A/N: Harry's awake now. There's still no Draco in this chapter, since my chapters are pretty short and the pace of the story is still relatively slow.

Chapter Two

The Escape

It took him a long time to slowly put aside his troubling thoughts and work on getting his muscles to cooperate. He tried to keep track of time but gave up after getting the sequence of numbers jumbled in his mind –was seven before or after eight?– and losing his place a few times. It was only when the nervous whispering in his head reminded him that the voices could come back at any moment that he finally found the courage to lift an eye lid. After all, he had no concept of time while in the darkness and couldn't for the life of him recall how long ago the last visit of the nightmare had been. He immediately had to shut his eye again however. The dim light of his room was the brightest of suns to his unused eye. He had drowned himself in the darkness for so long that it was a wonder he hadn't gone blind. After that thought, the pain didn't seem that unbearable. He was grateful for it, to be perfectly honest. It seemed as if his memories and sense of self had been the only casualties, regardless that they were more than enough of a price to be paid for being trapped in the darkness that he still couldn't remember why he had wrapped around himself.

He gritted his teeth and tried to convince his bruised eye to try opening up again. If it hadn't been for the fact that he'd rather crawl his way on sharp pins out of this place than wait here in this vulnerable position for the voices to find him, he would have just lay there, unmoving, patiently waiting for the ice over his body to melt when it deemed it to be the right time.

Or maybe he would have taken the easy way out and disappeared within the darkness once more. He shuddered inside his head at that thought. Never again was he going to let the darkness take him, whatever the temptation. The price was simply too high, the sacrifice too great.

But the fact remained that the voices were going to come back. They always did. And it wasn't the voices that he was afraid of, but of the hands and bodies that the voices belonged to, the pain that always followed suit, the potions that were given to him without his permission. If that wasn't motivation enough, he still felt impelled to find the woman and make sure she was okay. It was hard to think of her as his Mum, as something other than the smiling face of a woman that had haunted his visions lately, but he supposed that was only because his memories weren't coming back to him. Maybe when he remembered his life again, the connections would be made and he'd remember her too. Or maybe he'd been in this place his whole life. There was no way to tell. He remembered glimpses only. He knew certain facts, like his name and location, but not how he knew them. The connections simply were cut off by the swirling darkness that had swallowed his memories.

He bit his lip and pushed that disturbing idea out of his mind. So, naturally, his mind provided him with a more troubling matter to ponder on. What would the voices do if they found him awake? They'd been trying to wake him for as long as he could remember. Now he was awake. It was just lucky that he'd woken up alone, because he had no idea what they wanted from him. The only demands they had ever made was for him to hold onto who he was. They hadn't said why he should.

A part of him wanted to linger on here until they came back for another visit. He wanted to know who the voices belonged to. Did he know them? If yes, would he remember them? He was curious as to see what they wanted from him. He was grateful to them to a degree. They had after all pushed him to remember himself instead of surrendering to the darkness. Their prodding might have been what had brought on the swirl of images that had pushed him out of the darkness. But he couldn't afford to take that risk right now. And besides, their efforts to wake him up and make him remember had been useless as far as he could see. He couldn't remember his life. What was a name when there was only confusion behind its identity? A sigh of frustration escaped his chapped lips. He pushed his mind into taking things one step at a time. Focus on getting your eyes used to the light first, he told himself. There will be plenty of time to worry about those things later.

This time, he opened both of his eyes at the same time while still trying to bribe his body parts to shake, wriggle, or even turn blue as long as it meant that they were doing something. He felt the heaviness that was pushing on his eyelids and sticking them down to his face give way and his eyes opened all the way. Only seeing contorted crystals within the light, he tried to squint through the blur. His eyes fluttered open and shut a few times and he had the strong urge to rub his hands against them before he could finally keep them open a few seconds at a time. It took him a while to get the distorted shapes into focus, but that wasn't important because he was beside himself with a tiny spark of joy that lit up in the pit of his stomach. The fact that he wasn't blind was enough satisfaction to bring a smile to his face and start a celebration. Although the expression still felt strange and out of place on his face, it made him hopeful that he could do this. He didn't feel trapped in the darkness anymore. He was going to get his life back, what ever it may be.

He was in a room with white walls. He squinted more, realizing that they were in fact pale blue. His eyes slowly drank in all the lines, colours and shades. His mind threw pictures and names at him every time his eyes wandered onto something new. They remembered what size was called relatively bigger than the other; what colours were the bright and happy ones that he could spend a few seconds marvelling at and which ones were the cold and neutral ones that he easily dismissed. It was like being born for the first time. He knew he already had these memories but they slipped away behind a foggy screen every time he thought he'd grasped the taste of chocolate, or the coldness of snow, or the smell of the potions he'd been fed. But he'd eventually remember them. He would. Just knowing that there was a possibility of a life for him outside of this place was enough to keep him going.

But then he located a window on his right and saw the darkness behind it. His heart raced and he felt his eyes widen in shock before he realized that that wasn't hisdarkness. His darkness was filled with a sense of detachment where he had no physical body. It was a place where he lost all sense of who he was and what was going on around him. That wasn't how this darkness was making him feel. He felt just the same as he had a few moments ago, only more scared. His mind confirmed that it was just night time, but he still wanted to inch away from the window and the darkness outside. He took a deep breath and continued inspecting the room he was in, determinedly tearing his eyes away from the window.

There were other gurneys in the room with him. Some were occupied. There were unconscious people laying there, some old and some young. They all had the same sallow, ill-looking skin that he could see he himself had. He saw dark clouds of spells hovering next to them, connected to them through thin, shimmering strands. The clouds pulsed as if they had a life of their own. They felt wrong to him, being the same colour as the darkness that had trapped him. He looked at his own sides, but couldn't find a similar cloud. He knew he had just broken his own cloud and felt a sense of pride from that. He made a promise to himself to break the other clouds as well. No one should have to go through what he had. It made him angry at whoever had trapped him.

He frowned. Something wasn't letting him keep hold of that anger. He dug a little deep into his mind as it was still somewhat unfamiliar ground, but the reason was right there, shining and true. No one had trapped him. He had trapped himself. That cloud was created because he'd created it. He'd wanted to lose himself, and the cloud had only done what he'd asked it to do. He glanced at the people around him once more. They were teenagers here, as well as old men, with nothing in common except the blissful expressions they wore. They wanted the cloud, and as long as they wanted it, there was nothing Harry could do to help them. Sadness welled inside of him. What could have pushed him, pushed them, into giving up their whole lives? This was surely worse than death. Death was simple, quick, it was merciful. This was torture.

But he could still remember the peace he'd felt while cloaked in the darkness, in the illusion that now he knew was part of that darkness. The most he could do now was for himself, not these people who believed were taking the better option, the easier option. Maybe for them it really was. Just because that wasn't true for him anymore gave him no right to judge other people and their choices. He remembered the hands that had shook him, bringing only pain. He didn't want to cause these people pain. If he hadn't had to be forced to wakefulness, he'd still be happily in the dream world. For a moment he felt wistful. The darkness, as scary as it was, had been simple. This was so complicated. There were so many choices to make.

He shook himself out of his thoughts and looked away from his companions. He saw the closed door on his left, his way out, and then his eyes were drawn to the source of the dim light in the room. It was emanating from several lit torches on the walls around him. As soon as his eyes found them, he had to avert his gaze. They were far too painful to look at. Instead, he drew his eyes away and to the shadows dancing on the wall in the empty space between two torches. The shadows danced and his eyes moved pleasurably with them, taking in their slowly changing shapes and letting them calm him down. Now that he had a sense of his boundaries and knew where the door was, he decided to concentrate once more on his own body.

He focused on his ears. He knew they worked fine. Even in the darkness he'd been able to hear the voices around him. After concentrating on his sense of hearing, he could hear the gentle breeze outside the window. He wondered why he hadn't heard it before now. It sounded suspiciously like the waves that had been a part of his dream. The repetition slightly irritated him now instead of the soothing effect that it had had on him before and he wished that he could go back to when he couldn't hear it. He found that ignoring it didn't make it go away however, only enhanced it. He tried hard to listen for the sound of wings that he'd heard before in the darkness. Hard as he listened, it did not come to his straining ears. Maybe the birds had been a figment of his imagination then. He wasn't at all sure about what had actually been real during that time.

The voices had been real, His mind reminded him as he heard heavy feet shuffle behind the door.

In a moment of panic, he lost every thought except the need to hide. He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to slow his breathing and clear his mind. It proved to be impossible. Oh no, oh no, oh no; please don't come in, please don't come in, ran over and over again in his head till the words lost their meaning.

He realized that he couldn't have fooled anyone to be asleep in his rigid state only after the feet had shuffled onwards. He found it hard to care about that, since no one had entered the room to call him out on it. He was exhausted. He'd gone through so many emotional roller coasters in one day after being on lock down for so long. His body was definitely not used to such extremes and his head pounded and all he wanted to do was to go back to sleep. How could he stop now, though? He knew that this was his only chance to slip out of here unnoticed while everyone still thought he was out of it. He had slept enough for a life time. There was no more time to be wasted.

After listening, he thought he should move onto his mouth, but found he didn't want to try talking yet. His mouth was too dry to produce any tangible words and he didn't wish the sound to attract unwanted attention. So he focused on his sense of smell instead. He could detect a sterile smell that his mind provided a picture for: a hospital. Well he'd already had that figured out from the gurneys and the pale blue colour of the walls, and the certain knowledge that he was in a Psyche Ward, but it was nice to know all his senses worked fine nonetheless. Now he had to focus on getting free. There was nothing restraining him from getting up and walking away. It led him to believe that people in this section were not expected to wake up. How long had he been lost in the darkness? He was sure it must have been years for such certainty to be born that no one here would wake up and make a run for it. If it truly was a Psyche Ward, wouldn't they care about people getting away? Well, he wasn't going to question his good luck. It was time to move.

He tried to roll onto his side and push himself into a sitting position, but his hand gave out under his weight and he slumped back against the hard mattress. His whole body was shaking with effort and he felt sticky with sweat already. He tried again. His never-ending patience was the only thing that kept him from giving up. He'd waited eternities before, this was nothing compared to that. This time there was no pain to fight. Only the weakness of his own body was stopping him and that would be within his control. He let himself get lost in the timelessness once more. He wouldn't let himself panic about how long it was taking. It would take immense effort to fight the life back into a body that hadn't been used for years. He focused on lifting himself fraction by fraction, on pushing every part of his body to break the ice and start moving.

He was surprised when the darkness outside became decidedly brighter, slowly turning into dawn. He hadn't felt that much time passing. Perhaps the skills he'd learned while in the darkness would be more useful than he'd expected them to be. He watched the torches slowly dim until finally their fire was completely out, glad that his eyes weren't bothering him as much anymore.

Sitting up seemed impossible, but he knew it wasn't, nothing ever really was. He had to start over many times. His hands were slippery with sweat and the white sheets clung to his drenched body. But by the time it was noon, or so he judged by the immense amount of light filling the room, he finally did it. Shaky and out of breath, he finally got himself into a sitting position. He hadn't felt this good since… well, he couldn't remember. Although the physical exertion left him even more weak and shaky, in a strange way it also made him feel empowered. He'd come so far. He couldn't give up now.

Next, he tried to put his feet on the floor. He was sure they wouldn't support him. They felt like jelly. Curling and uncurling his toes and swinging his feet in the air a few times brought back some feeling into them. He supposed he should be glad for all the screaming and writhing the voices caused him to do; if not, he couldn't have been able to get the feeling back into his unused limbs this fast. But for some reason, he didn't feel so grateful. Those voices had caused him so much pain after all. He rubbed his thighs slowly, relishing the feeling of both using his hands and rubbing the weakness from his thighs. All these feelings and sensations felt both familiar and new at the same time. He had some trouble dragging himself from them and refocusing on standing up, but in the end his desire to get out of this room that had held him for years won over.

He put his left foot on the white-marbled floor, eyes wide in wonder. It was cold. Goose bumps rose all over his tingling leg, arms, and even the back of his neck. Next, he was shivering all over and had to pull back his foot. He wrapped the thin blanket that was sweaty but more appealing than the cold around himself and rubbed his hands over his arms and legs to soothe the goose bums. Soon he felt okay enough to try putting his foot back on the chilly floor. This time, he kept it there despite the cold. After he got somewhat used to the uncomfortable feeling residing deep inside his stomach due to the nipping temperature, he placed his right foot next to his left. He pushed himself closer to the edge of the gurney, took a deep breath, held on hard to the bedside table with one hand, his other hand pushing onto the mattress, and tried to pull himself onto his feet. He braced himself and stood up.

And then his world turned vertical as he fell down.

He knew that his shaky feet wouldn't support him if he tried standing up again. They screamed at him to lay back in the gurney, rest for days nonstop, and give up this futile task of going anywhere in his weakened state. But his mind screamed at him to get up and try again. He saw Lily smiling gently at him, James beside her with those eyes that knew him so well, knew that his will was strong enough to push him into trying again, and gathered all his strength. He couldn't let them down.

He lost count of how many times he tumbled back onto the floor. How many times he was sure he'd gotten the hang of it before his vision tilted and his hands broke his fall onto the hard floor. But after he got halfway through the room, from his gurney towards the door, he was finally convinced that he wasn't going to be pressed against the horrible sterile smell that came off the marbled floor anymore. It was true that his progress was very slow and his steps were very small, but he wasn't falling anymore. His legs were shaking, and he wasn't walking in a straight line, and he was somewhat crouched in order to keep his balance, but he had a wide smile and a warmth of pride and wonder that kept him going. In fact, he was so lost in the sensations that he didn't hear the heavy footsteps coming towards the door before it was too late and the door knob was already turning. He saw two people come face to face with him, frozen in mid-step as they took him in.

"Ah, Mr Potter. It must be my lucky day. You're awake." A sarcastic, cold voice drawled.

Harry felt dread take hold of him and before he knew it, he was losing consciousness and his world turned to black. The scream never had time to escape his lips.