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Transition chapter to the trials. It was not originally supposed to contain what it does.

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Home Truths

Rufus opened the letter cautiously. He didn't really think Harry would have sent him a letter that would explode, of course, but he was not sure that he wanted to know what was in it. None of the post he'd received in the past few days was good, though some of it was simply confusing, like the message he'd received detailing Henrietta Bulstrode's sudden burning desire to work with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to establish an Augurey sanctuary. Rufus had simply passed it along to the appropriate people and decided not to ask.

This note was simple, but it contained words that made Rufus burn.

November 11th, 1995

Dear Minister Scrimgeour:

It seems that your Aurors are not yet fully purged. I have discovered that a Muggleborn Auror, Homer Digle, has been writing to the Daily Prophet as Argus Veritaserum. He is closely connected to Dumbledore, though almost no one knows this. I believe him to be a deep-cover member of the Order of the Phoenix, and perhaps one of a number of Muggleborn students who went to Hogwarts during my mother's years there and became interested in sacrificial ethics due to Dumbledore's teaching. He would be the one who arranged matters so that Dumbledore could cast his spell, I think. You may want to purge him now, since he is, rather unaccountably, still there.

Harry James Potter.

Rufus put the letter down and stared into space. He knew Homer Digle, though he would not have been able to say the man was Muggleborn. He had explained to clerk after clerk that, yes, he was connected to the pureblood Light wizarding family Diggle, but his ancestors had chosen to spell their name differently due to a disagreement with the head of the family several centuries ago.

And that explains why I never thought to look for a connection between him and the Headmaster, Rufus thought grimly. I know all of Dumbledore's allies among the Light wizards, or I thought I did. Perhaps that was another matter that would have to be investigated, though, given the pressure that the Light wizards had put on him over the past few weeks to free their leader, Rufus was fairly sure that he did recognize all of them by now.

He stepped to his door and looked out. This morning, he had two Aurors on his door. He'd noticed the change a few days ago, and hadn't commented on it. If his old comrades wanted to make sure the Minister was well-guarded, he would hardly wish to interfere with that. It might be what saved his life one day.

"Auror Wilmot," he said, since Auror Feverfew was still recovering from the burns he'd taken at Fiona's hands a few weeks ago.

Edmund Wilmot snapped to attention and glanced at him. Rufus frowned. He didn't always like the man, though it was true Wilmot did impeccable work. There was something a bit too wild in his movements, and he smiled as if he were about to bite.

"Yes, sir," said Wilmot, though, perfectly polite, so Rufus went ahead and gave him his mission.

"I need you to find where Auror Digle is working, and bring him to me at once," said Rufus. "I have some disturbing news for him."

Wilmot's eyes lit. Rufus wondered for a moment if he could possibly know the truth, then shook his head. No, I'll be questioning Digle myself, and probably extracting memories from him for a Pensieve. Wilmot wouldn't be so eager if Digle knew something that could condemn him, too.

Unless Wilmot knew but Digle didn't know…

Rufus willed the thoughts away. Caution was one thing, but he couldn't become paranoid. Cleaning up the Ministry was a bigger job than he'd thought, that was all. He watched as Wilmot bowed and hurried off.

He spent a few moments speaking with Auror Feverfew, ascertaining that his burns were healing nicely, and then went back into his office, and confronted yet another disturbing message, this time from Madam Amelia Bones. She still held her position as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and though matters had flipped, rather, so that Rufus was her supervisor rather than the other way around, she still wrote as steadily and unflappably as ever, giving suggestions for new laws and new squadrons that she thought were a good idea.

Right now, she was making two suggestions she must think had their roots in sterling good sense.

Rufus didn't like 'em.

He warily studied her first proposal. True, on the surface it sounded interesting. With Death Eater numbers building again, and the Aurors still in demand for all their regular work, it made sense to designate a squad just for the capture and tracking of Voldemort's forces. They'd had great good luck a month ago, capturing a number of Death Eaters after a battle at a valley in Wales, but they wouldn't have that again. You-Know-Who had who-knew-how-many followers by now. There were trained war wizards n other departments who were wasted behind desks. They could become the Death Eater Removal Squadron.

Rufus was remembering what it had been like when the Aurors, briefly, had been authorized to use the Unforgivables in their campaigns against the Death Eaters in the First War.

He would not see that happen to them again.

He settled for scratching, "Needs reworking," at the top, and then turning to her second suggestion. This was the one that made him uneasy about Dumbledore's spell, and how deeply it might have taken hold.

Madam Bones wanted to lay the creation of a new department before the Wizengamot. The department would have the innocuous name of Investigation of Magical Disturbances. That could mean almost anything, from Unspeakable-like work to training for Obliviators.

What it was, as Madam Bones described it, was a means of registering and tracking Lord-level wizards. It would include monitoring children who showed signs of growing into such power eventually, so that, in the words of the proposal, "no child might ever be abused by his or her fearful guardians again."

Rufus could translate that. So that we will never have a Harry Potter on our hands again. The main reason Harry had terrified everyone was the suddenness of his appearance. Lords built their magic steadily over a long period of time, and rumors ran before them; no one had been really surprised when Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald, and there were rumors of You-Know-Who long before he launched his first raid. The wizarding world had a chance to adapt to them, to adjust their thinking and political processes to fit around them. But no one knew what to do about Harry.

Rufus didn't like it.

He was still frowning at it when the door opened, and Wilmot escorted Homer Digle in. Digle was frowning in his turn, as though he didn't really understand what this was about. He met Rufus's eyes with what looked like honest puzzlement.

"Is something wrong with my family, sir?" he asked.

"I know that you have betrayed us," said Rufus, seeing no need to hush things up at this point in time. "You must have let someone into Albus Dumbledore's cell, and you sent articles to the Prophet to fan the flames when you must have known you could encourage illegal conduct. What is your excuse?"

Digle's hand went for his wand. He'd always been fast, Rufus remembered, but that was part of the reason he had his own wand already out. He started to lift it.

Wilmot snaked a hand down and grabbed Digle's wrist, squeezing. The other man let out a scream as the bone shattered. He fainted with the pain, and then sagged against the other Auror, who held him up easily.

Rufus frowned, but let it go. Yes, Wilmot was violent—it was the reason he'd never advanced—but they'd hired him in spite of that, and sometimes his unusual strength came in handy. "Take him to the cells, Edmund. You're in charge of guarding him for now."

"It will be my pleasure," said Wilmot, baring his teeth.

Rufus looked hard at him.

"Imagine," Wilmot continued, without missing a beat. "Drawing a wand on the Minister."

That didn't seem to be the reason he'd broken Digle's arm, but Rufus let that go, too. I can't sack someone just for being odd. "Quite," he said, and then turned back to the business of deciding what to do about the more difficult business of his office, while Wilmot dragged Digle off to the cells, whistling a merry tune.

Rufus wished his life were that uncomplicated.

Harry rolled his eyes. His correspondence with the Burkes and the Belvilles wasn't going well.

He sat in a room near the stairs up to the Owlery, biting the end of his quill until the feather went damp and matted between his teeth. The letter on the desk in front of him had gone no further than the salutation. Harry wasn't yet sure how to answer the delicate mixture of praise and threats he'd got from Compton Belville. When Harry had told him rather sharply that, yes, he did plan on allying with Muggleborns, Compton had apologized, but then asked for several magical artifacts in return for his family's alliance with Harry. All of the artifacts were Dark Arts ones mostly used in torture, though Compton had provided "alternative" uses for them.

The Burkes were, in their way, worse. Their one infallible point remained that they wanted some artifacts from the Black estates, and other families that the Burkes had married into or descended from, but didn't carry the name of. Adelina Burke had told Harry earnestly that they could bring Ministry records to show that they did have the rights to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, to at least half the land on which Malfoy Manor currently sat, and to the Garden, the Parkinsons' estate.

"You look deep in thought, Harry. Care to share?"

Harry jumped, sending his letters flying in the wind of his motion, but luckily the semi-permanent Levitation Charm he had around him at all times scooped up the flying papers before they could hit the floor and smudge the ink that already covered them. He turned around and saw Regulus standing in the doorway—well, leaning in the doorway, because Merlin forbid he stand up straight—and smirking at him.

"Regulus." Harry relaxed. "Snape said that the Ministry was questioning you. Did they finally stop?"

"Finally," said Regulus, with a roll of his eyes. "I stunned them the first time I appeared, and they were willing to accept, temporarily, that I was who I said I was. Then I guess 'formerly dead Death Eater' on the paperwork turned a few heads, and I got hauled in for further questioning. They were most disappointed when I told them that I'd turned my back on Voldemort years ago, and couldn't tell them anything about his current activities."

"Did they treat you badly? Did they—"

"No, no," Regulus soothed him. "Just asked every question they could think of, and got me tangled up in all the paperwork they could think of. But I'm free and clear now. They know I'm a Black, that I'm loyal to you, and that I'm the legal heir to all the Black estates and properties." Abruptly, he grinned, and strode across the room to catch Harry in a hug. "Severus told me that you did something fairly spectacular yesterday. I'm sorry to have missed it."

"I didn't like having to do it," Harry said softly, leaning against Regulus and floating the quill across the room so that he could hug back without getting spit on Regulus's robes. "But if she shows loyalty, then I can give her back her magic little by little." He'd granted Henrietta permission to use many small spells and charms—Lumos, for example, and medical magic—but the Dark Arts only in self-defense. He'd made her Old Blood, in a way, an idea he'd had after talking with Paton. He didn't want his allies able to kill her, but, on the other hand, he could hardly leave her free to simply curse them, either.

"I think you did the right thing." Regulus's hand ran soothingly through his hair, still holding him close. Then the sound of a second voice, behind him and also coming from the doorway, startled Harry again.

"When were you going to tell him I was here, Regulus? Honestly, are all Blacks born to be selfish?"

Harry's breath caught in his throat, and he pulled away from Regulus to peer around him. "Peter?"

Peter Pettigrew smiled at him. He looked far different from the way that Harry remembered him looking, even a year ago when Harry had freed him of the last shreds of the phoenix web. His blue eyes might have shadows in them, but they could shine with light on the surface. His robes were perfectly neat and clean, and he'd lost the starveling thinness that remained from Azkaban, and there was no beard on his chin.

"Hello, Harry," he said, and held out his arms, and Harry went to him and held him in stunned silence.

"Don't tell me," he said, when he had his voice back. "The Ministry was finally satisfied that you were what you said you were, too."

"Yes," said Peter calmly. "It took longer for me than for Regulus, of course, because they wanted evidence from me to use in Dumbledore's trial, and they had to accept that I wasn't guilty of the crime I'd been convicted of in the first place. At least Regulus never had the bad fortune to actually be arrested," he said, to Regulus, who grinned at him.

"It's a matter of skill, Wormtail, not luck." Regulus sniffed. "If you'd just had the sense to change into your namesake and run when the Aurors first came after you, then you could have come and hidden in Wayhouse with me. Wouldn't you have liked spending fourteen years as a wooden rat?"

"Spare me," said Peter.

Harry closed his eyes and grinned, fighting back his own happiness to keep it from overwhelming him. It was really true, then. He could ignore what Peter had said about giving evidence for Dumbledore's trial in the flood of joy. There was one thing that bothered him, though, and built until he had to break through Regulus's and Peter's banter.

"Where are you going to live?" he asked, drawing back and looking up at Peter. "Do you need money? A house? I can—"

"Harry Potter, taking care of the wizarding world one stray rat at a time," Regulus intoned, and then laughed at him. "Honestly, Harry, did you think I'd bring him here and make you do that? He's going to stay with me. We were just going to get settled—in Cobley-by-the-Sea, I think, since it's the most comfortable. That's part of the reason we're here. I wanted you to see the place that you're going to inherit someday, and Peter wanted to talk to you."

Harry scowled. "Regulus, I told you, I'm not going to be the Black heir."

"That's all right," said Regulus. "Quite all right, really." He reached into his robe pocket and pulled out a great sheaf of paperwork, waving it at Harry. "These are the forms that I need to sign to make someone not of the Black blood, or sympathetic with my magic, a legal heir. It'll take months to get through them all and make sure I haven't forgotten a signature or a binding seal. By that time, maybe you'll be more used to the idea, hmmm?"

Harry just rolled his eyes. Let him waste his time, then. It's not going to do him any good in the end.

"I don't think I can go to Cobley-by-the-Sea," he said instead, and nodded to the letters floating in obedience behind the desk. "I have important letters to write to my allies."

"Do they expect them back by a particular time today?" Peter asked.

"Well, no—"

"Then come with us," said Regulus insistently. "Both of us haven't seen you to talk to in far too long."

Well, that was true, at least. Harry looked from one face to the other and gave in. He did want to speak with them, if only to make sure they were all right, and he could use a bit of relaxation away from the letters. Maybe some hours of not thinking about them would knock something loose.

"Let me just speak with Snape," he said.

"Beautiful, aren't they?"

Harry had to blink back tears as he nodded. He wasn't sure what he'd expected of Cobley-by-the-Sea—a larger Grimmauld Place, perhaps, with fewer crooning portraits and no magical singing beasts and more dust.

It wasn't like that at all. The house was built into the side of a cliff in Cornwall, and the very first thing that Harry had heard when they Apparated in was the sound of the Atlantic Ocean, falling and singing and surging hard enough to make the stone around them shake. It wasn't the North Sea that lay off the coast of the beach where he'd celebrated Midsummer, but it was water, and the sound had had the power to relax him since at least the time he'd gone swimming with the unicorns.

Everything was made of stone, and covered with sea-patterns. It had taken Harry wandering through three libraries in a row to realize that the pictures were continuous, not from one room to another but from one kind of room to another. The sitting rooms contained scenes that looked like they could come from the building of the house. The libraries had a visual history of an alliance between wizards and merfolk. A war with those same merfolk marched in spirals like a maelstrom over the walls, ceilings, and floors of the kitchens. Harry could have spent hours just trying to read and decipher them all, but Regulus had tugged him insistently through the house, aiming for the lowest level, promising Harry all the while that he'd see something remarkable.

And so he did. The lowest level of the house was composed of caves—or maybe of rooms carved out of the backs of caves, with rock turned transparent so that one could see through into the wild waters beyond. Harry truly wasn't sure if the glassy material in front of him was enchanted rock or pure magic.

When he'd first seen the creatures the caves held, he'd protested to Regulus, "But they don't live around Britain!"

Regulus had nodded slyly at the water. "Tell that to them."

And, Harry had to admit, the hippocampi frolicking in the waves didn't seem to give a fig for what Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them said. They continued swimming and playing around each other, snaring weeds and fish out of the water to eat, drifting with their tails curled in sleep, cradling their tadfoals close to them so they could feed. They had fish tails from the waist down, like merfolk, but their heads and forequarters were those of horses. The horses' coats were green, though, or perhaps blue; it was hard to tell in the subtly tinted magical light that filled the cave and allowed Harry to see them. Their manes streamed languorously in the currents, and their hooves weren't true hooves, spreading out in small fins that enabled them to stroke the water more efficiently. Harry caught a glimpse of two tadfoals chasing each other, and could see that their eyes were large and gleaming, opaline.

"How long have they lived here?" he whispered, more to the hippocampi than Regulus, as if they could answer him. "Did your ancestors breed them?"

"No," said Regulus. "And they didn't try to tame them or kill them and sell them, either, which I must admit is surprising when you consider some of my ancestors. They've always been content to watch them. Maybe they were just too beautiful."

Harry nodded, unable to speak. The hippocampi bore no web, it had been one of the first things he looked for. This was what magical creatures should look like in their natural state, unfettered, content, looking as if they had never known fear.

"Wouldn't you like to live in a place like this, Harry?" Regulus asked, leaning on the glassy rock and forcing Harry, reluctantly, to pay attention to him. "Somewhere you could watch water-horses, and take delight in them? Perhaps relax after your vates activities?"

Harry looked back at the water, and a mare cupping her fins around her foal, without answering for a moment. The prospect was infinitely more tempting than it'd been an hour ago, that was for sure.

But in the end, he had to shake his head again.

"Why?" Regulus asked. "I've had some time to think, Harry, and I don't believe you anymore about not valuing the Black legacy. It might be something you'd never ask for for yourself, but you're responsible. You would cherish and love these places and these things if I gave them into your hands; I know you would. And you'd use them well, which is definitely something I can't say for most of my family. So. Why?"

Harry took a deep breath and turned his back on the hippocampi, leaning on the glassy rock, too. "You're not going to like it."

Regulus gave him a quiet smile. Peter had agreed to wait upstairs for them—probably, Harry thought now, so that Regulus could have a chance to speak in private with Harry. Without him around, there wasn't the banter, though Regulus's voice was still light when he said, "A month at the Ministry and fifteen years as a toy have taught me to get used to lots of things I don't like, Harry. I'll survive."

He really won't like it. Harry rubbed his palm on his robes and decided to forge ahead. "Because I feel like it's too much," he said quietly. "Just—too much. So, it's connected to what I told you before. Too many possessions. Too much of everything."

"You don't feel like you deserve it," said Regulus, the same way he had before.

Harry gritted his teeth. "Yes. If you must put it that way, then yes!" His voice rose into a shout on the last words before he could stop himself. He turned away in embarrassed silence, and managed to relax the pressure on his teeth at last. He leaned his forehead on the glass and watched two tadfoals knock each other silly with their tails.

"I don't think it's incomprehensible, Harry," Regulus told the back of his head. "And I don't hate your answer. On the other hand, I do think this is a relic of something you haven't faced fully yet. Gifts embarrass you. Why?"

"Please, don't," Harry whispered, and closed his eyes.

"Please, tell me." Regulus's voice was soft and earnest. "I'm not asking for you to tell me anything else, Harry, and I'm certainly not asking you to accept being made my heir yet. Just the answer to this one question. I know what my version of your answer is, but I'm sure it'll pale besides yours. Please?"

The wistful ring of his voice made Harry squeeze his eyes shut until they hurt. Then he said, to get it over with, "Because it implies too much belonging, too much notice. Gifts are things you give out of gratitude or pleasure or because you like a person or to settle a debt. I can accept that last one. Not the others."

"Why?" Regulus whispered again.

Harry tensed his shoulders unhappily. But this much pressure brought to bear on a specific point wasn't something he could resist, and he had the trust to think that Regulus wouldn't repeat this conversation to anyone else, not even Snape. "I don't want to be noticed. I hate it. And I—" Oh, Merlin. Can I say this? "The only family I've ever wanted to belong to was my own."

He felt Regulus embrace him. He felt tears swarming and struggling beneath the surface, and the urge to keep talking, just tell Regulus how badly he wanted to belong somewhere, anywhere, but how it was tangled up with the notion that the only true belonging he would ever have was back at Godric's Hollow with Lily and James and Connor, and how much he hated his parents, with a strength that frightened him, for that longing when he thought about it in too much depth.

But that would mean spilling all his emotions about his parents, because all his emotions were linked, and one hatred would drag forth others, ones Harry didn't want to admit he had, because he wanted to be able to forgive them, and how could he forgive them if he loathed them with a fury like a storm rising at sea? At least, if he kept those feelings private, then he didn't have to look up and see the knowledge reflected in another person's eyes.

He used the Occlumency pools to swallow the emotions, one by one, until he felt calmer. He opened his eyes, and looked to the side, past Regulus, and saw Peter frozen with one foot on the steps coming down from the upper part of the house, caught in the doorway just as he had been at Hogwarts.

His face wasn't etched with pity, which Harry thought he couldn't have taken, but compassion. And his eyes looked straight into Harry's, and he saw far too much. Harry wrenched free of Regulus and walked over to a different part of the glassy wall to watch the hippocampi again. He regulated his breathing, counted in Mermish, and used the other tricks that Lily had taught him to keep going when he was in the middle of a war-zone. It shouldn't be this hard. He shouldn't have this much time keeping himself to himself. He had to be strong, with the trial coming up, and Lily and James both needing all the strength he could give in the fight to save them from execution.

This was why I didn't want to look at my emotions, he thought. It'll only dredge the depths and bring up all sorts of wet and nasty things, not bright and shining fish. There's so much—Yes, he could admit it, since no one else could hear his thoughts. There's so much that's ugly in my feelings for my parents. I don't want them to see.

He hadn't finished completely sitting on his feelings when Peter said, "Actually, Harry, this is connected to what I'd like to talk to you about. I know the Seers invited you to the Sanctuary for the summer. Obviously, circumstances made it impossible for you to go. But they've renewed the invitation for you over the Christmas holidays. If you could—"

"No." Stars, no.

"Will you tell me why?" Peter sounded as gentle as Regulus had, and Harry wondered if they'd taken lessons from each other.

"I don't want them to see me." It was an efficient answer. Harry watched the tadfoals swirl around each other, doing a dance with tails linked, and shuddered at the thought of a Seer looking at him now.

He had, Merlin knew why, imagined that all of himself was the same forgiveness and belief in freedom and protective instincts that Vera had described to him when she saw him last year. But when he thought too deeply about his emotions, he was looking straight into the face of hatred, and anger, and even a vengeful instinct that he'd felt in flashes before, but was getting a full dose of now, as the trial drew closer. A quick temper was permissible, barely, if it led to him defending the rights of others. But the wash of emotion he'd felt after Bellatrix took his hand had still managed to kill Dragonsbane. Harry had thought he only hated Bellatrix and Voldemort. It was a shock to find that part of him hated James and Lily, too.

Everyone was always encouraging him to talk about his feelings, to be honest, to let them see his real emotions.

And what would they think if they could see them? They'd be horrified. Hell, I'm horrified. Harry shook his head. No. I can't release them for the same reason I can't just let my magic run wild. They're in me. I've acknowledged them. Great. Now they can go away again.

This was the reason he wasn't going to testify under Veritaserum in the trial, though once he'd thought he would. Along with the desire to save and protect his parents that would come out in his answers to the Wizengamot's questions would come his contradictory desires to hurt them and see them condemned. And if the Wizengamot heard about those, unless all the members were more strongly influenced by Dumbledore's spell than Harry thought possible a few weeks afterward, then he could bid hope for his parents' freedom, either from death or Tullianum, farewell.

In, out, in, out, he coaxed his breathing. He thought he managed to look and sound normal by the time he turned around and smiled at Peter.

"No, thank you," he said softly. "I'm glad to have you back again, Peter, but I won't be going to the Sanctuary."

They spoke to him quietly for a short time more, but seeing him adamant on the subjects they'd brought him there to address, they gave in and showed him other things about Cobley-by-the-Sea. Harry relaxed by degrees, and even managed to study the house with a great deal of pleasure. He still thought Regulus's children, if he had any, should inherit it, or failing that Narcissa and Draco, or Andromeda and Tonks, but he could admire it. There was no law against that.

"Harry."

Harry blinked and almost walked right back out of the bedroom. Draco was standing beside his bed with a strange look in his eyes. The only expression Harry could compare it to was the look he'd worn the night Harry had taken the Blood Whip Curse. (Luckily, Draco still hadn't taken revenge on Marietta, because Madam Pomfrey still could not figure out how to Transfigure her back).

"What?" he asked.

"Come here."

Harry swallowed and glanced sideways, for once hoping that Blaise would be in his bed to save him. But if Blaise was there, he had up a Silencing Charm, and one to hold his curtains closed, and another one to make even the subtlest telltale signs of his presence unnoticeable.

Reluctantly, he walked up to Draco and looked down at the bed. Something that looked like a Pensieve stood there; in fact, Harry supposed it was a Pensive. But the liquid that filled it was gold instead of silver.

Harry looked up at Draco, and quickly away. The intent stare in his eyes was simply too much, after the good hard look Harry had been forced to take at himself earlier that day in Cobley. "What is this, Draco?" He hoped for his voice to be steady, and it wasn't. Damn.

Draco gently cupped his chin and turned his face back around, stooping and kissing him with great intensity. Harry closed his eyes and yielded. It did feel good, and, as ashamed as he was to admit it, he felt like he needed it after the confusion of emotions that he'd felt earlier.

Draco backed off and said, "It's a spell I invented. I did it just the way you said. I wanted it to happen, needed it to happen, and it did. Please, Harry, look into it."

Harry swallowed, and bowed his head, and slid his face into the golden liquid of the Pensieve.

He flipped over twice, the way he might when entering a normal memory, and found himself watching himself. It was a memory of breakfast this morning, when he'd apparently eaten in an abstracted manner, staring at the wall all the while. Harry couldn't imagine why Draco had found it interesting enough to record.

Then he realized that, although he could see Draco sitting beside him and watching him, he wasn't himself, free to observe the memory and see whatever happened more objectively than either person involved could have. He felt as if he were Draco. Ordinary Pensieves didn't compel the observer to share a particular viewer's mindset. This one did.

And it wasn't just an awareness of his mind, either, like the things Harry saw when he used Legilimency on someone else. This was an absolute immersion into—

Into what Draco felt, and thought, about him, Harry realized.

He knew, for one wrenching moment, what it felt like to impatiently crave and want physical affection, not fear it as a terrible thing. He knew what uncomplicated anger at his parents felt like, the utter hatred Draco had at them for having cramped and twisted Harry's mind. He knew what right and wrong were in matters of abuse to most of the rest of the world, and he knew the pride of someone who had grown up in a loving family and was at the moment fervently grateful for it, and he knew what it felt like for someone to love him.

For just one moment, Harry had to see himself as identical to other people in the capacity to be loved and seen, and, in Draco's eyes at least, a great deal more important.

Then the moment shattered.

Harry yanked his head out of the Pensieve, all his nerves afire. He shuddered, the more so when he felt Draco's hand come down on his shoulder.

"I told you that I was going to push, Harry," Draco said softly into his ear. "This is one of those times. Now you know what I feel for you. You've had the chance to see the world through my eyes. Will you allow me to see it through yours? I would like that." He toyed gently with Harry's hair, and Harry, knowing exactly what Draco wanted to do with him and why, was amazed that he had consented to wait so long already, even if the very notion of feeling that good made him freeze, himself. "And perhaps it will help me to be more patient," Draco added, as though reading his mind, "because, believe me, there are times I'm a second away from just hauling you into one of those abandoned classrooms we use for the dueling club and not leaving until we've both broken through every single bit of your conditioning that remains."

Harry swallowed, and swallowed again. Today was a day of unexpected emotional revelations, it seemed.

And here was another one. If there was a part of him that could hate his parents, and it could exist side by side with the part of him that loved and wanted to forgive them, there was a part of him that reached greedily for what Draco was offering, even as his training came down like a cage around it.

Harry wanted. He hadn't known he could want that strongly, that there was anything of it in him at all.

He was a second away from doing as Draco asked and lowering his own mindset into the Pensieve.

And then he remembered what Draco would see if he looked right now. All that hatred, all that anger, that Harry wasn't nearly as perfect as he pretended to be. Shame flooded him, pouring like a fall of gravel across his emotions, making them all the same color and papering over the cracks.

"Not—today," Harry said. "Not just now. Eventually. After the trial."

He kept his head bowed, but Draco grasped his chin and tilted it up. He was frowning, but lightly, more as if he were trying to understand than as if he blamed Harry.

"What's wrong?" he whispered.

And Harry experienced that same overwhelming urge to tell someone that he'd felt around Regulus and Peter, only ten times worse, because it was Draco, and there was a real chance that the urge would break around his strongest resolutions. He hunched unhappily. Yes, yes, he wanted someone else to know, he could admit that, but what price would easing his own soul carry? Forcing someone else into horror and terror of him, just so that he could feel a bit better?

When he'd remolded his mind, Harry had left spots along the steel skeleton for the new emotions to grow like leaves. He was wondering now if that had been a mistake. What if he didn't want some of those emotions that other people thought of as normal? What if he should have trimmed off those leaves, because the depth of what he felt could be dangerous, given his magic?

He certainly hadn't thought that he would ever grow the emotions towards his parents that other people expected him to feel.

"I'm sorry," he answered Draco, when he'd wrestled down the immediate temptation to speak. "I can't tell you yet."

Draco leaned forward and kissed him one more time, then withdrew with a small nod and picked up the Pensieve. "After the trial, then. I hope you hold to that, Harry." He gave him a faint smile, and slid out of the bedroom.

Harry made his way to his own bed and spelled the curtains tightly shut enough that not even Fawkes, Argutus, or the Many snake, whom he'd left behind again, could get in. He just wanted to be alone for a while, to rebuild his shields and constrain his emotions and try to breathe.

Five more days. I can get through this. I can. And I can help insure that my parents aren't executed, and free them if I can, without exploding into some stupid fit of tears or rage. I can. They'll be doomed if the Wizengamot sees what I feel about them.