AN: This chapter is for duj, who helped it to be more canon-compliant than it would otherwise have been, even though we don't agree on everything.

Also, I'm considering taking out the Prufrock references. Would appreciate input.

Survivor.

Survivor, survivor, survivor. The word burned through Severus' consciousness as he spiralled back up towards whatever passed for reality in this dreamspace.

He'd seen bits of Harry's home life in the boy's mind before, of course. Yes, he'd known Harry's home life wasn't very nice, but when was life ever nice? Besides, it didn't seem as though the boy was in any way damaged by it – he was chipper, cheeky and cocksure. Although Potter's grief and anger had been quite genuine, he'd never been particularly sympathetic to the boy's privations: not being given gifts was hardly an excuse to cry child abuse, although that business with the dog had been a bit much. And he'd seen the disgusting cousin bullying him before, as well. It was obvious they didn't care for him much, and tolerated his cousin and other relations mistreating him. Still, children weren't delicate flowers. Too many people treated them as though they were breakable – not so much permissiveness as out-and-out spoiling. He'd done his bit by the brat, too – hadn't he hinted to Tonks and Shacklebolt that it might be a good idea to check into the quality of care Harry was getting at the Dursleys'?

But this…

The abuse, the cupboard… He'd known the boy was locked in a room with bars on the windows, but… He had no idea why he hadn't seen it before. There was no reason why he shouldn't, unless the memories were repressed too far to appear…

Whatever else he wasn't, Potter was a survivor.

Living was no great achievement. Surviving was.

He didn't like Potter, he couldn't ever like him, he thought, but being a survivor was a trait he respected.

"No, Harry, please, not that!" Weasley whined.

His mind whirled as he realized he wasn't out of the woods yet. He was still in the dreamspace. Granger and Weasley were STILL with him.

And they were…cringing.

"Not this one, Harry!" Granger entreated.

"Not in front of Snape, mate," Weasley pleaded, "come on!"

Severus raised his head to see what it was that couldn't be seen in front of him.

…himself?

He never wanted to remember the next half-hour. It was a whirling collage of memories from Dumbledore to Harry, memories Dumbledore had not shown to the public; memories that Potter, blast him, had shamelessly shown Granger and Weasley in his turn. And they were all of Severus, memories he himself had once shared with Dumbledore.

He actually didn't realize it at first. He saw Fawkes deliver something he knew to be a Memory Charm to Potter, saw Potter's face twitching as he sat on the bed in the room so familiar to Severus from Occlumency lessons, saw him as he absorbed something. He didn't actually see what it was that was so absorbing until Potter called his two friends over and started explaining to them how 'Snape' – he shot them a dirty look to hear his name stripped of the honorific as they blushed – was innocent. "I know what I said! I can hardly believe it myself! But Dumbledore left me proof!"

"Hmm." Severus almost felt smug at the embarrassment on the two students' faces; if he was right, their past selves would start insulting him right about now, never imagining that he, Snape, would ever witness this scene.

And they didn't disappoint. The girl hadn't really said anything that could be held against her – something about his not being serious and how he'd been fooled by the Dark Lord before – but past-Weasley was, as usual, a fount of insolence and disrespect. "You out of your mind, Harry? He killed Dumbledore! You said yourself he was a traitorous bastard!"

He aimed a look at the present-Weasley at that – really, it was amazing how red the human face could turn – and Weasley could do no more than shrug. "What can I say? You made it look convincing."

Severus then saw Potter open his mind to his two friends in his turn, over Weasley's protests that he, Severus, was a 'filthy traitor—'

—and found himself swearing aloud at the exposure of memories he had hoped to take to his grave.

Along with past-Granger and past-Weasley, reluctantly accompanied by their mortified present counterparts, he swirled into Potter's mind, and into the memory-recording Albus had made for Potter. The first thing he heard was Albus' rich voice, reciting one of his favourite poems by T.S. Eliot. How the hell did Albus know he loved to hear him in "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock"?

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets…

To lead you to an overwhelming question …

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit.

He saw himself as a student, under pressure as a half-blood in Slytherin, tormented by the Marauders, his schooldays Hell. He was surprised to feel a flash of sympathy from the couple, both past and present, at that; he'd thought they'd gloat at the humiliation of their unpleasant teacher.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it toward some overwhelming question,

To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—

The scene changed, and the time changed; he saw his induction into the Death Eaters, saw the fateful night that had changed everything, saw it through their eyes and felt the grudging sympathy alongside the disapproval. He saw himself robbed of his greatest love and bereft, mad with grief at losing Lily; he saw, through Potter's consciousness, his own regret, shame and loathing for his Death Eater activities. He heard a small sound from the girl as his own past grief ripped through the three of them with an intensity that he could hardly bear; had he not been in this dreamspace, he was sure he would have wept, though he had not shed a tear for a long time now. He felt naked as the young lovers saw his remorse, his shame and his fierce determination to do anything in his power to make amends, although no amends could ever be made for him, now that he had nothing left; he had lost the one thing he had ever truly loved, even though it had never truly been his.

He saw himself, slogging through day after meaningless day, Albus' love the only thing supporting him, measuring out ingredients, making potions, knowing the Dark Lord would rise again, biding his time, and existing through day after empty day of endless, agonizing regret.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons…

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

So how should I presume?

He didn't know what he'd expected, but it wasn't the warm curl of sympathy snaking out to him from the Gryffindor yob, settling on his shoulders. He hadn't done anything important; certainly no more than was his duty after all the sins he had committed. He didn't want sympathy!

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two…

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

As his old mentor's collage went on, he saw himself going to Dumbledore and planning strategy when the Dark Lord had risen again. He saw himself, of necessity arriving late to the Dark Lord's congress, and saw the Cruciatus Curse inflicted upon himself, inflicted again and again when he'd helped Harry thwart the Dark Lord's plans, more times than he cared to count or remember. He felt Potter's mortification at that, and theirs; he saw their eyes upon him, but ignored them. Yes, they might be sympathetic, but his innermost secrets had been exposed before them without his permission by Dumbledore and the indiscreet brat, who ought never to have had access to his memories in the first place, and he didn't need their pity, Severus thought fiercely.

So how should I presume?

Even as the outrage boiled up inside him, Severus had to admire the old wizard's skill in thinking to put together a collage of personal memories, despite taking issue with his choice of recipient. It was the only way to convince the hard-headed idiot, Severus knew; Potter had had to trust him so as to continue receiving his information if he had been able to stay on in the Death Eater camp as planned. His embarrassment, he knew Albus would say, was irrelevant. He shrugged mentally. His comfort had proved irrelevant long ago, and his personal life had always been forfeit. What was one humiliation more or less?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

The scene changed to show the events of that disastrous year. He saw the past-couple and Potter stare flabbergasted at Dumbledore's stern instruction to Severus to kill him, followed by Severus' flat-out refusal and then his gradual acknowledgement of the fact that his dearest friend was cursed and dying; saw himself teetering on the edge of a precipice, the precipice of obedience.

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Then it came: he relived again that unbearable night he had worked so hard to push from his consciousness. He suffered again the maddening, unbearable pain that Dumbledore had felt with his own Legilimency in the moment Severus had cast the curse, killing a part of his own soul with it that night. The night he had fallen, for that was how he saw it; his soul had fallen from grace as Dumbledore's body had fallen from the Astronomy Tower. He had known then that there could be no life for him after this last and most terrible of sins. But, ever the obedient tool, he had not ended his life, because he was needed. He remembered how very little his life had meant to him then, how the madness had threatened to overwhelm him, the thinness of the thread with which he had clung to life, before time had lent him enough relief to make it through the days.

Yet nothing could quite dampen the overwhelming bitterness as he compared himself to Potter. They were both Dumbledore's men: but Potter was coddled and protected to preserve his eternal innocence, prophesied to vanquish the Dark Lord with his golden and sunny disposition, while Severus, though the irony did not escape him, was the Cinderella of the underground movement. From the start he had been sullied; as though he were so filthy a bit more dirt wouldn't matter, the dirty work had been left to him, the slogging through terror and torture and blood and moral filth and betrayal till, like Macbeth, he felt that "I am in blood/ Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,/Returning were as tedious as go o'er."

Alone in the world, he had known it that night: that he was irrevocably, irredeemably damned. His past self's bitter sobs were echoed, to his chagrin, by a lump in his throat in the present as the bitterness welled up inside him and he set his jaw against the familiar grief. He didn't know any more whether it was the drink or the onslaught of memories that were weakening him so.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

"Steady on, there," Weasley said gently. "It wasn't your fault, mate. No wonder you're upset. What an awful thing to ask of you. If Harry'd asked it of me I'd have had his guts for garters – and I've got Hermione. You knew you wouldn't have anyone left, but you did it. For his sake. Because he asked you to." And with that, the tall boy wrapped his arms round Severus' shaking shoulders, pulling him into a warm, comforting embrace. "Ssh. You're not damned, mate. You loved him, you gave it all up for him." He pulled Severus' bowed head closer, bringing his cheek to rest upon his chest. "No one could have given more."

Severus jerked upright, startled out of his grief. How dared Weasley presume to touch him?

Only he wasn't; he was still standing apart with his fiancée, his hands on her shoulders, looking mortified even now. But Severus could distinctly feel his emotions, the words as clear as though they had been spoken aloud, feel the warmth of the hug as though it were real. Gryffindors just could not help broadcasting their thoughts, Severus tried to grumble. The sympathetic touch and words of absolution – from a Weasley! – were comforting, but they disconcerted, unsettled him. What was he to do about it? If it were real, he could just glare at Weasley and have done with it, but what could he do to shake off this incorporeal touch, now stroking his back soothingly? He turned and glared daggers at the red-headed boy, and the embrace withdrew, not without a blast of embarrassment and a murmured mental You'd think he could read my mind.

The warmth, Severus was disconcerted to note, lingered on.

It lingered even as the collage faded and they were back in the grey limbo. "He had no right to show you my memories," Severus snapped, tight-lipped with fury, though the unsettling warmth lapped around the edges of his consciousness.

"We're sorry," Granger said, and her face was sincerely apologetic. "We really are, he'd already shown us by the time we'd realized what was in it, and…"

"Enough," he snapped. He'd hoped to have the last word, but looked down to find the grass growing under his feet – literally. As he looked around, he found himself at Hogwarts, on the grounds near the lake, under the beech tree – only the colours of everything were much brighter, and things shimmered a bit…

He took in the dazzling sunlight, the girls dangling their feet in the lake, the foursome sitting under the beech tree, himself next to the bushes, and groaned. Not again, was his only thought.

"Oh, this is a dream," said Weasley nonchalantly, sitting under the tree and pulling his fiancée down with him. "We should know, he's had it often enough."

"We've seen it twenty times at least." Granger accepted the proffered blade of grass from her fiancé's hand and stuck it in her mouth. Then she frowned. "That's unhygienic, Ron!" She made no move to spit it out, though.

Resignation began to give way to fierce anger, dulled slightly with fatigue and plain old shell-shock. Still, Severus' tone shook with rage. Potter dreamed of his humiliation often enough for his friends to become blasé about it? "He…enjoys it?"

The redhead had already leaned back, a blade of grass in his teeth, entirely much more at ease than he had a right to be considering he was in somebody else's mind. "Why don't you wait and see?"

"How dare you address me like that?" he barked.

"Sorry," Weasley said insincerely, "it's just that…"

The girl stretched out on the grass and laid her head in Weasley's lap. Severus felt his face heat in embarrassment at the sexual display. "Do you mind?" he snapped.

"Sorry, Professor, I'd forgotten you weren't fond of PDAs," said Granger, rolling off Weasley's lap.

"Personal digital…assistants?" Severus was puzzled at the non-sequitur. What did it have to do with…

"Public displays of affection, Professor!" the young woman giggled. "It's what they call it nowadays."

"Oh."

"What?" said Weasley, gawping from one to the other.

"Never mind," Severus and Granger said in unison, then blushed and looked away in different directions.

"Muggle thing," Granger elaborated. Weasley reached for her hair and Severus looked away, at his student self. Far too tense to sit down, he watched the hunted-looking young man he had been go over the OWL paper questions – he remembered how anxious he had been to ace that test – and start to move out of the cover of the bushes. "A personal digital assistant – that's what a PDA is short for – is sort of like a mini-computer," the girl started to explain to the adoring hooligan currently pawing her. "It's a bit like a… a charmed notebook, where you put in things you want to remember, like dates, names…"

Severus watched himself critically. In this dream, if dream it was, he looked more vulnerable. He snorted. If that was how Potter saw him…

"…appointments…"

Black and Potter stood up. "All right, Snivellus?" said Potter loudly.

Severus the younger was whirling to draw his wand. Really, what was I thinking? Severus mused. My wand should have stayed out at all times.

"Expelliarmus!" He watched as the Disarming Charm did its work and his past self's wand flew twelve feet into the air and fell in the grass behind him while that mangy Black dog laughed.

Out of the corner of his eye, Severus could see Potter – Potter the younger, that was – approaching. He was running full-tilt towards his former self. Severus raised an eyebrow. Potter, no doubt, didn't want to miss his share of the fun. Attacked by two Potters at once, he thought resignedly. Charming. So this was the revenge Potter dreamed of. And to make matters worse, he, Severus Snape, had to watch this disgusting dream, and a recurring dream at that. Well, he thought, planning revenge, he'd just have to file away whatever humiliations Potter inflicted on his former self in his dreams to embarrass the whelp to tears later.

"…and reminds you of them," the girl was droning on. "It has a little keyboard, you remember, like the calculator I showed you last summer? Only this has letters on it, so you type into it…"

"Wouldn't a Reminding Charm just be easier?"

"Do you mind?" Severus snapped. "I'm trying to listen!"

Weasley's casual attitude was positively infuriating. "Oh, that's right, he hasn't seen this one before," he drawled lazily. "Belt up a mo, Hermione, let him watch."

"Oh, that's right!" the know-it-all said in a sympathetic tone, turning towards Severus. He shrugged off the curl of sympathy that came from her, twined, a moment later, with the boy's, and growled. Gryffindors watching his humiliation like an afternoon at the pictures, he seethed, and obviously repeatedly.

"Impedimenta!"

The brat obviously had a good memory of the incident if it was imprinted so accurately upon his brain – such as it was. He watched himself lying helpless on the ground, panting, as the disgusting duo advanced on him, wands raised.

Potter pelted into the picture. Perfect, Severus thought. Would he gloat or just curse him while he was restrained? Perhaps he would take this opportunity to have a chat with his father and compare notes. Male bonding, Severus thought scornfully, what fun. His father had used Scourgify and then Levicorpus, if memory served. What would Potter use?

A wave of indignation and protective emotion sloshed over him in the typical uncontrolled thought-pattern distinctive of Gryffindors, coming from Harry Potter. A split-second later, Potter had planted himself between Severus' younger self and his father, feet firmly planted on the ground, wand raised. "Don't you dare!"

James Potter tore his eyes away from the girls at the water's edge to stare at this apparition who looked so like him. Black's jaw dropped. Severus, feeling the brat's empathy with his past self, the overtone of loneliness and the desire to put a stop to this injustice, was hard put not to gape like a fish himself.

"Let me tell you a story," Harry said, his face white, radiating such outrage that James and Sirius stopped in their tracks. "It's about a boy who knows what it's like to be bullied. It makes his life a living hell, and he thinks it's the worst thing in the world, until the day he grows up to find his own father's one of the bullies who make life not worth living." His voice trembled. "What if you have kids, James Potter? Would you like them to see you bullying someone who's weak and alone, just because you can? You know what they say about bullies. Would you like them to see this?" His eyes burned into Potter the elder's. "Not your finest moment, is it? How can they respect you, knowing what you've done?"

James looked taken aback for a moment, then tried for his usual arrogance. "Hm? …All it'll take is for them to look at Snivellus…"

"HE'S A HUMAN BEING!" He'd never heard a voice like that out of Potter before. "How dare you punish anyone for existing? I know what it feels like! It feels… it feels…" Inarticulate as ever, Potter, Severus thought, trying for his usual snideness, but unable to get past the image of Potter standing between him and his tormentors, unable to deny the outrage Potter was feeling on his behalf.

"If you've quite finished…" James drawled. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"

"I'm your son!" Potter yelled, and Severus saw the shock on James' face. How frightfully convenient, he thought, and what awful dialogue. Really, a dream so unimaginative could only come from a Potter.

"You're pulling my leg, right?"

"Whatever you do to him will be done to me," Harry said flatly, and his tone sent a chill through Severus. "Your choice."

James lowered his wand, shrugging, trying for nonchalance. "Well, I suppose some other time…"

"No. Never." Harry still had that flat, dangerous – almost Slytherin – tone. "Never again." His jaw was set, his face wearing an expression that almost, almost made Severus realize what people saw in him. "You won't lay a finger on him ever again, either of you, or you'll answer to me."

Severus caught a flicker of – something – on the edge of his awareness, and noticed that Granger and Weasley were looking at him and grinning. Grinning! He scowled at them and turned back to the scene, where detestable, arrogant Potter was saying, "Oh, all right," as though it didn't matter to him one way or the other.

"Swear it."

"Oh, come on…"

"I mean it." Potter's tone was deadly. "Never again. Whether I'm here or not. You won't touch him again. You won't even speak to him out of turn. No pranks. Nothing. No more bullying. Swear it."

"I—" James seemed about to argue, but Potter moved his head and a ring of flame erupted around the two Marauders. Lupin and Pettigrew were both on their feet now.

Potter just stared into his father's eyes.

"I swear it."

"You too, Sirius."

Black looked into Potter's eyes, and Severus felt a wave of pain. "I swear it."

"Good." And the ring of flame vanished as though it had never been.

Potter turned to his fallen past-self, holding out a hand to the gangly boy. I didn't look like that! Severus thought. He stared as Potter stood there mutely, hand extended to help 'him' up. "I'm sorry," Potter said. "I never knew. I really am sorry," he finished lamely, inarticulate as ever. And still he stood there like a statue, holding out his hand.

The Snape on the grass looked up, warily. He sat up…

Potter stood there, offering a hand up, and present-Severus could feel the sincerity in him. He realized he was holding his breath. Past-Severus appeared to come to a decision. His eyes took on a look of resolve…

"Mr. Potter! Time for your potions!"

"Check the monitoring spell, Eugenia!"

But whether or not he would have taken Potter's hand he never knew, as loud voices jolted Potter out of his dream and sent Severus hurtling back to the operating-room floor.