'Nother long one.
Chapter 25 – Delirium
They wouldn't give him what he needed. They wouldn't give him the Fless that his body was begging him for.
They just yammered at him endlessly in voices that didn't make any sense. He tried to tell them that he didn't speak their language, but it did no good.
He quickly discovered that the only way for him to make them react was to scream wildly at them. Likewise, it was the only way that he could make them see how he felt, how he suffered.
What he NEEDED!
He shrieked aloud once more, pulling and straining against the restraints that he could feel if not see. He spit wildly if any one of them came near enough to touch him with those horribly soft hands of theirs.
He bucked and shook the bed, right down to its frame, hearing and feeling a horrible grinding sound as the bed scraped against the wall behind him. The level of activity picked up as he did so, bringing a tiny woman to the forefront with that stick of hers pointed towards him.
He wished that she would just beat him and be done with it, but they all seemed intent on making him pay for sins that he could not remember committing.
He howled at her with long contained fury, especially after Malfoy had hurt him so desperately.
Who the hell was Malfoy?
And so he screeched in anger at not having access to his memories in order to answer that.
…
Back in the room that he had left, the boys took turns attacking Blaise. He was no longer being fed, nor were they wasting the Fless on him. His partner had disappeared, and now it was just a matter of time before he died from his body's inability to reconcile with that loss. They had begun taking him, two at a time and fast; purposely not replenishing his dwindling blood supply in an effort to quickly end his life.
It was the only kindness they could allow him as he suffered from his detrimental loss.
…
48 hours after Ron Weasley had appeared in Minerva's class, Poppy had been forced to admit she was over her head with the seriousness of the boy's case. She had hoped to involve Severus in the case, but given that he quite literally could not leave Harry alone, had been forced to make different plans. Luckily, she had been around the block more than a few times in her years of life, and had been able to call in a few friends who all had various types of specific in-depth experience in working with serious addiction cases. Of the three that were coming, two of the three were muggle born, providing them with plenty of knowledge about the familiar muggle drugs in addition to the wizarding ones.
They needed to figure out what kind of drug was in his system before they could adequately treat it. Magical drugs were especially problematic, as they frequently affected the person's magical core and consequently the person's surrounding environment.
So far, the boy was not responding to any of the typical levels commonly used with calming or sleeping draughts. On the other hand, he didn't seem to be aware of the pain from his multitude of injuries either, which appeared to be the only good thing about the entire situation.
Apparently, his moment of lucidity in making his way there was one of the few that he had experienced while under the mystery drug's influence. She and her friends had been staying with him around the clock, since the midpoint of the first day; at least two present at all time, and they had not yet seen another period of awareness in that entire time.
As for Severus, while technically this was his last day of enforced house arrest, they had discussed it and he had agreed—reluctantly—that with the winter holidays starting after classes in only two days hence, and the fact that he and the boy had not yet managed to make it more than three meters apart, it was better if he went ahead and cancelled those final two days as well.
He might have cancelled the classes themselves, but he had been damned if he would let them off that easily. Therefore, in the place of his classes, he had been sending out essay assignments by floo to his students' heads of house. In the case of his own house however, he had given the assignments to Poppy to deliver instead, given her old ties with the house of snakes.
The story that she had concocted to explain his disappearance apparently involved a need for him to be quarantined until his unknown sickness had cleared. It was an annoying story to stick to, but it was far better than trying to figure out a way to explain the truth.
…
Even though Severus was not directly involved with the case of Ronald Weasley, he had still been given the details by Poppy in hopes that he would be able to make connections that the others had missed.
After all, he was one of the foremost Potion Masters in Great Britain. It seemed likely that if anyone was able to figure out this unusual case, it would be him.
Following Harry's morbid question, and Severus's unwillingness to join the massive horde of adults who had consistently lied to him throughout his life, they had been forced to discuss the basic options of what might happen to the boy's friend.
Then, sometime after the boy had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep, he and Poppy had discussed it in more depth. He was certain that she must have found it amusing to continue the conversation in the dark, but he hadn't been willing to risk waking the child up, particularly after discussing with him the likelihoods of the death of his best friend.
Shortly before she excused herself, he had asked her if she would be so kind as to put through the paperwork from one of their previous discussions.
Agreeing quickly, she had walked over to their side of the bed and surprised him by kissing both of them lightly before saying goodbye for the night. From beside him, he'd felt the boy move a bit after her exit from the room.
"She kiss you too?" The boy had mumbled sleepily to him then.
"Yes, surprisingly enough," He had answered honestly.
"I like her," the boy said, drifting back down quietly.
"Me too," he had whispered.
…
Harry blinked into the dark room after sleeping for what had felt like eons.
Severus was apparently still asleep beside him, although he had found that he never could be quite sure in regards to the man. He was impressively deceptive in many things, including pretending to be asleep, Harry had decided.
He wondered where his glasses were. Severus had already made the statement that he was taking Harry in for an eye exam before the next term started.
Provided they ever managed to disconnect from one another, Harry had added silently after that statement.
Logically, he knew that it would make no difference whether or not he had his glasses, since it was completely dark in the room they were in.
Severus's bedroom, he thought with a thrill at being able to call him by his first name, even if he had only done it in his head thus far.
Maybe they're in Severus's pocket.
Maybe he didn't really want them that much.
Maybe it was all moot, as Severus suddenly stretched beside him.
"All right child. What is it that you need?" Severus asked him calmly.
"Have you seen my glasses? And how'd you know I was awake?" Harry asked.
"Although you are rarely still when awake or asleep, you are usually far more predictable in your movements when asleep." He answered, making Harry's brain itch with the explanation.
"Furthermore, why on earth would you feel the desire to find your glasses while in a pitch dark room?" Severus asked in a slightly incredulous sounding voice.
"'Cause pitch dark rooms aren't always totally dark," he said decisively, before suddenly wishing he could take back the ridiculous statement, as it pertained to a memory that he'd just as soon forget.
"Indeed," the man replied inquisitively. "Please explain this wretched logic of yours"
"Ah," he said; his mind racing as he sought out a way not to discuss the topic which he had accidentally mentioned.
"Very informative," Severus said sarcastically.
"Can we talk about something else?" He pleaded.
"What is it about this topic that worries you so?" Severus said, his voice becoming very quiet.
He opened his mouth, but found that he could not make himself explain his leftover memories of terror from what had happened in the dark with Ron that one day in Severus's classroom.
"Breathe slowly child." The man instructed suddenly, as he became aware of Harry's growing distress.
He didn't know why he felt the need to constantly bury his head against Severus's upper body, but knew that doing so made him feel infinitely better. He pushed his face down against the soft cloth of the man's shirt, which was warm from the innate heat of the flesh underneath.
He felt the man's hand stroke his hair softly, and he had to fight the urge to cry at not being able to remember his parents doing the same. No one had ever touched him as kindly as Severus, and lately he had found himself worrying that the man would be taken from him for daring to be nice to him.
"D'you suppose that my mum and dad loved me?" He asked, feeling completely random.
"More than anything Harry," Severus's voice answered firmly and without hesitation.
"Do you think that they'd mind?" He asked, feeling his throat clogging up with worry that Severus would get offended by his line of questions.
"Mind about what?" Severus asked patiently.
"Mind that you do also." He said, afraid of mentioning it, lest it stop occurring.
"What is it that I do also Harry?" Severus asked in that same calm voice, as he continued stroking Harry's hair softly.
"Love me," he whispered before shutting his eyes tightly against the man, fearing that he had just made a dreadful mistake.
Severus was silent for a moment, as the boy quaked beside him. He gathered him up, pulling him in close enough to kiss his forehead, before answering.
"No, I do not think that they would mind if I loved you." He said roughly over Harry's head.
"Am I worth it?" He asked, still whispering.
"Child, child," Severus admonished gently, while rubbing his hands comfortingly against his back once again.
"Yes, you are worthy enough to be loved; your mere existence should have been enough for you to have been loved in that so-called home of your so-called childhood. Dumbledore was a fool for leaving you there. Your childhood was a travesty that should have never been allowed into existence." He said strongly, pausing for breath before gently kissing him once more.
"Listen to me Harry. You have an extremely genuine and kind heart within you that somehow managed to survive those awful relatives of yours, even after all that you were forced to withstand. I remember your mother most strongly by the kindness that she extended me, even when it would have been far easier for her to follow in the footsteps of everyone else who regularly shunned me."
Harry had gasped upon Severus's mention of his mother. He hadn't even been aware that they had known each other. To hear Severus speak in such a loving way about all that she had done for him made Harry feel as though he had been given a tangible connection to the woman in his pictures.
He leaned up and kissed Severus quickly on the cheek before ducking back down, but put his back against the man's chest this time, feeling truly loved for the first time since he could remember.
"I bet that at the beginning of the year, you would have never expected to be voluntarily kissing your greasy git of a potions master, did you." Severus said as he genuinely laughed against the back of Harry's head.
It was a tickly feeling that he found himself liking, oddly enough.
"All right, time for breakfast," Severus said after a moment more. "And then I want you to clarify that other statement you made earlier," he said as he spelled on the lights.
Harry stuck his tongue out at him in exasperation, but felt that, following their most recent conversation, he didn't have quite as much cause to be afraid as he had been before.
…
Severus had not planned on mentioning anything about Lily to the boy, or at least not yet, but after hearing the child's heartbreaking questions, he had been unable to withhold such valuable information from him.
As it was quickly becoming evident, the boy's relatives had not done the memories of his parents any justice in their descriptions to him. He remembered Petunia and Lily from when they all three had been just children, and although he had not cared for Lily's sister much at that time, he had certainly never imagined that she would have grown up into such a despicable entity. It was revolting to imagine the depths of abuse that she must have forced the boy to endure over the course of his childhood in order to have made him truly believe that he was unworthy of love.
He silently promised himself that the boy would never go back to them, even if it meant their leaving Hogwarts for parts unknown in order to escape Dumbledore's likely wrath at his decision.
He looked over at the boy who was currently dressed in something barely fit for lining the bottom of a rodent's cage. The grayish rags were far too large for the child, both excessively long in both leg and arm, as well as being tattered and faded past recognition. Apparently the child's only recourse in addressing the length problem was to roll the ends several times over, just to be able to walk across the room without falling.
Before the boy's beloved trunk had appeared in the newly appeared extra bedroom, the boy had worn his hospital pajamas until Severus had thought to shrink an older outfit of his own down to size.
Severus knew that the boy's school clothes were adequate, from what he had seen in class alone, but the state of the rest of his clothing was absolutely beyond deplorable. The shock that had appeared at the child's heartfelt reactions to his own meager attempts at comfort had only continued to grow as the mystery of the boy's home life proceeded to unravel before him. Seeing the condition of the garments that the boy had automatically dressed in had merely provided another piece of the puzzle towards understanding that mystery.
"Child, do you know where the clothes you were wearing yesterday are?" He asked the boy.
"Oh," the boy said, turning quite red in reaction to his question. "I already put them down the chute."
"There is no reason for you to feel shame Harry," Severus said, laying a hand on the boy's shoulder. "It is those contemptible relatives of yours who should feel embarrassed towards their shoddy treatment of you and your wardrobe."
"Come, let us find something more acceptable for you wear today," he said, guiding the boy back into his bedroom and indicating that the boy should sit on the end of the bed.
He opened the closet door and heard the boy stifle a gasp at his doing so.
He turned around and raised an eyebrow at him in questioning.
The boy turned red again at his look, before stammering that he hadn't known that a person could own so many pairs of pants.
"Actually, you should see the headmaster's wardrobe sometime. I'm sure Poppy could tell you about it. Compared to him and many others, I own very little, actually." He smirked down at the boy who was still staring at him in wonder.
Quickly he pulled out a lesser worn knit shirt from the far end and shrunk it down to approximately the same size as he had done only the day before. Not surprisingly, the shirt was a dark gray. He had found that in addition to fitting with his overall persona and demeanor, darker colors also tended to not stain as noticeably as some of the gaudier color choices worn by some his colleagues—Dumbledore, he thought in irritation.
"If I have misjudged your size, you will inform me, understand?" He said sternly to the boy who was fighting to remove the gigantic shirt from his torso.
"Yes sir," the boy said, blushing once more at Severus's admonition. As Severus had learned while watching the boy in the infirmary, the child simply would not ask for anything, like now with his obvious difficulty in removing the shirt.
"You know," Severus said, reaching over and quickly unknotting the shirt from around Harry's head, "this inability of yours to ask for help is part of your difficulty in Potions." He looked at the huge monstrosity that he was now holding in his hands with a look of disgust before casting incendio on it, reducing the garbage down to a few flickers of ash.
He looked at the now scowling boy who was sitting on the bed with his arms crossed stubbornly—or was it protectively?—against his chest as he waited for his next instructions. The boy was likely scowling at him for criticism about the boy's ability to ask for things.
"You will remove that petulant scowl from your face now. You are not a three year old and I am not your nanny." He instructed firmly, narrowing his eyes in distaste at the boy's sulking demeanor.
The boy responded by dropping his eyes and clenching his teeth.
Severus crossed his arms in annoyance and chose to wait him out. Harry's patience was no match for his.
Finally the boy sighed and looked back up at him, all traces of previous defiance gone from his tightly drawn face.
"Not everyone tells you things in order to hurt you, to purposely rile you. What I said was true; you get into trouble in my class because you make mistakes and then resort to guesses when you get in over your head." He said, lightening his tone a bit in hopes that the boy would explain some of the bitterness in his face.
"But you belittle people when they do ask for help, just like you do on our essays." The boy said, looking back down at his ragged jeans, "I tried to ask for help before, but it didn't do any good." He said quietly as he hunched over with his hands in his lap and stared at the far wall, away from Severus.
Severus stepped over to where Harry was sitting on the bed and sat down next to him. He looked over at the boy's hunched shoulders and was forced to bite his lip to keep from exclaiming over the myriad of old scars he saw littered down his back and between his shoulder blades.
Later, he promised himself, his shock and anger against the boy's muggle relatives still continuing to swell within him.
"My belittling, as you put it, serves to enforce upon students the seriousness of Potions. Many students would do well to take their study of it more seriously, lest they make a particularly poor guess and take out half of the room in the process." He watched as Harry pulled up more into himself at his words, his thin arms holding his legs against his chest tightly with a strength they didn't seem possible of, given their size.
"In addition, I suspect that your mention of a time where you tried to ask for help was not in reference to my class, but rather a point in your younger years. Harry, will you trust me enough to tell me?"
At his carefully phrased question, the boy scooted closer against Severus, as though trying to draw strength from the older man just from touching him. Severus responded by draping an arm around his SLOB and pulling him in just that much further. The boy leaned his head and rested it on Severus's chest as he did so.
It wasn't all that cold in Severus's bedroom, but he could feel the coldness of the boy's skin through his sleeve. The shrunken knit shirt from his closet was still in his other hand; so after asking the boy to sit up for a moment, he pulled it over the boy's head and helped him to put it on, before pulling him back to his side and draping his arm around him once more.
"Does it fit you adequately?" He asked, looking down at the small bundle seated up against him.
"It's nice. I like it, Severus," Harry said with a small grin as he added the man's name on, apparently remembering that he had been given permission to use it.
"Then you may keep it," he answered, noticing quite by chance that the shirt he was wearing that day was quite similar in style and color to the one he had just put on the boy.
The boy smiled and then scooted himself a tiny bit into Severus's lap, causing the man to smirk at the child's non-verbal wish. He decided that now would not be the time to point out the usefulness of Harry asking for things. Instead, he leaned over and picked up the boy's small weight, before turning him around against him in his traditional position.
He felt the tension from Harry's muscles drain away at being held once more, and he felt contentment softly bubble through them both. He wondered if he would have to prompt the boy to tell his story, but quickly put it out of his mind as Harry began explaining.
"Once, after I had just started school, I got in trouble for not sitting down and doing what I was told like all of the other kids. The teacher finally got so sick of it that she just picked me up and plunked me down into my seat. Apparently she thought I was just being difficult or spoiled or something, when I began howling after she dumped me down. So she sent me to the principal's office." The boy said, taking a break from his story to breathe in a few shuddery and ragged breaths.
From what Severus could see from his vantage point, Harry's eyes were squeezed tightly behind his glasses from the emotion that was being brought up in his retelling of the tale.
"I have a morose suspicion I know where you're going with this account, Harry, but I would still like you to continue on when you feel that you can." He said, rubbing the boy's back gently with his free hand.
"I showed up and the woman at the front desk said that I had to take a seat and wait quietly for a bit until the man got out of a meeting with another troublemaker." Here, Harry's entire frame began shuddering with what likely was years of unspent emotional turmoil.
Severus only continued to hold him and rub those same circles into his back. He understood the very real need for the boy to be able to express his grief over the cruelties that he had been forced to withstand most of his life, without being told to 'grow up' or to 'quit acting like a baby.'"
He knew that the child needed validation that the pain that he had suffered had been real, and had been wrong; otherwise, he would never completely manage to get past the unresolved issues from his past.
And so he listened to the boy quietly and let him say what he needed to say, before allowing himself to speak in return.
"I begged her to let me just stand and I promised her that I would be as silent as the early dawn. She blinked at me in surprise, I guess, at my comparison, before nodding and agreeing to let me stand." He said, his arms tightening ever so slightly around Severus's body as he neared the critical part of the story.
"When I finally went in to Mr. Stilling's office, she came in with me and explained what I had said. See, the meeting he'd been in had gone on for more than two hours, but I had kept still and completely silent like a statue the entire time, barely blinking. She told him about that too, and I saw some kinda look go between them then." The boy cleared his throat softly for a second before continuing.
"She went back out to the waiting room section, and he closed the door behind her. I can't remember what he looked like, because I never looked at his face. He was wearing a big thick b-b-belt with a heavy cl-clasp." Harry's shudders turned from full body shakes to tiny spasmodic snaps of tension, moving randomly throughout his body in haphazard patterns, like popcorn as it first begins popping.
Severus felt the quavering in his body become more pronounced with that change, and likewise more vicious, as it warred with Harry's obvious need to maintain some kind of control over his body.
"Relax lad," Severus said, speaking then in an effort to keep the child from working himself into another panic attack, or dangerous release of accidental magic. "Relax son, I've got you. You are safe now. Just let your feelings out, child. They want to be let out. Can't you see that they are trying to eat you alive from the inside out?" He asked soothingly, rocking them both gently.
The boy's body tensed several times before the explosion of tears began, but Severus continued to murmur the same things in his ear, allowing the boy a chance to safely and freely express his pain and fear and anger for what was likely the first time in his life.
Through the tears, the boy gasped and stuttered out the rest of the story to Severus. He told him how the man had asked him about why he couldn't sit down, and he told Severus that no one had ever thought to ask him about why he was doing something. They always had yelled first and then punished afterwards, leaving him to figure out why, as was usually the case. His uncle hadn't ever allowed him to ask for what he needed, let alone ask for help.
So even though it had been literally beaten into him from the beginning that he "did not speak about what happened to him, 'cause Uncle Vernon said that no one gave a damn about a little nasty piece of shit like me," the boy had sobbed violently through that bit of the explanation, and Severus had held him tighter still, rocking him, only now with the boy's head at the base of his neck, where he could wrap the child tightly under his chin and arms, in protection against the outpouring of acidic memories.
Likely to be just the first of many eventual nightmarish accounts of his relatives' sadistic actions against him, he thought darkly.
The boy told Severus about the tight fist of control that his uncle had raised him with, but explained that Mr. Stilling's question to him been so unusual to hear that he had faltered on the usual answers he was supposed to use, and instead had taken a chance with the truth.
The evening before that fateful day, he had been making his way carefully across the kitchen to begin working on the mountain of dirty dishes after dinner, only to be surprised by his monstrous whale of a cousin on the way. His cousin had squirted him with his monster super soaker gun, spraying him in the eyes, causing Harry to duck out the way, only to fall and slip in the mess the other boy had made. His cousin had proceeded to spray the front of Harry's pants, and then laugh loudly to his father about how Harry had wet himself in the kitchen floor like a dog.
"That was before I learned to run from Uncle Vernon. I still thought that if I could follow his rules, and b-be g-g-g-good enough, they would eventually l-lo-love m-me," Harry said, no longer crying as hard, but his voice still burning with bitterness and anger, as well as across the charmed necklace around Severus's neck.
"Harry, please listen to me when I tell you not to direct your anger at yourself for trying to be loved. As I told you last night, and will say again, you are worthy of love. Your sorry excuse for relatives did not deserve the chance to have someone as loveable as you in their lives."
Severus felt the boy's tears begin anew as he processed what Severus had said.
"If you do not feel that you can currently tell me what your uncle did to you afterwards, don't make yourself sick in trying to do so, child." He said after giving him some time to cry quietly.
"No. I can do it," the boy said stubbornly a moment later, less shakily.
Harry explained the pure fury that had been in his uncle's face at hearing Dudley's words. The man had taken Harry down right then and there, beating him savagely against his bare flesh until he had bled, before eventually passing out. After awaking, he had been made to clean up the floor and then continue on to do the dishes even though it was nearly midnight by the time he had regained consciousness.
He had told all of this to the principal, but the man made one critical error in his handling of the situation. He did not have the injuries verified by the school nurse or anyone else there. From there, everyone had turned against him; his uncle and aunt had been called in, only to tell Mr. Stillings and anyone else who would listen that Harry had always been a liar, and was constantly doing things to get others in trouble. It might have still worked out even for all of that, if his teacher hadn't rallied on the side of his guardians.
"Dudley and I were in the same class," Harry said, yawning in Severus's arms by that point. "Dudley was always pulling stuff and blaming it on me. He threatened the other kids too, to the point that they would go along with his 'Harry hunting' schemes, just so they were safe." He yawned again, and Severus reached into his pocket for his wand to quickly cast a cleansing charm, followed by a drying charm on his shirt, so the surface would not be uncomfortable for the boy to lean against.
"After we got home that day, Uncle Vernon picked me up by one hand and threw me into my cupboard for the next two days straight. I heard him tell Petunia that if they were lucky, I'd die in there, and then all they'd have left of me would be a bad smell to . . . get rid . . . of." The child had cried himself out and had fallen asleep as a result.
Severus, for his part, continued to sit in that same position for more than hour, processing all that Harry had said, trying to determine an acceptable plan of action for both the child, as well as the torturous ghouls of his past.