Chapter 26

The magical world trembled in their living rooms when the Daily Prophet arrived the next morning. The entire front page was taken up by a single grinning face while flames and spells danced behind him, and even in print the glint of insanity in his eyes was clear. Many felt a shiver go down their spine when they saw it. Above the picture was a headline written in bold type.

FELIX DIRLEWANGER TERRORISES GODRIC'S HOLLOW

Only the older generation remembered tales of The Demon of Leipzig. Some had seen first-hand the mangled remains of his victims, others had only heard stories from haunted comrades. None had spoken of him since, not to their friends, their wives, their children or their grandchildren. Such cruelty should not be shared; those he knew did not want to burden those they loved with the knowledge that monsters truly did exist. They did not deserve to know that the stories of werewolves and vampires they were told in the dark were nothing more than sweet fictions woven around their eyes to hide the true monsters that walked the earth. They had thought him rotting in the deepest pit the Austrian Ministry could find, but he wasn't. He was back, and all who knew what he was shuddered.

For those that didn't, the Prophet was a new lesson in just how far it was possible for a person to sink. Tales of experimentation, of madness, of gleeful cruelty and overwhelming violence. Many readers had to pause to halt the nausea that rolled in their stomach. Others retched. Old men and women became still as old nightmares crawled up their throats and poked at their eyes, reliving horrors they hoped long forgotten. A single paragraph stuck out to many: "These stories are the less evil of the crimes that this creature has committed. Many are simply too sickening, too perverse, for me to tell. The brief hours of researching the Demon of Liepzig will haunt me until my dying day, and I urge you not to follow in my footsteps."

There was talk of Voldemort too. The men in the photos wore black cloaks and bone white masks. Not only was the worst Dark Lord in Britain's history back, he now had his own personal monster! Jack Potter had saved them from You-Know-Who once before, but Dirlewanger? Who would defeat him? Albus Dumbledore? It was Albus Dumbledore's hands that the Demon had slipped through after Grindelwald's defeat all those years ago.

The Ministry was in uproar as aurors and bureaucrats alike rushed through the building past horrified coworkers as they too clutched the newspaper, whispering to each other in trembling voices. They couldn't even cope with You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters, never mind this monstrosity dressed as a man, and that fear was only compounded when the aurors who had been dispatched to Godric's Hollow returned with a haunted look in their eyes. They had seen the destruction the Death Eaters wrought, some had even served during the last war, but they had never seen such vicious cruelty. It was simply inhuman. There was a man who had been forced to watch both his wife and two young children murdered in front of him, and then the attackers had simply petrified him and left him to stare at their still bleeding corpses until the aurors finally arrived. It was not the worst that the attackers had done.

Hogwarts, on the other hand, was in an awful sort of silence. Most were terrified, but a select few were gleeful that the Dark Lord had added such a monster to his service. None of the students had known who Felix Dirlewanger was until his face and his cruelty was plastered across the newspaper, and only McGonagall and Dumbledore were old enough to have been alive during Grindelwald's war. The horror in their eyes had sent a shiver down many students' spines and there had been a sudden clamouring for history books, but even they refused to give much more than vague mentions of his crimes. Just what was said in the Prophet was enough to give many students nightmares.

The Order too struggled to comprehend the headline. Dumbledore knew of the man of course, though he never actually seen him, but from the tales that he heard whispered in medical tents he had wondered even then who was worse: Gellert or his protegee. And now, as he looked at the photos and heard reports form the Ministry, he knew that the better man was currently locked up in Nurmengard. Many of those in the Order wondered whether the war was now lost. The Death Eaters were bad and Voldemort himself worse, but this?

Sirius, Tonks, and Fleur were horrified. Not only was Harry at the mercy of Voldemort and the Lestranges, he was at the mercy of Dirlewanger. Harry was the one who had caught him and ultimately condemned him to prison, however brief his stay was, and they shuddered to think of how someone like that would exact their revenge. They had made damn sure that the Prophet was ashes by the time Anaïs sullenly descended the stairs for breakfast.

~Scene Change~

Harry had been reintroduced to agony, true agony. So few knew what it truly was. Agony was not simply the endless, indescribable pain that most believed it to be, as if your bones are being ground to powder and your nerves set aflame. No, to Harry agony was all of that along with the knowledge that there wasn't a damn thing he could do to stop it. That the same thing would happen the next day, and the next day and the day after that. That he couldn't escape it. When the pain became normal, like sunset and sunrise. A simple fact of life. That was what agony, true agony, was; the little hope he had left seeping from the tears in his flesh, dripping on to the stone like teardrops and trickling away.

He didn't know how long he'd been here. Days? Weeks? More? There was no way of knowing. Food and water came irregularly. There was no noise, there were no windows, and so the room was wrapped in a constant darkness but for the times he was blessed with visitors.

Voldemort had come a few times, but not for a while now. Or at least he thought it had been a while. He honestly had no idea. Harry supposed the embarrassment of being unable to penetrate his mind even with the aid of Snape's potions was too much for him. He couldn't have it getting out that he was being beaten by a starving prisoner chained to a wall. Harry occasionally amused himself by imagining the punishments Snape would receive for his continued failure.

Rabastan and Bellatrix visited him often, and he had come to learn of the depths of Bellatrix Lestrange's depraved creativity. Muggle torture – whips and nails and water and knives – acid curses, asphyxiation curses, repeated bouts of the cruciatus curse. Overpowered cooling charms that turned his skin blue, and then immediately overpowered warming charms that made his nerves scream. They never wanted anything from him. Not once did they try to question him, nor did they try to breach his mind or force Snape's veritaserum down his throat. They simply screamed about Rodolphus. At times, he almost found it funny.

Dirlewanger came just as often, and it was those visits that Harry came to dread. Where the Lestranges were vicious, Direlwanger was cruel. He didn't attack the body – he knew that that would get him nothing but personal enjoyment – so he instead attacked the mind. The spirit. Sensory deprivation charms, immediately followed by charms that increased the potency of those senses. Harry would go from being able to hear nothing to being able to hear the wet squirming of his own tongue in his mouth, and his mind would screech as it became overloaded. But that was not what Harry truly feared; he feared the gleeful smile on Dirlewanger's face when he cast legilimens.

He couldn't get through his barriers, both of them knew that. But that didn't mean he couldn't linger on the fringes of his consciousness and plaster images across his barriers as if they were a cinema screen, and Harry would be forced to watch. Anaïs, Fleur, Sirius. He had watched all of them die so many countless times, each time in a way more painful and more depraved than the last, and as time went by and his psyche slowly crumbled the ability to tell what was real from what was not faded away. Each time he would have tears running down his face by the time Dirlewanger withdrew and patted his cheek in exaggerated sympathy, and he would say "we haven't even gotten to the best bits yet". Harry struggled to comprehend how it could be made worse, but his imagination couldn't stretch as far into the darkness as he was sure Dirlewanger's could.

He wondered if this was what his tormentors wanted him to feel. The helplessness. Maybe the pain was just a means to an end, and what they really wanted was to drain every drop of hope from his soul until he finally cracked. If so, it was working.

The cuffs that had cut deep scores into his wrists wouldn't break no matter how many times he banged them together, just as the wood of his suppression bracelets refused to so much as chip. The only glint of hope he had was the chains from which he dangled, secured to the ceiling with a sticking charm. There was no such thing as a permanent sticking charm; there would always come a point where the magic was no longer strong enough to take the weight. He had just had to pull until he eventually found that point and hope that they didn't recast it before he did so, and that they didn't kill him before then either.

Harry heard faint footsteps approaching and hurriedly stopped pulling at his chains just as the door swung open. He was forced to squint against the sudden assault of dim light as a figure stepped in, flicking their wand to set the torches in the room alight. It was Rabastan. He and Bellatrix often came together to release their rage, although they did occasionally come alone too. Rabastan was far preferable to Bellatrix; he was much simpler than she was. Bone breaking curses, cutting curses, pain curses. He had none of her terrible creativity.

Rabastan glared at him hatefully as Harry looked back at him through lidded eyes. How long had it been since the last time he was here, Harry wondered. Bellatrix was his most recent visitor and his leg still ached where she had shattered it, even despite his continuing efforts to heal himself of all his non-visible wounds. It was difficult to find the energy when food and water were rare sights.

He felt the familiar pain of the cruciatus spread through him and distantly heard his screams and the rattling of his chains as he writhed. There was no point trying to stop himself, and trying would only make Rabastan angrier. The rattling continued for several seconds after the curse was lifted as Harry blinked his eyes open and looked at the heavily breathing Rabastan, waiting for the next curse to strike.

"Why were you in Hogsmeade that day?" Rabastan growled, his wand tip already glowing crimson.

Harry did his best to smile at the man. They hadn't broken him yet, and if he could do nothing to stop them from torturing him then he would do his best to get back at them in some way.

"I felt like killing some psychopaths. I think I was successful, wouldn't you say?"

The cruciatus hit again, this one strengthened with rage. By the time the curse was lifted Harry could taste blood, and he let it flow out of his mouth as his face twisted into a caricature of a smile once more.

Rabastan snarled something unintelligible and then let loose with a myriad of curses. A bone breaker to the ribs and another that shattered his nose and cheekbones, a cutting curse to his left leg, acid-summoning spells to his chest and neck. Harry ignored the blood he could feel trickling down his torso as he gasped in painful breaths.

"I'm sure your brother would be… so impressed," Harry wheezed as he desperately tried to block out the pain, "by your skill at cursing someone when they… are unable to defend themselves. The mighty Lestrange brothers!"

The hatred in Rabastan's eyes burned even brighter before the cruciatus came again, and once it was lifted Harry didn't even have time to catch his breath before it struck a second time. When the pain finally receded his screams became rasping laughter. He had to got to him! He wasn't as powerless as he had thought; he could cause this bastard pain with simple words!

In a second Rabastan's wand was pressed in between his eyes, it's tip glowing green. The look in the man's eyes was positively feral and his face was twisted into a hate-filled snarl, and in that moment Harry wasn't sure that even Voldemort's orders would stop Rabastan from killing him. Harry grunted as he jumped, using his chains to pull himself upwards, and kicked Rabastan square in the chest, hoping to knock back enough of the hatred that was clouding his eyes that he would realise that killing him was not in his best interests. And, at that moment, the sticking charm finally gave way.

Harry fell to the cold stone floor in a jangle of falling chains. The air was forced from his lungs as each of his cracked and slowly healing bones fractured, but the possibility of freedom dulled his body's protests as he looked towards Rabastan. He was sprawled on his back, his eyes wide and filled with a joyous apprehension. His prisoner was free and dangerous, but that meant he finally had an excuse to avenge his brother.

Rabastan's wand snapped upwards and Harry was forced to roll over screaming ribs to avoid the jet of purple that shot from it's tip. Harry lashed out blindly with his chains, hoping to at least knock the next spell off course, and got lucky when they struck Rabastan's hand and sent his wand flying across the room. Rabastan scrambled towards it but Harry leapt on top of him and wrapped the chains tightly around his neck, using them to drag him away from the wand that lay bare inches out of reach.

For several minutes they rolled around as Rabastan flailed, jabbing desperate elbows and clawing at his face with desperate fingers, but Harry didn't stop pulling. Not when the kicking of his legs started to slow or finally stopped, nor when he felt him go limp in his arms. He continued for God only knew how long, and when he finally stopped and pushed Rabastan's now dead body off of him he realised his hands were slick with blood. He glanced sideways at the body. Huh, it appeared the chains had cut into his throat. He hadn't noticed.

He drew in deep shuddering breaths as the adrenaline burned away and feeling returned to his body. The pain returned, thickening from dull echoes to trembling groans. Everything hurt. His face, his arms, his legs, his ribs, his back, all whimpering in agony. He forced himself to concentrate instead on the flickering of the torches as he sat himself up and took a moment to look at the corpse of Rabastan Lestrange.

He quite liked that the bastard had been killed like a muggle, just as he liked the terror etched into now lifeless eyes. After everything Rabastan had done to him over his stay he thought it well deserved. He spent a few seconds poking through his now blood-soaked robes in search of anything useful but came up with naught. It had been wishful thinking that Rabastan might have the keys that would unlock his suppression cuffs. He did pick up Rabastan's wand and put in the pocket of what remained of his trousers, just in case.

Now came the question of how to escape, and quickly. He wasn't sure if Voldemort would have been informed about Rabastan's death through the dark mark or if Bellatrix would have some way of knowing.

Morphing was out of the question. He had tried morphing with injuries before, even tested if it was possible to use the ability to simply morph injuries back to how they should be, and his attempts had been met with excruciating pain. Given that quite literally every part of his body was hurting already there was nothing he could do. He looked at Rabastan's robes and immediately dismissed them too; robes that left a trail of blood drops after them was hardly a good disguise.

He resigned himself to simply staying out of sight as he pushed himself onto legs that shook under his weight. It was the first time he'd stood properly in weeks, maybe longer, and it took him a few seconds to find enough strength to start walking.

He silently pulled the door open and cautiously peered out into an empty corridor that led to a narrow stone staircase, dark but for the flickering light that streamed out of his cell. Though, corridor was a strong word, Harry thought. It appeared more like they had put a couple of walls inside a cellar to make a pair of cells, leaving a thin hallway for their tormentors to use. The cell next to his was empty and covered in dust, and Harry felt relief flood in his chest. No one had been kept there. The things Dirlewanger had made him watch couldn't have been real.

He crept up the stairs and listened for a few seconds before he inched the door open. It looked like a house, and a nice one at that. There were vases of flowers and photos of a young couple sitting on a spindly little table on one side of the corridor, and there was a skylight above him through which he could see a half moon peeking out from behind the clouds. The walls were a soft green that went beautifully with the dark wood floor that gleamed in the light from a… lightbulb? What the hell?

Harry slipped through the door and shut it silently behind him, trying to work out where the hell he was. There were stairs in front of him that led upwards and to his left he could see into a kitchen with marble worktops and white walls, complete with oven and microwave. He was in a muggle house. Voldemort kept him in a muggle house?

He heard muffled voices from his right and hurried into the kitchen, sparing a glance at the front door that was so tantalisingly close.

"Why in Merlin's name do we have to stay here?" a man's voice demanded. "I cannot stand the sight of the filthy muggles a moment longer! Merlin, we even had to speak to them! Why can we not slaughter them like the animals they are?"

"You know why," a female voice snapped. "Our Lord explained it to us when he gave us our assignment. We are to play a young couple so that no one finds the prisoner. The only thing more disgusting than the muggles is having to act as your wife," the voice sneered, and Harry heard the man growl in response. "Were you not listening to our Lord, Marcus?"

"Why could we not have–"

"Are you questioning the Dark Lord?" the woman asked with venom dripping from her voice as their voices came ever closer. "We cannot risk Dumbledore finding him! Our Lord said the prisoner is our highest priority. To be trusted with such a task is an honour! Our Lord refuses to keep such a dangerous man with his faithful, and any wards that could keep the old man out would be obvious. The muggles breed like the vermin they are – it would be impossible for the old fool to search ev-"

Her sneering voice was cut off as Harry plunged the kitchen knife into her stomach. Once, twice, three times the blade punctured her torso, splattering blood all over the floor. The man threw of his shock and grabbed for his wand, but before he could pull it from the pocket of his jeans the knife was hilt deep in his chest. They looked stunned as they lay dying on the tiles of the kitchen floor, and Harry didn't bother watching the life fade from their eyes before he stumbled towards the door.

The street was mercifully empty and Harry limped quickly away, trying his best to keep out of the streetlamps glare. It took over ten minutes for him to feel far enough way to slow down enough to think about his next move. He had to get out of the suppression cuffs – with them on he couldn't summon his ring to portkey away, and even if he could he would still be unable to either apparate or portkey without leaving both his hands behind.

He saw the tip of a shed poking over a fence and glanced around before climbing awkwardly over it, his body protesting every movement. Vernon had always kept his tools in the shed – not that he'd ever used them, of course – and Harry thought that a saw was as good a bet as any to get out of his constraints.

The wooden door splintered when he rammed himself against it for the third time, and Harry spent several seconds watching the darkened house for light only for the windows to stay black. They must be out or asleep, though he had no idea what time it actually was. All he knew was that it was dark. What month was it?

This particular homeowner's shed was thankfully well-stocked, and Harry immediately grabbed a saw at random and started sawing through the cuff that clung to his left wrist. The saw made quick work of it, and when the cuff finally fell away Harry rejoiced in feeling magic burn in his fingertips once more. He immediately started sawing at the other softly glowing cuff until that too fell onto the workbench.

The chains fell from his wrists and clattered against the floor with a twitch of his fingers and laugher bubbled from his throat. Oh, how he had missed magic. He could now feel it thrumming happily in his fingers, just waiting to be used, warming his soul with gentle flame. Spending so long not being able to cast spells had been a torture unto itself. He cast the limited number of healing spells he could cast wandlessly and felt his bones begin to slowly knit back together. Anything more than that was too delicate to do without his wand, an absence which he now felt keenly. It felt as if a piece of him was missing, and his magic took on an altogether darker hue in response. It wanted to make them pay, but he had more important things to do before then.

Harry reached into his pocket and grasped around Rabastan's wand, intending to cast a patronus to tell Sirius he had escaped. Instead, the wand radiated a sense of abject hatred as soon as he touched it and resisted even the slightest stream of magic he tried to force down its length. Harry grinned and snapped it over his knee. He had killed it's master, in fairness, and he didn't really want anything that liked Rabastan Lestrange to like him anyway.

He twisted and reappeared silently on the front step of Grimmauld Place. He trusted that Sirius would have hidden Anaïs somewhere he didn't know about, and he figured that if Sirius wasn't here he'd be able to leverage his destruction of the locket to convince Kreacher to go and get him. Hopefully anyway. He hadn't actually met Kreacher since that day, and he'd never been in Grimmauld Place at all.

He was a little giddy at seeing everyone again actually. It was a strange feeling, but one that he found he quite liked. Maybe distance – or in this case imprisonment – really did make the heart grow fonder. How long had it been?

He pushed the door open and strode into the entryway, taking a second to admire the gleaming torch-holders and the dark green wallpaper across which silver snakes slithered. Sirius had said that Kreacher had become absolutely devoted to the house but this really was rather impressive. Salazar would love it.

There was a soft, horrified gasp from the wall, and he looked up to meet the wide eyes of Walburga Black's portrait. He twitched his fingers before she could scream obscenities as Sirius said she was so fond of doing and looked into the mirror next to the now covered portrait.

He supposed he did look a bit… frightening. His spells had done little to fix the crooked mess his face had become and had only caused the bruises that covered his body to fade from black or purple into much less painful green, and that was not even mentioning to fresh set of burns, cuts, and holes that were in various stages of healing or the ribs that now formed ridges against his skin. It was only then that he realised just how much they had done to him, and he had to spend a few seconds clamping down on the cold fury that rolled in his stomach.

Those efforts were immediately torn down as he heard a muffled voice seep out from beneath the door.

"-Dark Lord does not inform me of such things. He doesn't inform anyone of his complete plans, certainly not one whose loyalties he cannot be utterly sure of."

Snape.

He'd arrived during an Order meeting. How… fitting. He supposed he could go upstairs and wait, or he could get Kreacher to pass Sirius a message, but why would he do that when Severus Snape was just next door? His fingertips began to burn as his magic coiled and squirmed, impatiently waiting to make the man pay.

"If he doesn't inform you of anything important," the deep voice of Kingsley Shacklebolt rumbled, "why are you here? What is the point in your alleged spying for our cause?"

"Now now, I have complete faith in Severus's dedication to the Order. We cannot blame him for Lord Voldemort's wariness."

Dumbledore. Somehow, Harry's magic began to beg even more desperately as Harry considered who else was in there. Not just Dumbledore and Snape, but the Potters too. Oh, the things he could do if he had his wand! He could burst in and put piercing curses through all of their hearts before anyone had time to react, even blow the room to smithereens. With the amount of rage that was blistering his veins he wondered whether he could do that one wandlessly, and the only thing that stopped him from finding out was knowing that Sirius, Nymphadora, and even Fleur could be in there too.

He spent a few seconds stood in front of the door listening, trying to work out where everybody was. Snape was in the right hand corner, directly down the wall from the door. Dumbledore was on the far side of the room, roughly in the centre, and he remembered Sirius saying that Moody had taken the head seat off of Dumbledore. No one else of any interest spoke, but Harry knew it was Dumbledore he would have to worry about as he tried to come up with a plan. He was exhausted and without his wand – he wouldn't be capable of many offensive spells. Where was Sirius sitting?

There were too many unknowns to make much of a plan, so he gave up. A few twitches of his fingers and flicks of his wrist disabled the locking charm, and then he burst through the door.

~Scene Change~

Sirius glared at Snape across the room. He was sure that slimy bastard knew something, but Merlin only knew that there wasn't much he could do to force it out of him. He wasn't anywhere near good enough a Legilimens to break Snape's shields and he also knew that Snape would be able to resist veritaserum with relative ease. That left torture to try and break or at least weaken the greasy git's shields enough that he could get through – likely what was happening to Harry, he thought with a pang which swiftly melted into the cauldron of anger that had swirled in his stomach ever since Harry was captured.

Six weeks. Six weeks Harry had been at Voldemort and his pet monster's mercy. He wondered how much longer even Harry would be able to hold out.

The wards pinged and Sirius ignored them as he continued to glare at Snape as he spouted that he just didn't know about the attack on Scrimgeour's home last night, just like he didn't know about any of the other large scale attacks either Voldemort or Dirlewanger had waged over the past weeks. Sirius was sure that he was lying. Scrimgeour had been killed, as had his wife and over a dozen aurors, leaving the Ministry utterly without direction. It wouldn't be difficult now for Voldemort to get a puppet elected and control the Ministry. And yet, Snape still claimed to have had no idea about any of them. If Sirius could kill Snape right then then he would, but unfortunately he knew that Dumbledore was far too protective of his pet Death Eater, and he knew that he wasn't able to go through Dumbledore.

Kingsley, at least, seemed to be suspicious of Snape, as did Dora, but unfortunately not many others did. He had told them about a few raids in advance that they had been able to stop, but they were inconsequential compared to an assault on the home the Minister of Magic or an attack on muggle Cardiff that had killed over three hundred people. Scraps that Voldemort was perfectly willing to go without if it kept his spy in the Order, but everyone was blind to it. Even Potter didn't believe it despite his own hatred for Snape.

Sirius was just about the growl yet another insult when, suddenly, the door burst open. A pale red jet shot across the room and yanked the wand out of Dumbledore's startled grasp just as Snape lurched across the room into the intruders waiting claw. Sirius had his wand out instantly and was about to cast a stunning spell at the intruder's exposed back when he noticed something; he hadn't used a wand, and the only person he knew that could do wandless magic was-

Harry!

Harry twisted Snape around to use him as human shield against the barrage of stunning spells that was sent his way. The action was unnecessary, however, as twin shields sprung into existence in front of him. Harry turned and looked at him, and Sirius felt his heart leap into his throat. He looked like hell – his face was shattered and almost entirely green with bruises with more than a few missing teeth, and his near skeletal body was marred by burns and cuts and slashes – but it was him. It was really him!

His and Dora's shield held against a second barrage and one of the Order members – he had forgotten her name, honestly – tried to cast a stunning spell at him, hoping to make him drop his shield. Instead, she was blasted backwards against the wall and slumped to the ground unconscious, her head dripping blood.

"The wards don't allow attack against the head of House Black," Sirius growled, "and I assure you I will not be dropping my shield, so I suggest you drop your wands."

Few did, but nonetheless no one cast another spell. Instead, they silently turned to stare at Harry, and Sirius could see a Dumbledore's eyes widen in realisation.

"Hello, Severus," Harry said as he held Dumbledore's softly glowing wand against Snape's pale cheek, "I bet you weren't expecting to see me again so soon."

Harry grinned at him, and Sirius was delighted to see true fear blossom in Snape's eyes.

"Who the fuck are you?" Moody growled.

"The old man has figured it out," Harry said without looking away from Snape, though Sirius could easily hear the hateful tremor in his voice, "why don't you ask him."

"The man from Beauxbatons," Dumbledore breathed, and the entirety of the Order jolted.

"Severus here was the third face I saw when I woke up in chains," Harry said with deceptive calm. "Gave me a modified version of veritaserum. It didn't work, of course. If it did I'd already be dead. So, I got handed over to Dirlewanger."

Even from his position Sirius could see the shudder that slunk down Harry's spine. What had the monster done to him?

"Anyway," Harry continued, "I was curious as to what your punishment was for your failure. Voldemort is a cruel master, I hear. But let me assure you of one thing: I plan on making whatever he did look like a picnic."

"Now let's all calm down," Dumbledore said, "I'm sure Severus did not do what you think he did. You said the potion was modified and that it didn't work? I'm sure Severus modified it with that intention."

Sirius resisted the urge to sneer as Harry turned his head to look at Dumbledore, and the old headmaster physically recoiled at the sheer hatred in the man's gaze.

"It was modified to be stronger, old man. And quite toxic as well. That was why they couldn't dose me up very often, so they resorted to more… violent measures. Bellatrix and Rabastan were quite enthusiastic."

Sirius saw Dora shiver beside him. Bellatrix, Rabastan, Dirlewanger and Voldemort. That sounded like a set of tormentors the Devil himself would be proud to call demons.

"Why are you here? For Snape?" Frank Longbottom asked, and Sirius had to give him credit for keeping his voice level.

"Oh no," Harry said as he turned to look at Sirius, "Snape was just a happy coincidence."

"We'll take you to her," Sirius said.

Harry nodded, and Sirius could see a spark flicker in his eyes.

"May I call one of my house elves to transfer Severus here to my cells?"

Sirius nodded, ignoring Dumbledore's protests as he temporarily lowered the house elf ward.

"Tippy!"

With a crack a house elf appeared dressed in a pure black uniform, and Sirius noticed that the Nightshade crest was missing from it's usual spot on her breast. Smart elf; he could only imagine the chaos that particular bombshell would cause. Tippy beamed up at Harry, her eyes glistening.

"Master!" she cried. "We tried to reach yous as soon as Mistress Dora told us but we couldn't!"

"I know Tippy," Harry said, smiling ever so slightly, "they warded against house elves. Calling you was one of the first things I did after I woke up."

If anything, Tippy's smile became even brighter.

"Could you take Snape here to our cells? Don't give him the Draught of the Living Death though; I have a feeling I'll be seeing him sooner rather than later."

He smiled a final icy smile at the visibly terrified Snape before Tippy apparated him away. Sirius pushed himself from his chair as Harry turned to walk back out of the room, flicking Dumbledore's wand experimentally as he did so.

"Harry?"

Lily Potter's words had been whispered, but everyone had heard her in the unearthly silence of the room. Sirius turned to look at her, wondering how the hell she could have possibly figured it out from just looking at him, and found her staring at his exposed back.

Those scars. They may be marred by fresh wounds and slashes in varying stages of healing, but Lily would recognise that pattern anywhere. She had watched and rewatched Petunia's memories of Harry's time in that house until she could see them in her sleep, basking in the sheer misery they brought so that she could never forget, could never move on, because to her to do so would be to forget that she as good as killed her own son.

For however many times she watched those memories though, she had watched the memories extracted from the homeless muggles countless times more. It was the only time Harry ever smiled, ever looked happy or calm or safe, like a child instead of the empty shell he had been at Privet Drive. Every time he saw the muggle girl his face lit up and Lily knew that he had seen her as more of a mother than he had ever seen her. She had had dreams – or were they nightmares? – where she had been Olivia and Harry had looked at her like that, only to wake up crying in the night.

And then Olivia had died, and Harry had died the very next day. She had never been able to even consider that he had taken his own life, had been unable to fathom her little eight year old son doing such a thing, but she had thought that maybe her death had been the straw that broke the hippogriff's back and his little heart had finally decided that it just didn't want to beat anymore.

But now here he was. She was sure of it. Her Harry was still alive and standing right in front of her.

Harry flinched as if struck and then stiffened, his fists clenched hard enough that he could feel blood bubbling against his fingertips where his nails had sliced crescent moons into his palms. He would have berated himself for giving himself away if any blossoming thought was not drowned into insignificance as it tried to fight its way through the blistering anger that was roaring in his ears.

Mechanically, slowly, he turned around and the faces of many were full of shocked disbelief, horror or, in the case of Lily Potter, hope. James Potter's face was completely slack, whatever he was feeling indistinguishable from any other emotion. Neither Sirius nor Tonks' faces held any sign of hope for any happy reunion as they grasped their wands tightly; theirs held only alertness and even a hint of fear. They had both learnt to read the minute details Harry gave away in his body language and right now everything about him screamed rage. His hands shook, his limbs were stiff. Dumbledore's entire wand was glowing as blood trickled down its length and dripped from its sparking tip. When Harry was angry he was even more dangerous than normal, and there were few or even none that he despised more than the Potters.

They had been expecting burning hatred and for Harry to finally lose control when he turned to face them, but neither happened. Oh there was hatred, an abyss of pure loathing that seemed never-ending, but instead of fire there was ice. His eyes were colder than Sirius had ever seen them, and instead of their natural purple they were a black that seemed to pull every hint of warmth from the room. Even he fought the urge to flinch, but he could not stop the impulse when Harry finally spoke.

"It is my understanding that your son is a dead squib," he said with a venomous smile, "as you can see, I am neither of those things."

"No, you are my Harry-"

"If you ever utter that name in my presence again I will kill you where you stand, and it will not be a quick death," he hissed.

Lily Potter's face crumpled in on itself as her husband distractedly pulled her into his side, still staring stupidly at Harry. Everyone in the room was staring at him. Dumbledore was in tears, and everyone else was in complete shock. The dead Potter squib was him?

Harry's wand started to twitch in his hand.

"I suggest you not tell anyone about this," he said in a tightly controlled voice, "or else I will kill you. Sirius, Nymphadora."

And with that, he turned around and stalked from the room. Sirius didn't even spare a glance for the Order members as he hurried after him with Dora a step ahead of him.

Harry was waiting stiffly at the door, and when they reached him he didn't even look at them. Even when they apparated he didn't react, nor when they apparated for the second time or the third until they finally appeared beneath the Slovenian streetlights.

"The Cellar is located in Laško, Slovenia."

It was only when the houses split apart in front of him that he showed anything but tightly controlled fury. His eyes blinked closed as he let a low, hissing breath and then started flicking Dumbledore's wand in short, sharp movements. His face became a little less crooked as the bones were loudly realigned, and he cast a series of spells over his ribs that caused several fragments to slowly crawl out and fall to the ground before he cast bone mending charms over the whole area. He grimaced as he forced the cuts, scars, and bruises to fade from his skin and his body to fill out to healthy proportions as his face twisted back into the shape it had held before with fresh teeth sprouting from his gums.

Next to him, Sirius saw Dora wince.

A final twirl conjured a muggle hoodie over his uncovered torso and jeans to replace the tattered and bloodstained remains of his trousers.

"Harry," Dora started, "are you…?"

"I'm fine."

Sirius forced down a sigh. He hadn't expected him to want to talk about and certainly not straight away – people just didn't voluntarily talk about things like what he had been through, and Harry definitely wouldn't – but from his tone that was both a lie and one that he planned to stick with.

Wordlessly Sirius led the way towards the house with Harry a half step behind, the slightest of bounces beginning to form in his step. Fleur was sat hunched on the sofa reading what Sirius remembered her saying was her favourite book, desperately trying to get the same sense of joy it had given her all the times she had read it before and, by the look on her face, failing.

She barely looked up as they entered before she returned to her book only for her head to immediately snap back upwards. Harry smiled a little at her and inclined his head towards the stairs questioningly. Fleur gave a slow nod, and then Harry disappeared up the stairs.

Her book forgotten, Fleur sat up in the sofa as Sirius and Tonks took seats on the sofa opposite, her eyes darting up the stairs with shocked relief.

"It is definitely…?"

Sirius nodded, and all the stiffness that had leached into Fleur over the past weeks instantly evaporated. Sirius felt her allure billow out happily, a far cry from the dim thing it had been ever since that day at Beauxbatons.

"How is he?"

They both shrugged helplessly but smiled as they heard a joyful squeal from upstairs.

"He said he was fine," Tonks said quietly, "but no one comes out of six weeks of whatever they did to him fine. He burst in on the Order meeting looking like shit. Cuts, bruises, scars, dried blood in his hair, his wrists rubbed raw. It looked like they'd broken every bone in his face and most of the others too. We have no idea where he was or how he got out; he just burst into the meeting, disarmed Dumbledore and held Snape by the throat. Turns out the greasy bastard was working for Voldemort not Dumbledore, and he was there when Harry woke up. Harry was furious."

"The Potters probably didn't help," Sirius muttered to himself, clearly a little too loudly as Fleur's features sharpened.

"What did they do?" she asked dangerously.

Sirius and Tonks shared a glance.

"We can't tell you. Oaths."

Fleur hummed in displeased understanding. Her own oath was certainly strict enough that she wouldn't risk it. She did wonder what Sirius and Tonks knew that she didn't, and what Harry had sworn them to secrecy about even from other people who knew him.

"I'm hoping he'll let us out of it now," Tonks said, whispered almost. "I want to tell my parents."

Sirius gave her a compassionate look. He'd never really thought about what it must be like for her to keep it from her parents. It had been hard enough keeping it from his own family and they had never met Harry. But Andi and Ted… they had loved Harry. Mourned him.

Fleur looked like she wanted to ask questions but held herself back, knowing that there was no point. They sat there in silence for a while as the occasional yelp or bout of giggling echoed down the stairs. There wasn't really much to talk about given that Harry hadn't told them anything, and they instead opted to let the tension slowly trickle out of them. Sirius was sure that tonight would be the first night in six weeks he would sleep soundly.

Harry came down eventually with Anaïs clinging to his hand, not that he seemed to mind, but Sirius was struck by the strange look on his face when he glanced down at her. He discarded the thought almost instantly; he was probably just relieved to be back.

"I suppose I might as well release you from your oaths about my identity," Harry said with a long look at Tonks, though he didn't seem particularly comfortable with it. Sirius wondered whether he had somehow heard them as he felt the bond break. "Though, Fleur, I'd prefer if you didn't tell your father anything. You never know when I might run afoul of the French Ministry again."

"He already knows. He recognised your magical signature at Beauxbatons, but he made sure that it was left out of all the reports."

Harry frowned but nodded nonetheless. He didn't think Fleur's father was the sort to use that information against him but that didn't mean he liked it. He'd need to gather materials for a retaliation, just in case.

"I'm going to take Anaïs home now," Harry said awkwardly after a few second's silence. "It was good to see you all again."

Sirius smothered a smile. That was so Harry; he sounded like he was trying to escape a particularly unbearable dinner party. Sirius supposed he was looking forwards to a shower, a soft bed, and plenty of healing potions after six weeks in captivity. Fleur and Tonks both looked similarly amused as he and Anaïs shuffled out of the door, though also slightly put out at the lack of overt affection they received. Sirius laughed at the thought. Harry certainly didn't go around hugging people and telling them how much he'd missed them.

"So," Fleur said suddenly as Sirius pulled the door open to leave himself, "he released the oaths. Now you can tell me what you meant about the Potters."

Sirius stood for a moment as he wondered how exactly to word it. By the look on Tonks's face she didn't have any idea either.

"You've seen the crest on the gates of his house?" he said finally.

Fleur nodded. "The House of Nightshade. It is very old and was thought extinct."

"It was extinct," Tonks said. "The last lord was centuries ago, and as is custom he left blood so a worthy heir could fully adopt into the family. That's what Harry did."

"Before that, Harry's surname was Potter."

Fleur gasped. The Potters had never really reached the newspapers of France beyond that Halloween, not that she had read newspapers at that age, but she had heard whispers about Harry Potter during her time in the Order. A squib who had been sent to live with Lily Potter's muggle sister where he had been horrifically abused, and then he had died. They had never found the body.

"And the Potters…?"

"Lily figured it out, Merlin only knows how. And she whispered his name and the whole room went silent."

"And Harry?"

Sirius smiled grimly. "I'm surprised he didn't kill them then and there."

Sirius left then with a final smile and a small smirk at Tonks, who looked resigned to answering all the questions that Fleur clearly had. All those vague mentions of personal history seemed to have come back to bite them.

He disapparated and reappeared outside his front door which immediately clicked open and he strode into the house, following the echoing music of the wizarding wireless with quick strides until he reached the kitchen. Sofia was there humming to herself in time with clunking of the knife against the chopping board, her dark hair tied into a bun and an apron tied around her waist. Sirius stifled a laugh. Sofia was fantastic at many things but cooking certainly wasn't one of them. He honestly had no idea why she kept doing it.

Any other time he would have stood in the doorway and watched for a while, but he was in far too good a mood to do that. He didn't even pause as he skipped into the room and grabbed his wife by the waist, ignoring her squeals and the diced vegetables that were knocked to the floor as he started to spin her around.

"Sirius!" she cried when he finally set her down, spinning to glare at him playfully. "I was cooking!"

Sirius shrugged, still grinning.

"You're very happy tonight," she said, "did something good happen at your Order meeting?"

Sirius nodded, long since used to the disapproval in her tone when the Order was mentioned.

"You haven't been like this in weeks," Sofia continued before he could speak, "not since…"

She trailed off, her eyes widening as she looked at Sirius's still grinning face.

"He escaped?"

Sirius's nod gained even more vigour. "He burst in on the meeting and exposed Snivellus for the traitorous bastard he is. I've got no idea how he escaped or even where he was, but he's alive. Six weeks with that snake-faced bastard and he's okay!"

Sofia smiled brightly at him, but he could see the frown that hid behind it. She didn't like being kept secrets from. She hadn't pushed him for answers since he was captured, but now that he was back Sirius was sure that she would soon start being a bit more insistent.

"Where's Hattie?" he asked.

"She should be in bed, but knowing her she's hunched over a book of prank spells. I still can't believe you let her have her wand this early – she doesn't go to Beauxbatons until next year!"

Sirius shrugged as he pulled out his wand and cast a revealing spell in case she was hiding somewhere. She really was too much like him. Once he had made sure Hattie wasn't listening he turned back to his wife, who immediately noticed the slight change in his demeanour.

"Sirius?"

"He let us out of the oaths."

He looked at her questioningly and she gave a small nod.

"It's Harry."

"What do you mean?" Sofia asked, confused, "Harry is ups-"

It was only then that she realised the significance of what he'd said. Sirius didn't call their daughter Harry. He had never called her Harry. Harry wasn't the name of his daughter, Harry was the name of…

"Your godson…" she breathed. "I thought he was dead."

"He blood adopted into an old family. As far as magic, blood, and Harry himself is concerned, Harry Potter is dead."

"You are sure it is him?"

Sirius didn't look at all bothered by the question as he nodded. "Me and Dora both made sure. It's definitely him."

"Nymphadora knows too?"

"She knew before I did. She's probably telling Andi and Ted now actually. Harry thought we abandoned him with those disgusting muggles. At least she was a child then – he couldn't really blame her for it – but if she hadn't known the name of the spell Dumbledore put on him and he hadn't had a book about it I'm not sure he'd have ever told me," Sirius said quietly.

"Can we meet him? Do you think he'd like to? Maybe we can have the Tonkses over as well so that he doesn't have to say everything twice."

Sirius shrugged somewhat helplessly. "He might. Harry isn't the most… sociable person even now, and he was far, far worse when I met him. He spent the best part of ten years entirely by himself with only a few portraits for company, and even now he only has relationships with four people."

"You, Nymphadora, Fleur Delacour, and the little vela girl he stopped from being kidnapped."

She blushed slightly under Sirius's surprised stare before he began to chuckle slightly.

"You put far too much thought into this, love."

"Well," she said with false sweetness, "when my husband appears with a nameless man who duelled the Dark Lord and was subsequently captured, and who my husband then refuses to talk about, I tend to take a bit of an interest."

Sirius cringed.

"You don't have to worry about that. The snake-faced freak's days are numbered. Harry's going to make sure of it."

~Scene Change~

Tonks was on edge as her parents peered at her over the table. After she had answered enough of Fleur's questions that she was allowed to leave she had apparated straight to her parents house, who had then insisted that she come inside for tea. Her parents had immediately recognised that something was up, and so they had spent the past five minutes gently trying to pry it from her.

But how did she tell them? She couldn't exactly say "Oh yeah, by the way, Harry is still alive", could she? Would that be better? Or would it be better to try and tell them gently? But how the hell could she say it gently?

"Did something happen at work?" her father asked, his once steaming mug long forgotten.

"You're not pregnant are you?" her mother deadpanned.

"Mum!" "Andi!"

"What? There's not many things that can make a woman nervous and happy at the same time. I'd have thought you'd see it too, Ted, considering that I was much the same way when I told you I was pregnant."

"Well I was wondering, but you can't just jump straight to that."

"Dad! I'm not pregnant!"

"Well that's a relief," her mother sighed, "you're far too young."

"Hypocrite," her father muttered, earning himself a sharp elbow to the side.

"I seem to recall someonebeing far too excitable to take the proper precautions, Theodore," her mother smirked, "and it certainly wasn't me."

"I don't remember you compl-"

"Harry's alive!" she finally blurted out, and her parent's playful squabbling immediately stopped as they looked at her for several long seconds.

"Dora," her mother said slowly, "how long have you thought that? It's not uncommon for people to see the people they have lost, but for it to be going on for so many years…"

"It's not that. I mean he actually is alive. I've been seeing him since a little after the world cup but I was under oath not to tell anyone until now. Wait, not seeing seeing – that would be weird, it's Harry – I mean just like, seeing."

Her parents shared a glance.

"And you're sure it's him? It's not just someone who looks like you think Harry would look?"

"What? No, it's actually him. He doesn't even look like Harry would because… well, because he doesn't want to look like that, but it's him. Trust me, it's him. I made sure – I asked him questions that only Harry would know. He blood adopted into an old family, that's why the Potter tapestry said he was dead, and he's just lived by himself ever since."

"Dora, you're not making any sense."

"Just trust me, please? You can even ask Sirius."

"Sirius has met him?"

Tonks nodded vigorously.

Her mother flicked her wand and a silver rabbit bounded from it's tip and through the wall, and they continued to sit there scrutinising her until a great silver dog ran into the room a minute later.

"It's him," the dog said.

Instantly, her parents slumped. She could see her father's hands shaking slightly as he raised his now cold tea to his lips, and her mother rubbed at her eyes in a vain attempt to stop the tears from dropping down her cheeks.

"How is he?" her mother asked softly.

"I don't know," she answered, her own tears starting to fall. "We haven't properly spoken in months. I was angry at him, and then– and then Beauxbatons happened, and I wasn't there to stop it."

"Beauxbatons?" her father asked, but her mother gasped.

"That was him?" she whispered. "The man who duelled the Dark Lord was Harry?"

Tonks nodded.

"He was never a squib. Merlin, he's a more powerful wizard than almost anyone I've ever met. He can do wandless magic without even trying."

"The man from Beauxbatons?" her father murmured, shocked. "But that man was…"

He trailed off in horror as Tonks gave a shaky nod.

"He escaped a few hours ago. He didn't say how."

"Can we see him?" her mother asked desperately.

"I'll ask him next time I see him. I just hope he's not upset with about before."

"How did you find him again?" her father croaked.

"I didn't, he found me. And he wouldn't of if someone important to him hadn't persuaded him to talk to me. He thought we abandoned him with those awful muggles! It was a little after the world cup…"

~Scene Change~

It was with great difficulty that Sirius stopped himself from apparating straight to Harry's house as soon as he woke up the next morning. Was he okay? What had they done to him? How had he escaped? Where had he been held? He'd been halfway out the door when Sofia managed to persuade him not to.

"After six weeks of imprisonment," she had said, "I think he may want a little time to recover before people start questioning him."

He had almost scoffed at the thought of Harry needing time to recover – he had looked fine when he left yesterday! – until he realised that just because he had used his abilities to look healthier for Anaïs's benefit didn't mean he actually was healthy. He had looked half dead when he burst into the Order meeting, and that was how he actually was. All the muscle and the fat looked to have melted off him, and just because he could make it look like it was all there again didn't mean it was anything more than an illusion. Anyone would need time to recover from that, even Harry.

He stopped himself from going the next day as well, but his resolve wasn't strong enough to last the day after that. It was all Tonks fault, of course. If she hadn't sent him a patronus asking him to come with her then he was sure he would have been able to hold out.

So that was how they found themselves wandering up the path towards Harry's front door and trying to ignore their nervousness. Sirius could literally feel the nerves oozing out of Tonks as she walked beside him, fiddling with a fibre of her fraying sleeve.

"What's up with you?" he asked.

"What if he's angry with me? I mean, I haven't spoken to him in ages even if we ignore the last six weeks. What if he blames me? Fleur was there but I wasn't, and I'm supposed to be his oldest and closest friend! Are they friends now? They seemed close yesterday. He was happy to see her, at least, and she was very happy that he was back. Very interested too – she had a lot of questions. Are they close close? Like, a thing close? See? I don't even know that! If I was him I'd hate me."

"Dora," Sirius said soothingly, "calm down. It'll be fine. You're both stubborn, he'll get over it. I think he'll probably just be happy to see you."

"Maybe," she admitted, though she was clearly quite sceptical. "Why are you nervous? He doesn't have any reason to be angry with you."

Sirius shrugged uneasily. Truthfully he was worried about how Harry's imprisonment had affected him. Prolonged isolation alone was enough to break people, never mind when whatever those monsters had done to him was added in. What if he had just… snapped?

They let themselves in as they always did and wandered towards the front room. They assumed that after six weeks Harry would be spending every second he could with Anaïs, probably teaching her magic now that she couldn't go back to Beauxbatons. Sirius, Fleur, and Tonks had tried to teach her during Harry's imprisonment, of course, even if it was just to try and distract her. She had hardly been in the right frame of mind to learn anything though, and even if she was none of them had the same instinctive grasp of magic that Harry did.

Anaïs was trying to learn magic alright, but Harry was nowhere to be seen. She was sat on the sofa with a spellbook in her lap and despondently waving her wand around, a look of complete depression on her face. She looked up excitedly when she heard footsteps only for the hope on her face to swiftly flicker out when she saw them.

Sirius and Tonks shared a look; this wasn't a good sign.

"Alright squirt," Tonks said cheerfully, and Anaïs didn't even react to her hated nickname.

"Hi."

"Do you know where Harry is?" Sirius asked.

She shrugged miserably.

Sirius glanced towards Tonks and nodded slightly towards Anaïs.

"Whatcha learning?" Tonks asked as she leapt onto the sofa next to her. "Need a hand?"

Sirius heard Anaïs's stubborn refusal as he left the room and made his way up the stairs. He'd try Harry's office first, and if he wasn't there he'd try his bedroom too. Harry would be none too happy about someone invading his personal space, but Sirius had a feeling there was something seriously wrong.

The door to his office was locked, and the moment he knocked Tippy appeared in front of him.

"Master does not want to be disturbed," she said, looking quite upset.

"Can you tell me what he's doing?"

Tippy shook her head as she wrung her hands in front of her. Sirius frowned; Harry had forbidden her from telling him. Another bad sign.

"Can you tell me how he is at least?"

Tippy shrugged helplessly. "Tippy does not know. She cannot tell."

Sirius sighed before he grudgingly walked back the way he came. Something was definitely wrong.

When he came back to the front room Anaïs was still adamantly shaking her head as Tonks continued to ask if she needed any help with her spell, her wand movements still limp and flat.

"Papa will teach me once he is better. That is why he isn't here – he is still healing," she insisted.

Sirius silently cursed Harry's name when he heard the tremble in her voice. Why was he being so damned cruel? By the time they left a couple of hours later she had still refused any help with her magic, just as she had refused to stop trying and do something else. They did manage to find out the last time she had actually seen Harry, just in case whatever it was that was keeping him locked away needed the attention of a mediwizard or something. She said that they had come back from the safehouse, had a little dinner and then Harry had put her to bed saying that he needed to rest. She hadn't seen him since.

It wasn't difficult to persuade Fleur to join them the next day, and her presence made Anaïs a little more cheerful at least. Those few hours went much the same as the day before, and much the same as the day after as well. All three of them went to knock on his office door – alone, in pairs, all three of them together – and every time Tippy appeared to relay the same message she had told Sirius the first time. Sirius was almost tempted to bring Anaïs to his door with them and see if he still stayed inside, but if the door did remain closed he couldn't imagine what that would do to her.

By the sixth day Sirius's head was running through absolute worst-case scenarios. Had Harry's mind suddenly fractured? Was he insane now? Had something been done to him that had rendered him on Death's door? A wound that he hadn't been able to heal, a degenerative curse that he hadn't been able to reverse? Was he so weak he couldn't move? Had he lapsed into a coma, and Tippy was unable to let them in to help because it violated an order from before he slipped into unconsciousness? All they knew was that he was alive, but any other questions Tippy was unable to answer.

By the looks on their faces Fleur and Tonks were having similar thoughts. They were all sat in the front room again and Anaïs was sat in one of the chairs, her spellbook lying forgotten on the floor and her wand grasped limply between her fingers, having long since given up on even trying to do anything but sit there. The atmosphere in the room was worryingly like the days after Harry had first been captured.

He heard footsteps from the hall and turned around just in time to see Harry walk stiffly into the room. He looked… normal. Just as he always had done, but Sirius could see the subtle signs of exhaustion. Shuffled strides, dull eyes, muted expression. He hadn't slept in days.

"Voldemort plans to attack Madam Bones soon," he rasped. "He's been planning it for a while according to Snape. The aurors have been infiltrated so we can't depend on them, though I'm not sure if he's got any on her protection detail or not. Tell the Order, and try and persuade her to make some changes to her ward scheme, even if it's just altering the order they are in. That should buy us some time. Sirius, see if you can ask a few colleagues from work for some help. He's going to bring everyone."

Harry looked at Anaïs with a longing, almost mournful expression before he strode straight back out of the room. Sirius stared after him. What was that?

Fleur looked towards Anaïs as she watched him leave, a heartbroken look on her face and her eyes glistening with tears, and decided enough was enough. She pushed herself from her chair and stormed after him and managed to jam her foot in his office door just as it swung closed.

The curtains were drawn so the room was lit only by torchlight, and his desk was strewn with books and parchments filled with complex equations and scribbled runes. There were potion vials lined up haphazardly on a shelf, many of them empty and a few still with the familiar red of the pepper-up potion, and in one corner was a transfigured bed that didn't look to have even be slept in.

"What the hell are you doing?" she hissed. "You're hurting her! You're hurting us!"

Harry didn't even look at her before he sat heavily behind the desk and started sorting through the cluttered parchments and staring at them with clouded eyes.

"Harry! Are you even listening to me? Do you even care?"

He looked slowly up at her and blinked, and Fleur was sure she saw the faintest spark of emotion burn on his lips before it flickered out and his gaze returned to the parchments. She just watched as he crumpled up a page and shoved it off the desk into a small pile on the floor before he started scrawling runes anew in a shaky hand. Everything she had ever seen of Harry was the complete antithesis of whatever this was. He just ignored her words when she knew that before that day at Beauxbatons even the implication that he didn't care about Anaïs would have pushed him very close to the edge.

"Look, Harry," she said gently, "I know you were imprisoned. I know awful things were done to you, even if I don't know what. I understand that-"

"No you don't!" he hissed as he erupted from his seat and glared at her. "You don't understand. How could you possibly understand when you didn't have that monster slinking around your head? Do you know what they could have done to her, what they said they would do to her when they found her? To all of you? What they showed me? I watched them kill her over and over and over again until I wasn't even sure what was true and what wasn't! Ripped apart by werewolves, kissed by dementors, eaten by fucking Acromantula! And then one day he stopped, and I thought to myself, 'was that one real? Is she really dead?' I was actually relieved when he threw images at me, I wanted him to, because that meant the last one I had seen wasn't real!"

Hot, angry tears were trickling down his cheeks, but he didn't even seem to realise as his arms waved sharply through the air, sounding more broken than anybody she had ever heard before even despite the fury that oozed out of him.

"And any one of those things could have happened, all because I couldn't protect her! Don't you see? My one job, the one thing that I have been placed on this Earth to do and I couldn't even manage it! They could have got her!" All the anger seemed to suddenly drain out of him. "They could have got her, and it would have been my fault."

He slumped back into his chair and stared at the mess of parchments once more before he continued, not even looking at her.

"She doesn't deserve to have me constantly looming over her, having to be scared that someone is going to try and kill her just because of her association to me. I could get her out. No contact, no relationship at all. I could change her appearance, her memories, even bind the allure somehow," he said, sounding so dreadfully optimistic, "I've been working on that. She could be free, and she could be happy."

"You are willing to orphan that poor girl a second time?" Fleur asked.

Harry cringed before anger overthrew the shame.

"She won't even remember me. As far as she'll be concerned I won't even exist. I can make her remember growing up with a loving family with no danger, no traumatic memories, no murder or imprisonment or Dark Lords. She'll be a normal, happy little girl."

"And you think that is better? To snatch away every memory she has? Take away her family, her friends, every moment of happiness she has ever experienced and replace them with lies? You think that will stop them hunting her?"

Harry gave an awful laugh that brimmed with self-loathing.

"Of course not, the taint of me is already firmly in place. Nothing will ever wash that off; they will hunt her just to use her to hurt me. But I can make it impossible for them to find her. Last time he found her because of me, because she was with me, but if she's not he won't be able to! She won't look the same, won't sound the same, won't even have the allure. She'll be safe. That's what matters."

"And how long until you do the same to everyone else? To Nymphadora, to Sirius, to me?"

His silence was answer enough.

"How can you be willing to take away everything someone is simply so that you do not get hurt."

"But I will get hurt! Do you not see that? Do you not realise that even thinking about this feels like my heart is being ripped out of my chest? Do you think that it doesn't make me want to disappear just to free you all of me? To make me want to memory charm myself out of your lives? Because it does! But I will not allow anyone else I care about to die!"

The anger evaporated instantly to leave him breathing heavily with tears running down his face, and for the first time she realised how truly and utterly broken he was.

"I can't let anyone else die. Not when I can stop it."

Fleur spent long seconds staring at him, trying to work out what she could possibly say. This was not simply a result of his imprisonment. This was something he had hidden from for years, buried so deep he could pretend it wasn't there, and Voldemort had shaken it loose.

"You can stop it without going to such lengths," she tried. "You can keep her here. Getting to her through these wards is near impossible, and if they even tried you would know instantly and then you could go somewhere else. To the Cellar, or to any one of the places you undoubtedly have to hide if need be. How much safer could she be?"

Harry looked unconvinced, but at the very least there was a glint that hadn't been there before.

"And besides," she continued, "those bastards will all be dead soon. You cannot throw away decades simply because you are scared now."

"Will they?"

"Of course they will," Fleur nodded, ignoring the doubt that she could for some reason hear in his voice. He outduelled Voldemort for Merlin's sake! "Are you telling me that after what they did you are going to allow them to go on living?"

Harry frowned fiercely at the suggestion.

"Well there is absolutely no reason to send her away then is there? Now that your ill-conceived plan has been showed for what it is," Fleur said as she yanked him out of his chair, "you can go and see Anaïs. She has been distraught for days because you were avoiding her."

His face suddenly took on an almost timid expression that looked incredibly strange on his face before he walked out of the room, pausing only to snatch a couple of vials of pepper-up potion from the shelf. Fleur set all the parchments on the desk a flame with a slash of her wand and only left once they had been reduced to ash. She wasn't a fool; all she had done was convince him to stop hiding from Anaïs. Harry was by no means convinced that Voldemort would be unable to reach them here, and she wasn't going to risk him actually carrying out such an idiotic scheme. Really, for such an intelligent person he was remarkably dense sometimes.

She reached the bottom of the stairs just in time to see Harry's face light up before Anaïs shot into him and dragged him happily towards the door. Fleur smiled; she'd never seen a teenage veela so affectionate with their parental figures. She certainly hadn't been, and by the way things were going Gabrielle wasn't going to be much better. The veela temper was far too volatile, a fact that she was sure Harry would be getting a reminder of in the near future.

"Where are they going?" she asked as she took a seat on the sofa, ignoring Sirius and Tonks's disbelieving looks.

"No idea. Harry just asked if she wanted to go somewhere, so knowing him they'll do whatever she wants. I've never seen Harry look that unsure of himself though; it would almost be funny if I wasn't so concerned."

Sirius gave Fleur a pressing look, and she spent a few seconds wondering how best to word it before she decided to just get straight to what she knew Sirius most wanted to know: what happened to Harry.

"They showed him false memories. Bad ones."

"From outside his occlumency shields?" Tonks asked, a note of worried confusion in her voice. "His occlumency is more than good enough that he should have had no problem realising they were fake."

"Unless they were so traumatic that he couldn't detach himself enough to tell," Sirius whispered with horror dawning on his face. "What did they make him watch?"

"He saw each of us die a thousand times over. He said dementors, werewolves, and acromantula, but if he is saying those I dread to think of what he did not say."

Sirius and Tonks shuddered, and Fleur too felt a shiver slink across her skin. She knew exactly the sort of things those people would have made him watch.

"And he said that sometimes they would wait a while," she continued, her voice catching slightly in her throat, "just long enough for him to truly believe that the last one was real. He would think that he had watched someone he loved be ripped to shreds in front of him, and then they would come back and start tormenting him again."

She dragged her gaze up from her lap and saw Sirius and Tonks staring at her, their skin pale as they tried to imagine being tortured in such a way.

"What was he doing?" Tonks asked. "Harry wouldn't escape all that and not plan something."

Fleur snorted.

"He was planning something alright. He was working on ways to bind the allure so he could modify Anaïs's memories and her appearance so she could send her away."

"He what?" Sirius and Tonks asked in unison. That made no sense. Harry loved Anaïs.

Fleur shrugged slightly. "He was – is – terrified, and decided she would somehow be safer away from him."

"He might actually have a point there," Sirius muttered, only to recoil at the angry glares he received. "What? She might be. I'm not saying that he should do what he was planning and quite literally kill her and turn her into a completely different person – Merlin knows I'd never be able to even consider doing that to Hattie – but he might actually be right."

"Sirius," Tonks said, "shut up, and make sure you never even think something like that where he can hear you. He doesn't need to be encouraged to do something so stupid. Anyway, Fleur, how did you convince him not to do it?"

Fleur gave another shrug. "I said that all of those people would be dead soon anyway so he shouldn't throw away decades with her simply because he is scared now."

"You told him you thought he was scared?" Sirius exclaimed. "You said that to his face? Out loud?"

"Yes, why are you so surprised? It was the truth."

Sirius smiled and muttered something too soft for her to hear. Tonks did hear, however, and her face blossomed into a smile of her own.

"What?" Fleur asked suspiciously.

"Oh, nothing," Sirius said innocently.

Fleur stared at him for a few seconds, hoping for him to give in, but his infuriating grin didn't wilt in the slightest. If anything, it became even brighter. Tonks was of no help either, and Fleur reluctantly decided to let it go.

"He said he couldn't lose anyone else die," Fleur said. "Anyone else. Who did he lose?"

The grin melted off of Sirius's face immediately.

"Olivia," Sirius said softly as he glanced towards Tonks. "How much do you know about her?"

"Not much," She admitted. "Just bits and pieces my parents told me when I was younger. I know her and Harry were close when he was on Privet Drive, but beyond that not much."

Sirius sighed and rubbed at his face.

"Close is an understatement. If you haven't seen the memories I don't think you can ever realise just how much he adored her. She was a muggle girl. Homeless; her and whole bunch of others stayed in an abandoned warehouse a few streets over. It's funny," he said as a wry smile appeared on his face, "she was barely older than he is now, but if you asked him I bet he still thinks of her as his mum.

"Harry met her not too long after he got sent there; the Dursleys locked him out at night in December and he went looking for somewhere he wouldn't freeze to death, and eventually he stumbled in on them. She knew what was happening to him as soon as she saw him, I think, and she let him share her sleeping bag near the fire so that he was warm. That was probably the first time someone had been kind to him in months. After that he kind of… I don't want to say latched on because Merlin knows that it was infinitely better there than at the Dursleys, but he started going back. At first he'd just visit for a few hours and then he started staying there on the weekends for a few months, and then he finally just stopped going back to Privet Drive at all. He talked to the rest of those in the warehouse, sure, but she was special to him. He spent as much time as humanly possible with her; almost like a lost puppy, honestly. If she went somewhere, chances were that he would go too."

"What happened?" Fleur asked.

"She died. Got hit by a car. Harry wasn't there, thank God, but I guarantee you he feels immeasurably guilty that he wasn't. Probably thinks if he was there he could have used his magic to save her. When the people who she was with stumbled back into the warehouse and told him, Harry just… died. His face in that moment still haunts me. He was heartbroken, completely and utterly heartbroken, as if everything good and happy in his world had been snuffed out at once, and then he walked out and never came back. The next day he was in Diagon Alley doing the blood adoption.

"Remember when I said that he had something personal that would make him want to be a parental figure? Well that's it. She took a scared kid and made him happy, made him realise that he wasn't all the things the Dursleys had told him he was. That someone actually wanted him, that he wasn't a freak who wasn't even wanted by his parents. She cared about him when no one else did. Of course he'd want to do the same; it probably started off as him trying to make her proud of him in some twisted way."

"And now?"

"Now, the only person Harry has ever loved more than Olivia is Anaïs. That I can tell you without a doubt."

"It probably lets him… live out the fantasy, I guess," Tonks murmured. "Think about it. If Olivia hadn't died he'd probably have ended up going to Diagon Alley and blood adopting anyway eventually, only he would have brought her here with him. It would have been a mirror of how it is now; Olivia would be like him and he would be like Anaïs. He gets to give her everything that he thinks Olivia would have given him."

The room lapsed into silence for a while then, each of them lost in their respective thoughts. Tonks quietly asked if she could see the memories and Sirius gave a soft nod in response, and Fleur pretended not to notice the pointed look Tonks shot in her direction or Sirius's answering shrug.

"Do you think he'll try it?" Tonks asked suddenly. "Send her away?"

"I think it depends," Sirius said. "Voldemort will be there when Madam Bones is attacked, as will Harry. They'll go at each other again – that's just inevitable. If that duel goes in Harry's favour then there's not a chance in hell that he'll send her away. If it doesn't…"

He shrugged helplessly, and all three of them shared a solemn look.

AN: Really sorry about the huge 4 month wait. I hit a roadblock with where this story was going to go way further up the road but that stopped me from writing any of this until I'd figured out what to do, annoyingly, even though it doesn't actually impact this chapter. Now that I've got it figured out I should – should – update a bit more regularly, assuming uni work doesn't pile up any more than it already has. Again, apologies for the wait and as always cheers for reading.