The first few weeks back at school felt strange to Harry. On the one hand, being back at Hogwarts was like returning home. Everything was familiar. Hermione and Ron were still in the early stages of their bickering, where each would cast him exasperated looks behind the other's back. He sniggered with his dormmates as they invented wild predictions for Divination. He rolled his eyes at Hermione's lectures on time management, though he secretly felt comforted by the subtle mothering. Even the threat of the O.W.L.s on the horizon only created a stronger bond with his peers, one that could only be created by shared complaining. Hogwarts was where he truly belonged, more than he ever had in Surrey despite the best efforts of the Stensons.

And yet, he also felt more isolated than he ever had in his life. When he passed by the Hufflepuff table and found them laughing and gossiping, he wondered if he was the only one who remembered that their brightest star had been heartlessly murdered only months before. He still had nightmares about it almost every night and yet the horror had lost its grasp on the other students. Hermione commented on it positively, glad that the Hufflepuffs were moving on, but Harry found it chilling. If any other student was to be lost to Voldemort, it would most likely be him. To look around at his smiling, joking housemates and realize that things would go on the same if he were gone...it was startling. At least Cedric had family to mourn his memory, but Harry only had the Dursleys.

Though he tried to forget the disturbing turn his home life had taken, it kept creeping up. The truth about Privet Drive had always been a topic handled delicately, but he felt it was turning into a dirty secret he had to guard more than ever before. What he had let his uncle do to him...people wouldn't understand. They need him to explain why he hadn't defended himself and he didn't have an answer. He didn't know why hehe felt paralyzed with fear at home when he had handled everything the wizarding world had thrown at him. They would think he wouldn't be able to do his job and fight against Voldemort, but that wasn't true! He didn't want to explain that Voldemort was the bad guy of an epic story and that Harry had to be the hero of the tale. People were counting on him to play that role and so he would do his best to save them all.

Vernon, however, was the monster of his nightmares. There, Harry had never been anything but a scared child alone in the dark waiting for a claw to reach out from under his bed.

And then there was the Stensons, another family he had to save. He didn't know how, but when he made that promise to Kota, he had thrust himself into his Boy Who Lived role and he couldn't take that back. It was up to him to fix things now.

In an attempt to make things feel a bit more normal, he asked Hermione for her help in research. Hermione was sympathetic but unhopeful, explaining that the magic coursing through wizards helped protect them against many Muggle illnesses and that medical research was dedicated almost exclusively to wizarding sicknesses and cures for nasty spells. Yet, when Harry determinedly took the library head-on to search for an answer, she sat across from him, pulled a book off his stack and began skimming.

After a few weeks at it, Hermione began focusing on her own studies and Harry began to lose hope. Hermione had been absolutely right: wizarding medicine was negligent in the field of Muggle infirmities, so much that they weren't even caught up with Muggle medicine in some areas. Harry was extremely disappointed and was angry that with all the wonders magic offered, wizards didn't even know how to vaccinate for the chicken pox.

Hermione latched onto Harry's indignation about the medical field in an annoying way, suddenly sure Harry was destined to be a healer.

"You could push for research into these fields, Harry!" she gushed excitedly, pushing career pamphlets at him. "You could make change! It's something the wizarding world could use! There are so many wizards now with Muggle family who are probably just as frustrated with you at the limitations of magical medicine just because no one's looked into it. We have three more years here, including this one, so what we should do is make a plan. You can start your research now and start picking specific projects by the end of the year..."

"Hermione, I'm really not in the mood," Harry groaned. "And I don't need more than one pamphlet on healing."

"Well, just in case you lose it," Hermione protested.

"I'm not going to lose it."

"I just want you to think about your future! You need to start thinking about it now," she pressed, looking from him to Ron. "We should all have an idea in mind and dedicate a few hours a week to studying it so we can make a difference in whatever area we choose!"

Ron looked a bit nauseous at that. "Don't drag me into this! And you can't have Harry either. Who am I going to hang around with if you both are always in the library?" He said library with just a hint of a shudder.

Hermione huffed. "You should really think about your future too, Ron. You could stand to be passionate about something, you know. And even if you're not, you shouldn't keep Harry from helping his field."

"Healing's not my field," Harry reminded her.

Hermione ignored him. "Well if you don't want to prepare for your life you could at least study for your O.W.L.s."

"Sorry. I'm allergic to libraries," Ron shrugged, just to push Hermione's buttons. "Just found out this summer."

Harry snorted and Hermione tried to glare but couldn't help but cracking a smile herself.

"It's true. It's a serious condition," Ron continued.

"Well, then maybe you should become a healer, Ron," Hermione teased. "That way you can figure out a cure."

Ron scrunched up his nose in distaste.

"I think it's a handicap he's come to accept," Harry joked in mock-pity. "I tried to drag him to Madam Pomfrey but he just refuses the help."

"I think it's work you're allergic to," Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Nah, it's the boredom," Ron replied. He shook his head in a martyred way. "It's a hard, hard struggle."

Harry's eyebrows furrowed as Hermione and Ron kept teasing each other. Maybe all this time he had been looking in the wrong place. It was a long shot still, but really, if he needed something to do with medicine, maybe he should have started with the infirmary. It was possible Madam Pomfrey had heard of something during her schooling.

It was worth a shot.

-

Harry poked his head into the infirmary to find an empty room. He wandered in and looked around awkwardly, not wanting to just call out for the nurse when she might be in the middle of something important.

Thankfully he didn't have to go looking for her. She hurried into the room shaking her head. "Mr. Potter, do you go looking for trouble? I have never had a student spend so much time in my care!"

Harry blushed. "Er, sorry."

"You must learn how to take care of yourself, young man," she scolded, grabbing his chin and looking critically at his face.

"Actually, I'm not here 'cause I'm hurt or sick," Harry interjected, pulling away from her grasp. "I was just wondering if you could answer a medical question I have...for Muggle Studies." He invented the class assignment on a whim, just wanting a candid answer free from sugar coating.

"Hm." She seemed skeptical, as if Harry couldn't actually have stayed uninjured for this long. With a raised eyebrow, she abruptly left his side, bustling around the infirmary. "Fine, fine. Ask away."

"I've been trying to find information on cancer but the library doesn't seem to have anything."

Madam Pomfrey nodded impatiently. "Yes, I've heard of it. Muggle terminal illness, yes?"

"Yeah!" Harry said, stepping toward her in excitement. "Do you know if there's any sort of magical cure or treatment?"

"Magical cures for Muggle afflictions...it's a fascinating field. Superb choice of subject for your class," she enthused. Her mouth quirked thoughtfully as she looked through her potions, shaking bottles to see how full they were. "There's a fascinating story behind cancer in particular. There was a wizard a very long time ago who invented a spell to save his Muggle lover. I believe it was used only twice before the few who knew of the spell decided to hide it from the public. After a while, it was widely forgotten."

Harry sat down on the edge of one of the beds, facing the medi-witch. "But why would they hide a spell that did something so good?"

"Ah, well, it was dark magic," she revealed.

"How is that dark?" Harry asked incredulously.

She eyed him in surprise before comprehension crossed her face. "I forget they don't cover magic theory until your seventh year. How ridiculous. It should be the first thing you learn." She clucked her tongue disapprovingly, but explained. "Light magic is generally accepted as spells that don't have inherent negative consequences. They may have only positive effects, like cheering charms, or may be neutral, like the Lumos charm. Many spells fall in a middle area, which most label gray, though you rarely hear it called so. These have questionable effects. The petrifying curse, for instance, could be used maliciously or defensively. It's negative, but causes no real harm." She took a breath and continued. "Dark magic will cause pain. It's built in. It's most obvious in curses whose purpose is harmful, such as the Unforgivables. But, a form you will learn of later is characterized by peripheral harm."

"Peripheral harm?" Harry echoed hesitantly.

Madam Pomfrey nodded. "Mm, yes. In the case of the cancer-curing curse, it doesn't destroy the illness. It transfers it from one body to another. The wizard to invent the spell did it out of extreme love. He transferred it to himself, giving his life for the one he loved. Peripheral harm to the caster. The second person to cast it transferred the cancer to another, an innocent servant. Peripheral harm to a third party. It was murder. The cancer must be transferred to someone, making it inherently dark."

"Did they transfer it back?" Harry asked, sick at the thought of illness being used as a weapon like that. "From the servant?"

"No." She squinted as she seemed to search her memories for the details. "It can only be transferred once and there's no cure from there.

"And they don't worry about it being used as a weapon anymore?"

"Like many of these ritualistic spells, it's so archaic not many know about it now," she assured him. "Even if they are found, complex dark magic often can go terribly wrong if done even slightly incorrectly. If you say Lumos wrong, nothing happens. If you stutter during a complicated dark incantation, you may curse yourself or the person you're trying to help. There have been instances where a wrong pronunciation instantly killed everyone in the room. It is therefore often hard to find information on such spells and those who find them would be foolish to attempt them. Of course, with desperation, many wise men turn to fools."

Harry looked down in disappointment. "And that's the only way?"

Madam Pomfrey looked up, surprised at his tone. "Yes. Does that disprove a theory you had?"

Harry shook his head and forced himself to sit up straight. "So the wizards couldn't fight it any better than the Muggles? Doesn't their magic help at all?"

"No. Magic can't do everything. Though an interesting point to put in your paper is the effects the cancer had on the magic of those who had it forced into their bodies. In both cases, their magic went wild. It seems that with the uncontrolled cell growth and rapid spreading of the disease, their magic actually also grew uncontrollably and spread in ways no one's ever seen." Madam Pomfrey sat down on the bed facing him, excited to talk about the fascinating case study. "It seems the magic even spread into their brains and affected their cognitive abilities. The man who invented the spell had struggled for years to design it while his lover battled the illness, but in the last year of his life, he invented dozens of new spells and potions, the amount of which no one has yet to reproduce in their lifetime. The servant taught herself to read and researched ways to cure herself; though she failed, her notes are still used today in the best medical research institutions. It's intriguing but of course no one's willing to die for the extra power and intellect."

Harry listened intently. He would almost expect Voldemort to be enticed by such an offer of power, but of course it also represented the Dark Lord's greatest fear: a premature and certain death.

"I have an old text from my medical studies that details the cases and the theory behind the spell, as well as the work of the inventor after the illness took hold. Would you like to borrow it for your assignment?"

Harry nodded more out of surprise than anything. He didn't know what he would do with information about the spell, but more information couldn't hurt.

Madam Pomfrey shuffled into her office and emerged with a large, leather-bound tome. "Well, this should certainly help with your report."

Harry accepted the book gingerly. "I'll take good care of it," he promised.

She nodded and returned to her chores. "You stay out of trouble, you hear? I don't want to see you back here for anything other than returning that book."

"I'll try," he vowed.

-

Harry sat on his bed, chewing his thumbnail, the book in his lap. His roommates were snoring in their beds while a Lumos spell kept his bed lit behind his curtains.

The spell was in the book.

It was written out, step by step. He wasn't sure if Madam Pomfrey even remembered that when she gave it to him, or if she was just so sure no one would ever use it that she felt safe passing it on.

It was the most complicated piece of magic he'd ever seen. It required not only an incantation full of words he could barely wrap his mouth around, but also a potion that looked just as difficult to make as Polyjuice. He found it ironic that elsewhere in the book there was a curse to make similar illnesses dramatically worse to kill within minutes that was infinitely easier than this one; it was just two words! "Recnac Sunimun" instead of "Ah-nack-a-reen-in-ah dem-ee-en...dem-i-ahn?" or however you said it: gibberish that went on for two lines.

To make it more intimidating, the spell had apparently been attempted a third time, but the caster had mispronounced a word and his tongue had burst into flames, leaving him speechless for the rest of his life. The person he had been casting on had died instantly.

What had made him discount the possibility at the beginning was his role as the Boy Who Lived. He had a job to do and he couldn't defeat Voldemort if he was dead.

Yet he had started thinking...what did the spell promise but power? If he was fated to defeat a wizard infinitely stronger and more prepared than he, how else to do it but to have a secret power of his own to fight back with?

But he would die.

He knew everyone was counting on him to do something, but...well, he hadn't even had his first kiss. He hadn't had a girlfriend or gotten drunk or figured out what he wanted to do for a job. He barely knew who he was! All he knew was that he didn't feel like the hero everyone needed him to be.

If he did this, he would be giving up the sliver of hope that he might survive Voldemort's battle for power.

But if he didn't, how many others might die?

His breath caught as the memory of Cedric's death played vividly in his head. He shut his eyes hard to ward off the images.

Hedwig hopped off his headboard, onto his head and then to his shoulder. She seemed to sense that Harry was under stress and picked at his hair like she picked at her own plumage to remove dead feathers. It was an oddly motherly gesture, but he supposed it made sense. She had witnessed everything Vernon had done to him during the summer. When he had cried in his room after particularly harsh beatings, lying silently and letting his tears soak his pillow as he stared at the dark window, Hedwig had hooted softly and nuzzled his cheek, carefully stepping to avoid any of his fresh injuries. She was the only one who knew how much he trembled when his uncle knocked him to the floor and towered over him or how he couldn't help but tear up when his uncle slapped him over and over demanding Harry explain why was such a waste of space. She refused to sleep in the owlery since they got back to Hogwarts, instead choosing to stay close.

Earlier, she had delivered a letter from Kota where she confided to him her fears about her father's death. Her father was the breadwinner of the family and she didn't know what they would do for money. She had always been her daddy's little girl and didn't know how she would manage without him. She couldn't understand why this was happening to them.

It was horrible to read because he knew how it felt to have no parents; he couldn't imagine how painful it would have been to actually know his parents before they were snatched away.

-

That night, he dreamt that he was in a locked, safe room and that Kota, Hermione, Ron, Ginny and others he loved were banging on door, begging to be let in. But he knew that if he opened the door, he'd get sucked outside and didn't want to go, so he hid in the corner and clutched the key. There was a great explosion outside and his friends stopped begging for his help. He knew they were dead.

Then the safe room was his cupboard and all his friends, now dead, were on the other side, whispering through the grate that he was a coward, that a real friend would have died rather than betray them.

He was then in the graveyard, watching Cedric die, but the grave he was tied to was Mr. Stenson's and all around, in a great circle were the graves of those who died because of him. They began to swirl and he begged them to stop but they kept going faster and faster until suddenly a bony hand broke out of the grave below him, grabbed his ankle and dragged him screaming down to where he belonged.

He woke with a startled yelp, breathing heavily.

He put his head into his shaking hands. It should have been him, not Cedric. Voldemort had meant to kill him. He couldn't understand why he been allowed to survive instead of Cedric, or why he had lived when his parents had died. Any of those who died for him would have dealt with the Voldemort issue so much better than he. They would know what to do while he'd just slid by on luck. They gave him the title "Boy Who Lived" because he shouldn't have lived, and they thought there was a reason he did. But everyone looked at him and couldn't see what the reason was and he had no answers for them.

And yet, this was an answer, wasn't it? Maybe this was how he was supposed to balance it all out. Maybe others had died for him so he could die for others...wasn't that what everything pointed to? He could save Mr. Stenson and save everyone else. If he didn't, that would just mock his parent's sacrifices and Cedric's unfair death. He really would be a waste of space.

He was suddenly sure this was what he was meant to do. It was why he'd been robbed of a family. As he'd seen with Cedric's death, family was the only one really affected by someone's death; he didn't have family so his death wouldn't really hurt anyone. He looked at Kota with her father's illness or with the Diggorys and the loss of their son; he didn't have that.

Who would his death really affect? The Dursleys were looking forward to it; the public didn't care as long as he brought Voldemort down with him. Hermione and Ron might be upset for awhile but they'd get over it. Lately, they'd seemed much closer to each other than they did to him. They didn't know the real him, the shameful side that Hedwig had witnessed. He never wanted them to find out or see whatever it was the Dursleys saw in him that sickened them so much. Maybe the way to do that was to go out as a hero. Wasn't that what most people wanted in life anyway?

And it might be nice if the Stensons found out what he'd done for them. Maybe they'd be so thankful they'd treat him like a real family member and though he'd be sick, Mrs. Stenson would bring him soup and Kota would tell him stories and Mr. Stenson would say how proud he was. Or if not the Stensons, then maybe Sirius! He hadn't heard from his godfather in so long. It was obvious the man didn't care much about his godson yet. But if Harry made this sacrifice, maybe Sirius would realize how much like his parents he could be and he'd finally let Harry live with him. They would stay up late together watching movies and Sirius would curse the Durlseys. Harry would tell him not to bother with them, but Sirius would tell him every night that Harry's relatives were wrong, that Harry was so much more than they ever knew.

And that settled it. He wanted to earn a family. Before Hogwarts, he had been nothing, and then they told him he was a hero.

It was time to make them proud.