CHAPTER THIRTY

[Disappear]

HARRY

Some part of him always knew he could never keep them in the dark about it forever. He suspected they already knew part of the truth too. He just never wanted to face it and especially not so soon.

The hospital wing was quieter than it usually would at this time of hour and Harry was playing with the self-playing Exploding Snap cards Ron had left him. Occasionally the cards would backfire and scorch the hair off his arms. Madam Pomfrey threatened to ban them if they burnt a hole in her sheets one more time.

"Harry?"

He looked up to see none other than Remus walking towards him from Madam Pomfrey's office. His behaviors were a little too timid than what one would expect from a thirty-year-old man. Harry was immediately suspicious, though, that might just be him not trusting adults in general. He knew enough about Remus to know he was never one to confront things head-on so whatever had brought him so the visit must be something serious.

"Mhm?" Harry responded. He set down his deck of cards facedown to signal a time-out.

"How are you feeling?"

"Alright, I suppose. Madam Pomfrey had me drugged up on numbing potions so I wouldn't really know though." Harry shoots him a grin. She had said since the curse was now so close to his heart he could have another episode any minute despite the spells and potions to repel it. It was tiring his heart out trying to fight it so his blood pressure was constantly low as well. For some reason he got the hint this wasn't what he wanted to talk about.

"Are you sure?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"I.. well…"

Madam Pomfrey came bustling out of her office followed by a fourth-year who had accidentally given himself two noses. "Just drink the potion dear and you'll be fine- Remus! I told you not yet!" She ran up to Harry's bedside and shot Remus a glare.

"We can't just ignore it anymore, Poppy. You out of all people should know that. It's been going on long enough."

"Don't lecture me. I know exactly that, but Dumbledore said-"

"What Albus doesn't know won't kill him."

"It might us! We're under strict orders not to interfere! You promised him."

"Didn't you take the Hippocratic Oath? You swore too, did you not?"

"Ignore what?" Harry interrupted. If he hated anything in the world, people talking about him as if he wasn't there was one of them. Poppy and Remus fell silent and gave him a sympathetic expression. It sent a familiar ache of dread into his bones.

"Mr. Potter," the mediwitch began anxiously, "a normal diagnostic spell only dates back within the past few days. For your case, when you first showed up with the curse, I had used a much stronger one as a normal one did not go back far enough to tell me what it could have been. It can go back a matter of months, years even if cast correctly."

Harry knew exactly what she was getting at. Panicked, he shook his head. "I don't know what you're getting at."

Remus opened and closed his hands at his side as if fighting the urge to reach out. Harry watched them carefully. "You know what we mean."

"No. I don't."

Remus watched him carefully as Madam Pomfrey handed Harry a piece of parchment she had rolled inside her robe pockets. Harry unraveled it carefully, scared of what he would find.

The list went on for ages. Bruising around the wrist, bruising on the abdomen, lacerations round back and legs, low-blood pressure from malnutrition, headache, fractured Ulna, first-degree burn on hands….

There were no dates on them. That much brought a little bit of oxygen back into his lungs. They couldn't specifically trace this back to the Dursely's since they had no concrete evidence. They might know, or be suspicious, but they couldn't do anything about it. They would still worry needlessly or view him as weak. Harry pulled at his fingers anxiously. Both possibilities brought millions of needles prodding at his heart.

"I told you already. I got attacked by death eaters. Of course, I got hurt. Whatever you're trying to suggest isn't what you think it is."

"Harry…"

"What?" He accidentally hissed the words. The panic was getting the best of him and he never was one to hide his emotions very well.

"You know it's okay to get help, right? You don't have to keep it locked up inside. The Dursleys are long gone, you'll never have to see them again." Remus reached out to place a hand on Harry's knee who jerks back quickly.

"They haven't done anything." He glares back at both of them. "Sure, they're dreadful but not-" He pauses, thinking over his words. "They're not like that. You're confused."

Madam Pomfrey huffed indignantly with her hands on her lips. "Mr. Potter, do you mistake me as blind?"

Realizing she was waiting for a response, Harry shook his head slowly as not to break eye contact

"Right you are. I've seen you come back time after time again with too little on your bones, new scars, and wrongly healed bones to add to a list I can't even begin to imagine. You have scar tissue older and deeper than you would think. I'm trained in these things and frankly, it's insulting to know you think I would just glance over it!"

Harry's nerves had turned his brain to a mental soup of conflicting instructions. In his building anxiety he constructed elaborate rationalizations for why everything would turn out alright, but still, the nagging voice in the back of his mind spoke of nothing but doom ahead.

"Nothing happens. You're making a big deal out of nothing." He tries. Looking at their facial expressions he knew they weren't so easily convinced.

Madam Pomfrey reaches into her robe pockets again and brings out a small potion vial blue-ish in color from the contents inside. He recognized it easily as a calming draught. "Drink this dear. It'll help."

"No- no I don't need some potion. I'm fine. Why don't you believe me?" The last part comes out a little more desperate than he would have liked.

"You've said it yourself. The Dursely's are the worst type of people. They don't feed you and even lock you in your room for days on end. It's not that hard to come to the conclusion of abuse as well when you come back bruised and cut up." Remus adds on slowly to gauge his reaction. It does the trick because Harry rushes to defend himself hotly.

"It's not- It's not abuse! I'm not some weak child who can't defend themselves! I get into some fights, so what? That's not because of the Dursleys!"

"I find it highly unlikely that you get them beat up from so many fights when you so rarely start anything while in school."

"Well then maybe you don't know me at all," Harry huffs. Remus pulls back from trying to comfort him.

"Maybe I don't. But I know when you're nervous you tap your wand on your leg just like your mother, and when you don't want to talk about something you get defensive, and that your favorite colour is green because the Dursely's thought it was disgusting, and that you think that it's up to you to fix everything. After all, you can't trust adults."

Harry should have been shocked if he wasn't so frustrated. "I'm not abused."

"Do you really think that yourself?"

Harry thinks back to all the times when Aunt Petunia had threatened him if he told anyone what went down in their house. All the times he had been stuffed in his cupboard or locked upstairs when they had guests over. And when one of the teachers in his primary school had reported suspected abuse before she was fired and he'd come to school the next day with a broken arm for 'being a whiny snitch'.

No, he knew he was abused; he just didn't want to admit it. He could handle it, so he would. There was no need to drag anyone else in.

"I know you don't want to talk about it, but Potter, if you confess they could go to court and get time for what they've done. Don't you want that?"

Harry breaks his concentration from Remus to Pomfrey. She was looking at him sadly as if he was weak, just like he was that little boy in the cupboard under the stairs again and he hated it.

"Show me then." He spits even if he knew he was immediately going to regret them. But he needed to know what exactly and how much they knew. "If you want me to confess to take them to court you need evidence, right? Show me then."

The two adults looked at each other uncertainty. There was an unspoken conversation between them. When they looked back at him he deliberately crossed his arms.

She sighed and walked back to her office. Moments later she came back with a thick yellow folder. The sight of it brought a foul taste to his mouth. He took it with shaky hands. He grazed his hands over the cover for a moment before flipping it open. The first page read his name, age, gender, guardians and wizarding proxy, etc. The second page is where things went downhill. It started in his first year. She wrote down her concerns about Harry's empty medical record, weight, and height when he had to get examined for the Quidditch team. She mentioned the periodic flinching he hadn't grown out of yet and is so far timid behavior. It was left alone for a while until his first incident. There were pictures taken of his back that had to be taken when he was asleep and descriptions of his refusal to seek help. The years after that only proved her suspicions right. Every Quidditch physical exam he'd had, his weight loss and injuries at the start of terms, pictures, diagnostic charms, and even his own remarks about the Dursleys. There were even pensive memories bottled and labeled in the folder pocket to prove it.

Harry swallowed back the bile that threatened to rise in his throat. It was ironic that the papers and photographs were what made it so real to him instead of actually living it. And it scared him. He couldn't deny it to himself or them anymore. That should have been a good thing, to be free of that cycle of pain, but finally stepping away terrified him for some reason.

He closes the folder and pushes it to the side. He couldn't bear to look at them just yet knowing exactly what they did. Instead, a heavy silence falls over them as Harry stares down at his lap, playing with his finger to collect his thoughts. They knew. They've known. He'd thought he'd hidden it well enough over years, and now that he knew how wrong he was, it felt like a pillar he'd built himself around had collapsed in on itself from the ground up.

And then a sudden fuse to a bomb ignites from inside him.

"You've known?"

Pomfrey shifts slightly. "Yes. I have." She says quietly.

He looks up at her finally and examines her. His mouth was slightly agar and eyebrows furrowed in what seemed slight shock and frustration.

"And you did nothing?"

Remus butts in. "She tried Harry but Dumbledore wouldn't allow it. We weren't allowed to interfere. It was a choice between two evils, you have to understand that. As long as you thought of Privet Drive as your home, you would be safe from certain death from You-Know-Who."

Harry stares at him appalled. "If you knew what went on there then you would know it never was my home. Not once did I ever think that."

Remus's face softens. "I known, but-"

"I was alone. That's what it did. My entire childhood was just being isolated and feeling like a freak over something I never had a choice in. I never got love, or presents, or even sympathy. That wasn't a home, it was a prison!"

Madam Pomfrey sits down on the chair next to him and reaches out for his hand but Harry recoils. "Take it easy on him, he didn't know. He'd just now found out, Harry."

His glare shifts from Remus to the mediwitch. "You then. You always knew. You just had to keep me there, making sure I felt worthless under the delusion that the Dursley's ever cared for me."

"Heavens no! I-"

"But that's what you did, and I woke up from that nightmare a long time ago. You cared more for the word of an old man than making sure I was loved or wasn't being beaten half to death every other week. Don't-! Don't try to deny it. I was the one who had to live through it, not you."

She looks crestfallen at the teenager's fury towards her. "There was nothing I could do!"

"Wasn't there? Or did you just need to make sure I fell into the perfect molding clay into whoever's hands I got into first? Make sure I played my part of a perfect, little hero when I needed to be? Oh don't care about him, he only just lost the only family he's had left!"

Both adults stared at him in blatant shock. He glared back. A part of him knew he was being selfish in his rant, but no longer could he help it. They had known and done nothing! Guilt was beyond him at this point. It was Draco's words from the library that day that kept it from closing in on himself. 'I don't understand how you can be so selfless after everything. You've never had a break. Don't you ever want to hold on to something? Give people who've wronged you a taste of their own medicine?' And he did. So much. Surely after all this time he was allowed to be a little bit selfish?

"Harry," Remus cuts it, "I think that's quite enough. I understand that you're mad but you can deal with it in another way than yelling at poppy who was just doing her job. She has nothing to do with this enough. If you're that upset, take it up with Dumbledore. He was thinking big picture and I'm sorry if you as a person got stuck in between."

Harry didn't respond. He shoved the folder back to the witch before angrily laying back down and pulling the thin hospital bedding up to his chin. He didn't want to look at either of them right now.

Big picture.

I always was that, wasn't it? It was the Boy-Who-Lived, not him. Always. He didn't count to the seas of people in the end. Even with Ron and Hermione nowadays that was almost all they talked about it seemed. He wished he could go back to when they were eleven when all they're problems seemed to be a troll in the bathroom or a Dreadful on an exam. The only person who didn't seem to care (anymore at least) was Draco. The topic of the war was an unspoken taboo between them and he was glad for it. Even when Harry had to open his stupid mouth in their stupid fight the night before about the prophecy he'd allowed it to quickly move on.

Remus and Pomfrey quickly realizing Harry was past talking, they left him alone. The privacy curtains were pulled back up again and he let out a heavy breath he didn't know he was holding.

He didn't know how long he sat there thinking over his rant. He'd dissected it through every possible light and came up with even more reasons to yell at his headmaster. Greedily he wished Draco was there with him. He still didn't know why Draco had done all those awful things (he'd half hoped Ron had been dramatic but Draco hadn't denied any of them) but he still would know what to do. He always seemed to know exactly what he was doing and execute it with elegant skill thoughtlessly. He never realized exactly how much he'd admired that of him.

As if sensing his longing, there was a tapping at the window next to his bed. Harry sat up, frowning. His eyes still ached where they had burned earlier. He rubbed them as he got up towards the window. Instead of an owl like he'd expected, there was a small piece wad of parchment. Harry opened the window and it came soaring in, him catching it with trained reflex. His mouth opened in awe as he realized it wasn't a wad of paper at all but rather a small origami crane. It was beautiful.

The paper-made creature pecked at his open palm. The message was clear enough to Harry. Still, it saddened him to destroy the intricate magic. A small chuckle left his lips despite his mood when he realized who exactly would have sent him such a thing just to show off.

He pulled the crane apart carefully to find a message written inside in a recognizable, dignified scrawl.

'Meet me at the tapestry of Sir Elwin on the third floor tonight. We need to talk.'

He didn't even ask. How in character.