"What?" They all chorused.
Harry's mouth had dropped open and he wanted to run to this man, but this man didn't know him, and he didn't know the man either when he thought about it.
"He betrayed us all! He did this to me!"
Ron looked at Harry and fought to keep Snape steady; the man was trembling.
"Professor, Harry has been locked up next to you. He didn't do this to you"
"He did. It was always him. He joined them."
"Hermione."
She looked at Harry in question.
"I really need to get my memories back. I need to know if they managed to make me do that to him"
Hermione looked appalled. "Of course you didn't; you couldn't Harry."
"I remember so little. I don't remember any time I was taken out of my cell. Severus, no the man was able to release some of my memories. I need you to try."
Ron was struggling to get Snape down the corridor but Harry didn't need the legilimancy because next to Snape on a desk were small containers and he recognised them at once. He remembered the small sharp pains and the wait as someone took the potion and sidled into the room for his chance to shag the boy who lived.
It wasn't a man; it was many. And his memories were recovered in sections dependent on the whims of the intruder, what they wanted him to know, to feel… some wanted the pain and the punishment and others kept the deception alive … and made him want it.
There, next to a huge stockpile of long black hair was another, much smaller hoard of short black hair that he knew to be his own.
They had known, he realised. They knew he would escape. They wanted to destroy him, not kill him.
They had created an illusion that he had fallen in love with and the object of that love would never be able to learn to return that feeling after because they used his own image to torture him. They had cursed him with a thoroughly one-sided affection and even if Severus believed him, learnt the truth of those hair samples the images would remain. The memories would remain. Only Harry had been obliviated, only he had forgotten. Snape was cursed to remember. HI own Severus didn't even exist.
Multitudes of Snapes, all with their tiny differences, different manners he was too befuddled to notice. He remembered so much now, and he needed to know more, to remember it all, but the only person he knew and trusted to recover the memories now was tormented by just the idea of him.
"I understand now, Hermione. Let him go".
