Author's Note: Hi all! Sorry about the delay. School started again and I'm already procrastinating. This chapter is long, to make up for the wait.
Dumbledore sat at his desk and glared into space. He was at a loss as to how to find his student. Harry Potter was in England, yes. That part of the search had been very easy. A simple scrying spell told him that much. Discovering anything more elaborate than that was a wee bit harder. He had every Muggle school, boarding and day, searched thoroughly. Not one harbored his pupil. Mrs. Dursley had hidden the boy well and now Dumbledore could not find his student! There was an unknown element at work, hindering his every move. Something was blocking his efforts. He hesitated to say it was his own wards (how embarrassing that they would not listen to him), but it was becoming more likely that the wards he had set to keep track of Harry were now working against him.
Fudge was becoming more demanding every day. He wanted to see Harry Potter and he was willing to go to great lengths to make it so. Dumbledore had managed to thwart him so far, but it was becoming more difficult to do so. He had gained the support of the Wizengamot and they, too, were anxious to see Harry Potter, and talk to him, if they could. Their excuse? His welfare. They seemed to think that Dumbledore was somehow endangering his welfare by "secluding him from his peer group and additional mental support". Dumbledore smirked and dropped the letter from the ruling body back to the desk. The Wizengamot would riot if they knew the Potter boy was missing. Aurors would be unleashed on unsuspecting Muggles and schools, just to locate a child. A thoroughly annoying child Dumbledore could not find!
Dumbledore turned to his Chocolate Frog card and said a spell. The manufacturers would remove him from the cards if they knew to what purpose he put his images every day. He had heard rumors of his omniscience. He was amazed to find that no one had yet worked out how he knew what he knew about his students when they arrived at Hogwarts. He tapped his wand on the surface of his card and started to page through images his pictures had taken for him. He only used this in extreme circumstances, but it was a way to keep an eye on his children. If Harry Potter had touched a Chocolate Frog card, or even was in close proximity in the last few months, Dumbledore would have an image to work with. He worked his way backwards through images, discarding each one when he did not see Harry's signature in any of them.
Almost an hour passed before he came to a possible image. There was a signature that seemed similar to Harry's. It differed just the slightest bit from the boy's, but the different signature could be explained by almost anything that disturbed the lad, from stress to hunger or even extreme happiness. The face that held the card clenched the matter. Hermione Granger's face appeared before Dumbledore's eyes. It appeared that she was talking to someone. She knew where Harry was! Dumbledore sat back in his chair and smiled to himself. "I think we might find him, Fawkes." Dumbledore told his companion. The phoenix chirped a few notes and hid his beak beneath his wing again.
Dumbledore wrote a note to Minerva with a request for a meeting first thing in the morning. She was the boy's Head of House, after all, and she should know him the best out of all the other professors. She would know if the boy would be trying to return to Hogwarts or not, and if so, how they could help him. He was ready to try anything to find the boy. He had relied on Remus for so much lately that he didn't want to tax the man overmuch. Remus was looking especially strained lately and was almost never home. While he did receive a small salary for his services to the Order, it was not enough to support him and he had found a part-time job in the Muggle world that was willing to work around his full moon requirements. He was happy for the werewolf, he really was, but Remus being so busy was an inconvenience to the Order.
Dumbledore pushed back from his desk and moved to the shelves that held his instruments. He stared at them for a long while before deciding that nothing could be done for the rest of the night. He sent his note to Minerva and decided to head to bed. He was feeling optimistic about the situation now. Harry would be home soon and everything would be alright.
"I want you to come back if you start feeling weak or tired." Dr. Lansky said once he finished examining Harry.
"Yes, sir." Harry agreed. Anything to get him out of the infirmary! H felt fine and he just wanted to return to class and his friends. Was that so much to ask?
"Alright. Get out of here." Dr. Lansky mussed Harry's hair and nudged him towards the door. That was all the invitation Harry needed. He shouldered his backpack and nearly ran down the hall to get away from the doctor. It wasn't that he disliked Dr. Lansky. Far from it. The man had excellent bedside manner and could see what Harry needed without much effort. He also seemed to know how far to push Harry and when to let him go. Harry just disliked being in the hospital itself.
Breakfast just ended in the cafeteria and Harry was released in time to attend his classes as usual. He had missed his classes while he was with Bleys. Harry shifted his thoughts away from his old mentor and focused on where he needed to be. Tuesday? Spanish at nine o'clock. He turned down the right hallway and nearly walked into someone. "Evan!" Harry reached out and caught Julie as she stumbled.
"Sorry." He apologized as he righted her. "I was thinking." Well, it was not the best excuse he had ever used, but it was better than nothing.
"That's okay." She said and gave him a small smile. "I heard you were in the infirmary again. I'm glad you're okay."
Harry nodded and gave a sheepish smile. "I spend half my life in the care of doctors." He confided. "Thanks, though." Silence fell between the two of them again. There was something Harry had wanted to say, but he couldn't remember.
"Well, it's almost time for class. I'll see you later?" She said as she took a step away.
"Huh?" Stop spacing out! "Oh, right. I'll see you later." Harry took two steps before he stopped himself and turned. "Julie?" Julie stopped and turned back around. "Um, I was…" He trailed off and stared at her for a few seconds. You, Harry Potter, are an idiot. Just ask her! The worst she can do is say no! "I was wondering if you had a date for the Halloween dance?" There. It was up to her now.
"No, not yet." She told him. "Why?" Right. Potter, you must ask her!
"Would you like to go with me, then?" Harry mentally crossed his fingers. He watched as Julie's face grew thoughtful. Were all girls taught how to do that, as a way to ensure that the man asking them out was as nervous as possible?
"I'm not interested in a relationship right now." She said slowly, as afraid of hurting his feelings.
"Oh! Neither am I, honestly. I just thought, you know, going as friends would be fun. You'd always have someone to dance with that way." He admitted.
"Sure." She said with a bright smile. "I'd like to go as friends." She glanced at her watch and sighed. "I've got to go."
"See you in front of the gym at 7:30 on Friday?" Harry asked as he started to back up.
"Yes. I'll see you then, Evan." Julie hurried away from Harry with a smile and a wave as Harry turned and went to his own classroom. He tried to tell himself that it was only a 'friends' thing and that he shouldn't be so excited. He wanted to be very calm about this. He just couldn't fight down the sappy grin on his face or the light step. He made it to his classroom and nearly danced to his seat.
"What are you so happy about?" Bug asked through his morning grumpiness.
"I have a date for the dance." Harry admitted, still slightly dazed at the idea. It was so easy, to just ask someone. What had been so hard in his fourth year?
"What? Who?" Bug woke up and stared at Harry.
"Julie. It's just a 'friend' thing, but at least this way, we'll both have someone to dance with."
"You can dance?" Bug asked in a whisper.
"Can't you?" Harry asked in wonder.
"No. I never learned." Bug admitted.
Harry fought down his amusement (he remembered his fourth year all too well) and smiled at Bug. "It's not hard. It's just different." Their teacher came into the room at the moment and ended the conversations. "I'll give you a few tips later." Harry whispered as he took out his notebook. Bug shot him a grateful smile and turned his attention to his teacher. He had a date to the school dance and he was looking forward to his Darth Vader costume. Dancing would be a little difficult in the costume, but he was hoping to intimidate anyone who said that Darth Vader shouldn't dance. He tried to imagine Darth Vader waltzing and nearly laughed aloud. Darth Vader waltzing. That was an image Paul would appreciate.
"Are you going to tell me what happened?" Paul asked the teenager across from him. Harry looked up from his hands. "Or do I need to guess?"
"What do you mean?" Harry had just sat down. What had happened that Paul wanted to know?
"You don't remember having a rather vivid nightmare last night?" Paul asked in disbelief.
"Oh, that." Harry shrugged. "It was nothing big. I've had nightmares…" Harry trailed off and looked down.
"How long has this been going on, Harry?" Paul asked as he moved to sit next to Harry on the couch.
"Um…" Harry trailed off. "It's nothing. I'm fine."
"Harry, you're not fine." Paul said as he shook his head. "Far from it, especially if you're keeping things like this."
"It's not a big deal." Harry insisted as he stood up. "Can I take Zen out?" Paul studied Harry and nodded. The distraction might help Harry open up. Harry took the snake out and allowed it the snake to wrap around his arm.
"Do you remember having a nightmare last night?" Paul tried again.
"I remember dreaming." Harry told him as he stroked the snake. Zen let out a hiss that sounded like he was extraordinarily happy and would be unwilling to leave Harry's arm and caresses. "It was scary, but that's all."
"Just scary?" Paul took out a tape and showed it to Harry. "May I play something for you?" Paul asked as he held up the tape. Harry nodded. Paul slid the tape into an extra player and pushed the play button.
Harry stared at the player as he heard his own voice come from the speaker. He ended up back on the couch next to Paul. Harry shook his head and looked away from the player. He pulled his legs towards him and put his head on his knees. Zen uncurled from Harry's arm and settled on the couch next to him, hissing something at the boy. "Could you turn it off, please?" Harry's muffled voice asked Paul. Paul reached out and stopped the tape. "I understand why you're concerned now." Harry told him. "I don't remember the dream. I just know that I was dreaming and that I was upset. I don't remember the details." He admitted.
"No details?" Paul supposed that made sense. There were times he could not remember his own dreams. "Just this dream or all of your dreams?"
"I don't remember most of my dreams." Harry confessed. "Sometimes I'll remember a phrase or a scene, but that's all." He picked up Zen and stroked the snake. "Sometimes I do remember my entire dream. Most of the time, I can't remember a thing."
"Hmm. I understand why you didn't seem concerned." Paul offered as a compromise. "Do you remember having those feelings about the tournament?" Paul asked.
"I knew I was out of my depth." Harry told him. "I really didn't want to compete. I was having a hard enough time fitting in with the kids from the other schools staring at me. I told you we had a bunch of foreign students there?" Harry asked.
"Yes, you did." Paul reassured him. "So, you didn't want to compete?"
"People have died during this tournament." Harry told him. "That's why they quit having it in the first place. The year I competed was the first in a while and they haven't had another since then." Harry shrugged. "The age limit was there to ensure that no one would be seriously hurt. I guess they figured that anyone seventeen or eighteen knew as much magic as they could. I was only fourteen. I knew I couldn't match the magic of someone who had three or more years of education."
"That must have been a lot of pressure." Paul said in a quiet voice.
"It was horrible." Harry told him. "I was this close," Harry held two of his fingers a millimeter apart "to quitting Hogwarts, just so I wouldn't have to compete. That wasn't much of an option."
Paul placed his pen back on his desk and shut his notebook. "Why not?"
Harry gave Paul an odd look before picking up Zen and stroking the snake. He shrugged and lapsed into silence. Paul waited patiently for Harry to come to an answer and his patience was rewarded. "I would have gone back to the Dursleys' and they would not have liked that very much at all. It would have been hard to go to a Muggle school after so much time at Hogwarts, and Uncle Vernon would have been very angry with me."
"Why would your uncle be angry with you?" Paul studied Harry while the boy thought over his answer. The boy was tense, yes, and wary, but he was still willing to talk and that was the only important thing at the moment.
"My uncle doesn't like me." Harry answered with a sigh. "Or magic. I'm both." He gave a funny grin. "I'm myself." He shook his head and curled up on the couch again. "I couldn't go back to that."
"What do you think of him now?" Paul asked.
Harry gave him another odd look before looking away. He shrugged and ran a finger down Zen's head. The snake left out a soft hiss and shut his eyes in pleasure. Harry smirked at something the snake said and answered him before turning his attention back to Paul. "He's still the same man Aunt Petunia said he would try. I guess that's what important, right?"
"What do you think?" Paul returned.
Harry stared off into space for several minutes before speaking up. "Can we talk about something else?" Paul nodded and cast about for a subject. He knew that Harry hated talking about his family. This was the largest amount of speech he had from Harry concerning a relative that was not Petunia. It was progress. Not much, but some. Perhaps Harry would be willing to open up a bit later.
"I'd like to talk about your dreams a bit more." Paul said. He looked to Harry to see his reaction. It was cautious, but accepting. He continued. "I think that they may be a sign of something wrong of which you are not even aware." He explained. "That may be why you are unable to remember them when you're awake." Harry's face was pensive and concentrated. "I doubt you'd have such a strange reaction in a dream if there was not something you weren't expressing then, something that you needed to express."
"Right. What does that mean?" Harry asked as Zen curled out his shoulders.
"You tend to bottle emotions, right?" Paul said as he turned and dug into his mini-fridge for some water. He handed a bottle to Harry and took one for himself. Harry nodded in agreement with Paul's statement. "That all comes out later in one burst, doesn't it?"
"Sometimes." Harry said slowly, drawing out the word as though he almost didn't agree with it. Paul raised an eyebrow and looked at Harry. Harry saw the look and capitulated. "All the time." He answered truthfully.
Paul gave him a smile. "Imagine that some part of that bottled up feeling broke off from the rest and buried itself." Paul suggested. "You forgot it and therefore forgot about the feelings and circumstances under which you felt them."
"It's possible." Harry said softly before turning into Ball Harry. Paul left him alone. This was a rather difficult subject and he wanted Harry as comfortable as possible. The barrier wouldn't harm him now.
"Well, what I think is that you have parts to your past that were just too much for you, too hard for you to face, that you simply repressed those feelings to survive." Paul told him, motioning for Harry to drink some water. Harry complied with Paul's instruction.
"What does that mean?"
"You have feelings and the like that you forgot about and now, cannot remember, because you choose not to remember them." Paul explained.
"Could I have forgotten something important?" Harry asked as he looked up at Paul from his study of Zen's scales.
"You remember things from your fourth year, correct?" Paul asked. Harry nodded and sat up a little straighter. "How many details do you have?"
"What do you mean?" Harry asked with his brow knitted in confusion.
"Do you remember, for instance, what you ate the day of the first task?" Paul asked.
"I tend to go off food when I'm nervous. I don't think I ate much at all." Harry admitted. What did remembering what he ate have to do with anything? He couldn't remember what he ate that morning, much less a morning over a year ago!
"What do you remember?" Paul pressed him.
"A dragon that had huge claws, big sharp teeth, a tail, and it could fly." Harry explained. "I don't see what that has to do with anything." He returned his feet to the floor and sighed. What in the world is Paul trying to say?
"Do you remember anything that happened that day besides the dragon?" Paul asked quietly, trying to reach a calming tone to help Harry. "Or after? Directly after?"
Harry allowed his eyes to fall shut and tried to remember what Paul had asked him. What had he done that morning before he faced the dragon? Hermione and he talked for a while…excited students…wasn't there a party that night? Or was that after the second task? Hadn't Rita Skeeter been there? That awful interview? When had that happened? Why couldn't he remember? Think, Potter! You can remember this! Harry fought through his memories until he had a headache. He opened his eyes and shook his head. "Why can't I remember?" He whispered the question. He was almost afraid to hear the answer.
"You repressed things that were too much for you. The task you remember, because that was the central focus. It was reinforced by those around you. Your own feelings, anger, fear, resentment, anything along those lines, were repressed to enable you to respond as others hoped you would. You are very good at reading what others want from you and you react as they want. What is important now is recovering those memories so that your own feelings about past events will make sense to you."
"How do we do that?" Harry asked, thoroughly engaged in the idea. He would like to know why he resented so much that happened that year. And figure out why Dumbledore was so cautious in his fifth year and why he hadn't really talked with me. He said he had reasons, but they couldn't have all been bad, right? He could have taken a few minutes to explain things better than he did!
"We have several options available to us. We'll just need to try one and see what happens." Paul told him with a hopeful smile.
"What are they?" Harry asked as he stood to return Zen to his cage. "The options?" He clarified.
Paul waited until Harry sat back down. "Hmm. Well, there are several ways we can go about this. We could just talk and I'll try to draw the memories out, the little details, with questions. Sometimes, that is the only thing needed and you will remember it all on your own. The dreams themselves will help. I could put a recorder in your room so that you will be able to hear things you say during your dreams. There is even hypnosis, but I would like to keep that as a last resort option. The human mind, for all we've studied it, is still very much a mystery, and I don't like to go prancing about in someone's head without a firm idea of what I need to do."
"Which would you recommend?" Harry asked.
Paul sat back and shook his head. "It does not matter to me. You're going to be the one doing all the work, remember? This is your therapy. Which would be easier for you?" Paul wanted Harry to make his own decision on this matter. Paul, personally, would like to see what Harry kept behind his mask (and thus answer many questions he had currently), but he would stay within what Harry wanted. He would not say no to taking a peek inside Harry's brain, but resisted the urge to steer the boy to the easiest path. If it would be easiest at all. Few people actually managed successful therapy with hypnosis and some could not be hypnotized at all. He was curious as to which group Harry belonged.
"If we talked, how would we do it?" Harry asked as he dug through his backpack. He whipped out a notebook and clicked his pen.
"Just as we do now, but we would focus on events and I would direct the talk to the details. Things you only vaguely remember or events about which you have conflicting feelings and can't remember why. I'm guessing that you have several events?" He asked. Harry nodded emphatically. "Thought so. It would mostly be question and answer until you can remember everything possible."
Harry nodded and paused as he wrote several things down in his notebook. "And the recordings? How would that work?"
"I would place a tape recorder in your room at night, somewhere near your bed. We would be listening for your nightmares and anything you say during them. We'll go through the tape the next day and we'll try to figure out what your feelings were and what you don't remember about them." Paul explained.
"And the hypnosis?" Harry asked.
"Hypnosis is a very odd technique. There are some people who cannot be hypnotized." Paul warned. "A common hypnotic technique is regression. What that means is, once you are hypnotized, I would take you back to your mindset at the time of the event, and then I would include a trigger, so when you 'wake up', you will not only remember everything, but also your feelings involved. It is tough, because you'll have all these memories and feelings that seem new to you. It may take a while to accept fully both the memories and the feelings."
"Why are some people unable to be hypnotized?" Harry asked.
"We're not sure." Paul ran a hand through his hair. "Some psychologists think it is because people do not believe in it. Others feel that the subject has an uncommonly strong will, and others yet think that only certain types of people are able to undergo the procedure." He checked the clock. They only had a few minutes left, and he had so much more he had wanted to cover with Harry today.
"Do you think I could be hypnotized?" Harry asked, just as Paul thought he would.
"I'm not going to answer that." Paul said with a small shake of the head. "I don't want you having any preconceptions about it if it is our option." He explained. "I'm afraid our time is up for now, kiddo." He told his patient. Harry nodded and closed his notebook. "You have a class to get to. Martial arts, isn't it?" He asked.
"Yes. Sensei is going to be hard in training today."Harry complained. "He hasn't been able to pick on me for two days."
"Yes, that odd little coma thing." Paul agreed. "That must be one of those dream things you don't remember." Paul commented. He saw Harry's face change, as though he had something to say. "You okay, Harry?" He asked. He almost flinched in shock as Harry's old mask slid into place.
"Fine." Harry answered Paul with a small smile. "I'll see you later?" He asked as he stood and shouldered his backpack.
"Sit down." Paul demanded. Harry stopped and looked at Paul's face. "That odd little coma thing is something we need to talk about. There is something you aren't telling me."
Harry sank down onto the sofa with only one thought in his head. Now what?
Author's Note: Some of you may have noticed that I fixed Chapter 14. There's a little problem. I'm certain I'm missing a part of it. Has anyone saved my story, or archived it somewhere? If you have, please message me or leave a review and let me know. I could swear something big happens, but my brain can't keep all 38 chapters straight.