A/N:This chapter didn't end exactly where I wanted it to. Oh, well. I'll try to update something else before my birthday tomorrow.

CH27: Good morning?

Previous chapter: "Wake up."

"No..."

"Wake up!"

In a small Muggle hospital, miles and miles away from Hogwarts, Harry Potter sat up in bed, shivering.

"Ah, you're finally awake! Good morning."

Harry rubbed at his eyes, trying to cleanse them of their dryness. He blinked owlishly up at the sandy-haired man standing above him, who was scribbling something furiously on a nondescript clipboard. The man continued to smile widely at him.

"How are you feeling?"

"How-" His scratchy voice cracked sharply, making Harry wince. "Water?"

The man scurried over to the bedside table and poured a glass of water out of a small silver pitcher. "Here you go!" he chirped.

Harry gulped down the glass. "Thanks," he said softly. He glanced around the room. It was a long, narrow room, with a small window at the end where the curtains were open to let sunlight stream in. "Where am I?"

"St. Mary Hospital of Belleview," the man responded cheerily.

"How did I get here?"

"You don't remember?"

Harry tilted back on his pillows, scrunching his brilliant eyes shut tightly. He could remember …

Ron slowly walking ahead of him, leading him down a skinny hallway. They walked up a pair of rickety stairs and headed into a small, dark office …

"A mother and her daughter found you on the edge of town two days ago," the man went on explaining. "You were barely conscious and had severe lacerations covering most of your body. They called us and you were brought here immediately. Dr. Preston and I have been taking turns waiting for you to wake up." The man paused, apparently considering something. "Oh… I'm Dr. Turner, by the way," he offered somewhat sheepishly.

Harry tried desperately to wrap his mind around this. "Is Ron here?" How did we end up at that house? We were just on the way home from school and then …What happened to Hermione? Was she there, is she okay?

"Ron?"

"My friend. He was there with me. Is he here?" A slight note of panic rose in his voice.

"I'm sorry, child. There was no one else," he said gently. "Can you remember the last time you saw Ron? Where you were? We could send somebody to look for him."

"No … I don't remember."

"Nothing? You don't remember anything at all?"

"There's this gap…" He looked up, his green eyes wide with terror. "I can't remember!"

"It's quite common," remarked Dr. Margaret Preston, the resident psychiatrist at St. Mary's. "Many trauma victims suffer from repressed memories after severely disturbing incidents. They feel that the pain is too much for them to abide at the time, and, accordingly, they subconsciously suppress the unwanted memories." She peered through the doorway to the patient's room, watching as he restlessly slept on, oblivious to their conversation. A lock of dark hair settled in front of his mouth, rustling slightly as his breath came out in short, frantic gasps. The young man looked troubled, even in his sleep.

"I'll be back in a few hours," Turner said, following her eyes. Margaret was already walking into the room.

She sat down next to the slumbering boy and raised a hand to move the hair off his face. He flinched at her light touch and sat up, eyes open but unseeing.

Patient covered in multitude of cuts. Previous scars include crook of elbow, collar bone, and a peculiar lightning bolt shaped line bisecting his forehead. She scribbled in her notebook. Traumatic behavior reoccurring? Possible child abuse?

"Hello, child," she said in a soothing voice and laid her hand on his arm. He withdrew, startled.

"Who are you?" he asked, distrust filling his eyes.

Startling green eyes. Much too old for the age he appears to be.

"My name is Margaret," she said, offering an encouraging smile. "It's nice to meet you." When he did not return the sentiment, she pressed on. "May I ask what your name is?"

"Harry," he replied slowly, never taking that piercing gaze off her face. "Harry Potter. What are you doing here?"

Vulnerable. Uncertain.

"I just came to talk, Harry." She reclined in her seat. "Can you tell me something about yourself?"

Harry stared at his hands, twisting them together. "I don't know."

"Do you remember anything, Harry?" she continued gently, prodding. "How you got here? Where you came from?"

After a moment, he bit his lip and answered. "I know this sounds crazy, but I swear – I swear – I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy, okay?"

"I never thought you were." She cooed, quietly pressing her pen to the notebook again.

On guard. Defensive.

"It's just," he continued as if he never heard her, "I thought I was going home. Well, back to my relatives at least. Not home. But- well… but then I was in some house and then I was here … I don't know. I just don't know." He finally looked back up, his eyes shinning with fright. "Why can't I remember?"

A few hours later, Margaret emerged, disturbing creases lining her forehead and with a very full notebook in hand. Turner was waiting in the hall expectantly.

"His name is Harry," she said bluntly at his look. "And … I have absolutely no idea what is wrong with him."

Turner looked incredulous. "That's it? That's all you know?"

She sighed. "I have reason to suspect some form of child abuse from his 'relatives'. I also believe he is an orphan. Other than that, I have no idea how he got where he was found in the state he was found in. Mentally, there is nothing wrong with him, other than not being able to remember anything about his situation." She looked back at Harry, who had drifted back into an uneasy slumber. Margaret shook her head irritably, confused and without any ideas of what to do. "I just can't figure it out."

Draco took a deep breath and stared at the empty frame where the Fat Lady of Gryffindor usually resided. He slowly raised a fist and knocked impatiently.

The frame gradually swung open and a mop of bushy hair emerged. "Did you get locked out again–" She stopped abruptly at the young man standing before her. "Malfoy?" Upon hearing the name, the entire Common Room within fell deathly silent.

"Granger," Draco mumbled, inclining his head regally. "Is Longbottom here?" He had just broken the news of Harry's disappearance to a devastated Cho and he didn't have the patience to deal with the know-it-all.

Hermione crossed her arms across her chest and huffed obnoxiously. "No, he is not."

He remained unaffected by her irritation. "Are the Weasley Twins?"

"What do you want with them?" she spat hatefully.

"That is none of your business–"

"Let him in, Hermione," he heard one of the twins call out. He shot her a smug look and pushed past her. He remembered why he was there when faced with a roomful of hostile Gryffindors and the smile melted quickly.

"I need to talk to you," he said without preamble. The twins started to stand, only to be pulled back down to the couch by their friends.

"What are you, crazy?" Lee Jordan hissed. "You're going to go off with him alone? He's Malfoy!"

"Yeah," a tall boy with narrow eyes shouted. "Anything you can say to them you can say in front of us."

Draco took a controlled breath and gave the twins an indecipherable look. "It's about Harry."

"Harry?" Hermione squeaked, her glare disappearing. "What happened? What's wrong with Harry?"

The portrait swung open again and Neville stumbled in. "What's going on? Draco, what- ?"

"We need to talk–"

Hermione interrupted, her tone pleading. "What's going on, Malfoy? Tell me!"

"Would you shut up for once, Granger!" Malfoy yelled, finally letting the tension buildup from the night spill over. "This is none of your business!"

"He's my friend and I care about him! I want to know what happened!"

"Correction!" Malfoy bellowed. "He was your friend! You haven't spoken to him in months!"

"Tell me!"

"You betrayed him! You think he gives a damn about you any more?"

"Please tell me!"

He turned on her, eyes blazing and snapped. "You want to know? Fine. Harry was captured by the Dark Lord last night. They could be torturing him right now. He could already be dead. We don't even know." He collapsed against the wall and slid down, heedless of the horrified faces staring at him. "We don't even fucking know. Is that what you wanted to hear, Granger?"

"I'm telling you, ketchup is way better on fries than mayonnaise," Xander exclaimed for the twelfth time that morning. Buffy rolled her eyes.

"I like them this way," she replied, dipping the fries once more into the small pile of mayo on the side of her plate as Xander gagged.

From her vantage point on the other side of the room, Flame sighed and shot Dawn a pointed look. Dawn giggled back and motioned that her older sister could be nuts sometimes.

"I can't wait for Harry and Draco to get back," Flame said, settling her back on the arm rest of the couch.

Dawn gazed dreamily out the window. "Me neither." Flame rolled her eyes, disgusted by the gooey affection in her friend's face.

"Hey," Dawn said, sitting up and pointing out the window. "We got an owl."

Flame scrunched her forehead up in confusion as the owl dropped a small roll of parchment in front of her. She slowly broke the seal of the letter and read it.

The parchment fell to the floor as she fainted.

Albus Dumbledore stood wearily next to his desk, gazing out towards the Quidditch field where he had seen Harry play many times. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and turned back to his office, where a worried Pomona Sprout still remained by the fire, waiting for any news.

"Why don't you get some sleep now, Pomona," the Headmaster said gently. "You can-"

The fireplace suddenly roared to life and Albus could barely make out the head of a young Auror named Tom who was recently recruited to work for him.

"We found him!" he gasped out. "He's in a small community hospital in Belleview."

Pomona sighed with relief and Dumbledore smiled brighter than he had in a long time.

"There is, unfortunately, a problem." The worried looks immediately came back. "He …"Tom hesitated. "He doesn't remember."

"Remember?" Pomona asked, confused. "Remember what?"

"Remember anything." Tom quickly filled them in with the sparse details he knew.

"Thank you," Dumbledore said thoughtfully. "We'll retrieve him right away." Tom nodded briskly and vanished.

"Well," Pomona began, uncertainty clouding her voice. "This is … good news. I'll go inform Severus and Minerva. They'll be very relieved to hear–"

"No," said Dumbledore, scratching something down on a scrap of parchment. "We'll get Harry back here safe before we reveal this to too many people. We don't want to take any risks."

"Of course."

"No, we don't want anything to go wrong," he said to himself and glanced out the window, smiling as the light glittered off the Quidditch hoops. "We want Harry back here with us."