AN: **All quotes in the following chapter are taken directly from the Harry Potter books by JK Rowling, I take no credit for them. I put them in because up until the end of Deathly Hallows everything in Harry's past is canon…except the epilogue. An awfully short chapter this time, folks…unfortunately I have been having difficulty in finding the time to write. I apologise and hope you can forgive me, so I will leave you with this little snippet into Harry's mind. Enjoy it and I intend to return to the action as soon as possible.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

All your two-bit psychiatrists
are giving you electroshock
They said, they'd let you live at home with mom and dad
instead of mental hospitals
But every time you tried to read a book
you couldn't get to page 17
'Cause you forgot where you were
so you couldn't even read

Don't you know they're gonna kill your sons
don't you know gonna kill, kill your sons
They're gonna kill, kill your sons
until they run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run away – 'Kill Your son's' Lou Reed

"You'll stay with me?''Until the very end,' said James."

"You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it."

Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face.
"Severus ... please ..."
Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore. "Avada Kedavra!"

"Come on, you can do better than that!" he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room.
The second jet of light hit him squarely on the chest.

But some part of him realized, even as he fought to break free from Lupin, that Sirius had never kept him waiting before. . . . Sirius had risked everything, always, to see Harry, to help him. . . . If Sirius was not reappearing out of that archway when Harry was yelling for him as though his life depended on it, the only possible explanation was that he could not come back. . . . That he really was . . .

"There's nothing you can do, Harry ... nothing ... He's gone."

"Look...at...me..." he whispered. The green eyes found the black, but after a second, something in the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed, blank, and empty. The hand holding Harry thudded to the floor, and Snape moved no more.

'No - no - no!' someone was shouting. 'No! Fred! No!'

And Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred's eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face.

"Avada Kedavra!"
"Expelliarmus!"**

Harry woke with a violent start, his eyes flew open as he panted desperately in the dark confines of his prison. He reached up and brought a shaking hand to his chest where his heart beat too rapidly behind the cage of his ribs. He swallowed and wiped sweat from his forehead. Slowly he drew his knees close to his chest and rested his dully aching forehead on them, he took slow, calming breaths until he had managed to calm himself a little. Once again the nightmares plagued him, they had become so real he sometimes struggled to differentiate them from reality. When he slept it seemed that the awful dreams were always there, eager and ready to start the second he closed his eyes. He was dragged back into his own past and forced to helplessly re-live each and every death, each grief torn moment, every hard decision. Most nights he found himself waking up in a cold sweat, his eyes staring blindly into the gloom of his bedroom as he fought desperately for some purchase upon his current reality. His hands shook so violently he heard the chains around his wrists rattling, he took another shuddering breath and held it as he willed his heart to slow. Finally it did and he lifted a hand to wipe at his eyes, his cheeks were wet but not from the rapidly cooling sweat that stained his skin.

Although he never spoke of it to Ron or Hermione he still continued to blame himself for the deaths that had plagued his childhood from the word go. If it hadn't been for him no one would have got hurt, if he hadn't dragged all those people into a battle that should have been for him alone, they wouldn't have died. Guilt had weighed at his heart almost constantly since his victory over the Dark Lord of his time, he had spent the first few weeks shut away in his room in a desperate attempt to try to rationalise what had happened to him and to think about his future…a future he had managed to convince himself he would never have. He had been utterly unable to celebrate the destruction of the Dark and his own victory, to him it felt as if he had lost. He no longer had any idea who he was or what his purpose in life was now that he no longer had Voldemort hanging over his head. He felt stuck in a strange kind of limbo and it had taken him weeks to finally work up the courage to ask Ginny out once again, it had worked for a while until he had great difficulty in the bedroom one night and decided to sleep in a completely separate room. He had been ashamed of his inability to perform but refused to speak to his girlfriend about it, he had slowly begun to re-shut the doors that had been slowly opening to allow some light into his life. He had closed himself off emotionally and physically from her until she had had enough. After that he only left his house to go to work, he rarely spoke to people unless he had to and he had made more enemies within the Ministry than ever before.

The press assumed his life was one big ride, that he was rising through the ranks of the Auror's with ease, that he was happy and content…they had no idea just how much he was truly suffering. All too soon he found himself faking it. He went about with a big, false smile, he forced himself to pay cursory visits to his friends but none of it felt real to him anymore. He was stuck in a giant rut, he was bored and felt aimless. It was only recently that colour had begun to bleed back into his world, it was only since he had been effectively kidnapped by Sirius that he had begun to actually enjoy himself. He chuckled humourlessly into the dark and let himself fall back onto the bed. Minus the nightmares he was finding that this world suited him, he knew, deep down that something inside him craved danger. He had lived with it for so long that now his life was empty without it. This was the reason he had a 'saving people thing', he suspected that muggle psychiatrists would have a field day with him. He lay on his back and smiled grimly up at the ceiling, he had no idea what he would do with himself if he survived this strange, exciting, dangerous world.

XXX

Ron was frowning down at the pile of paper in his lap, he sat perched on Harry's bed as he rifled through his paper work. Hermione entered the room and handed him a cup of tea. "Find anything useful?" She asked as she sat down at his side.

"No." Ron sighed and put it aside, he glanced sideways at his girlfriend who was wearing a slightly furrowed expression. "What is it?"

"Well…when I was looking downstairs in the drawing room I found this…" She withdrew a small book, it looked like an ordinary muggle notebook. "I think…I think it's some kind of diary." Ron grabbed it greedily off of her but before he could open it she put a hand on his. "Ronald Billius Weasley!" She said sternly, reminding him forcefully of his own mother. "If that is what I think it is, we're better off not prying! Harry's inner thoughts have nothing to do with us."

Ron looked down at the book in his hands with a frown. "But why would he keep a diary? It's a bit of girly thing to do, isn't it?"

Hermione sighed in exasperation. "All good muggle Physiatrists…"

"They're those head-healers, right?"

"Yes Ron, I suppose they are." Hermione said stiffly before continuing on in a flat, lecturing voice. "All good muggle Physiatrists tend to tell victims of Post Traumatic Stress syndrome-"

"What's that?" Ron asked.

"It's a condition that affects people who have been put through a traumatic experience; the symptoms vary depending on the victim…"

"You reckon Harry had this?"

"It's highly likely, after everything he went through he would never have come away unscathed." She cleared her throat and continued in her explanation. "Some doctors recommend keeping some kind of diary, or some way of writing down inner thoughts and feelings so that you can later reflect upon them. Harry must have heard of this way of healing and is probably attempting it."

"So…" Ron lifted the tatty looking notebook with a wary frown. "So this is all of Harry's thoughts and feelings about the war?"

Hermione nodded and took it gently from Ron's hands. "If we read it it would be the greatest betrayal. It's best we leave it behind."

"Ok…well, I'll just finish up here then."

Hermione smiled and patted his hand affectionately. "Ok, I'm done in the drawing room..I could only find a few warrants for arrest in the desk, most of them unsigned. Should we take those back to Kingsley?" She asked thoughtfully and Ron nodded.

"Yeah, might as well take it all, we still don't know what exactly it is they wanted anyway."

Hermione nodded and stood up. "Bring what you can downstairs then and we'll take the floo back to our place before owling this lot to the Ministry." Ron pulled her down to him for a brief kiss before they drew away and smiled at each other, Hermione turned and went back downstairs. Ron stood up, gathered up the paper work he had found and paused as his eyes came to rest on the little book. He bit his bottom lip before picking it up and stuffing it in his pocket.

"You're not getting away with keeping stuff from me this time, Mate." He muttered and left the bedroom.