Thump. Thump. Thump.
Harry's hangover continued to slap out a beat against the drum that was his skull. After a moment to prepare his sensibilities for the next layer of pain that would be coming, he cracked open an eye.
To his relief it was dark.
He made to stretch his arms, but the jingling of chains was all he got. They didn't sound too rusty, so whoever had kidnapped him this time at least kept their dungeons to a certain standard. The first two or three times this happened, he'd made more of a show of being shocked, but he'd long since learned to keep his cool in order to look, well, cool. His wrists were able to slide this way and that within their manacles, his feet weren't chained up at all, and the mattress they'd put him on was comfy.
All in all? He'd woken up in far worse conditions than this before, and oftentimes those had been bedrooms he'd willingly gone within.
"Look who's awake." The sound sent a new, throbbing pain cracking around in his mind. Harry clenched his eyes shut. "I'm surprised you leave yourself so undefended, Dumbledore."
Albus was here too? 'No wait, I'm a Dumbledore now.' He waited a few moments for the pain to wane before opening his eyes again. 'Let's see who the hell managed to pick up The Boy Who Lived this time.'
Morgana. She'd either repaired or replaced her dress, and her hair was out of its braid and fell down her back. A confident smirk was plastered across her face, but Harry would be dealing with that soon enough.
Much more interesting was the man beside her, holding up a glowing ball of purple, black-ish light. He looked vaguely familiar, but Harry couldn't place it. Scars covered his face in brutally symmetrical lines that told Harry they hadn't come in the heat of battle. His eyes were blank and empty, and when Harry probed out with a legilimency probe he found… Nothing.
Who was this man? What was this man?
"You can leave," Morgana said. The man let out a low, drawn out moan in response and left, though the orb of energy he carried remained in place. "Now, let's see if I can't make you more… accommodating, with your information."
"Could you come back in, like, ten minutes?" Harry asked. "I'm seriously hung over at the moment, and would prefer not to give away the secrets of how I'm going to make my daring escape."
"You're not going anywhere." Morgana stepped up closer to him, the ball of light following in her wake. "Those manacles are enchanted with some of the most powerful anti-magic charms the world has ever known. The cell itself is made of sanctified marble, spells won't have any effect on them. The bars of the door are wrought iron, each microgram of which was extracted from the blood of a particularly nasty strain of chimeras that were completely impervious to spell work."
"Fine then, I guess I'll just have to spoil my secrets then."
At least the new pain would distract him from the old pain in his head and stomach. This had to have been one of his top… Three? Maybe even top two hangovers.
He made a futile effort to apparate, he hadn't expected it to work, but he was going to be using the magic anyways so why not try it. For all his blustering to the boys yesterday, even Harry had his limits, and turns out they were somewhere between 'making Ministry and Hogwarts wards his bitch' and 'trying to teleport out of a jail cell crafted by one of the most powerful witches in all of human history'.
He focused on forming the magical 'tear' in reality in a miniscule area, forcing the already powerful spellwork into a concentrated bit of magic under so much pressure it would be lethal, into a carefully manipulated bit of splinching that would, if he did it right, set him — Splat — free him from the manacles.
And the hands and wrists which had been trapped by them.
Morgana's mouth fell open and she stepped back as Harry stood. Blood was pouring out from his new stumps in spurts, but he had the advantage now. It took even more energy to generate enough flame magic to seal off the stumps, but at least he wasn't fighting against the manacles' wards directly this time. Next he tried apparating again, but the proverbial walls provided by the literal ones were still too powerful for him to cut through
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Harry almost laughed. "Its nothing a few elixirs and poultices can't fix up. At least I got to keep most of my arms this time. Hell, one time I had this bat-shit insane 'fan' kidnap me, chop off all of my limbs, and truss me up like a swaddled baby."
That had been a hell of a weekend. In truth he hadn't necessarily been kidnapped, but he'd have been a lot less willing to jump into that particular stranger's bed if he knew ahead of time that she planned to all but emasculate him when it came to his extremities.
"This is amateur league, Morgana." He took a step towards her, and once more she took a step back. "I'm gonna give you a free pass this time, cus I'm about ready to puke all over the place, and fighting with a hangover isn't fun. Open the door, or I will. And if I have to do it myself…"
He let the threat hang. Creativity wasn't his strong suit first thing in the morning.
"Just tell me how Merlin transported you from another world, and you'll never see me again." She was certainly bold, Harry had to give Morgana that. "It doesn't make any sense."
"Here, I'll tell you a secret." He moved across the room before she could react, leaning in close to her ear with one of his bloody stumps pressed against the side of her head. His lips brushed against her ear as he spoke, they were cold and clammy. "We're not from another world. We're from several decades into the future."
Harry pulled away, and was surprised to find Morgana glaring at him without any fear. He'd really thought the whole 'caressing her with a bloody, disfigured bit of his flesh' would've gotten her worse than this. "You're certainly not from this world's future."
"Huh?"
"You think time travel is something simple enough that you can just launch two people back dozens of years without irreparably breaking the universe?" Morgana folded her arms. "An hour or two, or even a couple days? Sure, a time turner or a sufficiently powerful chronomancer could do that no problem. But no one, not Merlin, not me, not you could ever do that."
"But—"
"What's more likely is that he found some other timeline whose stream ran parallel with your own but was slightly behind, 'slightly' in a cosmic sense obviously." Morgana was tapping her foot now, one hand moved to her chin. "And perhaps the realities are incredibly similar with only the slightest difference between them, perhaps in this world some random muggle a thousand years ago wore a brown shirt instead of a slightly darker brown one. But this is definitely not your timeline."
"That's—"
"Not important. What's important is the how. How did Merlin manage to send you across the boundaries of space? I don't even care about the why." Morgana was pacing now, and Harry took a step back so that she didn't bump into him. "I've seen for myself that even a brute like you can defy the cosmically local boundaries with your inability to be held back by apparition wards, but there's a valley and a half between that and stepping into the bounds of another universe.
"Or perhaps there isn't? Perhaps its just a matter of knowing your destination and locking into that. What if that old bastard just explored for a while… Perhaps he still is. That would certainly explain where he went, and where he is now. Is he really just wandering about the multiverse like some sort of vagabond?"
Morgana finally stopped to take a breath, then plopped into the bed Harry had been chained to. She wasn't paying him any sort of attention now, she glared at the ground with a ferocious intensity and pulled one of her fingers into her mouth to chew on the nail. Harry had seen quite a few 'mental tornadoes' from Hermione, but Morgana's was putting those to shame.
"Erm, listen, why don't you just let me go and ponder all this later while I grow my hands back, alright?"
Morgana snapped out of her stupor and fixed her intense stare on him. "Tell me how he did it."
"I already told you, I won't, and I won't because I want to spite you."
"Don't be a child."
"You kidnapped me." Harry waved a hand, wait no, a stump, through the air. "I think I can be excused for acting a bit like a kid."
"What do you want?" Morgana grabbed one of the dismembered hands and waved it at him. Had she just been pretending to be unnerved earlier? Harry felt a cold lump filling his gut at the thought of being manipulated. "I can bankroll the rest of your life no matter how lavish you're used to living. I can fix your arms immediately. I can ensure that the blonde from the other day never strays from your side. Just tell me what I want, and I'll give you whatever it is you want."
"I already told you, I want to spi—"
"There's no need for us to be enemies." Harry's eyes widened as she sat the hand aside and lifted her legs apart, ever so slightly. "Wouldn't you prefer to have the most powerful witch in the world on your side? If we were to join together…"
"That's the last thing I'd ever want." She wasn't even trying to be subtle with her attempted manipulations now. He spoke through gritted teeth. "I don't want to fuck you, I want to fight you. You're asking me the same thing Merlin did, what do I want? I want to be able to fight for and risk my life against the most powerful and dangerous forces I can find, and we already both know you're not capable of that."
"He asked you what you want…" Morgana closed her legs and Harry would've slammed his fist against the wall, if he had one. "Did he finalize that then?"
"Open the door." Harry moved towards the woman and didn't care about propriety as he began to feel for a pocket or fold in her dress. It was a challenging prospect considering the state of his hands, he wasn't quite sure what he'd do even if he found the key, but at least he was doing something. If he wasn't about two seconds away from exploding in anger, he'd probably have laughed at how non-sexually charged this instance of 'groping' a pretty woman in a private bed was. "Where's the damn key?"
Morgana didn't even look at him. She stuck a hand out into the air, and withdrew from nowhere an iron key that matched the cell's door. Harry leaned down to bite and snatch it away. It took a bit of maneuvering with his stumps and tongue to get it into the correct positioning, but eventually he had it stuck out in such a way that he could slide it into the keyhole.
"Wait, when you met with Merlin, was he using a round, stone-like device?"
Harry ignored her and opened the door. He stepped out into the hall and was surprised to find that it was rather… Plain? Egg-white walls with the occasional brazier, and a beige carpet that wouldn't have been out of place in a nursing home. When he turned back to the wrought-iron door, he found the bars were replaced with a plain old oaken one. 'Illusions,' he thought. 'I wonder how much of any of this is real. I wonder how much of her is real.'
He turned his neck over a few times to crack it, and immediately regretted it as a vertigo-like sense of nausea crept up inside him. Wherever Harry was about to apparate to, he needed it to be next to a toilet. Well, he knew one bathroom that wouldn't be occupied.
Crack.
"Eek!"
Luckily for Harry, or perhaps for her, Moaning Myrtle leapt up and out of the way as soon as he appeared. He doubled over and began to empty out the contents of his stomach. Or at least he tried to. It felt like trying to squeeze toothpaste that was a century past its sell-by date through a needle's eye. What the fuck had he drank last night, concrete?
"Are you alright?" Myrtle's head was peeking through the stall wall now. "You look a bit… Your hands!"
Harry had tried waving her off. "Its fine. I'm fine. Sorry to bother."
With another crack he appeared in Pomfrey's office, nearly starting the old woman into dropping a handful of vials. She took one look at him before her mouth dropped. "Is this some sort of cruel testing from the headmaster? See how many different and unique ways you can maim yourself to see if I'm up to snuff?"
"Forget the hands." Harry plopped into the bed and rested his stumps on his stomach. "Fix my tummy."
In the heat of battle, Harry had never failed to keep his calm and composure, no matter the pain. In front of the pretty women, he allowed just the slightest hint of it to shine through in order to try and trick them into pity and awe at his stoicism. In front of an old mediwitch who had, even if not in this life, seen more of his insides than any person should have any right to? He could allow himself to be a bit whiny.
"What's wrong with your 'tummy'?" Madam Pomfrey began shoving vials into shelves. "More broken ribs?"
"I drank too much of something, and I can't remember what it was." Another wave of nausea left him dry heaving again. "It feels like I ate a chunk of solidified sewage water."
"I haven't even looked and I'm going to guess you filled up on rockgut, didn't you?"
She'd finished tucking her stuff away and was striding towards him. "Rotgut?"
"Rockgut. A less-than-clever play on words for something that's supposed to be a mixer." Harry let out a moan as she jabbed his stomach with her wand and muttered a spell. "I knew it. You just need some water and time."
"That's how you cure a normal hangover, this—"
"The water will hydrate both you and that lump in your stomach, no shortcuts."
"Can't you cut it out?"
He must've grown a second head, the way she looked at him. "I'm not about to give you a bloody C-section just because you don't understand portion control."
Harry let out a petulant whine, but the woman just shoved a glass of water at him. He cocked an eyebrow at her, then raised his arms. Her head dropped and she took a long, drawn out sigh before holding it up to his lips so he could drink.
He could at least admit that the water felt good, even if it didn't immediately solve his problem. Whatever this rockgut stuff was, he hoped drunk Harry thought it was worth it. When he finished the glass he belched, and to his horror a cloud of smoke came pouring out of him.
"Another side effect of the stuff." Pomfrey's nose wrinkled. "Now let me see your wrists."
The door to the ward opened and cut off her examination. Two teens Harry didn't recognize strolled in, carrying a third between them. They half set, half tossed the middle one into a bed and stomped off. Pomfrey tried shouting for them to wait, but Harry was more interested in the one left behind.
Greasy hair, beak-like nose, and a trail of blood dripping down the side of his face from somewhere atop his head. Severus Snape. Seemed the Marauders had gotten their vengeance for being turned into fungal-phallus unicorns.
Pomfrey stomped back over with a huff, and her eyes shifted back and forth from Snape to Harry. The older patient jerked his head at his former professor. "Take care of the kid first. Me and my stumps ain't going anywhere." He paused. "Actually we are, I'm gonna grab my girlfriend so she can keep me hydrated."
"Don't drink too much water," Pomfrey said. She moved to Snape and began swishing her wand over his head. "You'll just spit it back up if you don't have room."
If it brought chunks of whatever dragon had made its lair in his gullet up with it, that was a sacrifice Harry was willing to make. He stood and apparated back to the Three Broomsticks. Luna didn't look up from the newspaper she was reading, to his surprise it was a copy of the Daily Prophet rather than her father's.
"Welcome home."
Her voice was even and unconcerned, but Harry couldn't help but worry she might've been upset at his disappearance. He couldn't remember whether or not he'd seen her at any point last night. If it were Ginny, she'd have that newspaper rolled up to swing at him with by now. Was he just being paranoid because of that?
"I don't suppose you could…" He stopped himself before making the pun, but then decided the Weasley twins would've murdered him for not going through with it. "Lend me a hand? Or two?"
Luna sat her newspaper down and her face went pale. "Harry!" She rushed over to him and he winced at the concern. He supposed she'd been doing well thus far with not going overboard with the concern, but considering he was coated in his own blood, and missing body parts, it wasn't unreasonable to frighten her. She grabbed his wrists and began turning them over and twisting his arms at uncomfortable angles. "Was it a gulping plimpy? They're notorious for this sort of thing, though they usually just eat the fingers. Where did you come across them? Was it nearby? Should I ask my father for some gurdyroot?"
"I, what? No." He shook his head, which he immediately regretted, then pulled himself away. "I just need you to help me drink some water back at Pomfrey's."
"I knew you should've let me get that nurse's outfit." Their first stop during the clothes shopping spree had been a costume store that caught Luna's eye thanks to the eccentricities on the outside display. "Now I'll look far too mundane."
"There isn't a person with working eyes in the world that would ever call you that." He wrapped an arm around her, hoping she didn't mind the blood on her clothes. "Come on."
Pomfrey wasn't startled this time, but Harry couldn't say the same for Snape. The boy practically jumped out of his skin at the sudden appearance, and Harry tried not to smirk at catching the second or third nastiest teacher he'd ever had to put up with off guard. Harry settled down into his bed and Luna set to filling the cup he'd been drinking out of with a quick aguamenti charm.
"You're going to have to stay here for the next hour or so," Pomfrey said to Snape. "Your neck is fine, but you definitely have a concussion."
Snape didn't say anything as she turned away to face Harry and Luna. Harry swallowed down the last sip of his water with a smack of his lips, then held up his arms for Pomfrey. "I'm ready to be rehanded."
"Hmph." She sidled up to his bed and Luna stepped back. "I hope you don't expect me to just magic up some new hands for you, this will be a long and draining process. I'm guessing you don't have the hands at all anymore, given the fact that it looks like you burned them off?"
"Nope, I traded them for freedom from a particular clingy witch." He jerked his head at Luna. "Not this one. And then I cauterized the ends."
"With what?"
"Magic."
"How the bloody he—." She stopped at the last second, remembering the other patient within listening distance. "How in Merlin's name did you manage to do magic like that without a wand?"
Harry snorted. "Don't bring that stupid old man up, its his fault we're in this mess to begin with."
"Who, Merlin?"
"It's a long story." He shook his head. "Anyways, I know the drill. Gotta magic away the burned flesh, slather some plant-goop on there that'll somehow feel like its both burning and freezing me, then a trio of potions."
"Just two, actually. One for the bones, one for the muscle fiber."
Harry's brows furrowed. "What about the skin?"
"I'm afraid you'll have to wait for it to regrow on its own, which is the other reason you'll need that 'plant goop', in order to keep your flesh insulated." Pomfrey turned up her nose. "Perhaps you'll be a touch more careful with your extremities in the future."
"Nonsense." Harry turned to face Snape, who hadn't stopped studying him since regaining his composure. "I'd bet ten galleons to a sickle that boy over there could brew up such an elixir, concussed or otherwise."
Snape sneered at him, though it was a pale imitation of the facial contortions he'd work up in the future. "No such thing has been invented."
"Then go invent it already." Harry rolled his eyes. "It'll be a day… No, two days before I'm ready to drink it anyways."
"That's—"
"Tell Slughorn that Dumbledore has given you free reign of the supply closet, so long as you don't abuse the privilege to make anything unrelated to this venture. Call it an early chance to prove yourself for the NEWTs, and a chance to make yourself a tidy fortune on the patent." Harry shot Pomfrey a sheepish stare. "Once your hour of waiting around is up."
"I didn't realize you spoke for the headmaster." Snape's sneer grew closer to the one of future legends. "Who do you think you are?"
"His nephew, Harry Dumbledore." He would've waved, but Pomfrey had finished sloshing off the dead skin on his left arm and was spreading the poultice on it, while Luna stroked the other like a cat. "Feel free to tell Tom I said hi."
Snape cocked his head to the side. "Who?"
"Your boss." Harry rolled his eyes. "Nasty evil wizard? The one who I'm going to be putting down sooner or later."
Horror and recognition appeared in equal, rapid measure on the boy's face. "I don't—"
"Of course you don't," Harry cooed. "Just tell him what I've told you. Tell him I'm coming. And let's just say that, for your sake, I hope you haven't gotten any tacky pieces of ink lately." Harry winced and sucked his teeth as Pomfrey prodded a finger into a groove of flesh. "And don't forget my skin potion. If you do, I'll tell Potter and the other idiots every little secret you think you've kept hidden, Prince."
It took a lot to make someone as pasty as the former — Future? — Potions Master pale, but that seemed to do the trick. Harry couldn't take much pride in his victory though, Pomfrey shoved a finger right back into that same groove and he knew she did it on purpose.
"Quit disturbing the other patients, Mr. Dumbledore." She traded places with Luna to start working on his other arm. Luna gave a few testing sniffs of the wrist the mediwitch had been working on before pulling away with a scrunched up nose. "I don't care how powerful you and your uncle are, this is my ward."
Harry grumbled but didn't argue. Whether it was Madam Pomfrey, Master Bings (his dedicated physician out of St. Mungos, in his own time), or even Hermione on occasion, he knew better than to sass at whoever was helping you grow back your body parts. One time Bings 'accidentally' started disinfecting his eye socket with an alcohol nearly as strong as rockgut before he'd done the numbing spells.
That was a hard lesson to forget.
He missed Bings.
"There we are." Harry blinked. He'd totally drifted off. "Now for the two potions."
"To start," he shot back. "Snape will get the other one done."
"Considering you just got finished threatening the child, I'd be surprised if I don't have to find a bezoar afterwards."
"Please, he's far too proud to admit defeat." Harry rolled his eyes. "He'll try and kill me after he's proven his mastery over the cauldron."
To the teen's credit, Snape didn't join in the banter. He scowled at the two of them instead and turned over onto his side. Pomfrey departed then quickly returned with a pair of potions which she handed to Luna. Harry allowed her to pour their contents into his mouth, wishing for more water instead of these vile things. The first tasted of an oily broom rag, the other like severely over cooked rubber pretending to be steak.
"Here." Luna finally fulfilled his silent wish and gave him another glass of water to wash it all down with. His stomach pain had almost faded into the background amidst all this commotion, but as he settled into his bed and closed his eyes it was certainly doing its best to remind him of its presence. "Scoot."
Harry grunted but slid over anyway. It was a tight fit for two grown adults, especially when one was as large, muscular, and broad-shouldered as his humble self was, but he wasn't going to complain. Even if he had to keep the arm on her side at an odd angle so as not to rub the poultice off, it was nice to have Luna pressed up against him. A rumbling came up his stomach and he belched again. He frowned at the smoke that came with it.
"Why the hell is it blue now?"
#
The next day, Pomfrey surprised him by being surprised herself. "Why isn't it done yet?" she asked. "I purchased this Skele-Gro straight from the same apothecary St. Mungo's uses."
"You drink enough of the stuff, you start getting a bit immune to it." Harry shook the fleshy bit of bones and meat hanging from his wrist at Pomfrey. "I told ya, this ain't my first rodeo."
"I've never heard of such a thing."
"You've never had a patient like me," Harry said. "Either way, more plant-goop please."
Pomfrey sighed but still got to work.
Luna had left to sleep in her own bed last night, leaving Harry to merely ponder whether or not they could've gotten away with fulfilling an old school-years fantasy. Albus had stopped by briefly to find out why he was offering out permissions for students that he technically didn't have the authority to give. Other than that, he'd just been bored out of his mind, and for once unwilling to remedy that with alcohol, given the fact that his bout with rockgut still hadn't fully subsided.
"May I ask you something?" Pomfrey pulled up a stool and unscrewed the lid of the poultice jar. "What were you talking about with Mr. Snape yesterday?"
Harry's eye twitched as she started applying the substance. "Nothing to concern yourself with. I was probably wasting my time trying to threaten him away from all that nonsense."
"Is he…" Pomfrey swallowed. "One of them?"
'How much does she know about the Death Eaters?' he wondered. 'How much does anyone besides Dumbledore?'
"Potentially." She pressed down hard on his hand and Harry cringed at the pain. "Careful, Pomfrey, I just got these hands."
"I wouldn't call them hands just yet." Despite her tone, she moved a bit more gently. "Is he or is he not?"
"He's obviously been in contact with them, but I don't know if he's in the club just yet," Harry said. "Either way, I'll be dealing with all that soon. Let's just hope he hasn't done anything… Stupid, yet."
For a while the mediwitch was silent. She kept slathering on the substance, probably far too much if Harry's experiences were anything to go off of.
"He's so talented though," she almost whispered. "Why on earth would he waste his gifts like that?"
"Hell if I know." Harry sniffed, then regretted it as the stench hit his nose. "Well, I do know, but unless he decides to be selfish and not make that potion I won't be going around spilling his secrets."
"I know I just said he's talented, but—"
"But nothing." Pomfrey finally moved over to his other side. "He's more than talented, he probably knows potions better than Slughorn himself. I'm one hundred percent certain he's capable of it, it's whether or not he's willing that I have to question."
Pomfrey gave a worried hum. "My mother's a muggle," she whispered. "The things they're doing to those poor people…"
"Poppy." The woman pulled back at him using her first name. "I promise. I'll put an end to this war. I'm not just an arrogant ass, I'm an arrogant ass who deserves every last drop of his ego." A thought occurred to him. "Albus hasn't called me up just because he's missed his nephew."
Harry didn't have the people's trust yet. He hadn't earned it. Albus was the hero who'd slain Grindelwald though, and Harry had no problem using his name for every advantage it could give him.
Even if his momentary goal was just to assuage a worried witch's fears.
"Thank you."
Poppy stood and stepped away. Harry had to fight the urge to rub his goopy hands together, god they were itchy.
"Oh!" Pomfrey said. Harry glanced over to see that Snape had arrived. "Mr. Severus, when did you arrive?"
He stepped past her and sat a vial on the tray beside his bed. Harry stared at it for a few moments. "You're missing something."
Snape had already spun around on his heel with a less-than-dramatic flare of his cloak, but froze. "What?"
"It should be light-green, not forest-green." Harry shrugged. "Maybe you've actually added something you shouldn't have. Either way, that won't work."
Snape wheeled back around. "Of course it will. I tested it myself."
"Maybe it will, maybe it won't." Harry leaned in closer to stare at the concoction. "Also, there should be little floaty white things in there, it shouldn't be this clear." He pulled away to settle back down in his bed. "Make of that information what you will, you're smart enough to figure it out."
The adolescent potions master flexed his jaw for a moment, then snatched the bottle and stormed off, nearly barging through Pomfrey on his way. Harry watched him go with a smirk. Truthfully he had no idea what those differences were about, the boy's version might've even been better than what he was used to, but he'd rather play it safe.
A few more hours passed without disturbance, which meant Harry was left even more bored than before. The most entertainment he got was when the occasional belch of smoke came up, and he could try to blow smoke rings in the general direction of a very annoyed Pomfrey.
'Wonder what Luna's up to,' he thought. 'Maybe nargle hunting.'
He still wasn't quite sure what a nargle was, despite his girlfriend's best efforts, but she seemed quite enamored by the things. The duo still had to make time to go see those whatever-she-called-them's that apparently went extinct in their own timeline. He wondered how much longer it would be before she got sick of him.
"Here." Harry turned to find Severus standing there once more, a potion that more accurately fit Harry's memory in hand. "The white particulates you described were an unnecessary byproduct of crude handiwork."
"I'll take your word for it." Harry smudged off some of the poultice to take a look at the flesh underneath, and decided he could drink the skin growing potion without risking premature… What was the opposite of shedding? Either way, he could take it now. Worst case scenario he'd wind up with some particularly thick and numb hands for a while. "Throw it down my hatch, will you?"
"How did you know of this potion?" Snape asked. "I thought you were just blustering, but the addition of the shavings from a boar's hoof to make it 'forest green' amplified the efficacy by a massive margin."
The nausea that Harry had thought he'd quietened suddenly returned in full force as he realized what the 'white particulate' must've been. "Many things have been lost to time." An honest, if easily misunderstood answer. "Less talking, more pouring."
To his astonishment, the boy actually did what he asked. A much more pleasant surprise was the fact that the elixir went down quick and smooth. For all his grievances against the git, the man really was a master of alchemy. When Harry finished he nodded a thank you to Snape.
"How did you know my secrets?" Snape asked in a tone near a whisper. "Who told you?"
"Practice your occlumency."
"What?" Any good will Harry had earned with his potions knowledge had vanished. "You invaded my mind?"
Harry stared into the man's eyes, and before Snape could look away drove a mental 'spear' into his consciousness, though he didn't bother to make use of the gap to actually pry into memories. Snape staggered back.
"Mind yourself, Snape." Harry flicked his wrist to help the silencing charm he was about to cast, incidentally spraying a bit of goop onto the floor. "I won't accept any moral grandstanding from you."
Snape grit his teeth. "Have you told anyone about… him?"
"No." Harry tried not to take too much pleasure in the man's squirming. "But I wasn't exactly being subtle the other day when Pomfrey was first patching up my hands, so it wouldn't surprise me if she put two and two together."
"Then—"
"Then nothing," Harry said. "If you're that worried about being exposed as a traitor to the wizarding world, you shouldn't have started down that path to begin with. Just be grateful that Albus is kinder than I am. Did you deliver my message like I asked?"
"You were serious?" Snape's eyes were wide. "I can't just walk up to the dark lord and say 'Hello, a stranger told me tell you hi, said your name was Tom.'"
"You can if you're not a coward." Harry snorted. "Just get someone to pass on the message. Tell Tom or Voldemort or whatever you want to call him that Albus Dumbledore's nephew is on the hunt for him, and would love to have the chance to meet and kill him."
"You have no idea how powerful he is."
It was time to try an experiment that Harry had been contemplating ever since he'd had to dump out half his brain to bring Dumbledore up to speed. He launched another spear through Snape's occlumency defenses, but this time it was more of a syringe. Harry plunged the memories of his recent battle with Morgana into the boy's mind, cutting it just short of him helping the witch up.
Snape fell to the ground like a discarded doll, eyes glazed over. Harry watched him with his head cocked to the side. Was this just what people went through when they were buried in a pensieve? Or had he just, in effect, killed his former potions teacher? He at least knew it wasn't the latter when the boy suddenly began convulsing. Or at least, it wasn't the latter just yet.
Just as Harry tossed off his blanket, the boy came to a rest and groaned. "What… What…"
"So what was that like?" Harry asked. "I've never done it before, thought I might've killed you."
Snape looked up at him, eyes wide, and panting. "You're Potter's son."
'Ah, fuck.'