Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!

Chapter Eighty-Six: The Last of the Potters

Harry did not wait for Draco to come out of the warded room from which Lucius had vanished, although he heard Draco curse and curse, the second one destroying a desk. Snape had called him back with a low hiss to Hawthorn's side, and Harry was stooping over her, seeing the red lines of infection spreading out from each embedded silver knife.

"We must take her to Hogwarts," said Snape, with what Harry recognized as one of his more controlled expressions. "I do not have potions that can stop silver poisoning here. She will need more than salve to insure that she heals correctly, this time; she will need the potions, and careful applications of medical magic so that she does not scar." He was holding his hands away from Hawthorn's blood, Harry noted, wary of the lycanthropic infection, even though it was the dark of the moon. "And there may be supplies we can only fetch from St. Mungo's, which will be a problem. They still make it a policy not to treat known werewolves if they can get away with it, and Hawthorn bears the Dark Mark as well."

"Leave that to me," Harry said quietly, staring at Hawthorn all the while. Silver studded her like a collar, a collar put around her life. Harry could feel an enormous weariness on her behalf. So much suffering she has endured, and still no end in sight. He put out his hand, and Hawthorn rose from the floor, Levitated in comfort. Luckily, she was already unconscious from the shock and pain. "I'll take her back to Hogwarts. You make sure Draco and Narcissa are all right."

Snape nodded, and then Harry was running steadily back through Malfoy Manor, Hawthorn skimming beside him. He steered her around corners and over furniture they'd examined for traps, letting his magic and his muscles do more of the thinking for him than his mind.

There were so many things to be done.

There were so many things he was not looking forward to doing.

But he had to do them, so Harry carefully balled up his emotions and sank them, and then reached the outside of Malfoy Manor with Hawthorn and Apparated away.

SSSSSSSSSSSS

"We need Argent-Free Potions," said Madam Pomfrey, with a helpless shake of her head. "They've just been developed to help werewolves recover from silver poisoning—it hasn't been a large area of research, for obvious reasons—and I don't know all the ingredients, so I can't just ask Severus to brew them. And the only place in Britain that has them which I know of is St. Mungo's, to treat the few registered werewolves who don't mind the stigma."

"Then we'll get them," said Harry, and stepped away from the hospital bed. Hawthorn looked slightly better. Madam Pomfrey had spelled the knives away and used a combination of salve and potion to stop the progress of the wounds. Silver poisoning was as hard to remove as most curses, however, and the list of side effects Hawthorn might suffer from it was long, even if she stopped short of dying: brain damage, loss of ability to speak, a weakening in her magic, amnesia. Not to mention the scars. The scars, Harry knew, could well be most damaging to a pureblood witch of Hawthorn's pride. "I'll get them, from St. Mungo's." He walked towards the fireplace.

"How do you think you're going to do that?" Madam Pomfrey's voice was slightly scandalized.

Harry glanced back at her. She took a step away from him. Distantly, Harry wondered what his face showed, anger or blankness, and which she would have found more frightening. "Simple," he said. "I'm the Boy-Who-Lived."

He cast a handful of Floo powder into the flames, and called "St. Mungo's!" as he stepped into them.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Harry found himself emerging from the fireplace in a large, quiet, pale room that seemed designed to calm people who might stumble into it at the middle of the night shrieking about their or someone else's magical accident. The walls were a light foamy blue, and the paintings were exclusively of landscapes, mostly mountainous ones that faded into purple and more blue, with exotic magical animals moving around in them. Harry gave his head a shake when he felt his muscles half-uncoiling. There are wards that try to get you to relax, too. He fought them off.

The door opened a moment later, and a witch with large laughing eyes and a weary face stepped into the room. "Hello, can I help—" She cut herself off with a stare, obviously recognizing him.

Harry nodded to her. "There's been a horrible fight," he said, and opened a rent in one Occlumency pool to leak pain and fear into his voice. He would use the power of his name and reputation to win what Hawthorn needed, but he was not adverse to doing even more than that, and appearing like an abused child. If other people were so determined to see him that way, he might as well oblige them when it could get him what he wanted. "A—a curse on a friend of mine. Practically a foster mother." He looked down, clenching his hands together as if he were trying with all his might not to weep. In reality, the inside of his mind had never been so dry. "She's a werewolf, and someone used the Argenteus curse on her."

The witch gave a little gasp, and Harry looked up to see her eyes glistening with tears. Yet she did cling to the questions that Harry supposed they were trained to ask in such situations. "Is she registered, dear?"

Harry gave a little sniff and nod. "Everyone knows she's a werewolf. That's wh-why the enemy chose the curse for her that he did. He wanted to destroy her." He let his voice sink, having decided a whisper was better than a wail. "He wanted to destroy me."

"Oh, my dear," the Healer murmured, and then pulled herself back on course with an obvious effort. "And she's willing to pay for the potions that she'll need to reverse the infection?"

"I'm going to pay for them!" Harry judged it worthwhile to add some indignation to his tone. "She's like a mother to me. I can't let her die!"

"Of course not." The Healer licked her lips. Luckily, Harry thought, she didn't need to ask if he could afford the Argent-Free potions, since everyone in Britain by this point knew he was the Black heir. "And what's her name, child?"

"H-Hawthorn Parkinson."

"The Death Eater?"

"The mother," Harry corrected, and now he let the wail out. "The woman who's lost her daughter and husband, and been imprisoned unfairly, and suffered from the stigma of lycanthropy, and who's going to die in just a little while if you can't give me something right now!"

Harry didn't know if it was his performance or the magic that rose up around him, rattling the paintings on the walls, that decided the Healer. Either way, she gave a brisk nod, blonde curls bouncing, and then said, "I'll be right back with the Argent-Free potions, dear." The door opened and shut behind her.

Harry flicked a hand and cast the Tempus charm. He would give her five minutes before he went after her.

She was back in four, clutching four small stoppered bottles, three of blue glass and one of green. "She must take the one in the green bottle first," she instructed him as she gave the potions to Harry. "Then the first of the others half an hour after that one, and the other two at intervals of an hour each. So an hour passes between the second and the third, and an hour between the third and the fourth. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Harry said, and debated telling her that he was a well-trained Potions student and could understand simple instructions. He decided not to. It would have been satisfying, but it would also have ruined his impression as a distraught child on the edge of breaking down. He gave her a wide-eyed, worshipful look that had her patting at her hair, looking flustered. "Thank you so much, Madam! Please, send the tally of the costs to Harry vates. What's your name?"

"Eugenia Comfrey, dear." The Healer was giving him a sort of helpless smile.

"I'm never going to forget how you helped me," Harry declared, and that was true. If she had been difficult and tried to refuse him, he would have had to fight, but as it was, he would give the potions to Hawthorn, and he would do it much more quickly than he could have otherwise. So what if Eugenia had fallen for his bait and helped him because she thought he was helpless, or because he was famous or a powerful wizard? That was exactly what Harry had wanted her to do. It was hardly her fault. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Clutching the potions close to his chest, he Levitated the Floo powder out of its dish on the mantle and made the connection spring back to life, calling on the way, "Hogwarts hospital wing!"

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Draco felt as if he were moving, or possibly living, in a dream. His father had vanished, he had destroyed a desk, and—

And that was it?

That was all?

He was the heir of the Malfoy line and the Manor was his?

Well. That last was not a question, really. Draco had reentered the study and examined the ledgers and documents Lucius had left, along with instructions on who to contact if Draco was suspicious about the provenance of any of the documents. Yes, the Manor was his. Lucius had specified that control of most of the fortune and most of the estates was to pass to Draco in the event of his "disappearance," and the conditions left for the disappearance matched the ones he'd just enacted. Draco shook his head, slightly stunned. His father had been planning this for a long, long time.

He turned and regarded Narcissa. She hadn't moved from the door to the warded room, staring fixedly at the blue and green lines of the spells, as if they represented all the secrets Lucius had kept and all the parts of his life he'd shut her out of.

"Mum?"

Narcissa stirred, turning and giving him a faint smile. The smile worried Draco. It made her look like a marble statue, and generally, when she appeared less than fully alive, there was something wrong. He went over and held her, feeling a fine tremble move through her body.

They were alone in the house—Professor Snape had gone back to Hogwarts to brew potions that Mrs. Parkinson needed—so Draco let himself lower his head to her shoulder and whisper into her ear, "It will be all right."

"It did not end as I expected," said Narcissa, so pure a time later that Draco could not have said if it was moments or minutes.

"No. Not me, either." Draco stared at the wards and the ruins of the desk, and remembered the last words Lucius had spoken to him. He wanted to believe that they were true. They probably were, or at least on the same level of truth as the information Lucius had given Harry about his parents. And yet his father had given those words to him, and the Malfoy fortune, and still fled, instead of staying to take his punishment, as recovered pureblood honor would have demanded he do.

The contradictions were greater than Draco had ever thought he would find in a man like Lucius. It showed, he supposed, that Lucius had raised him to be one way, and Draco had actually become that person, that son, never knowing that Lucius himself was satisfied with a shallower and more cracked version of the truth.

Draco had read once that the end of childhood was learning one's parents were fallible. He would have ceased to call himself a child long before that, really, but this sealed it. He felt old, immeasurably old, staring at Lucius's faults with new eyes, forced to see him as just a person, like any other, and not a sculpture of frozen perfection.

"Are you well?" Narcissa asked him at last.

"Yes," Draco whispered, and he was. He did not regret his decision. He had simply come here expecting an end, that was all, and Lucius had assured there would not be one. Draco felt like someone who had gathered up his strength to make a leap across a ravine, only to find out that the ravine was far narrower than he'd expected, and he'd stumbled onto the grass beyond and crashed into a tree.

As if I should have expected less from Lucius, really. His game lacks all sorts of supports.

He kissed his mother on the cheek, and finally stepped away from her. The Manor was his, but he didn't have time right now to stay and make it completely his. Exhaustion and worry and uncertainty clawed at him. "Come on," he said, offering his mother his arm. "Let's return to Hogwarts."

SSSSSSSSSSSSS

Harry nodded when he recognized the flutter of Hawthorn's eyes—she'd taken all four potions by then, and this was ten minutes after she took the last of the blue ones—and leaned forward. She still might be damaged; perhaps the silver poisoning had stayed too long in her body before Harry managed to get rid of it. If so, he wanted to be the first one to know. She had suffered this damage because of a man he had trusted, after all, and because Harry had not reacted fast enough when Lucius cast the multiple spells on her.

Hawthorn looked at him with recognition, but then her eyes filled with tears. "Pansy," she whispered.

It might have affected her memory. Grimly, Harry forced himself through the realization and past it. Mourning would not help Hawthorn now. Learning what she had suffered and how to help her cope with it was the most important. "Pansy's dead," he said gently, and squeezed her hand. "Do you remember?"

Hawthorn turned her head away. "Of course I remember," she said. "But Lucius showed me the memory again—so strongly that I was convinced he did it. That was why I attacked him the way I did, why he was able to cast the curse." She paused, and said, "Will there be scars?"

"It's too early to tell, but we don't think so," Harry said. "I fetched potions from St. Mungo's to cure the infection, and Professor Snape will be brewing more potions to help your recover. There will be weakness in your shoulders and arms for some time. Madam Pomfrey doesn't think it will have an effect on your magic, though."

She gave a shallow nod. Harry, thinking she had something more she wanted to say, from the trembling tension in her shoulders, waited, and wasn't surprised when she said, "I hate Lucius Malfoy."

"I know," Harry said.

"Do you?" Hawthorn turned over so suddenly that Harry was concerned for her wounds, and sure enough one on her right shoulder ripped itself open with the movement. He silently cast Integro at it, and it knitted. Hawthorn didn't even notice. "I don't know that you do, Harry. Have you ever felt that kind of hatred, the kind that demands vengeance? You certainly hate it enough to scold it out of all your allies wherever you find it."

"I've felt it," Harry said, remembering the summer before his third year and how part of him had hated his parents enough to set death traps for them, traps he didn't even remember setting. "But feeling it and acting on it are different things. If you'd simply believed the Unspeakables' letter, for example, and gone after Lucius without waiting for me, who knows what would have happened? He might have killed you. Even if he only cast the Argenteus curse, you might have died before help found you."

"I want him dead."

The passion in Hawthorn's voice was both human and lupine. Harry could understand it. It didn't mean that he thought Hawthorn was fit to get out of bed and go hunting Lucius yet.

He eased her back against the pillows, and nodded to her frustrated gaze. "Yes, Madam Pomfrey did say you'll need several days of rest."

Hawthorn closed her eyes. Harry could see the exhaustion sweeping over her like a tidal wave, but it was not enough to drown the burning hatred.

"I want him dead."

And then she was asleep. Harry contemplated her in silence for long moments, wondering what the best course for her would be.

I won't let her go hunting Lucius alone. Even if she's a stronger witch than he is a wizard, he'll have had time to prepare his ground, just the way he did at Malfoy Manor, and he can use her wolf against her, especially if she finds him near the full moon. I'll help her do what she must to earn peace. I won't stand out of the way just so that she can foolishly dash in and get herself slaughtered. Hatred is not a license to madness.

He stepped back from the bed and gave a weary stretch, extending his arms over his head to their furthest extent. He needed to rest. Then he would wake up and do what else needed to be done.

Many of those other things involved his parents.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Much to Harry's relief, everything had come out as he intended. He'd come back to their bedroom to find Draco already deeply asleep, worn out by emotional turmoil, and so had gone to sleep himself without having to answer awkward questions. A modified version of the Tempus charm buzzed in his ear four hours later, and he rose and searched among the papers Draco had brought back. Yes, there was the book on medical magic that Lucius had said contained the possible solution to James's cancer.

Harry picked the book up and went to see Connor, using a few judicious Disillusionment Charms on the way so that he wouldn't have to stop and explain his presence to anyone. Merlin knew what rumors might coat the school already, given Hawthorn's presence in the hospital wing and the fact that Snape hadn't been there to teach his morning classes.

He reached Gryffindor Tower—since it was after dinner, Connor should be there—and gave the latest password. The Fat Lady admitted him without a murmur. Harry glanced quickly around the common room, and found curious stares coming to rest on them, but he moved too fast for anyone to stand and ask questions; in moments he was already ascending to the sixth-year boys' room.

Connor sprawled on his bed, restlessly flipping through his Charms textbook and muttering under his breath. When he strained his ears, Harry could just make out, "Stupid damn Snake-Calling Charm. Why shouldn't it use the same basic structure as the Bird-Calling one?"

"Mastering one struggle only to become involved in another?" Harry asked, as he shut the door behind him. "The story of your life, brother."

"Harry!"

He found himself bowled back against the door by his brother's rush and hug. Cautiously, Harry patted Connor's back with one hand, then pushed him away a bit so that he could breathe without the book being crushed against his chest. "What was that for?"

"No one knew where you were!" Connor answered, with a glare. "I did go to Slytherin after lunch, but one idiot wouldn't let me in, and another idiot said that you were resting and I shouldn't disturb you." He eyed Harry doubtfully. "Is that true? Did you actually rest, and would I actually have disturbed you if I'd come in to see you just then?"

"Yes," said Harry, deciding unadorned truth worked best.

Connor looked taken aback. "Oh," he murmured. Then he rallied. "Well! It was still rude. And I'm glad to see that you've learned sense at last, and you'll sleep after a difficult time. What happened?"

Harry gave him as much of the truth as he thought wouldn't betray others' secrets, short of the information about their parents, which he wanted to save until last. He didn't tell Connor Lucius's words to Draco, even though he'd heard them well enough, or exactly how badly Hawthorn had been hurt. Those were their weaknesses, possible chinks in their armor, to share or not as they willed.

Connor grew paler and paler as he listened, and leaned forward and gave Harry several little hugs along the way. "I'm glad that you had them with you," he whispered into Harry's ear, when the story finished. "I'm glad that you weren't killed."

"So am I." Harry patted his shoulder absently, then freed himself and held up the book again. "Lucius gave me details of how he tortured our parents, Connor. He took Veritaserum just before he did, so I know that what he said was true. He gave James a kind of cancer with magical insects, and the answer to how to cure it should be in this book. And he set a spell on Lily that would stretch the last moment of her life into a painful eternity, and he told me how to cure that, too. But I'll need your help. Moral support, if nothing else." He tried a smile, but he knew it was limp and unconvincing, and a moment later he knew he shouldn't have tried it.

Connor, being Connor-who-noticed-inconvenient-things the way he was lately, latched on to the one thing Harry hadn't wanted him to latch on to. "How are you going to be able to cure Lily?"

Harry met his eyes calmly. "The absorbere gift."

"No." Connor's face was the color of strawberries.

"Yes."

"No." Connor leaned forward and closed his hands like hooks on Harry's shoulders. They hurt. "Haven't you done enough to help them? The little speech at the trial was more than enough. I don't want you seeing them again, Harry. I'm sure that Snape would agree."

Harry shrugged, forcing his brother's hands away. "I might not need to be there when they cure James—"

"You won't be," said Connor. "I can go in and stand with him and do whatever else is necessary for that."

"But I don't think there's any other way to remove the curse from Lily," Harry continued. "I recognize what Lucius described. It was created by a sacrifice. There's no countercurse for it, and no healing spell. I can remove the magic by draining it. That's what I'll have to do."

He felt calm, empty, very drained himself. He'd thought when Mallory spoke to him that he could not hate her for torturing his parents because it all seemed so long ago. So it was with Lucius; the pain Harry felt on Draco's behalf and for the betrayal Lucius had given Hawthorn was much worse than what he felt when he contemplated the torture of his parents. And they could be healed. That meant he could give them something that would ease their pain, just as he'd done with other people. They should be nothing more than those other people to him, random strangers he could help, if they were really in his past. He had cut them out of his life. Releasing them back into it would do no harm, because they had no fertile ground to root in.

"Let the Healers and the Ministry officials look at Lily first," Connor said, and Harry was startled to see that he was pleading more than arguing. "There might be another way to take the curse from her. Just—please, Harry. Let them do that."

"They can do that," Harry agreed. "But if there's no other way to step around this, then I'll see her, and do what I need to do to take away the curse. No one deserves to suffer that much pain as they die, Connor."

"You really have no desire for vengeance, do you?" Connor muttered.

Harry gave him an empty gaze. "I've cut it out of me in regards to them," he answered. "They need my help, so I'm going to help them."

He would do this because it needed to be done, he told himself. The past was the past, and might remain that way. This was for their futures.

SSSSSSSSSSSSS

Rufus sat slowly back behind his desk. His whole head ached, but he had to acknowledge that came from tension, and it wasn't going to be soothed by his usual cup of tea, or Percy offering to do some of the paperwork.

The Healers had had the Potters for the past week. They had finally confirmed that, yes, they could do something about the cancer that James Potter had burgeoning inside him—though it would require blood from a family member. Connor Potter, Harry's younger brother, had offered his blood for that.

But the curse on Lily Potter was a strong Dark one, one that not even the man who had cast it on her, Lucius Malfoy, could entirely remove. It had to be stripped or drained by something that would absorb magic. And if such an artifact lingered in the vaults of the Department of Mysteries, Rufus didn't know about it. He'd asked for an official list of such artifacts from the Unspeakables. Of course, there was nothing like that on there.

Even if the Stone isn't playing with Harry, it won't want to make this easy for him. It probably wants to see what he'll do, when he has to face his mother again.

Rufus had his own speculations about the Stone's motives, of course. It seemed strange that it had worked so specifically to insure Lucius's downfall, rather than simply insuring that Harry knew about his betrayal. Why a letter sent directly to Hawthorn Parkinson, rather than solely the communication of Fiona Mallory to Harry? She might have gone ahead and killed Lucius on her own.

The Stone might not have minded that. But surely it wasn't as good as seeing Harry upset? Harry had told him after the Unspeakables' capture of Adalrico Bulstrode that the Stone seemed interested in him as a figure of magic it had never encountered before, and it would probably conduct experiments on him. Altering his moods could count as one of those.

Rufus had listened to Harry often in the past week, as they discussed his parents and the Stone's motives. And all the while, words he couldn't speak had been burning behind his tongue.

It may have targeted Lucius because he took part in the Ritual of Cincinnatus.

The Stone hadn't been able to see what happened in Courtroom Ten, but it could have looked through the records of the wards and seen those seventeen people approaching the bottom level of the Ministry. Or it could have sensed the shimmer of the Unbreakable Vows around them, perhaps.

Plotting against it would be enough to annoy the Stone. It had shone itself willing to go after Harry for considerably lesser reason.

And that meant it might seek to hurt the others who had been there. Percy. Aurelius Flint. Griselda Marchbanks.

Rufus himself.

And still he could not speak, not breathe a hint of the truth, the bridle around his neck holding his mouth shut.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, counting down the moments before he would have to firecall Hogwarts and tell Harry that his magic was needed to heal his mother.

SSSSSSSSSS

"Yes."

"No."

"There's no other way."

"That doesn't mean you can't leave her to suffer."

Harry raised his eyebrows. Snape had grown to hate the gesture in the last week. It usually meant he was puzzled by Snape's lack of logic, and was about to show why, in fact, things could be the way that he thought they could. "But I can't," he said. "She's nothing to me now, just a fragment of my past, just someone I've done with. I have to approach her, but she's a stranger. I should be able to help her like any other stranger and then leave her alone again."

"Do you really think that will happen?" Snape lowered his voice a notch and took a step forward. "That you'll be able to stand before her without your emotions creeping upon you and overwhelming you?"

Unexpectedly, Harry grinned. It was the first smile Snape had seen him give in a week, and he did not like it. It had too much of the maniac in it, a glint that he usually only associated with Evan Rosier.

"I do think that, yes," he said, far too cheerfully. "I've been able to do what I need to do in the past week, Severus, and balance the life I'm leading right now with what other people require from me. I've been eating and sleeping on time, haven't I? I haven't ignored my classwork. I've come and told you when I had trouble sleeping, and taken a Dreamless Sleep Potion for it. And at the same time, I've helped comfort Draco and Hawthorn, and Narcissa when she needed it, and helped prepare my brother to see our dad again. I think I've done pretty well, considering how badly Lucius's betrayal might have thrown off my center of balance."

"That is not what I mean," said Snape.

"Then what do you mean, sir?" Harry took a coaxing step forward. "I can't understand it unless you explain it to me."

And there they met an impasse, because Snape could not explain it, except with words that sounded far too wet to him. He wanted Harry to—to live, was the way he would phrase it, but Harry had been living. He had not allowed Lucius's betrayal, nor the looming specter of the idea that he would have to heal Lily Potter, to delay him for very long. He had worked his way forward, and identified dangerous signs of obsession in himself, and dealt with them. He had even, as far as Snape could tell, continued to research ways of dealing with the Horcruxes and freeing the thestrals. He hadn't broken down or flung himself too madly into one thing, his major coping mechanisms in the past. It was no wonder that Harry felt rather as though those fussing over him were fussing over nothing.

But something was still missing, and Snape could not say what it was. Or he could say, and in the words he would expose far more sentiment than he was comfortable speaking of.

"You know, sir," said Harry, evidently feeling that with the moment past, he had decided not to speak at all, "if you need help of me, you have only to ask." He reached up, squeezed Snape's arm comfortingly, and then made for the door.

Snape found his tongue again. "Harry, you will not go and heal Lily Potter."

Harry paused, but didn't look back at him. "And how are you going to stop me?"

That isn't a question I remember him asking before. But Snape held calm even in the face of such provocation. "I am your legal guardian," he said. "If I say that you cannot go to her, then you cannot, Harry."

Harry sighed and turned to face him. "You can't stop me that way, sir—"

"Severus."

"I don't feel like calling you that now. You don't have a right to command me." Harry cocked his head contemplatively. "I was wrong about the thestrals. I made a mistake there. But here, I've waited a week. There's no other way they can heal her. If I leave her like this, I have the punishment of knowing that when she dies, she'll do it in pain and suffering I could have prevented. I've thought about things the way an adult would, and tried contingency plans, and they didn't work. You have no right to forbid me, sir."

Those words were delivered in a tone that actually seemed lower than Harry's normal voice, and some of the stones around Snape turned white-blue with frost. He was forced to incline his head stiffly, never taking his eyes off Harry.

"When you feel like talking about this, then come back here and we will do so," he said.

Harry relaxed then, and the frost vanished. "I probably won't, sir," he said. "I want to help her and have it over and done with, and then put the emotions out of my mind. But thank you for the offer. I'll remember it."

He left then, and five minutes later, Snape thought of the perfect thing he should have said to him.

Harry was Occluding furiously to be able to get through this without collapsing. Normally, given everything he had to do, Snape would have approved that. It was certainly better than wallowing in the grief and guilt as had happened when he killed the dozen children in the Life-Web.

But Occlusion meant that Harry hadn't yet faced his emotions. If his life was really so integrated and whole as he liked to pretend, then he should have felt free to do that and still do everything else at the same time.

And there Snape ran up against a wall of hypocrisy, because he hardly did that, did he? The only usual activities in his days were eating, sleeping, brewing potions, teaching, and marking, and the most usual emotions he felt while doing it were anger and bitterness.

I hope someone else tells him that, he thought, rubbing his left arm; it had been tingling rather fiercely since he woke up this morning. Since he will never accept it coming from me.

SSSSSSSSSSSSS

"This may hurt," the Healer told Connor.

Connor knew what that meant. Things that hurt a little in the eyes of Healers and parents hurt a lot in the eyes of children. So he braced himself for intense pain, the way he had when Peter trained him last summer, and was surprised when the only pain he felt was his arm contracting sharply as the Healer drew blood out of it. The liquid flowed through the air in patterns that followed her wand, and Connor, fascinated in spite of himself, watched it intently as she directed it gently into a vial that lay close at hand. Then she whispered "Integro," at his arm, and the small wound that had opened closed in a moment.

"That's all the blood you need from me?" Connor cocked his head to watch the vial. It had seemed immense when the Healer first showed it to him, but now he could hardly believe that this small pool of red liquid would be enough to save James from cancer.

"We can amplify it and insure that it replicates itself when we put it in the body." The Healer smiled at him. She was a short woman, with dark hair that reminded Connor of his own, and pale blue eyes that made her expression a bit watery but still kind. A round badge above her heart said that her name was Betsy—something; Connor couldn't read the surname. "So, no, we don't need much. Just the way that you only need two mice to have a whole colony of mice soon."

"If the mice are male and female," Connor pointed out.

Betsy laughed. "Well, yes, that's right." She looked up as the door of the small, enclosed white room where they'd sat, with only a portrait of a stuffy-looking old wizard for company, swung open. "And here's your father."

Connor stiffened, but didn't bother pointing out that he called his father "James," and that only. He'd heard Harry referring to him as "Dad" a few times in the past week, but Harry had denied that it meant anything when Connor questioned him. And when Connor had tried to raise other objections against Harry attending Lily, Harry had looked at him patiently, and Connor knew he'd lost the argument.

Two Healers and two Aurors accompanied James into the room. Connor didn't know why they needed so many guards; James had been stripped of his magic, so he was hardly about to grab a wand away from someone and threaten them all.

And he looked so pathetic, coming along between the Aurors, his head bowed as if he hoped that he would be relieved of the weight of holding it up soon. He was much thinner than Connor remembered, and his skin had the ghostly pale look that Connor's got the time he was so sick as a child that he had to stay inside for a month, only worse. His hair was thick with grease and sweat.

"I did ask for him to be clean," said Betsy, sounding a little irritated. She waved her wand, and James's hair was clean, as were his arms.

He looked up then, and froze when he met Connor's gaze. Connor returned the stare as evenly as he could. He supposed the Healers hadn't told James whom he was coming to meet.

"Son?" James whispered.

"Connor," Connor said stubbornly, and folded his arms over his chest.

One of the other Healers looked as if he'd like to ask questions, but Betsy quelled him with a glance. "Into this chair, Mr. Potter," she said, and slapped the plain wooden seat in front of her.

The Aurors had to steer James there, in the end; he wouldn't stop staring at Connor. Connor just kept staring back. He felt a hard-edged pity, and a certain satisfaction. James was paying for being a coward and a hypocrite and someone who refused to see that his sons were being abused even when he knew about it. Connor supposed he couldn't ask for much more than that.

Betsy pushed James down, and then picked up the vial with Connor's blood in it. With a wave of her wand, she cut a small gash on James's arm—he flinched—and then pressed the vial against it, and chanted a low incantation. Connor craned his neck, but couldn't see the blood flowing into the wound, just that one moment the vial's glass glinted red and the next that it didn't.

Betsy healed the wound, and then began chanting again, this time quite a long spell. Connor couldn't keep up with the Latin, so he didn't try. He noticed the Aurors talking quietly. Betsy had closed her eyes and retired so entirely within the cocoon of the spell that Connor knew she didn't notice.

James seemed to have seen the same thing.

"What is your life like now, Connor?" he asked.

Connor thought about lying, to try and punish him, but he didn't think he knew James well enough to say what would punish him. He might have changed again in the year and a half he'd been in Tullianum, though his cringing suggested that wasn't true. So Connor said, "Quiet. Voldemort hasn't attacked since last Midsummer."

"And that was Harry's doing?"

"Yeah." Connor couldn't resist a dig, then. "He cut a hole in his magical core and drove him from the battlefield. Quite the heroic son you raised, even though you didn't have much part in raising him."

James shuddered and put the hand of the arm Betsy hadn't gashed over his eyes. "Don't, Connor," he whispered. "You don't know what life has been like for me. My magic gone, and then my mind invaded by the visions of Dumbledore's Capto Horrifer spell, and then days and weeks and months when I had nothing to do but stare at the walls of my cell and think."

Connor smiled. "Well. With that much time, perhaps you've even come up with an original thought."

"Why do you have to be cruel?" James whispered, though there was no spirit behind it.

"Because you couldn't restrain yourself in your cruelty," said Connor, his exasperation bubbling over. "Maybe, if you'd shown one sign of remorse for the way you behaved towards Harry, just one, then I wouldn't feel like I had to hit you when you're lying wounded on the ground. Instead, I testified against you, and then I watched as you went to have your magic stripped, and I've never regretted it."

James looked at him at last. "I've raised one hero and one proud and thoughtless and cruel young man, according to you."

Connor rolled his eyes. "Don't flatter yourself. We both know that you had less to do with our rearing than Lily did."

"But don't you ever regret your childhood, and the way it ended?" James shifted forward as much as he could, sounding earnest. "Don't you ever wish it could have stayed the same, golden and untainted? Wasn't I ever—" He paused, swallowed, then continued. "I'm always 'James' in your memories? Never 'Dad?'"

Connor saw what he wanted, then. James had lost all sense of the person he'd once been in Tullianum; he had too much evidence that he was a coward, a broken man, a neglectful father, not the hero he'd once wanted to be. If someone outside the prison still remembered him as a hero, then maybe he could preserve some shreds of dignity when he went back into the cells.

Bugger off, gift for noticing, Connor thought, and hoped fervently it would listen to him this time.

He now had a choice between telling a palatable lie that might ease James's pain a little, or going with a truth that would be honest but work as a torture. No, he didn't think back on his father as a father. He'd worked hard to wipe out all trace of the emotion with which he'd once regarded James, the same way he'd worked hard to remove all traces of jealousy of Harry from his own psyche. Harry didn't need a jealous brother. Connor didn't need a broken father hanging around his neck. And he didn't regard the days of his childhood as idyllic, either. How could he? He had to search every memory now for the hidden signs of abuse, for the truth that he knew was there even if he couldn't see it—especially if he couldn't see it.

Connor's hands clenched on his arms. A year ago, he would have told the truth without hesitation, but a year ago, his anger had still been hot and burning.

His conscience spoke in Hermione's voice, and told him that a lie wasn't the same thing as resuming a relationship with James.

Connor sighed, and spoke. "Sometimes I have good memories of childhood, yeah," he said, and James's face lit up like the sky with fireworks after Voldemort had been reported dead the first time.

"And me?" he asked eagerly. "What do you call me, in your head?"

There was only so far a lie could take him, though.

"James," Connor told him.

He might have said something else, but abruptly Betsy's still continuing Latin chant rose to a climax, and Connor saw her magic roar through James and sweep out again like a tornado. It came through the gash on James's arm for a road. It was a golden tornado, and it held the broken, black bodies of insects in itself. Connor curled his lip. That was a dirty thing Lucius did. And coming here to offer my blood and give James a chance to live was the right thing to do.

He should stare at his cell walls for many more years before he dies.

Betsy waved her wand a few more times, then nodded briskly to the Aurors. "We're done. You can take him back to the Ministry now."

James tried to struggle as they lifted him, but one of them muttered an efficient Stunning Curse, and he collapsed. Connor was glad. He didn't want to know what the man who was once his father would have said.

Liar, whispered his conscience.

But Connor had done enough of what it wanted for one day, so he ignored it.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Harry had a new tactic for facing his mother. He had sunk his emotions to the bottom of the Occlumency pools, then muffled the pools in dense fog, then draped soft cloth over that, until the only feeling left near the surface of his mind was a kind of vague compassion. He would have stopped to help a dog dying in the street with that kind of emotion. He was ready when the Aurors opened the door and ushered him in to face Lily.

Snape had offered to come with him. Draco had demanded to come with him. Harry had refused both. He would have Aurors for companionship and protection, in case Lily tried something desperate, and he doubted that either Snape or Draco would be able to control the impulse to snap at his mother, which would only distress her further.

Draco had had a long, raging argument with him. Well. A one-sided, long, raging argument. Harry had sat there and calmly stared at him. Then Draco had stormed out, and come back later with his face tear-stained and lain down stiffly to go to sleep with his back to Harry. Harry had talked to him calmly enough the next morning about Lucius, and the difficulties his going away like that had left Draco in.

There were burdens that were other people's to carry, and some burdens that Harry could help support. And then there were tasks that he had to perform on his own.

The cell was utterly plain and bare. There was a bed, and a toilet, and a table that Harry knew held the trays of food the Aurors brought Lily. And there was nothing else. No books, no Daily Prophet, no portraits. The prisoners were expected to lie on their backs and stare at the ceiling until they went mad, apparently.

"Here she is," said the male Auror who'd come with him, quite unnecessarily, in Harry's opinion. And then they shut the door and stood in front of it, and left Harry there with his mother.

She'd changed, of course, growing paler, but not much thinner. Her green eyes held a dull gloss to them. When she sat up and stared at him, Harry wasn't sure if she really saw him. The Aurors had told him as they descended into Tullianum that his mother had suffered from Dumbledore's Capto Horrifer. The Healers had worked with her for months before they'd been satisfied that she was sane enough to endure moments alone without babbling at herself and tearing at her skin.

She whispered, "Harry."

Well. This is progress. She hadn't tried to run screaming from the room yet, which Harry had thought she might do, given how afraid of his magic she had once been. He nodded. "Lily," he said. "I came to heal you. The Healers talked to you about that, didn't they? About the curse Lucius cast on you?"

She nodded rapidly, too long, and then stopped herself with an equally senseless, abrupt jerk. Her eyes wouldn't stop traveling over him. "And you're going to heal me," she whispered. "And you're not a Dark Lord."

"No, I'm not." Harry had known she might want to talk about personal things. He had decided to keep his answers as short and soothing and noncommittal as possible. He squinted, and a dark crust of magic slowly formed around her. "Can you move towards the head of the bed, please?" he asked, gesturing with one hand. "That way, I can see how the magic winds around you more easily."

Lily scrambled across the bed, still staring at him. "And you have a second hand now," she said.

"Yes," said Harry, and resisted the temptation to say that Death had given it to him. He was not going to speak about anything personal with her. Why should he? He would hardly tell someone else who commented on his hand, someone who didn't know him, the truth, and that was the position where Lily stood in relation to him now. He studied the dark crust of magic again, and then nodded. If she were still a witch, this would have been difficult, but there was no magic anywhere on his mother except for that one edging. Harry didn't have to untangle it from under any other power. He just had to swallow it.

"You've become a new person," Lily whispered. "Does that mean that you have changed in regards to me?"

Harry could feel the Aurors stirring uneasily. They were supposed to protect him if Lily made a physical attack, but he thought Scrimgeour had also told them to beware a mental assault. Once again, he was grateful that Snape and Draco weren't here. They would already be trying to drag him out of the room.

"No," he said, and opened his gullet.

The moment he did, Lily screamed, and cowered back against the pillows, wrapping her arms around her head.

Harry sighed and glanced at the Aurors. "What do you think I should do?" he asked, carefully closing the absorbere gift. "She appears to be terrified of my swallowing magic even though she has none to lose any more."

"We can hold her flat," offered the bulky female Auror, whom Harry thought looked like Millicent's third cousin. She eyed Lily as if she would enjoy gripping her wrists and holding them above her head.

"Not that, if possible." Harry shook his head a little. "Perhaps I can persuade her." He faced Lily again. She had pulled her arms down and was regarding him over one of them. "I'm not going to drain your magic," he said, making his voice as soothing as he could. "You're not a witch. You can't lose it to me. I'm only going to try and pull out a curse that would cause you pain in the future."

"I—I might let you do that." Lily gave another shy rabbit-nod. "If—" And she broke off and bit her lip.

"Yes?" Harry leaned forward encouragingly. "What is the matter? What would you like?"

"For you to talk to me while you do it," Lily said.

Harry swallowed a curse and stuffed the anger back into the Occlumency pool. Fuck. Well. He had the feeling Lily knew exactly what she was doing. He had disappointed her by refusing to engage with her on a personal level, so she would ask for that as a price for good behavior.

Harry shrugged, and told himself he was empty of feelings for Lily. He would talk to her, if that was really what she wanted. She had not asked anything terrible so far.

"Lie still," he said, and once again, fixed his attention on the dark crust. Lily still jerked, though this time it was before he opened the absorbere magic. Harry thought she couldn't feel it; she was probably judging when he opened it by how intent his expression had grown.

She asked, "Where is Voldemort now?"

"Wounded," Harry murmured. He pulled, and the first part of the curse flaked loose and flew towards him. He grimaced. It tasted even fouler than some of the Death Eater magic he'd eaten almost a year ago. "I cut a hole in his magical core last year. He's hiding somewhere, and he hasn't dared a strong strike in nearly a year. All his Death Eaters are dead except the ones who became my allies, and Indigena Yaxley and Evan Rosier."

Silence, and he had the feeling she was staring at him in shock. But he refused to look at her face and confirm that.

"I never knew—" Lily whispered. Then she cleared her throat, and said, "Did Connor help you?"

"Yes." Harry cracked the crust in a weak place, and grunted in satisfaction as the larger piece tore loose and soared down his throat.

"How did he help you?"

"By using his compulsion on a group of Death Eaters bringing in a tank of sirens. They would have compelled most of the people in Hogwarts otherwise, and Merlin knows what Voldemort might have made the hostages do." Harry squinted, and finally picked the second loose piece of the curse off. This bit tried to escape him, as if the Dark magic knew what he was doing and didn't like being swallowed, but he snatched it and dissolved it. His own boundaries expanded a little. This was an unexpectedly heavy meal, but Harry rejected the idea of closing the absorbere gift now and letting it digest this. He didn't want to spend that long in the cell with Lily because—

Well, just because, that was all.

"I want to know more," Lily coaxed. "Are you any closer to fulfilling the prophecy? Have you used the training I gave you to help you do it? Have you thought about whether we were right, after all, to train you the way we did?"

"No, yes, and I don't know if you were right or not." The rest of the curse, unfortunately, showed no sign of weakening just because Harry had found weak points in the other pieces. Calling on it was like stepping on a thick cake of ice. He had to stamp several times before cracks raced through it, and it seemed as if he might be able to follow the cracks to the center and pull the shards off completely.

"Harry. Look at me."

Sighing, Harry met her eyes.

To his dim surprise, hers were large and glistening with tears. "I did love you," Lily whispered. "When nothing changed, when even after that horrible vision you didn't come and kill me—and then I found out Albus had sent the vision—" She caught her breath with a sob. "I've had a lot of time to think, Harry. I think that, perhaps, I didn't express my love for you in the right way. But I didn't know that for certain. Perhaps the good we did you outweighed the evil. I didn't know it, because you wouldn't come and talk to me."

Harry frowned slightly in exasperation. She had a right to ask healing from him, even comfort if she was so afraid of his absorbere gift. She didn't have a right to ask for anything else.

He tore through the rest of the curse, sending his magic running through the cracks in the black crust. It responded, flickering and rippling up and down, and then came loose. Indigo flakes raced towards Harry, who caught them by stretching the "mouth" of his gift as wide as he could. He swallowed the putrid mess, trying not to grimace.

"Harry," Lily whispered.

He was occupied in settling the newly absorbed magic in his gut, and didn't respond.

"I wish things had been different," Lily said, her voice thin and reedy. "I wish I had been able to express my love in a way that would have helped you with future battles and kept you strong. I wish I had known what the prophecy really proclaimed, that you were the Boy-Who-Lived. I wish I hadn't needed to lie to Connor. I wish Albus had been a different sort of man. I wish I hadn't lied to James, either. I think I even regret that the training I gave you was—well, it could be called abuse." She leaned forward. "But to know that, I need to know how much it's helped you and how much it's hindered you. Will you come back and talk to me again, Harry? Will you tell me that?"

Harry hesitated. Has she changed? It sounded as if she'd reconsidered some of her thoughts, at least, some of the bone-deep beliefs she'd always taken for granted. And she was asking for a relationship with him, a new kind of foundation reared on burned and salted ground—

And what if I don't want to make the effort to build one?

Harry stopped in his effort to take a step towards her. His heart beat loudly in his ears, and a rent in one of his Occlumency pools had sent a few emotions bubbling towards the surface.

I don't want this. I don't give a fuck if she's changed. It's too late. I just want to go on and live my life, my life where she's a stranger to me, and has no part in my standing or falling.

He tied up the emotions then, before they could get out of hand, and made a cold little bow to Lily. Then he turned for the door.

"Harry?" He heard the sheets rasp under her fingers as she scrambled to the edge of the bed. "Harry! Please, just tell me, the answer to that one question. Has it helped or hindered you more? Do I have to call it abuse?"

Oh, how part of him longed to turn and shout at her, screaming that of course it had been abuse, that she was blind to imagine otherwise, that once again she was stumbling along in a labyrinth looking for ways to excuse the unforgivable—

But if he screamed that, that would just prove he hadn't succeeded in exiling her from his heart after all, and that he should have brought Draco and Snape with him today. And that wasn't true.

So he walked out with the Aurors, and shut the door on her cries, and accompanied them up the main corridor of Tullianum, past other shut cells of criminals who might be worth a second chance, and might not be.

Maybe he could have something different with her, if he chose to build it. Perhaps they could have a reconciliation, a renewal.

But Harry knew already that ninety percent of the burden would fall on him, and that it would interfere with other relationships in his life which were finally the way he had wanted them.

So he walked out of Tullianum, and left her there.