AUTHOR'S NOTE: So here we go, this is sort of a chapter 9.5 as opposed to a real full chapter. I'm still working on the rest of the story, and originally this whole thing wasn't planned. After publishing chapter 9 I found that I am so thrilled by the reviews, follows, and favorites, that I wanted to give you guys another quick little update, just for fun.

This whole chapter is mentioned in passing in the next chapter, but again, I hadn't actually written it out until today when I decided to put thought to paper, so to speak.

Also, I wanted to say that I may not personally respond to a lot of reviews but I do try and I love every review received, even those that disagree with something I've done or question something I'm trying to do in the story. It all reinforces to me how invested you guys are in this story and I can't tell you how thrilled I am with the response this story has gotten.

Thanks you guys, and here ya go.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Please no sue. Thank you.

Soul Scars

By,

Rtnwriter

The cold pressed in from all sides and he shivered. He wasn't sure he even had a body, but he still shivered. The darkness was so complete that he couldn't tell if his eyes were open or closed. Couldn't tell if he even had eyes to see with.

I don't want to see this.

There was nothing to see, but still, he knew what was coming.

"Step aside, silly girl!"

No, I don't want to see this, I don't want to hear it, not again. Please, not again.

"Not Harry, please not Harry. Kill me instead."

He knew that voice. He had no other memory of her voice, but he knew it. Cold red eyes burned in the darkness, filled with a mad glee as a flash of green light ended the pleading voice.

"Harry Potter," he hissed. Harry looked up from his tiny hands clutching at the wooden railing of a crib, into the eyes of death.

"There is no way I will let you grow up to one day destroy me. This is where you meet your end, Harry Potter."

But I don't want to destroy you, I don't even know you.

He glanced down at the body lying on the floor nearby, vibrant red hair fanned out in a halo around her head.

Mummy?

"Avada Kedavra."

Pain.

Pain unlike anything he could imagine. His forehead split and the blood began to flow as every part of his body erupted in the worst pain imaginable. His blood turned to acid, his bones to ash, fire raced along his nerve endings searing them over and over as something tore free, something was ripped from his very being.

A loud explosion overcame his senses and he was suddenly standing in the Entrance Hall at Hogwarts.

There was no pain. No blood. No explosion.

Only fear. Only the fear that he knew what was coming. It wasn't the first time he'd seen it.

Inexorably, his feet carried him toward the doors leading into the Great Hall. Massive doors, towering dozens of feet above him, they opened silently at a single touch of his hand. The house tables were empty, not a student present as he made his way down the wide aisle that separated to the two center tables.

At the top of the dais, behind the teachers table, a figure occupied the large golden colored chair that Dumbledore normally occupied. Cast in shadows, clad in black, little could be seen of the figure except for the gleaming red of his eyes.

"Did you really think me dead, boy? Did you really think that you, a mere child, could destroy the greatest wizard who has ever lived?"

But I didn't do anything. I don't remember…

"Foolish child. I will come for you. I will have my vengeance, and I will start with those closest to you. I will take away everything that you love. I will destroy your world and leave you broken and shattered before I kill you with my own hands."

The figure's voice ended in a high shriek and with a wave of a wand the shadows behind him lifted and Harry stumbled back a step, his eyes wide in horror.

High on the wall behind the table, Daphne, Hermione and Susan were strung out, pinned to the stones by way of metal spikes driven through their bodies. Like bugs on a board they were splayed out, on display. Their bodies torn and ravaged. Tooth and claw marks, burns and bruises marked every inch of naked flesh.

Only their faces were unmarked, their eyes open, dark, without the spark of life in them yet those dim orbs seemed to pierce him, laying the blame at his feet for their fate.

No, no, no, no, it's not real. You're gone. You're DEAD!

"I cannot die, boy. I am Death, and I cannot be stopped. Only delayed."

The dark figure lifted its wand and pointed it at Harry who stood frozen in terror and revulsion.

"Avada Kedavra!"

A roaring sound filled his ears as his vision filled with bright green light and Harry knew no more.

#####

"NO!"

Harry sat bolt upright in bed, fighting back the scream that wanted to follow. Panting, sweat soaked and filled with terror, his eyes swept the room around him, finding himself once again in the guest room at Bones Manor, where he'd slept for the last two weeks.

And just like every other night since he arrived, he'd had the same damn dream. The same nightmare fueled terror. He closed his eyes and delved deep reaching for the link he had to his girls, searching desperately for it, driven by panic and need.

He could feel them, their warm, comforting presence resting just at the edges of his mind. With an explosive sigh he flopped back onto the bed, staring up at the darkened canopy above and tried to calm his racing heart. Slowly, his breath evened out, and his heart rate dropped to something under that of a formula one race car. He closed his eyes and rolled over onto his side, shivering as he shoved the images from his dream aside and tried to go back to sleep.

Twenty minutes later he was standing in the hall, staring at a closed door. It was ridiculous. He knew it was ridiculous. They were fine. He could feel them through the bond they shared. They were safe, and content, and he couldn't help but feel terrified until he could see them with his own eyes.

Slowly, he reached out and turned the handle on the door, easing it open enough for him to slip into the room. Susan's room was similar to the guest room he occupied in furnishings and layout, but that was were the similarities ended. While the room he was staying in was spartan, and free of decoration, Susan's room felt lived in. A few pictures dotted her walls. Old stuffed animals lined a shelf above a desk and a set of bookshelves were filled to the brim.

There was a Quidditch poster for the Hollyhead Harpies stuck to one wall next to the large four poster bed which he ignored even as players swooped in and out of the frame on their brooms and bludgers and quaffles flitted back and forth.

He crept carefully over to the bed, making sure to make no sound, until he could see the sleeping figures huddled together, the comforter pulled up as far as their waists.

Susan lay on her left side, facing him, her deep red hair easily visible even in the dim light from the embers still burning low in the fireplace. Her free arm was wrapped around Hermione's waist, holding the smaller girl tightly against her, her bushy, untamed mane held back by a hair tie that exposed her face entirely. They both seemed so peaceful to him, their faces completely relaxed and calm in their sleep, unplagued by the terrors that kept him from his rest.

Behind Susan, Daphne lay on her right side, her back toward her bed partners, right arm bent under her head and her pillow somehow shoved up and out of the way. He quickly skirted around the bed so he could see her face, relieved to find her just as relaxed and content as Hermione and Susan.

His heart, which hadn't slowed down to a completely reasonable level since he woke, finally stopped pounding hard in his chest and he took a deep breath, tension easing from his body. With a final glance at the girls, he made his way out of the room and silently closed the door behind him.

"Harry?"

He jumped, once again biting back a strangled cry as he didn't want to disturb the girls, and spun to find Amelia standing in the open doorway of her own room, a light robe thrown over her dressing gown. Her arms were crossed over her chest as she leaned against the doorjamb, an inscrutable expression on her face. How does she keep sneaking up on me? he wondered.

"I didn't do anything- I mean, I wasn't- I couldn't sleep and-"

"Harry," she interrupted him, "take a breath and calm down. I'm not upset with you, okay?"

He nodded rapidly, one hand clutched against his chest. She pushed off the doorjamb and started toward him, reaching out to place one comforting hand on his shoulder.

"Come on," she said. "Let's grab a cup and we can chat for a bit."

A part of him wanted to smile as her words so closely followed those she'd said the first morning he was there when she'd found him exploring the house at five in the morning, but a larger part was still worried about how she was going to respond to this situation. He let her direct him down the hall and to the stairs then through the ground floor until they entered the kitchen.

The coffee pot and tea kettle sat right where they always did and Harry stared blankly at them for a moment. "Does Binky ever sleep?" he asked and Amelia started laughing quietly.

"Yes, house elves sleep," she said. "Something about the nature of their magic, though, means they always know what their family needs. The better the relationship, the better they're able to anticipate their families needs and wants and react accordingly. I would imagine that Binky knew we were awake and his magic got him up and he was able to get this ready for us."

"What about the coffee? I'm just a guest."

Amelia smiled and shrugged. "I guess he must consider you a part of the family," she said and he stared at her in open mouthed shock for a moment before he shook himself back to reality and shrugged off the comment. There was no way she could be serious, so why worry about it? He grabbed a mug and poured himself a cup, going through his, now familiar, ritual of adding two sugars, stirring, then a dash of salt from the shaker, which still caused her to shake her head in bemusement.

"All right," Amelia muttered, giving in to her curiosity. "I've been wondering since your first morning here. Why on earth do you add salt, of all things, to your coffee? I may not be a coffee expert but I'm pretty sure salt isn't a standard addition to most people."

He stopped and blinked, looking, almost confused, at the salt shaker still in his hand before he laughed quietly and set it down. "I'm not really sure," he admitted. "Just a habit I got into sometime. It definitely changes the texture of the coffee, not so much the flavor if you don't put in a lot." Harry shrugged and walked over to sit at the table of what had quickly become his favorite room in the house.

They sat for a while, enjoying their drinks in companionable silence until Amelia finally cleared her throat, drawing his attention away from the coffee he'd been quietly contemplating and toward her.

"You've been getting up and checking on Susan at least three times a night, every single night since you arrived here," she told him and his mouth dropped open. "Don't try to deny it," she added before he could speak. "I'm not making any kind of accusations or anything, but there are wards around my and Susan's bedroom doors. Any time the door is opened, the wards warn me, as the person keyed into them and with control over them, so I know every time you go in there in the middle of the night."

"I'm not doing anything-" he started before she cut him off again.

"I figured that much out on my own, Harry. I'm guessing you're checking on her, making sure she's safe?"

He nodded, his eyes directed at the table again and a fierce flush staining his cheeks.

"Daphne and Hermione too?" she asked.

He nodded again.

"The thing that I can't figure out, is why? What reason do you have to think that she isn't safe, here, in her own home, with centuries old family wards protecting the entire property? I assure you, if anyone were to try to get in here to harm any of us, we would have warning long before they even got onto the lawn, much less inside the house."

He fidgeted nervously in his seat. "Just a bad feeling," he muttered keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the cup he held cradled between his hands.

"Harry, look at me, please?'

Reluctantly, he lifted his eyes to her. He'd been expecting her to be annoyed with him, at the least. What parent or guardian likes the idea of a boy sneaking into a young girls room in the middle of the night, whatever the reason? Instead, he saw sympathy and compassion in her eyes. He idly noted how closely the color matched Susan's, such a deep, vibrant blue that he'd never seen in anyone else. Their eyes alone would tell anyone that Susan and Amelia were related to each other.

"When Edgar and Naomi died, my brother and his wife," she added the last part, seeing the confusion on his face, "I took over as Susan's guardian. About a year later I formally adopted her. She's my niece by blood, but legally, she's my adopted daughter and I love her, very much. Strangely, I never had any trouble sleeping right after I took her in. It wasn't until after the adoption went through that I started having trouble getting through the night. I would wake up in the middle of the night, terrified, convinced that something was wrong, that she was hurt, or scared, or needed me.

"I'd check on her all the time, and every time she was always sound asleep and perfectly happy in her own bed." She paused and took a sip of her tea as Harry quietly observed her. "It took me a while, but eventually I was able to convince myself that she was okay, and I was able to sleep through the night again."

"How long did it take before you stopped worrying?"

She arched a brow at him over the rim of her cup. "Who says I did?"

He frowned in confusion. "But, you said you knew she was okay and didn't have to check on her anymore."

"Doesn't mean I stopped worrying. I'm a parent, Harry. I may not have carried her, or given birth to her, but I've raised her from a very young age. I've watched her grow into a bright, caring, and wonderful girl. I'm always going to worry about her, that's what parents do. But I also learned that I can't protect her all the time. I can't watch out for her every second of the day. That's part of why I am so happy that she has you with her at Hogwarts. You've already saved her life one time. Without you I would more than likely have buried my daughter and I can't begin to explain how indebted I am to you for that."

Harry shook his head. "Anyone would have, if they could," he insisted.

"I'm not so sure of that, but we'll agree to disagree, for now. Why don't you tell me what it is that has you checking on the girls so often?"

Harry's shoulders hunched in and his chin ducked toward his chest as he idly spun the empty coffee mug in front of him. "I've been dreaming," he whispered after a long silence where she simply observed him and waited patiently for him to open up.

"Dreaming?"

"Nightmares, really. Well, nightmare. It's always exactly the same, every single night."

"It might help to talk about it," she offered.

He started slowly, falteringly, but over time the entire story came out. "… And all I see is this flash of green light, and that's when I wake up, soaked in sweat, panting and my heart pounding like I've been sprinting flat out in some kind of demented race," he finished.

"And that's what has you worried and checking on them?" she asked.

He nodded. "It just feels so real, even though I know it isn't. I wake up and I know they're fine, I can feel them because of the bond. But I can't convince myself they're actually safe until I can see them with my own eyes."

Amelia nodded. "I think this might be a good time to return to an earlier topic," she said. "If you'll remember, on your first morning, here we briefly touched on the idea of you needing to talk about your life growing up before now, and the report I'll be needing for my investigation against your relatives?"

He nodded, feeling his coffee settling unpleasantly in his stomach.

"Well, I want to see about getting a healer to see you periodically. He'll try to help with whatever he can and he'll be the one you could talk to about everything if you're not comfortable doing so with me. I'm not sure how quickly I'd be able to arrange it, but it can only help you possibly with these nightmares, and just in general."

"You said I didn't have to, if I didn't want to," he pointed out and she nodded, humming quietly in agreement.

"I did say that. But, remember, I also said that if you don't, it'll make getting you away from your relatives that much harder, if not impossible." She reached out and took a hold of one of his hands. "I don't want you to have to relive whatever it is you've been through," she told him. "I know the girls don't want you to deal with it either. I can't begin to understand how difficult this entire idea must be for you and I won't insult either of our intelligence by pretending I can.

"You've heard it said already, but you have people that are on your side now, Harry. I'm on your side. Even if you weren't bonded to Susan, if I'd found out about this, I would still want to help you. No one deserves what's happened to you. Even not knowing the details, it's not difficult to tell that it was horrible, even if I didn't have Susan telling me what she was feeling from you over the years. You act like a wounded animal, always wary of everyone, waiting for someone to hurt you.

"You're emancipated, now, Harry. Once we get you, legally, out of that house, you'll find any number of families wanting to take you in, offer you a home. You'll get a lot of offers unless I miss my guess, and you'll be able to choose, for yourself, where you want to go. Isn't that worth the discomfort you'll have to deal with delving into the past? This decision was taken from you, letting others know about what happened but," she leaned forward, keeping an earnest expression on her face, "the end result is you'll have greater control over your life than you ever have before."

Harry hadn't considered that, and without thinking, his eyes dropped to the heavy ring adorning the middle finger of his right hand. He was emancipated. He really needed to look more into what, entirely, that meant for him. If he had the option to choose, to decide for himself where he wanted to go, and this was the price he'd have to pay to have that choice… Amelia was right, it should be worth it.

It still stuck in his craw that he hadn't been able to choose for himself when, and how, to go about it, but for the freedom that was on offer he would deal with it. He wouldn't be happy with it and it definitely wouldn't be easy, but he would deal with it, just like he'd dealt with the years in that house.

"Do we have a guess what kind of time frame I might be looking at?" he whispered. "Like, when am I supposed to do this?"

Amelia shook her head. "Like I said, I'm not sure when I'll be able to arrange it, and there are other forces at work here that I don't want you to worry about. Please, let me do this for you, Harry. I'm not trying to control you or dictate your life for you, I'm just trying to help, and you can be sure that I really do have your best interests at heart."

He arched a brow at that. "How can I be sure of that?"

She gave him an incredulous look. "You know, for someone as clever as you've shown yourself to be, you do miss the obvious sometimes," she said with a chuckle that took the sting out of her words. "You need to remember that you're not alone, anymore. You have three very determined young girls, that won't let anything stop them from being a part of your life, and one of them is my daughter. Even if I didn't want to help you, just for the sake of doing so, I'd do it for Susan. Even if you can't trust that I want to help you, you can trust that I want to help her by association."

She didn't like giving it to him in that way. She would have preferred if he could trust that she just wanted to help him for him. He couldn't see the forest for the trees, though. It was obvious to her that any offer of help would be viewed with suspicion as he tried to figure out what angle there was beneath the offer. If she presented it in a way that made her seem less self sacrificing and more self serving than it would better align with how he viewed the world and what he expected of people.

"Come on," she said after a time. "It's late, and I think we should try to get some more sleep." He nodded and let himself be lead out of the kitchen as their dirty cups vanished with a quiet series of pops behind them.

When they reached the door to the guest room he paused, one hand on the door knob with his back to her. "If I can choose where I live, and who I live with," he said, quietly, "I think this would be a really nice place to live." Before she could respond, he yanked open the door and disappeared inside, closing it quickly, but carefully, behind him. It was as if he was afraid to hear what she might say in response to that, and she realized, he probably was terrified that he'd even said it at all.

"I think this could be a good home for you too," she muttered to the empty hallway. "But you'll have to decide that for yourself, when we reach that point." After quickly checking on the girls and finding them still sound asleep, Amelia returned to her own room and settled into her own bed. She slowly drifted off, her thoughts filled with a house that rang with young laughter and felt like a true family home again.