Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Anything you recognise belongs to JK Rowling, anything else is mine!

Authors note: Thanks to everyone who reviewed, much appreciated. I hope you like this chapter as I had serious writers-block during the middle of it. Please keep on reviewing, and sorry for any mistakes, feel free to abuse it in review form. Anyways, happy reading…

Chapter 3: Truth into Nightmares

History is a nightmare from which we are trying to awaken…

The battered form of Harry Potter stumbled past the threshold reaching out to steady himself on anything he could. White faces stared at him with wide eyes, but no one talked, no one dared to. He coughed, they flinched. He fell, they watched. He called for help; they just stood too shocked to do anything.

Finally Ginny broke the stunned silence.

"H-Harry?" There was no reply, just a painful cough. She stepped forward and knelt by his form that lay helplessly on the floor. His breathing was fast and raspy and he clutched his chest protectively.

"Harry, please Harry talk!" Ginny cried shaking him as his breathing became even faster. "Mum! Mum! What's wrong with him? Help him for goodness sake! Mum!" She cried in between sobs to her mother. Tears were falling one after another down her pale cheeks as she stared helplessly at her mother, the one she thought could do anything.

A hand squeezed Ginny's shoulder. It was Lilly; she was staring at Harry cautiously. It was hard for her, to see this helpless man that she knew was her father. Something she should never of seen.

"Harry! Don't do this Harry, please. Wake up! Wake up!" Ginny sobbed, still shaking his lifeless body vigorously. Remus stepped forward with his wand drawn. He knelt down with sympathy in his eyes and pointed his wand at Harry's chest.

"Enervate" he whispered. Suddenly Harry heaved and coughed. He turned on his side and tried to pull himself off the floor. As if she had come out of a trance Mrs Weasley rushed forward and helped him into a chair, closely followed by Hermione.

Ginny still was on the floor shaking silently. Her mind was dizzy as she tried to bring to realisation what had happened. Harry is back, after all this time. She thought. He's back…

The rest of the family were behind her, all silently staring at the familiar figure they all thought to be dead that was now sitting at the kitchen table. The children looked warily at the stranger that they had so many times seen in photographs and heard so many times in stories, but he was real, not fictional like they had thought.

"Harry, you…you look terrible." Said Hermione quietly, he replied by a stiff nod. "We…thought you were dead…but…your not." She continued. She pulled him into a tight hug and started crying. Ron came up and stood by their side, with a lopsided smile on his face.

"Its good to see you, mate." Ron said softly

"Help…I need help." He gasped, coughing up blood and doubling over, when Hermione finally let go.

"I-I can help…" Mrs Weasley stuttered but was interrupted by Remus.

"No, I think they might be a bit more severe than normal injuries, Molly. We need to get him to St Mungos." Remus stared at the wounded man before him. How could have this happened? Why now? What happened? Where was he? Thousands of questions entered his mind but he knew they had to wait, there was no other choice.

Remus had never truly forgotten that part of his life. When Harry had disappeared he had moved on, from the marauders, from Harry, but now this had happened and Remus was beginning to regain his past once more. He had married Tonks like he had wanted, had two wonderful and clever children, if not a bit clumsy, but there had always been something missing for him, part of him that wanted to be found but couldn't. Until now, that is.

Harry wheezed, coughed and spluttered. He cried in pain and clutched his stomach in agony. He had come too far to black out now, he had found them and was in safe hands, but he needed to tell them the truth; the whole truth.

His head spun as he coughed up more blood, he could feel the warm liquid shoot up his throat and taste the crude flavour of his own blood on his tongue. He wretched and bent over to vomit, his condition was getting worse – he could feel it.

I'm dying. I'm really am dying. He thought bitterly. People gasped around him as he fell to the ground but they were past his concentration, all he could hear now were the screams in his head. His vision unfocused then focused again and again. He covered his ears, trying to block out the blasted screaming but it was still there, filling his mind with memories and noise.

"You're going to have to break sometime, Potter"

"Never!"

Screams. Pain. Laughing.

"Aww, did that hurt the famous Harry Potter? I thought you were meant to be strong. The cure is simple. Just tell me, Potter, and I'll leave you be…for the time being."

"NO!"

More screams. He crumbles to the floor and the figure leaves him to fall into unconsciousness like he had so many times before.

Flash.

He was back in the burrow on the floor. Blurs of people surrounded him as he rolled around trying to make the screams go away. He screamed as the headache tortured his mind, hurling him into so many memories. His voice was raw and his eyes were watering. He shut them tight, hoping that it would make them go away but they didn't.

Darkness.

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3 days he stayed like that, lifeless and still. 3 days of peaceful darkness for him, of dreamless sleep and rest. 3 days she spent by his side, never taking her eyes off him in case he might slip away from her again. 3 days Lilly stayed next to her mother, talking quietly to her and hoping that her father would come back to them like she had always hoped.

Dreams were becoming reality, and nightmares were becoming truth.

The healers worked their magic on him and he was fully recovering, but there were some things that could not be mended. Everyone had their demons, Harry just had more. When his three days of peace were finished the demons haunted him every minute of the day and night. There was nowhere he could escape to now, no way to rid of the terrible memories inside of him. Only to forget, but he could never really obliterate them.

Every light blinded him, every noise was two hundred times louder to his ears, every smell was overpowering, every touch burned his skin, and there was no way out of this hell hole. When he was at Hogwarts in the hospital wing the white walls had been so boring and St Mungos was no different, if not even more white. He spent all day staring at the bright white walls in front of him, trying to ignore the gnawing inside of him, trying to forget everything.

Ginny had stayed by his side since he had been in hospital. Holding his hand and gently talking to him, filling him in about the past years. He tried to grasp onto the fact that he had missed so much, but it was hard. Lilly was 14 now, she was about to start her fourth year at Hogwarts, there was so much he needed to know, so much he wanted to know.

He had only seen Lilly once since he had been in hospital, when he had woken up. She was standing next to Ginny expressionless. She had been cold and stiff towards him when they had talked, and had rushed off quickly to the Burrow when Mrs Weasley had come to fetch her. He knew she was going to find it hard to accept that he was back again, but he had to try to make her understand.

Starting with the truth.

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The fox slips between the jumbled dustbins, his ears carefully listening to his surroundings. Twice he is disturbed but only by the odd night-time creature. His curtain of greasy black hair hangs beside his haunted features, hiding the large, hooked nose of the fox. He knocks on a battered door and another man, the traitor, opens the door and lets the fox in, bolting the door behind them.

"She's becoming restless," the fox spits at the traitor. "I suggest you hurry up."

"I'm trying the best I can…"but the fox interrupts.

"It's not good enough, Pettigrew. We need him back before he tells his friends the truth. Potter can not escape this time. He knows too much" the fox stalks up and down, angrily talking to the traitor.

"I know…I will do it soon, I promise. He will come to you," the traitor stutters, "soon."

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Harry lay in bed sleeping while two redheads sat watching, a daughter and a mother. Both were alike yet both were unmistakably different. One loved the man lying in bed resting; the other was learning to hate him, yet both had some unknowable force connected to him, and that could not be helped.

Ginny hadn't left his side for four days now; she was tired and hungry but didn't want to leave his side in case he disappeared again, like he had before.

"Y-you should get some rest, mum. I'll watch him, go home and sleep." Lilly said to her mother, looking concerned. Ginny softly smiled and glanced at her husband.

"Are you sure?" Lilly nodded and her mother rose from the chair. "I won't be long, I promise." She left the room leaving Lilly alone with her father, for the first time in years.

She watched him cautiously, with an ever growing coldness in her eyes. She would never forget what he had done, never. She looked at his messy black hair, his emerald green eyes that were so much like hers…wait...eyes?

"Lilly?" he whispered hoarsely. Lilly gulped, she didn't want to talk to him, not now, not ever. Her eyes widened in fear, what should she say?

"Y…yes?" she stuttered uncertainly.

"I'm sorry; I never meant to hurt you." Lilly stayed silent, waiting for something but she did not know what. Nothing came.

She said the first thing that came to mind t break the terrible silence.

"How could you?" her voice sounded hurt and angry. She stared at him with daggers in her eyes, but she could feel the tears threatening to fall. There was a pause

"I…I need to tell you something…something important." He said softly, ignoring her question. He sat up in the bed, and turned to face her. "Please, don't be angry I…" she jumped up abruptly scraping the hard wooden hospital chair backwards on the floor.

"No."

"What?"

"I said no. Don't tell me anything. I don't want to know."

"Lilly don't be stupid." Harry said.

"No, I wont let you do this." She cried.

"Lilly-"

"Do you know what happened when you left us father? Do you know how much pain you put us through, put me through."

"Look Lils, I'm-"

"Sorry? So you've said, but it doesn't fix what you put us through. I stayed up every night hoping that my father would come back to me. Hoping that one day I might get a birthday present, or even a card from my dad. But I never did. I watched all the other kids play happy family, and play games with their dad's and thought 'Why can't that be me? Why can't I be the happy family for once?' Do you know why? Because my dad left me, left without even leaving a note." Angry tears streamed down her face as her voice grew louder. "You said you would always be there for me, dad. But you weren't. And I will never forget it, never." She turned to walk out of the private ward.

"Please, Lilly listen to me…" she turned around quickly, her red hair flailing around her.

"No! You listen to me. September 1st, my first day at Hogwarts. Mum, couldn't come to say goodbye to me. I sat on that station and watched all the other children say goodbye to both their parents. Do you know how that felt? To be the only one on that platform that didn't have anyone to say goodbye, no one to hugor to see me onto the train. Do you?" Harry gaped in surprise at his child, who had tears streaming down her face as she screamed at her own father.

"NO! You don't, because you weren't there. You were never there for me like you said you would be. I gave up hope on you years ago, dad, and I don't plan to trust you ever again." With that she stormed out ignoring Harry's shouting at her; she strode out of St Mungos and onto the muggle high street, not noticing the black cloaked figures watching her every move.