Disclaimer: Don't own.

Pre/Post summary: Harry's relatives were found dead in Harry's 6th year after a Death Eater attack. Harry's still captured, but Severus is sure he's found a way to find Harry. Remus' problems grow, and doubts are planted in Harry's thoughts.

A/N: This chapter would have been done ages ago, but I had to rewrite parts of it a few times . . . I skipped out writing a few scenes because they just became pointless. Anyway, happiness will occur in chapter 14, so just hang in there.

Chapter 13 - Doubts

Remus leaned against the cool, stone wall of the corridor, willing his headache to go away. Even the cloud-covered sky was too bright for his eyes, so the dimly-lit dungeon helped a little.

Pushing away from the wall, a wave of dizziness settled over him, nearly falling to the ground.

"Ce n'est pas vrai," he heard all of a sudden and Remus blinked a few times before looking up to see a woman, taller than him. She seemed familiar, but he never remembered seeing her. And she was tall. "You must stop this nonsense."

"There's nothing wrong with it," Remus felt himself talk, but the voice was different. Younger.

Female.

"You will stop it!"

Remus took a step back. "The box is mine," he said.

"What did you do to it? Why doesn't it burn?"

"I didn't do anything to it. It protected itself. And besides, I bought it. You can't take it. It won't leave me."

"Again, nonsense, Caroliina. A box doesn't stop itself from starting on fire! You did something. I shouldn't stand for this."

Remus was pushed and he fell back onto the grass. But it wasn't grass, it was stone. Cold stone of the dungeon floor.

What the hell was that? Remus asked himself. It was quite awhile before Remus was able to pull himself off the floor and slowly walk, using the wall for balance, to the room he hoped was Snape's lab.

He knocked, but there wasn't any more of an answer than the scraping of something along the stone. He tried the door, finding it to be open, and he let himself in, falling into what looked to be the only chair in the room. He didn't pay much attention as Snape worked, trying once again to will his headache away. It did finally subside a bit. Enough he could sit back and try to take in what Severus was doing.

"I'm having hallucinations," Remus finally said. He was surprised Snape actually looked up from what he was doing, a look of confusion on his face. Snape looked rather involved in his project. After what must have been a large internal debate, the potions professor picked up a jar, mortar and pestal and dropped all three on his lap.

"Grind and talk. All of it. Very fine."

-----

Severus forced himself to listen as Lupin explained what had happened, even though he was focusing on the potion.

"So you were the girl," Severus said flatly.

"Yes. I didn't have any control over any of it, though."

"Sounds like a memory," he commented, turning his attention back to his work.

"But why would I be seeing this memory if it isn't mine?"

"I don't know, Lupin!" he snapped and he heard the werewolf sigh.

"What is it you've found?" Lupin asked after a few minutes. Severus didn't answer right away in favor of working. The man had his job, he could do it in silence.

It was a long shot that it would work, but if the connection was still there, even the slightest bit, it would work.

It had taken a little bit to find Harry's work on the potion. Even after the incident, the boy had continued to work on it a little bit at a time, but since Severus chose to work on something else, aside from the few trials Harry worked on with him, he hadn't known where all the research was.

When he found it, he was insanely glad he had taught the boy the correct way to keep a lab notebook. It was messy, yes, but organized enough that Severus had an idea of what to do.

Apparently, Harry had done more with the potion than Severus knew about. Lots of test trials with the mice. And from what it looked like, if there was a connection between the two who took the potion, the connection could be made stronger with only one of the partners taking the potion.

There were three downsides to this. The first, Severus had no idea whether or not he and Harry were still connected. It didn't seem likely that they were still connected from when they had purposefully died to destroy the connection between them and the Voices as evidence showed the connection decreased over time, but he had taken a few other potions Harry was experimenting with. And the boy's notes said it did increase the connection.

The second was that the potion would have to be taken many, many times before the connection would be strong enough to find Harry. After that, finding him wouldn't be too difficult with soul traveling. He hoped.

The third issue was that he couldn't take the potion too many times so close together. With several of Harry's trials, he had given too much of the potion during too little of a time and those mice had all died. The problem was knowing how much he could take without killing himself. Harry had speculated no more than one 30 dram vial every two days, to be safe. With one vial every other day, and Severus estimating he was going to need 10 -- maybe 12 or 13 -- times that for a strong enough connection to be established, he wasn't too happy. It would probably be at least a month before he could do much of anything.

And it was going to take two days to make the potion.

Severus added the hairs before mixing 8 and a half time clockwise and a half time counter clockwise before increasing the temperature of the fire and cleaning up the supplies he didn't need anymore.

"Where do you want the powder?" Lupin asked. Severus had forgotten about him.

"It needs to be divided into five 3gram portions. The scale is over there. Just put them into vials."

"I don't think I can do that," Lupin said. Severus was going to say something along the lines of him being so incompetent to not even know how to use a scale, but when he looked up, Lupin was cradling his head.

"I'll do it later. I won't need it for a couple hours." Severus took the grinded ingredient and set everything on the workbench. "Now, what about the box?

"The box?"

"The box in the memory," Severus said slowly. "What was it? Do you know?"

"No," Lupin said. "And what does that have to do with anything? And what's your plan for finding Harry? You wouldn't be brewing anything if you didn't have a plan."

"I'll explain that when I have the potion finished. I do not know if it will work and no, you will not be able to help with it besides preparing ingredients. The memories might be something useful and that memory appeared to be centered around a box."

"But why would I be living memories that aren't my own?"

"Why did the Death Eaters want you?" Severus asked, annoying. "We don't know. But as the headache got worse right as you saw the memory, we can assuming they are connected. Perhaps . . ." Severus trailed off. That idea was almost absurd, but he wouldn't put it past the Dark Lord.

"Perhaps what?"

"Perhaps the Dark Lord is storing the essence of this person in you."

Lupin just stared at him.

"Storing a . . . Severus, two souls cannot live in one body. It's . . . just not possible."

"Exactly. Hence the headaches."

"But I'm still . . . Here."

"Obviously. What I mean is that the essence of this person . . . Caroliina . . . Is being stored in you. You had said the headaches had stopped for a short time after you returned? Perhaps they were attempting to keep this . . . person in storage."

"And then I started having headaches again. Stronger."

"Go find Albus. He'll know more about this than I would, and I don't have time to look up soul magic."

"Albus isn't here," Lupin answered. "He's meeting the headmistress. He won't be back until late tomorrow."

Severus felt like he wanted to kick the workbench, but he refrained from doing so. He needed to concentrate on Harry. Perhaps, even without the potion, he could search for Harry through soul traveling. It would be aimless, but . . .

But Lupin's life was in danger if what he speculated was true. And he couldn't truly search for Harry. Not with getting results.

Severus felt frozen. And stupid. The decision shouldn't be that difficult! He needed to find Harry. Lupin could help himself.

Severus was torn from considering when Lupin knocked several vials to the floor as he fell to the floor, one hand still on the door handle.

"What are you doing?" Severus asked bitterly.

"Just going to the library," Lupin replied. He sounded almost . . . Bitter. "Thought I'd do some research while I waited for Albus to get back. The library here should have something."

"You can't just . . ." Severus trailed off, not quite sure what he was going to say.

"I can't what? Go to the library? Abandon you to your own work? Ignore everything else that's going on? There's nothing else I can do." Lupin paused. Severus just stared at him, probably blankly. He realized he had no idea what to do about Lupin. "I'll go to St. Mungo's. There must be someone­ there who would know what to do."

"NO!" Severus said.

"What? You just want me to sit and wait for the memories of some dead or non-existing person to just take over? I'm not--"

"Do you want to be at the mercy of the Dark Lord? Think he'll save you? They may very well be waiting for it to be bad enough to go to the hospital. There could be someone waiting to abduct you the moment you enter the building."

"They've already had me. If they still wanted me, they wouldn't have let me go."

"Don't presume their logic makes any sense without knowing the entire plan."

"So what would have you have me do?" Lupin asked, the resentment clear in his voice this time. Severus found he couldn't handle that. Lupin wasn't bitter, it wasn't who he was.

He was angry. With good reason, a part of Severus reasoned. Severus sighed.

"Go back to the manor and search the library for anything that has to do with soul magic. Or souls in general. There should be something." Severus looked up from the cauldron. Lupin was staring blankly at him. "I can't leave the potion. I'll check through the Hogwarts library when I can. Don't read through the books, just bring them back here."

- - - -

"Harry." Harry started as he woke. He supposed he should have been used to it. "I have a present for you." Now that he had woken up, Harry was unable to stop the coughs. They weren't horrible, just a reminder of the trouble he was having when it came to breathing. It had become gradually more difficult. For how long, Harry couldn't say.

The man was gone now, though. Or so he hoped. He decided he might as well get up, though, lest he was supposed to find this 'present'.

It couldn't be good. It was never any good. And it if was, there was always a price. And the price was usually worse than the things that weren't good.

Getting off the bed, Harry made sure it was made as neatly as possible while not being able to see, and then he followed his usual path around the room. Nearing the kitchen, he was glad he hadn't come across any messes that he hadn't made. A couple more times back and forth and he would be in the . . .

Harry paused as his hand landed in something wet and he quietly groaned. This was apparently the present. Another mess. He sighed as he rose to his feet, but after a couple of steps toward the kitchen, he tripped.

He got away from whatever it was he tripped over immediately. Something about it felt completely wrong. Like . . .

Not willing to speculate on what it was, Harry turned around and crawled back, feeling carefully. Nothing wet on the floor yet, although the liquid that he put his hand in before still seemed to be on his hand. He wiped it off on his pants -- getting a tinge of pain in the process -- and continued. Harry gasped as his hand hit something soft and warm. It felt like a . . . body.

Harry couldn't stop the dry heaves that hit, which turned into uncontrollable coughs. Through the coughs and choking, he vaguely realized the person was moving but not making any verbal noises.

"Who," he managed to say in between coughing his breath and coughing, "who's there?" Whoever it was didn't answer and Harry scooted backwards, trying to listen. "Hello?"

It was then that the pain started. More painful than it typically was when it started, but he didn't think of that. He needed to do something to make the pain stop and he needed to find out what it was. His first instinct was to clean, and the only thing he could think to clean was the liquid on the floor . . . Blood perhaps? He didn't care. Whoever it was wasn't answering him and . . .

"Arrg!" he shouted, hitting the counter as hard as he could with his hand, only realizing then he was in the kitchen. He was just . . . so . . . frustrated! As quickly as he could, he found a towel, wet it and dropped back to the floor. He didn't know where the blood was, so he continued to wash the wood floor, hoping he was retracing his steps and cleaning up everything.

"Potter."

Harry froze. What was . . .

"A-aunt Petunia?" Harry stuttered. There was no answer. The voice was more toward his left and he was sure the body was right in front of him, and he nearly reached out to see if they were still there, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He knew that anymore contact would just make it more real than he wanted.

It took him a few minutes of kneeling there listening to realize it was probably some sort of trick, so he convinced himself to continue scrubbing the floor. After a bit, he filled a bucket of water, deciding it would be best to just do a full scrub of the floor. It probably needed it, anyway.

He started in the kitchen, moving backwards. He'd eat later. He'd gotten used to not eating a lot, so feeling hungry wasn't a pressing of a feeling that it used to be. Scrubbing, he lost himself in the movement -- forward, back, forward, back -- and he was completely surprised when he backed into something.

The body. Reluctantly, he turned around on his knees and reached forward. He would have to move the body to somewhere eventually. Probably soon, so better to find out what he had to deal with now rather than later. Harry's hand touched skin and he jumped. He hadn't been expecting that, but he pushed himself forward. The body was still kind of warm and it didn't feel like they were breathing, but he still found the next and checked for a pulse anyway.

And there was one. Not much of one, but every couple of seconds, he felt another beat. Harry pulled his hand away, not knowing what to do. The person was obviously unconscious, but . . . There was nothing he could do, was there?

"Hello?" Harry asked, although he knew it wouldn't do any good.

"Potter," the voice said again, this time closer. It sounded exactly like Aunt Petunia. "I hope he's hurting you as much as you hurt us, Potter. We never wanted you anyway, and this is what we get. Everyone told us we should have dropped you off at the orphanage immediately, but we couldn't because those freaks of yours thought you were too important. But you aren't, are you? Are they even looking for you?"

"I . . . who are you?" Harry asked because he couldn't get anything else to make sense in his head.

"Who do you think I am?" she snapped.

After that, she didn't say anything more -- whether it was Aunt Petunia or not -- and Harry just continued to sit there, his breath shaky. The pain had increased slightly, but it still wasn't bad enough to force Harry to do anything right then. And even if he had to do something, he had no idea what it would be.

Hope the person would wake up, he supposed. Sitting back in a more comfortable position, Harry played with the towel he was holding, the water dripping on his legs. He sort of wanted to find the source of the bleeding. To see if the person was still bleeding, but he couldn't seem to unfreeze himself.

It's not as if I could actually see where he was bleeding, Harry told himself, but that didn't make him feel any better.

Harry didn't move from the spot until the pain reached the point of becoming unbearable and even then, he couldn't bring himself to do anything but reach forward and shake the person as if it were Ron he were trying to wake up. When that didn't work, checked for a pulse again. And again.

Harry wouldn't let it hit him that the person was actually dead. And the fact that he died while Harry was just sitting there.

Suddenly, Harry stood, too fast so he had to wait for the dizziness to pass, and walked to the closest wall to feel his way around. He had to find where he was supposed to get rid of the body, before the pain got too much and before he couldn't take it anymore. Then, he would scrub the floor. Then a bath. Then . . . He didn't know, but at that moment, he was sure food wouldn't be involved.

While he was searching, he couldn't help thinking back to . . . Aunt Petunia. She was dead, so she couldn't be here. It had to be a trick, right? Professor Dumbledore said they found the bodies! But, it would have been something Aunt Petunia would have said, exactly as she would have said it, so . . .

But she was wrong. They were looking for him. His father and Remus . . . And Ron and Hermione. They wouldn't stop until they knew for sure he was dead. He never talked with it with his dad, but he, Ron and Hermione decided that if one of them ever went missing, they wouldn't stop looking.

Harry had avoided thinking about it before then, but now he couldn't stop thinking about what would happen if they never did find him.