Chapter 1 : The Hours After

There was a feast.

It was in Harry's honor as much as it was in honor of anything else, but it was more than half over by the time he arrived in the Great Hall, pushed through the double doors by an irate McGonagall.

It was simply a fact that things like the fall of a dark wizard had to be celebrated. Things like the end of a war. It didn't make any difference how many people died, or that they died only hours before. You just shoved your mourning aside and celebrated. It didn't make any difference if there was a gaping hole inside you where your heart used to be. You just celebrated with everyone else.

They rose from their seats and clapped.

The hole inside him was swelling with black, swirling waters. He had been drowning in that pit of darkness for hours, fighting the pain and hatred. He had known he would lose that fight. He had kept away because he had felt something coming. He had felt that black wave rising in him, and he felt powerless to keep it at bay.

There were gasps. Suddenly they were not clapping anymore. There was no celebration.

They hadn't won the war. The dark wizard hadn't fallen.

Couldn't fall. Not while Harry lived.

He understood it in that moment, and he threw back his head and laughed. There wasn't a bit of mirth in his laughter, but it came up out of his throat anyway, because as he understood, so did the thing inside him understand. And it laughed, and he laughed, and the laughter came up out of him on a wave of blackness, and then he knew no more for a very long time.

"Fight it, Potter."

There was something about the voice that cut through the darkness and managed to reach him.

"Fight it like it's the Imperius."

He wanted to obey that voice. Something terrible would happen if he didn't, he was certain.

There was something in his head besides his own mind. He didn't know how he knew this, because he was somehow very sure that he had never been aware of his mind being a thing that could be shoved aside. It was as if something else had grown and expanded until there was no choice but for his mind to retreat and shrink. There wasn't enough room in his head for both his mind and the thing that had grown there.

"Listen to my voice, Potter. Fight it."

He tried pushing back. It was like pushing against water; it just gave way where he pushed against it, but pushed in somewhere else.

"You will never see your friends again."

Faces seemed to float out of the darkness and hover in front of him. He did not know them except instinctively. They were his friends.

He pushed harder.

"You will never use magic again."

"Severus, is this really the only way?"

"It is if you want him back."

He pushed harder. He knew those voices. More faces floated out of the darkness.

"You will lose your soul."

"Severus."

Just as he had become aware of his mind being a shrunken, cowering thing inside his head, so too now he became aware of his soul being a thing that had been shoved aside to make room for something else.

He pushed against it, and pushed too hard, expecting it, too, to flow like water.

Instead it was solid, hard and cold, and when he pushed against it there was searing pain, as if he had reared back and punched a wall. White-hot light exploded before his eyes. His head was not big enough to contain it. Compressed impossibly, it found a weak spot and shot out of him in a lightning bolt of blinding agony.

"Merlin."

"I don't think that will go undetected."

"No."

"Time to leave."

For the first time, he became aware of his body. It was being squeezed on all sides, all air gone from his lungs. A scream formed in his throat, but he did not have the strength to release it. Once again, darkness closed around him and he knew no more.