- but because he had been subjected to torture enough times that he could honestly say that something was "worse than torture" without using hyperbole.

But it was the honest truth. After suffering through Umbridge's use of the Blood Quill on detentions and being on the receiving end of Voldemort's Cruciatus, Bellatrix Lestrange didn't seem like such a big deal anymore. In fact... Harry refocused on the situation at hand, because that thought was just disturbing.

But no, there it was the evidence staring him in the face. He had even stopped screaming after the first few volleys of curses. He hadn't even realized.

It was such a stupid thing to discover in the middle of a torture session with Bellatrix of all people that Harry had to lower his head to try and contain a slightly hysterical giggle.

He chanced a peek through his bangs and lost his battle against laughter. It was relief, and rage, and more than a little hysteria. But most of all, it was stupid.

Bellatrix had featured on his nightmares since that night on the Ministry. The monstruous, crazed woman that had cost him his godfather and tortured Neville's parents into insanity. Voldemort's most trusted. Expert duelist. Terror of Wizarding Britain.

Try as he might, Harry couldn't see that when he looked at her. He saw a thin, crazy woman shooting spells at him with a mixture of furious anger and more than a little bewilderment.

He was literally helpless before her. She could do anything. And her worst barely managed to coax some grunts out of him. So Harry was angry, because this woman had cost him so much. To him and to so many people. But the woman herself was a malnourished, crazed mess that looked like she was going to actually burst into tears like a toddler throwing a tantrum if he continued to ignore her "torture".

Harry had faced Voldemort and his Death Eaters. He had faced straight-up assassination attempts. He had faced more than a hundred Dementors. He had faced a thousand-year-old Basilisk and a shade of Voldemort at the same time. Bellatrix? She barely registered as a threat.

Harry let the last of his laughter fade and closed his eyes in an effort to calm down. He exhaled a deep sigh with his eyes still closed and idly wondered if Bellatrix was truly so pathetic compared with everything he had already faced that he couldn't even tell if she was still shooting curses at him.

(On the oppossite side of the room, Bellatrix lowered her wand without even being conscious of it. The explosion of strange purple fire that had accompanied the brat's baffling hysteria had not damaged the chair or his bindings, and she wasn't sure what, if anything, it would do now that it seemed that the purple magic was receding. She wasn't used to this strange feeling of uncertainity and didn't know what it meant)

It didn't really matter, though. Because with the I am actually not scared of Bellatrix epiphany there had been two other equally clear statements that appeared on his head and Harry felt were overwhelming fact.

Namely, I still hate her and I will tear her apart.

Harry opened his eyes and gave Bellatrix what could only be described as a predatory grin. He knew the glint on his eyes was probably more than a little disquieting, but he didn't care. Bellatrix was going to pay, sooner or later, at his hand or at someone else's. It was going to happen, Harry felt it to his very bones. So he looked at her and smiled.

(Bellatrix felt the breath freeze on her lungs and remembered what that feeling was. Fear)

At that moment, a flurry of activity from Ron, Hermione and Dobby's rescue attempt interrupted them. Harry felt more than a little proud that, even bleeding and shaking from the after-effects of so many curses as he was, he managed to punch Draco in the jaw.

Definetely satisfying he thought I totally understand why Hermione did it back on Third Year.

After the War ended, the bodies were buried and their studies completed (and he needed to do something nice for McGonagall, because having the DA -what remained of them- and his friends around, along with distracting classes and projects had been exactly what he needed) Harry found himself trying to work out what to do with his life. It didn't help matters that there was a niggling on the back of his mind that always stopped him from applying for entrance on the Auror program, or from reklinding his relationship with Ginny. And it was that whenever those matters came up, his mind flashed back to that day on Malfoy Manor, strapped to a chair and the realization that Bellatrix didn't scare him.

He didn't know how to properly explain what was happening to him or why something so objectively minor in the grand scheme of things had felt like such a huge thing to him, but it didn't give him rest because he always felt that there was another epiphany there, just out of reach. So he did what he always did whenever something came up that he didn't know how to solve on his own and talked about it with his friends.

"I dunno, mate. How would we know something about you that you didn't?"

That was true, but he really would appreciate another perspective. So he gave Ron his best deadpan stare for the supremely unhelpful answer and tried to explain himself better.

"But that's the thing!" he smoothed -ineffectively- his hair out in exasperation "It's about myself, so I should know what it's about, but I don't get it"

He scowled at the persistent thought, even now fluttering just out of reach, but Hermione darted forward before he could truly become frustrated.

"You said you didn't know Bellatrix had stopped scaring you until you were face to face, right?"

"Yeah. I know it's kind of stupid compared with all the other discoveries we made during the war, but... It felt huge, you know?" He cringed a little at the lame ending, but couldn't really explain it better.

Hermione seemed to have understood something nonetheless, because she was nodding in that way that indicated she had just discovered the answer they were looking for.

"So you are wondering what else you don't know about yourself"

It wasn't even phrased as a question, and Harry had to blink because that... that felt right.

"Yeah! I mean, it's me, shouldn't I know everything about myself?"

Hermione actually rolled her eyes at him "Self-discovery is a long road, Harry James Potter. There are actually entire philosophies and ways of life dedicated exclusively to it"

At their baffled looks, Hermione huffed in the frustrated aggravation usually reserved for when she tried -unsusccesfully- to explain advanced theories on magic and tried using smaller words.

"No, you won't automatically know everything about yourself just because it's your own mind. In fact, most people have moments like those when they discover things they didn't know about themselves, and it's not rare for people to go on a journey of self-discovery, or go into meditation, or any number of different things just for the purpose of knowing themselves better."

"What would traveling have to do with self-discovery?" Harry hadn't meant to ask that, but the word journey had suddenly evoked half-forgotten daydreams about leaving everything behind and never, ever returning. They had used to plague him on his time with the Dursleys, but abated with his introduction to the Wizarding World. He had completely written off those fantasies because he had a responsability with the War... that had already ended.

Something of what he was thinking must have shown on his face (or, as he had privately suspected for some time now, Hermione had a talent for Legilimency), because her answer was delivered with the kind of knowing smile that meant that she was plotting something for him.

"Traveling means discovering new places, meeting new people and basically being in completely new situations. It's very common for people to think that they will react a certain way to something, only to discover when they are faced with it that their first impulse is something completely different"

"Why don't you try it, mate? If it works, you'll discover all that is bothering you. At worst, you had a nice vacation"

Harry felt himself warm to the idea, then his shoulders slumped suddenly. "And what of the Wizarding people?"

"We tell them to bugger off! You bloody well can take a vacation if you want to, Harry"

"Ron is right. You are tying yourself down to Wizarding Britain when you have no need to. If you want to take your things and go on a sabbatical or... or even spend your whole life traveling the world, the only one who's stopping you is you"

Harry had to smile at the wobble on Hermione's voice when she voiced the possibility of him not returning, but he just shook his head sadly.

"I don't mean it like that. I mean that I really not fancy going to different places and getting the whole Oh my gosh, it's the Boy-Who-Lived reception again and again"

"I think they are calling you Man-Who-Conquered now" Ron offered unhelpfully, then grinned unrepentantly at the dirty look the comment earned him.

Hermione straightened suddenly, a look of pure glee on her face they had gotten used to seeing whenever she had one of those bright ideas that had saved their hides more times than they could count.

"So pretend to be someone else!"

Harry had to blink in shocked bafflement, because that was not the brilliant plan he had been expecting.

"Uh... Hate to break it to you, 'Mione, but that kind of defeats the purpose of Harry traveling to discover himself."

Hermione rolled her eyes at Ron's words and Harry's hesitantly agreeing nod. The boys exchanged glances, because that was her my great idea will not be constricted by your "impossibilities" expression.

"We are more than our names and our appearences. What Harry wants to know is what he ignores about his personality. So he just has to forge an alias, and he'll be free to explore without people's expectations weighing on him."

Yep, convulted, illogical, and perfectly possible. Harry had to grin. Just like brewing Polyjuice on Myrtle's bathroom.

"That could actually work..." He cut himself off with a surprised blink, because he hadn't even considered the idea of traveling properly and he was already planning how to put it into practice. He tried to direct a narrow-eyed look of suspicion at his friends, but it was ruined by the corner of his mouth twitching upwards. Hermione and Ron didn't even have the decency of disguising their smug looks, the arses.

As was becoming irritating habit, putting his idea to practice hit more snags and complications than it solved.

Emptying Grimmauld Place had been accomplished with gleeful ease (no matter how much he had loved Sirius, that place had never stopped giving him the creeps), but going on a journey was much more complicated than that.

He couldn't Apparate somewhere he had never been to (and even if he could, he had a nasty suspicion that international Apparition was a bit above him), International Portkeys were even more strictly regulated than normal ones and even if he could floo to Bill and Fleur's home on France the Ministry kept an eye on International Floo and the public would know where he was in a matter of hours. Not to mention France was a bit too close to Britain for his tastes.

That left traveling the Muggle way, which simplified the "forging a fake identity" part and complicated the "disguise himself" part. He had no intentions of pulling a Crouch Jr. and spending his entire time traveling as a real person. The whole point of the disguise was to create a blank slate and act naturally. Not worry about someone else's reputation, even if one of his friends volunteered hair samples for him. Not to mention having to pretend to be a drunk or at the very least compulsively addicted to a drink for the ruse to work.

But glamours could and did fail. On the Wizarding World that wouldn't be a problem unless he wanted to enter a Ministry or a branch of Gringotts, the rest of the places would let him be. Most people would simply assume he was hiding some kind of scar or facial disfigurement -which wasn't even false- and it would be a simple matter of reapplying the enchantments when he felt them start to falter.

Obviously, that wasn't an option on the Muggle world.

He could probably go without a disguise on the Muggle world, but it would only take a single wizard for his damnable fame to catch up to him.

He might be biased, but Muggle disguises seemed obvious and unreliable to him. And there was no way he would be able to cross national borders with one of those stupid-looking fake beards or wigs on.

Harry scowled at nothing while he walked aimlessly through London. The negligible weight of his shrunken belongings seemed to mock him for his hasty and ill-planned departure.

A surly-looking teen seemed to think the expression was directed at him, because he glared right back. Harry actually stopped in shock while the kid snorted and walked past him, though it wasn't his expression that had given him pause.

Rather, it was what the teen had been wearing.

With a steadily growing -and probably creepy- grin on his face, Harry made a beeline for the nearest clothing store.

Twenty minutes later, Harry left the store with a bike suit neatly folded on his bag. Not exactly the goth look the kid had been sporting, but equally good as a disguise when paired with a helmet -which, annoyingly, he would have to buy on a different, especialized store.

In a flash of inspiration -because never taking off the helmet when he actually got one would be irritatingly inconvenient- he entered yet another store, this time looking for hair dye and make-up.

After browsing for ten solid minutes with a mystified expression on his face, a shop assistant finally took pity on him. Apparentely, his black hair left him with very few options in regards to dye that would actually take, so he selected a purple one and -at the employee's poorly hidden look of astonishment- made up a story about losing a bet and having to give himself a makeover that left him looking as unlike his usual appearence as possible.

They laughed a bit at the story and the girl gamely explained to him how to apply the hair dye, as well as the white make-up that she swore up and down was not strange at all in goths, that also had the advantage of being fairly easy to use. He literally just had to spread it evenly on his whole face.

(Harry wisely decided not to mention that that was what he had thought applying any kind of make-up was like)

Afterwards, and on the shop assistant's recommendation, he went to an Optometrist in search of contacts. He was overjoyed to find that he could even get graduated colored lenses, and selected a couple of purple ones that matched the hair dye on a whim.

With his disguise finally complete, Harry grinned at the mirror. He looked just like one of those "ruffians" his Aunt Petunia had always felt dismayed about encountering. A surprisingly strong surge of vindictiveness accompanied the idle thought of visiting her just to see her gasp and puff up, but he dismissed it with a rueful shake of his head. He wasn't that petty.

He had had to rent a hotel room in the end, but not even the fact that yes, he had left way too soon without a proper plan could tamper down his glee at having finished his disguise...

Harry facepalmed and started the tedious process of removing everything -make-up, contacts and bike suit. He couldn't go to bed dressed like that, after all.

While his features steadily went back to his original look, he tried to think about an alias. It wouldn't do to stumble around like that again when concerning his new name.

Morbidly, for the first few minutes every name he came up with was accompanied by the image of a dead friend or acquaintance. Harry scowled in aggravation and gave up.

Fine, I haven't recovered from the trauma of the War. I get the hint.

He sat on the bed and, in true Gryffindor fashion, went for the most effective way of dealing with trauma, uncaring that it was also the most emotionally taxing.

After several minutes of replaying and rationalizing the War -and his many failures in it- on his head he felt a little depressed, but less like his own thoughts were swirling like smoke around his mind, waiting for him to let his guard down like an ambush.

When he went back to think about aliases it occurred to him that he was going to spend his time traveling discovering himself AND expunging his demons. He might have gotten enough practice at dealing with the trauma that a couple of minutes of meditation before going to bed guarded off the worst of the nightmares, but he didn't have illussions that he was anywhere near recovered.

However, taking a break from Britain could only help him cope. He might have needed his friends by his side breathing, moving, alive on the immediate aftermath, but at that point continuing to help with a reconstruction that never seemed to end was doing more harm than good... Maybe he should choose something related to the War as an alias.

It was a bizarre idea, but it took root on his mind. It made sense, after all. This new identity was going to be a blank slate, but his past weighed on him and ignoring or trying to forget that would just be counterproductive.

So Harry closed his eyes and thought about the War. The first thing that came to mind was the Dark Mark. So, with all the solemnity and weight that such a symbol and the choice of his new name warranted, Harry decided that his new name was going to be Skull.

AN: Yes, I too have been infected by the Harry-is-Skull disease. Blame wolfsrainrules' amazing Slip Up.