This chapter is part of the reason that I see the book definitely getting darker.

Chapter Eight: What a Tangled Web We Weave

"Someone's coming," rasped a low, urgent voice from ahead.

"Oh, shit, it's him," said someone else, and then the noise of pounding feet grew stronger. Harry stepped around the corner just in time to see two taller students hurrying away from him, giving him a distrustful glance. Harry found it funny until he looked sideways and saw Luna Lovegood stuck to the wall with some kind of web that looked like it was made of chewing gum. Pink strands clung to her hair, her face, and her robes, and twisted her mouth shut.

"Harry!" Draco scolded as Harry stepped forward. "What are you doing? We're going to be late for Potions—"

Harry gave him a look that shut him up entirely. Turning around, Harry pointed his wand and murmured, "Finite Incantatem."

The web vanished. Luna dropped to the floor and shook her head, then stood. Her wand was still behind her left ear, Harry noticed, the long flow of her hair nearly obscuring it. She gazed at him with solemn eyes.

"Thank you," she said. "But you didn't have to do that, you know. They were under the control of Wrackspurts."

"Did they hurt you?" Harry asked. He didn't think they had, but he'd never seen that particular hex before, and for all he knew, the web could have pulled free skin or hair when it vanished.

"No," said Luna. "I think they meant to humiliate me, if you want the truth. Wrackspurts like making people's minds fuzzy, but they can't change them. They wouldn't really have hurt me, because they didn't want to hurt me before the Wrackspurts possessed them."

Harry wasn't so sure of that, but he let it go. Ignoring Draco's impatient shifting, he stepped forward and surveyed Luna for a moment. She tilted her head back so as to see him better; even for a first-year, she was small. This morning, she wore a necklace of bottle caps as jewelry. Her face was utterly smooth and calm. Harry had no idea what she was feeling.

"If anyone hurts you like that again," he said, "and I'm not around, then I want you to find the nearest Slytherin when you're free. Tell him or her that you have a message for Harry Potter, and tell them what your attackers looked like."

Luna nodded. "But why?" she asked.

"What do you mean, why?" Harry glared up the hall where the older students had gone. They weren't Gorgon and Jones, he knew. They hadn't shown that extreme a level of fear. But he was fairly sure they had been Ravenclaws. "I don't want them hurting you."

"They want to humiliate me," Luna corrected gently, "not hurt me. I said that once before."

Harry took a deep breath. "Then maybe I want to humiliate them back," he said. Draco drew in a breath beside him, but when Harry glanced at him, the other boy shut his mouth and gave him a pointed look. We're going to be late for Potions, said that gaze, and you shouldn't be doing all this anyway, since you just got out of the hospital wing. Harry ignored that in turn.

"Do you have a Wrackspurt in your head, too?" Luna asked.

"Maybe," said Harry. "I don't know. What does a Wrackspurt feel like?"

"Fuzziness," said Luna. "Not remembering what you're doing. Thinking odd thoughts, like hurting people."

Harry tried to smile, though he was afraid it didn't come out exactly the way he would have liked. "Why, yes, then. That feels like something I've been experiencing a lot of lately."

Draco clutched his arm. "Are you blind?" he hissed.

"What he said," said Sylarana. "And tell him to kindly take his hand off me."

Harry shook his arm free and watched as Luna drew a clacking necklace from the pocket of her robe. It had small silver charms on it, including a horse and a bird that Harry thought was a swan, but also many more ordinary objects—more bottle caps, sweet wrappers, pierced playing cards. Luna held it out to him, and nodded solemnly as Harry accepted it.

"That will protect you from Wrackspurts," she said. "I offered some to the people who bound me to the wall, but they didn't want one. I don't know why," she added. "I think the Wrackspurts were confusing them further."

"Thank you, Luna," said Harry. He put the necklace around his neck. Draco spluttered, but didn't actually manage to say anything, which was most gratifying. Harry nodded to Luna. "I think I can feel the Wrackspurt fading away already."

"No, that's your stupidity coming back," said Sylarana.

"You're welcome," said Luna. "Now, I have to go to class. Someone might miss me, and then they would think Heliopaths had taken me." She turned around and walked away without a further word.

Harry watched her go with a faint smile, and then Draco grabbed his arm—luckily, not the one Sylarana was wrapped around—and dragged him off in the direction of Potions.

"Professor Snape'll be furious with us if we're late," he said. "And why did you take that necklace, Harry? They're going to think you're as mad as she is."

"Some of them already do," said Harry softly, tugging the necklace's string so that it rode higher around his neck. "Speaking Parseltongue, fainting in a corridor upstairs…"

Draco stopped abruptly and reached out, clasping Harry's shoulders. Harry looked into his eyes.

"I don't think you're mad, Harry," said Draco. "I think you're unusual, and always will be."

Harry smiled slightly. "Thank you, Draco," he said, and stepped around him. "Now, as you pointed out, Snape will be furious with us if we're late." He started down the corridor, and Draco followed obediently.

"Do you like Luna more than me?" Sylarana was obviously sulking.

Harry looked down at her head poking out of his sleeve and responded in what he was sure was Parseltongue. "Of course not. I would think you would be happy about my helping her, in fact."

Sylarana turned her head and fixed him with brilliant green eyes. "Why would I be?"

"Because sometimes I might think you should bite a stupid Ravenclaw," Harry pointed out.

Sylarana crooned at him for the rest of the way to Potions, telling him what a good human she had, such a smart human. Harry smiled to himself. By the time that he found the Ravenclaws hurting Luna, he might be in a bad enough mood to at least let Sylarana threaten them, and that would probably content her. He was learning how to manage her now.

His anger tried to return at the thought of older students tormenting a first-year, at the thought of students hurting someone in their own House, at the thought of no one doing something about it, but he shoved it away. He was going to be angry enough tonight, after his first Occlumency lesson with Snape. But he had promised his mother to try to be as cool and composed as possible. He had to be, for Connor's sake.

Snape raised an eyebrow when Harry and Draco came in just before he would have closed the classroom doors, but he said nothing—until Harry turned to take his usual seat beside Neville Longbottom. Then his eyebrow climbed higher, and he said, "Up front, Mr. Potter, if you please. I think that you should partner Mr. Malfoy today."

Harry saw Neville's face fall out of the corner of his eye. The timid Gryffindor really wasn't so timid when Harry partnered him. Harry didn't point out all the obvious mistakes, the way that Hermione did, but tried his best to let Neville figure them out on his own, only lending help if he really needed it. That seemed the best way to teach Neville—in fact, the best way to teach a lot of the more fumble-worthy Potions students. Harry could only wonder that Snape didn't realize it.

"Are we starting a new potion today, sir?" Harry asked.

"No, Mr. Potter, we will be continuing our work on the Calming Draught," said Snape, his voice growing a bit sharper.

"Then I would prefer to remain and work with Neville, sir," said Harry, sitting down. Neville beamed at him. Harry smiled back. "After all, we started the Calming Draught together, so I think we should finish it."

Snape swept forward to stand over him. Harry looked up and met his eyes. Sylarana hissed softly, and he felt her sink into his skin. Her presence was in his mind now, and if Snape tried to read his thoughts in the next few moments, he was going to get a nasty surprise.

Harry had agreed to take the Occlumency lessons, and listened to Sirius's raging about it, and answered his mother's letter with a calm and reasoned one of his own, telling her that he understood and accepted every point she made. But it had been more than a week since his possession, and he had had that time to think on his own strategies for learning from Snape while keeping the man from seeing more than he should. Sylarana was one of those strategies. She was in his mind anyway, so he would make use of her willingness to be so.

And he would force Snape into the open and make him lose as many minor battles as he could. It was important that Snape know he distrusted him, and Snape hadn't won over Harry just because Harry would take private lessons from him. Whatever mad, conceited, Snapeish reason that the Potions Professor had had for thinking Harry would still trust him after his use of Veritaserum might possess his thinking again.

Snape wants honesty, does he? Harry thought. He wants me to open my mind to him? This is a place to start.

The air grew more and more tense as the Professor stared Harry down. Harry could see Connor leaning from two rows in front, looking at him. His face was pale, and so was Ron's. Hermione, who sat at the table in front of Harry and Neville, was staring at Harry in absolute shock and horror.

At last, Snape said, "Perhaps you are right, Mr. Potter. Mr. Zabini, return to Mr. Malfoy. You may partner Miss Parkinson at another time." He turned away and swept back to the front of the room.

Harry let out a small breath and faced Neville again. Neville was shaking, his head buried in his hands.

"Hey," Harry said softly, concerned.

Neville looked back up at him and shook his head. "Did you mean that, Harry?" he whispered. "Did you really want to work with me?"

Harry blinked. "Of course I do. Why wouldn't I?"

"I melt all the cauldrons," whispered Neville, as he began to copy down Snape's instructions for the Calming Draught. "And I'm just not very good at Potions. You're really good, or P-Professor Snape wouldn't have given you points last year."

Harry shrugged. "Then I should work with you, since I am good at Potions. Besides, I like you."

Neville's face lit up at that. Harry hid a sigh as he went to fetch the Calming Draught ingredients. Did no one ever tell Neville that they liked him? Harry couldn't see why. Neville had always been perfectly polite to Harry whenever he visited Gryffindor Tower, and he listened to other people's words, like he was going to be tested on them later. Harry couldn't imagine a less likely candidate for being pushed out and ostracized by his own House.

Of course, Luna got ostracized by the Ravenclaws, too.

Harry frowned and carried the ingredients back to the table he shared with Neville. So, what was it about Luna and Neville that made them targets? He could understand why he was a target, since most of the students in the school now seemed to think he was Dark. But Neville just wasn't talented at Potions, or Snape wouldn't let him be, and Luna wore odd jewelry and said odd things and carried her wand behind her left ear. Harry couldn't imagine that the others really thought those were Dark activities.

They get pushed out because people are stupid, said Sylarana. I thought you knew that.

"Mr. Potter."

Harry glanced up. Snape stood over them, and Neville was obviously shaking, trying not to slip out of his chair in a dead faint.

"I shall expect you tonight in my offices at eight-o'-clock sharp," he said.

Harry lowered his eyes and nodded, turning back to look at the instructions for the Calming Draught. He knew how to make it, but it was always good to double-check.

"Did you hear me?" Snape demanded.

Harry blinked up at him. Perhaps Snape expected defiance in all things, even this. But Harry had agreed to the Occlumency lessons. He wouldn't fight the lessons actually taking place.

"Yes, sir. Eight-o'-clock in your offices. I'll be there," he said.

Snape eyed him once, then turned away. Neville let out a shaky breath. "How do you stand him?" he whispered.

"I don't, really," said Harry, dropping in the first pinch of shrivelfig. "He stands me."

Harry let out a deep breath, put his anger in the box—this was for Connor—and knocked on the door to Snape's office.

"Come in," said Snape's voice, perfectly polished and cold. Harry opened the door and stepped inside.

He'd been within Snape's offices before, and so he knew immediately that something was different. The countless bottles of finished potions and their ingredients were gone, the shelves standing empty. The desk and chairs that usually sat in the middle of the office stood against the wall, and there was a long stretch of floor Transfigured to look like a mattress. Harry stared at it, then up at Snape, who leaned against the far wall of the office and watched him.

"Why is the mattress there, sir?" he asked.

"To catch you if you fall, Potter," Snape said equitably. "Occlumency is a trying task. I fully expect you to collapse at some point during it, if only because you are keeping too much attention focused on your mind and not enough on your body." He shrugged. "It happens to many students. It happened to me."

Harry blinked. He was thrown by Snape's tone, by the look in his eyes, by the fact that he had bothered to explain—and do it without snapping.

A moment later, as Snape stepped forward and pointed his wand, he thought he understood the purpose of answering his question like that. He stiffened his shoulders, and Sylarana took up her guard position in his mind.

"Legilimens!"

Harry felt as though someone were pushing at him, stepping through his eyes and into his mind. He fell through a tumbling chaos of impressions. Sylarana coiled around him and held him, and he stopped a few of the memories from escaping with her help.

Others, though, stormed past him and fled. He saw, briefly, the first time he managed to master wandless magic, the endless hours he'd practiced with Protego before understanding it, the time three autumns ago when his magic unexpectedly sprang up around him and whirled around his head like a ball on the end of a string when Connor had taken the last Chocolate Frog from a box of them—

And then Sylarana twisted, and pulled, and Harry found himself kneeling on the mattress, breathing hard.

He closed his eyes, not wanting to see Snape's expression just yet. He had survived the first time. And he thought he could figure out the pushing motion Snape had made. There was a certain direction to the magic, a certain way one sent his will when performing it. He could learn quickly, and if he could keep Snape from seeing important memories each time, then he might be out of danger in a few weeks.

"On your feet, Potter," said Snape quietly.

Harry stood. Snape's face was utterly blank. This time, he said, "I am going to seek out a memory you do not wish me to see. Legilimens!"

Harry grimaced as the force pushed into his mind again. He tried to stand to face it, and it was too strong for him.

He dropped into the second of the strategies he had worked out with Sylarana, choosing shreds and shards of memory, the flashes of tiny things he might remember of a summer when he was six, and sending them up like a cloud of butterflies before Snape's reaching will. Snape paused to examine some of them, and Harry whipped around and dived. He had a brief sense of vast, overarching corridors and deep black waters, his mind as wilder and stranger than he had ever thought it was, and then he felt Snape break through at his back.

Sylarana lunged and lashed, but she was too slow. Snape didn't know Harry's mind well, but he knew minds, and Harry caught a glimpse of what a skilled Legilimens could do, in that moment, how his own expertise might overpower even someone who knew his own mind well. Snape knew the general form of what he was looking for, while Harry knew only the memories he wanted to protect, and thinking of them would reveal their presence to Snape.

A memory exploded before Harry's eyes like a shower of Muggle fireworks.

"To keep Connor safe. To always protect him. To insure that he lives as untroubled a life as he can, until he has to face Lord Voldemort again. To be his brother and his friend and his guardian. To love him. To never compete with him, never show him up, and never let anyone else know that I'm so close to him. To be ordinary, so that he can be extraordinary."

Lily knelt in front of him, her clear eyes filled with love and sorrow, and kissed the top of his head. "That is correct," she said. "I'm so proud of you, Harry, for saying them all the way through and knowing what they mean."

It was the first time he'd known, really known, what the vows meant. He was six years old…

Harry shoved Snape violently out of his head. He looked up in time to see Snape stagger back against the far wall, while Harry sat down on the mattress again. Harry was pleased to see Snape sweating and panting, just as he himself was.

I'm sorry, said Sylarana miserably. He was too fast. Too strong.

Don't worry about it, Harry told her. We'll just have to try something else. Now that we really know what he can do, it'll be easier. And we still have some other strategies that we didn't try.

"Potter."

Harry glanced up. Snape was holding his wand before him, but loosely, as though he didn't intend to aim it.

"What was that?" he asked.

Harry blinked. "You know what it was," he said. "Sir," he added hastily, as the professor's face clouded. "It's one of the memories you tricked out of me with Veritaserum last year." He couldn't keep the hatred from coming out in his voice then, but he grabbed the worst vestiges of the emotion and stuffed them into the box. He had to learn from Snape. He couldn't afford to anger him too badly. At the same time, it was a relief to speak openly of an incident he'd kept from everyone. "You know that I made vows to protect Connor. Those were them."

Snape stood still for a very long time. Then he shook his head. "I can see the wounds in your head, Potter," he said. "Gaping ones, where Tom Riddle touched you and tore the memories from your mind."

Harry shuddered. Snape said Tom Riddle, but he heard Voldemort.

"How do I get rid of them, sir?" Harry asked.

"You do not," said Snape. "Not easily. That is what the Occlumency is for. Eventually, it will fill those holes with fog, with defenses, and they will not be the pits they are right now." He paused again. "And you must learn to defend yourself without your snake. Did you know that she is woven throughout your mind now, her thoughts braided around yours?"

"I knew," said Harry steadily. "We planned that. We didn't want you finding humiliating memories of James Potter, sir."

Snape's eyes narrowed. "So anxious to protect your father, are you?" he whispered. His wand came up. "Legilimens!"

Harry tried to avoid the push of the spell, but he was too late. Snape was in his head again, and this time he was hunting memories of James.

Harry created a false one as fast as he could, an ordinary time when he and James played Quidditch together, and set it in Snape's way. He barely paused before plunging on, however. Harry knew he was aiming for a specific area of his mind, but he didn't know where it was, or how to anticipate Snape's movements.

Snape found and pushed past something, a curtain that parted on a veritable storehouse of memories.

They came out in a flood.

James helping him practice Quidditch… James playing pranks with Connor while Harry watched with a fond smile…James flying a kite in spring with Connor outside the house in Godric's Hollow while Harry sprawled on the grass with a book and read about defensive magic…James tossing Harry in the air and spinning him around…James drawing his wand on Lucius Malfoy in Diagon Alley…

James expressing concern to Lily over Harry's total dedication to learning magic, the way he never laughed or had fun—

Harry pushed, and Sylarana pushed, and Snape was out again. Harry wasn't sure that it wasn't partially willing, however. Snape seemed to have found what he was looking for.

Snape was pacing up and down, rapping his wand against his knee. Harry closed his eyes. He didn't have to look at him, he thought. There was no law that said that he had to look at him. Keeping his eyes closed allowed him to better think about the techniques of Legilimency, in any case, and Occlumency, which was its counterpart. Snape had pushed, had parted a flimsy barrier. That meant that the best chance of Harry concealing his thoughts was to hide them behind a hard one.

What was hard?

Metal, said Sylarana helpfully. Stone. Scales. The ground when it hasn't rained.

Metal would do, Harry thought. He wondered if he should envision a metal door, or—

"Potter."

Harry looked up, then remembered who he was dealing with and snapped his eyes sideways. Snape said only, "That is enough for your first lesson. I want you to practice clearing your mind before the next time we meet. That is the necessary first step for Occlumency."

"Why didn't you tell me this before, sir?" Harry asked quietly.

"I wanted to see how strong your defenses were," said Snape. "And what wounds Riddle had left in your mind, that I might know the best way of healing them. Clearing your mind is the first step."

"What about solid barriers?" Harry asked. "Metal doors to stop you—to stop Riddle from peering into my thoughts wherever he wants?"

"That will not work, Potter," said Snape, all inflection stripped from his tone. "Occlumency and Legilimency are both arts of motion. A Legilimens confronting one barrier will turn around and go somewhere else. You may have felt the motion in your mind as swimming, or darting, or hunting. You will have noticed yourself that your best tactics came from moving about, either your sense of self or your memories. It is not unlike the pureblood dance, which I now know you to be skilled in. Clearing your mind is necessary because it give the invading Legilimens nothing save blankness to swim in, no matter where he goes."

Harry lifted his head. This had to be spoken, given what Snape seemed intent on revealing. "Will you be telling anyone what happens in these lessons, sir?"

"No," said Snape, his voice like a whip. "I will not. Will you?"

"I would prefer they were not happening at all, sir," said Harry. "So, no." He turned away and walked to the door.

"You must learn to defend yourself," said Snape at him. "You must learn to do so without the use of your snake. And you must heal your wounds."

Harry didn't see any reason to respond to that, since Snape already knew what he would say. He pulled open the door and left.

Snape Transfigured the mattress back into the floor, moved his desk and chairs into their rightful places, and reversed his earlier Vanishment spell, summoning the potions back to their proper place. He did all that before he allowed himself to think about what he had seen in Harry's mind.

The wounds were one thing. He had expected them. They were gaping and ugly, sunken holes stained with foulness from Riddle's touch. He had had no reason to be gentle, and he hadn't been. Snape was confident that, in time, as Harry learned Occlumency, he could heal them, or fill them and make them neither vulnerable places nor wounds any longer.

The depth of the Locusta's intervention was also worrisome, but not a surprise. She was a glowing golden braid, intertwined so deeply into Harry's mind that Snape knew trying to tug her out would cause Harry permanent damage. He would still insist that Harry learn to defend himself without her. All the Dark Lord would have to do at the moment would be to kill the Locusta, and Harry would be rendered screaming and defenseless, overwhelmed by agony. A careful, a proper, training would prevent that.

Two things did worry Snape, and they were not what he had expected at all.

The first was the sheer form of Harry's mind. Snape had walked in many different mental conceptions since he became a Legilimens, and seen innumerable wizards and witches defend and define themselves in innumerable ways. He had seen houses of the mind, labyrinths, forests, cave systems, oceans, replicas of Hogwarts or the Ministry, gardens, single large rooms, planes of drifting fog.

Harry's mind was meshed webs, strands of thought and training and memory and belief twined into one another, tangling with each other at every point. Riddle's wounds were holes in those webs, places where the strands gaped and fluttered. The Locusta was another thread in them, a new and prominent one.

Snape had searched, and sought, even as he distracted Harry with memories that did not truly matter. He had not seen one place where the webs yielded, where Harry's sense of self was free of them. Any thought he had took a tangled route along spirals and circles and branching intersections, bound as far as possible into the webs that he had already woven. And all of them wrapped as tightly as they could around the same goal, the one Harry had already told Snape mattered to him: saving and protecting Connor.

Snape did not know how such webs could have evolved on their own. They had been carefully tended.

He understood how and why, with Harry's memories of his vows and of studying. Lily—not James, evidently—had trained her son to be like this, weaving as many expectations as she could into the webs, teaching Harry what to think about the future before the future had happened.

He could not examine his own feelings on the matter, not yet. He knew that his emotions would burst from their own cocoon and savage him if he tried it. There was howling anger there, and the old hatred directed towards James Potter, and a sickness so great that he had no appetite for the late dinner he had planned—

Snape moved a sharp hand, cutting his own thoughts off. That was the reason he had decided not to think about them, because it would take him time to contemplate the full extent of what had happened.

The second thing that worried him about Harry's mind was the box. It appeared in Harry's thoughts as a small, low container of dark wood, padlocked with a strength that had stunned Snape. It floated like a ghost over the webs, indicating that Harry consciously thought about that part of his mind that way. It was not an unconscious way of seeing himself, as the webs were. It edged itself into view whenever Snape hunted, but darted away when he looked directly at it.

The box had opened, once, when Harry had cut himself off from the tirade Snape was sure the boy was about to give on the Veritaserum incident. Harry had thrown his hatred into the box, and it had slammed shut in the next moment and ghosted away again. Harry had done it with absolute ease, indicating yet another skill he had practiced for years.

Snape thought about at least six years—if he counted from the time that Harry had apparently fully understood his vows—of hatred and resentment and bitterness and any other emotion that might possibly damage his relationship with Connor, or the training he needed to help Connor. He thought about it all contained in one place, separate from the rest of Harry's mind and strictly ignored.

He decided that he did not want to think about it any more.

Snape pushed himself wearily to his feet. He was a Slytherin, and he was a former Death Eater, and he was a Potions Professor who had managed to teach for twelve years despite disliking most of his students. There was no reason for him to feel as weary and discouraged as he currently was. He had met challenges and overcome them. He would overcome this one, too.

Why did he feel as if the ground had dropped out from under him?

Because, he decided, I never expected to have sympathy for any bloody Potter.

It was not entirely true, but he made it be true for right now, and turned to his own preparations before bed.