Disclaimer: all characters belong to J K Rowling and Warner brothers.

a/n

The Persistence of Memory

By neutral

Chapter five - persistence of misunderstandings

I'd like to think memories in the mind are like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

I don't mean that you only see what you like, and those that you don't, you can trade them back in and buy new ones. That'll happen when Will decides to parade down the street in that pair of boxers Eric gave me for my birthday that says 'Use without discretion. May the fittest survive.'

Ouch. That was one awful mental image. Moving quickly onward…

Instead, imagine the Christmas tree as a mind. Memories, like the ornaments of a tree, decorate it. Some ornaments are repulsive, and the concluding result is a rather unsightly tree, while other ornaments are beautiful, and thus the tree is an elegant, well rounded, pretty thing you can't bring yourself to throw out at New Years.

When memories are lost, it is like the tree had suffered a terrible moving accident, and all the ornaments had fallen and shattered against the ground. The old decorations cannot be taped together and hung up again. There are still pieces, but they are no longer the same, unless you can magically seal them whole, but magic doesn't exist. You can only redecorate your tree with new ornaments.

But of course, by then, Christmas would most likely be over and that is just too much trouble to be bothered with.

Likewise, when memories are forgotten, they are no longer important. They are apart of the past and, sometimes, best left behind in unidentifiable pieces on the floor.

I don't mind not remembering. Sometimes, I feel that it is better this way. Its strange, considering most amnesiacs are obsessive with finding their past, but something in the back of my mind urges me to run from it. What I don't remember can't be important. What I don't know can't hurt me. What I did in the past should not and will not affect my future.

I am me. I am James. Even if my past does come back to me one day, apart of me will always be James. It won't ever change.

- James [ March 1st ] [ St. MaryAnn's Orphanage ]

Harry made a strangled cry that was muffled into a whimper against Sirius' hand.

The flickering fluorescent lights were dim, but his godson's face was clear like an enlarged photograph, reprinted down to the last detail. The slight curve of his eyebrows, the small groove just above his right ear, the thin scar that was veiled by his thick dark locks… it was Harry. He didn't care what anyone else said, not the boy's insistences that he was not or Remus' urges for him to wait and investigate. This boy was Harry. He was Harry!

"It's really you… I wasn't wrong. I knew it," the raggedness of his voice would have been unsettling if he paused to listen, but at the moment, Sirius' thoughts were frozen rigid and spinning in erratic loops. Harry, Harry, Harry is alive, standing right in front of me, breathing and alive, alive, alive…

Harry's thin shoulders were heaving through the large, threadbare shirt. His eyes were large and wild. With a desperate twist, Harry freed an arm and swung it blindly at his face, but Sirius caught his wrist and held it tight.

"What are you doing?" Sirius bit out more aggravatingly than he intended; after the sporadic events, he had been pressed to the edge. There was no spark of recognition in Harry's eyes, just desperate fear. Sirius shook his shoulders in frustration. "Harry, look at me. It's just me!" Sirius whispered.

Harry gave a stifled shout of alarm. Madly, he lashed out, throwing out his arms seemingly out of blind desperation. Sirius saw more than felt Harry's fingers claw across his cheek. The wound was just a scrape of skin but Sirius reeled back as if burned. At the slight slip, Harry twisted free, ducking under Sirius' outstretched arm and diving for the door. Reflexively, Sirius reached out to trap him, his hand closing on an unnaturally thin arm.

There was a deafening crash of breaking china as Harry's elbow tipped a tall stack of plates.

Sirius paled and Harry's trashing grew desperate. Clamping a hand over Harry's mouth a second time, Sirius drew back into the shadows.

The rain came down in torrents, with large spats of water the size of his knuckles pounding into his face as he stumbled in darkness towards his manor. Sirius followed the path by memory, a hand outstretched to block the low branches and another placed lightly over the slight weight over his shoulder. Harry was silent. Sometime between the moment when he half dragged half carried him through the orphanage's back door to the moment when he ran down the alleyway to apparate, Harry had ceased struggling completely and hung like a limp doll over his shoulder.

He carefully fixed the hood over Harry's head and adjusted the cloak, ignorant of the water pounding over him. The boy was light and he was thin; the water-logged cloak felt heavier than him. Sirius examined the Harry's face fixedly, trying hard to remind himself that it was not a dream, that he was alive and breathing and well; through the rain, Sirius could only see the dim light refracting from Harry's glasses. But it was, it had to be. Harry… he had been frightened because he couldn't discern Sirius' face in the dimly lit kitchen.

Sirius pushed his pace. It would be bright once inside.

The manor loomed ahead, dark and imposing through the rain and the thick ring of trees surrounding it. After fourteen years of neglect, the ivy framing the walls had grown across the windows, until the entire residence bore the appearance of abandonment. Sirius never restored it.

The rippling prickle across his arms signified the first set of protection barriers passed, and the heavy oak doors swung open for him on its own accord. The overhead lights brightened systematically as entered the room, his drenched coat soaking the floor and leaving muddied boot prints on the carpets.

He wasn't quite sure where he was going. He climbed the stairs in a numb daze, aware of only the barely audible breathing against his ear and the sound of his footsteps padding softly through the halls. Sirius found himself pushing open an oak door and entering a room that he was only recognized the morning after, and pushed back the blankets to a previously made bed.

Sirius knelt and carefully eased the boy from his shoulder. Harry's head lolled back against his arm as he was shifted, and Sirius stilled again. Tentatively, he brushed a few locks of wet hair back from Harry's face and let his fingers linger over the pale scar that cut across his forehead. Stiffly, he switched on a nearby lamp that illuminated Harry's face in sharp detail.

Sirius choked on a gasp of air he hadn't realized he had been holding. Something in him was itching to break, a torrent rushing and heaving against a crumbling wall, and he wanted to sink to his knees, scream himself hoarse, and envelope his godson in a suffocating hug all at once. A year… a year of thinking Harry had been dead, rotting a gutter, he had been alive, and well, and…

//'Oh, you mean that one who was with that troublemaker?' the café owner spoke in slow mumblings tones, and if Sirius hadn't been breathless and shaking from the run, he would throttled her in his impatience. 'The dark haired one, thinner than a stick? They're St. MaryAnn's children, but why are you…?' \\

St. MaryAnn… he had stopped listening to the woman after that and had taken off running in the opposite direction. Sometime that afternoon, he even shook Remus off and went hunting down the place on his own. It was harder to find than the Room of Requirement on a moody day…

Sirius' hand shook as he lowered Harry against the four-poster. Peeling back the waterproof cloak, Sirius pulled back the dry blanket and tucked the boy in bed.

All those months of grieving, Harry had only been a few miles away from Diagon Alley. Sirius didn't know what to think. All those times, they had been so close. Sirius held his breath, fighting the ridiculous urge to scowl and smile at the same time. Why did it feel as if the entire world had been against him?

Sirius pulled up a chair beside the bed and stared at the boy listlessly. Why weren't you found sooner?

A hazy minute passed before Sirius was aware of the hand resting against his shoulder. He threw it off with a jolt and stood quickly. Sirius stilled when he recognized his visitor.

Remus' face was drawn. He wore no coat, an obvious sign that he had been waiting for Sirius in his home for some time, but Sirius couldn't recall seeing him as he passed the living room.

"Where have you been?"

"I…" Sirius licked his lips, his throat suddenly very dry.

Remus frowned, but when his eyes flickered to the form Sirius had been shielding, everything slipped.

"You… what have you done?" Remus quietly whispered.

Sirius would have shrugged that question off without a word on normal occasions, but that clipped and accusing tone incited a surge of indignant anger that felt foreign. Setting his jaw stubbornly, Sirius glared back in silence.

Remus had suggested leaving Harry until they received further information. Always the cautious one, Sirius knew, but he still couldn't help feeling the sharp sting of betrayal. After a year of blind wandering, while his godson was some unknown institution, Sirius' thoughts were running in circles about how to get Harry back, but Remus had told him to go to Dumbledore. It was the headmaster who lost Harry last year; why would he involve Dumbledore into another situation Harry was involved in? Dumbledore made too many mistakes Harry had to pay for…

Remus grimaced, "You've completely flung caution to the wind, Sirius."

"I was not going to leave Harry there," Sirius whispered vehemently.

"It was only for a while, maybe not even a day," Remus stared at the sleeping boy fixedly as he spoke. "I contacted St. MaryAnn's for a file matching Harry's description, and…"

"But he is Harry!" Sirius angrily cut in. "You don't need to…"

Remus wearily shook his head, "Something must have been wrong for him to run like that."

"He just couldn't see us clearly," Sirius stubbornly insisted, his eyes hard. "This boy… his eyes, his hair, his face, his scar… everything! He is Harry!"

"Sirius…"

"Don't try to deny it!" Sirius hissed out, his voice rising to a harsh shout. He had a vague idea that he sounded almost hysterical. "I don't care what you say. I don't care if you think I'm going insane. I know this is my godson, and nothing you say will convince me otherwise!"

"I wasn't trying to tell you that he isn't Harry!" Remus shot back, although his tone was considerably softer and even a little wary. "This boy looks like Harry in every way. There's no way he could be, but this morning, he was obviously very frightened, as if he didn't recognize us. Something was wrong…"

Sirius bit his lip and turned his face away.

"And you kidnapped him," Remus continued softly. "I knew you were going to do something rash when I left, but I never thought… do you have any idea how many laws you are breaking?"

"I don't care," Sirius stonily replied.

Remus' mouth hardened into a thin line, but that softened as his gaze drifted back to the sleeping boy. It was a long time before Remus spoke again.

"Sirius, I know you're upset. I know that all these things" Remus gestured distantly with a wave of his hand, "affected you much more than you let us see, or perhaps you don't even see it. Harry's disappearance was the last straw, and what Severus said to you that day was the last thing… Sirius, I that you somehow think all of this is your…"

…god, he was being pitied.

Sirius wanted to yell out with bruised pride, but his throat seemed to have adhered to his windpipe. It was so utterly insulting, made worse as it was Remus…

Damn it, he didn't need to be pitied, much less from Remus. One moment, Sirius had been defending his godson, but the next, Remus had twisted the entire issue around to him as if it had been entirely his own fault that he was acting that way. And then, he looped Azkaban and Snape into the argument as well, as if that in some convoluted way was involved with Harry's disappearance. Yes, as if it had been his fault, as if everything that had happened had been his fault! Why wouldn't he just go away and let him be?!

"What I'm saying isn't doing much good, is it?" Remus whispered. It wasn't a question at all.

"What are you trying to say? That I didn't do this? That I didn't make Harry disappear?" Sirius gritted his teeth, glaring at his friend out of the corner of his eye. "I know I didn't do those things! I…" His voice cracked. Sirius drew a long breath and buried his face in his hand wearily, "you know what, I don't care. Say want you want."

Remus didn't speak but gently placed a hand on his shoulder. Sirius couldn't help but notice the hesitation reflected in his face, as if he were approaching some sort of ferocious and untamed beast in their dangerous creatures class.

"Don't look at me like that." Sirius frowned, shrugging off Remus' hand sharply.

"I'm sorry."

Remus' words were soft and calm, but the expression that crossed his face was the first signs of pain Sirius had seen in years. He felt regretful, suddenly, but he was too weary to say anything apologetic. Sirius stiffly turned away from Remus and focused on Harry's hands.

"You're both soaked," Remus said softly. His professor façade firmly in place, he dried them both with a lift of his wand. "Let's talk and let Harry sleep in peace, okay? You haven't eaten since this morning."

Remus sounded soothing, and Sirius found his frustration slowly dissipating. He sighed, suddenly aware of how weary the previous events had left him and how weary he felt. Stealing another glance at Harry, Sirius managed a slight nod in compliance.

//

He could never quite ignore that beeping. That was what he woke up to, that was what he fell asleep listening. The calm, rhythmic drumming of the heart… James had tried holding his breath sometimes to make it go faster. But after a while, listening to it became aggravating…


He wanted it to be quiet for once, shut the stupid thing off and let him be. Or listen something else. He wanted to hear a person's voice, anyone's, just as long as it was different. But no one ever came to see him. The other had families, but who did he have? He couldn't even remember…

He wanted to. Gods, he wanted to. He racked his mind for any semblance of a face, but all he seemed to grasp were empty shadows. He tried so hard everyday but all he could get were blinding headaches that seemed to slit his head in half.

He hated this room. The whiteness, the cleanness, the emptiness. He wanted to hurl on the floor if that just meant he could add some flaws to the damned purity of the place.

He hated how the nurse would always set his bland tray of food in front of him with her pinky daintily raised, and the way the custodian tried not to look in his eyes as he cleaned the floor, and the way visitors peeked inside curiously as they walked down the corridor.

He wanted to get out; why didn't anyone come?

'He's still not identified?'


The nurse was back again. Voices, people to keep him company even if he couldn't speak with them. He would have breathed a small sigh of relief if he didn't know it would hurt. Damn broken ribs…


'No. None of those pictures matched.'


'Poor boy. How old is he?'


'We tried to do a skeletal scan, but he seems to have suffered malnutrition sometime in his past. It's hard to say. We're guessing around fourteen.'


'Did you see those cuts? He wasn't hit by a car.'


'Yes, I know. And that burn in the shape of a skull on his back. We probably need to surgically remove it.'


'That burn's been there at least three days. Those injuries were spread over a period of a week. He wasn't hit by a car. If you ask me, I say he was kidnapped. He probably can't remember because he doesn't want to.'

'Post Traumatic Stress doesn't make you lose your memory completely, you know that. It's got to be some sort of head injury.'


A grunt. 'He just has a minor concussion. He was most likely kidnapped and tortured. Who knows what his family did.'


'Are you saying…?'

'They probably didn't want to pay the ransom, that's what I'm saying…'

'Oh, that poor boy. The memory loss really seems like a blessing, doesn't it?'

\\

James slid his eyes open before his mind clear, his thoughts sluggish and his limbs heavy. For a frozen second, he thought he heard the steady beeping of the heart monitor and the nurses' whispered words. He was caught in the drug induced daze again, watching dreams fly by without any sense of reality or fantasy, unable to discern which were real and which were false; with half an ear, he listened greedily to those visitors speaking with the patients of the nearby rooms, and with the other, listened to the droning rhythm of the monitor. James' breath hitched painfully in his chest in panic.

But the ceiling was red.

James was awake with a jerk, eyes darting frantically through the room. But instead of the whitewashed walls of the hospital, a richly ornate chamber met his eyes. James gaped when he took in the four-poster bed with vermilion overhangs, the roaring fireplace which burned with warm and crackling fire, and the neat set of matching divans that were aligned close to his bed. The walls were simple but intricate all at once, laced elegantly with gold vines and intertwined themselves all the way to the ceiling. James squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, taking deep calming breaths that failed to calm him down.

He was dreaming, he had to be dreaming. This was another one of those strange dreams he had that never made any sense. This was like the chamber he imagined at the hospital: a red and gold room ringed with six four posters, when he had still been desperately searching his mind for his memories. But he no longer tried to remember, where did this…?

Tentatively, James pushed the covers back, reluctant to even wrinkle the rich sheets. The velvet felt thick and very expensive, and James was sure they cost a fortune just to maintain. The carpet luxurious, looking thick enough to swallow up his entire foot. James gulped nervously, feeling out of place in his tattered, hand-me-down clothes.

Slowly, he eased himself up, and nearly cried out at the sharp pang of pain that cut across his side. Drums pounded his head mercilessly and the slight movement and he fought to hold back a groan. His throat felt skinned. There was a slight ache in the point right between his eyes. James relaxed against the bed, recognizing all the signs in an instant; within a few hours, he was going to be bedridden with yet another fever.

But he had been only in the rain for…

// There was a blur of black at the corner of his eye. It was odd, it felt odd, like he had been watched like a senseless prey and when a cold hand clamped tightly over his mouth, he knew that he was in more trouble than ever before. And that stranger dragged him, trashing and screaming, through the back doors with a grip so tight around his ribs that he could barely even breathe… \\

Abruptly, the past events flooded back to him in vivid details, nearly suffocating him as the stranger nearly had. James bit his lip until it began to hurt. He had been kidnapped. Kidnapped, just like those doctors described…

// It was dark. He couldn't move. There were walls on all sides, and he was trapped in a darkness that looked black but smelled red, with his eyes caked and seal shut like tape over a cracking window. A word, a laugh, and then something dug into him, carving into his arm, twisting until he was screaming on the top of his lungs even though he knew not one person was there to help him and only one person there to hear him and that one person wanted to hear him scream. And James was kicking out, knowing that this wasn't how he wanted it to end, and knowing how he didn't want to die… \\

James' hands knotted in the bed sheets as he clenched them into fists. His breath was coming in erratic gasps and he was shaking uncontrollably; he knew he was beginning to panic. That voice in the back of his mind was shrieking out in fear, but knowing at the same time, that where would be no one to help when he truly needed help. Darkness, they were going to lock him in darkness, lock him… lock him… like… no, no, no!!

I'm going to die…

*