Notes: I've been getting a lot of grief (not here, on other places) about how Harry is acting. But think about it – if almost everyone you've ever loved died (or was hurt very badly) trying to save you, wouldn't it get to your head eventually? So I added this chapter to help some of the slower people out there understand.

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Harry snuck down the stairs. Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were in the kitchen. And he knew they were talking about him.

"It's just that it's been scaring me lately, is all," Ginny was saying.

"Well, if the same thing happened to you, wouldn't you act that way?" Hermione said.

"Yes, but it's not me."

"Congratulations. You've discovered that Harry is, in fact, a normal person."

"He never let things like that bother him. But now he does. I don't know why it's changed so suddenly."

"He was like this before," Ron pointed out. "before you were kidnapped two years ago. We had to force him to look for horcruxes. It was like he didn't care anymore. But then you were kidnapped, and he sprung into action."

"And remember after Sirius died?" Hermione said. "He wouldn't even talk to us for the longest time." There was a pause, and then she continued. "I think he always pushed it out of his mind to concentrate on getting Voldemort and all that."

"But now that Voldemort's gone he has nothing to distract himself with," Ginny said quietly.

"Exactly. And he's starting to think about everything that's happened, and now he can't get it out of his head."

"I think," Ron said, "that somehow he's convinced himself that everything that's happened – Sirius, Dumbledore, all of that – was his fault."

"But it's not."

"But that's what he thinks. Go try to talk with him about Sirius and see how far you get. I think he can live with them being dead, but he can't get rid of the thought that they died for him. In his mind that's as good as if he would have done it himself."

"Plus how you were hurt," Hermione said, referring to Ginny. "How you're head got practically beaten in. You should have seen his face in the hospital, when he thought you were dead. And when he came home he couldn't sit still. If he could have walked he would have been pacing. He blames himself for how you got hurt, and for everything else along the way."

"I just wish there was someway I could help him," Ginny said.

"You're not going to get him to change his mind," Ron said. "Believe me, I've tried."

"You have to let him go and hope he sorts it out on his own. Harry's one of those people that hold stuff in. He's not going to talk with you about any of it. So just let him know you're there for him, and hope for the best."

Harry stopped listening and went back upstairs. It was true. Every word that they had said was true. After Sirius died he had been able to push it out of his mind, but now he couldn't. Everything kept coming back, and once one thing left two more would show up. He stopped half way up and sat on the stairs. There has to be a better way to do this.

Ginny arrived on the stairs. "I guess you heard that." He nodded. "Are you okay?" He nodded again. She sat down next to him and put her hand on his back. He leaned against her.

"There has to be some way to fix this," he said. "Magic fixes everything else. Why couldn't it fix this?"

"I could always hex you." Harry laughed. "Or I'm sure Hermione knows something that could make you forget you're a person."

"Then what would I be?"

"I'm not sure. What would you want to be?"

"I think being a person is a pretty good deal."

"Yeah, me too." He sat there for a while, leaning against Ginny and thinking of how funny it would be if a person thought they were an animal, when –

"A pensive."

"Hmm?"

"A pensive. I need to learn how to use a pensive."

"Do you have a pensive to use?"

"Yeah, upstairs in that room -" He stopped, realizing that she didn't know anything about that room other than that it was there.

"The one I've never been in?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah."

"Oh... I don't know anything about using a pensive. At least not how to put new memories into one."

"Neither do I."

"I'm sure there's someone you can ask though. Remus would know."

"Yeah, but he's locked up at the moment. Unless I wait until the end of the week."

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"Remus?"

"Harry?"

"Could I ask you something?"

"Obviously." They were in the living room of Grimmauld Place. Harry had finally gotten Tonks to go away for a moment so that they could talk.

"Well, I need you to do me a favor. To teach me something."

"That seems to be all that people use me for."

"I need to know how to use a pensive. I mean, how to take memories out of your head and put them into a pensive."

Lupin raised his eyebrows. "So I suppose you have a few things bothering you that you would like to have removed?"

"Just a few."

"All you do is think about the memory, then put your wand to your temple and pull it out."

"That's it?"

"That's it. But you have to think of only that memory, or else it will get confuse with other ones. It feels a little odd, like a piece of your brain being pulled out by a string. So maybe you want to start with one that's easier to think about to get the feeling out of the way."

"I thought it would be harder than that."

"Nope. Just don't do too many at once. You don't want to fry your brain. You'll still have the memory in your head, it just won't be as clear as before. So don't use this as some miracle treatment. Magic can't fix everything, Harry."

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Harry sat in the room in front of the pensive, with his wand ready. He hoped that he wouldn't kill his brain by doing this, but it was his only hope. He couldn't go on living depressed and sad in bed forever. He had left the door to the room open, just in case.

He needed a memory that wasn't too hard to think about, but also one that he wouldn't mind not having in his head. He decided on when he had gotten chosen for the Tournament. It was significantly less dramatic than other things that had happened, and he preferred not to be reminded of it.

Here it goes, he thought. He held his wand to the side of his head and thought hard about the memory. Then he pulled his wand away. It felt exactly like he was yanking part of his brain out through a small hole. His head felt compressed in the way it did when he apparated. But then it was over. The memory swirled in front of him in a little silver stream. He put it in the pensive and looked down into it. That wasn't that bad, he thought. He bottled that memory, then sat back down and started the next one.

Three hours later, Ginny entered and found Harry slumped over near the pensive. She went over to him. "You okay?"

He nodded. "I just feel… really tired."

"Stop this for now. Here." She put her arms around him and helped him up. She led him to a couch in the room. Harry was too tired to resist. "Rest for a little bit."

She covered him with a blanket and then went over to the pensive. The memory in there was so long that it had taken him nearly ten minutes to pull out. She bottled it for him and set it by the rest. In all there were fourteen bottles, and he hadn't even gotten to Dumbledore or Sirius yet. As he had looked for easy memories he had found a bunch that he could do without – everything from Fluffy to the Yule Ball to what he had learned in class last week – and had taken them out instead of the memories he needed to remove. They could wait until later, he decided. Ginny came back over to him and ran her fingers through his hair until he fell to sleep.

End notes: These memories will be very helpful later, which is why I'm taking all this time talking about them. Remember how Dumbledore showed Harry Voldemort's life in HBP? Kind of the same thing is going to happen in my next story, so I needed to provide a place for those memories to come from.