When he woke, it was flat on his back in a comfortable bed, with a splitting headache threatening to crack his skull open if he moved or thought too hard. His sleep and pain blurred mind couldn't seem to piece together where he was, or why he had a headache, but he automatically reached for his glasses that normally sat on his bedside table. His fumbling hands couldn't find them, but they did find a rather bushy head.

"Harry," said Hermione, sitting up. "You re awake, how do you feel? Are you okay? Can you remember your name? Ron, RON!"

Harry winced at the additional pain Hermione's yell invoked, then winced again at the pain the wince caused. Finally he tried to speak, but found his mouth was dry and his lips parched. A quiet squeak was all that escaped his lips.

"Oh no!" cried Hermione. "He can't speak!"

Harry tried again. "Wa-er," he croaked.

Ron came bursting in to the room, visible to Harry only as a red-topped blur at the edge of his vision.

"Oh, Ron," Hermione cried. "I think he can't speak!"

Harry tried to lift his head up to look around, but the pain was so great all he got was a blurry image before having to stop trying. He couldn't even make out the ceiling, let alone if there was any water or his glasses nearby. Letting his head drop back down the whole inch it had raised, he tried to signal his need again, this time carefully raising his hand to point to his mouth.

"Watr," he croaked again.

There was a stunned silence then a rush of movement at the edge of his vision and a straw was pushed between his lips. Harry took a deep drink from the straw and immediately felt better.

"Headache," he said quietly, hoping they would understand and be able to help him.

Hermione rushed away while Ron came to stand closer to Harry.

"You okay there mate? You gave us a bit of a fright. Hermione hasn't been sensible because of the worry; she's been sitting here reading every medical book she could find while waiting for you to wake up. I wanted to take you to St Mungos, but she knows how you feel about hospitals and said they couldn't do anything until you woke up anyway."

Hermione reappeared and pushed a potion bottle against Harry lips while lifting his head with her other hand.

"Drink this, Harry," she said, not waiting for him to agree before pouring the potion into his mouth. "It will help with the pain."

Harry nearly gagged on the horrible potion, but he knew the favour well; it was a headache cure and general pain reliever.

As soon as the potion slid down his throat he started to feel immensely better. His headache eased so that it only felt like a few Hippogriffs had been dancing a tango on his brain, rather than a whole flock performing a mating dance.

"Glasses?" he asked, stronger this time.

Ron leant over and placed his glasses on, bringing the room and his friends into focus. He was lying in a bed in one of the rooms inside his tent.

"What happened?" he croaked.

"What were you thinking, Harry?" demanded Hermione angrily. "I warned you trying to put another person's memory into your head could be dangerous. Do you have any idea how worried we have been?"

Harry winced from her raised voice and took a closer look. Ron was looking very tired, but Hermione looked positively bedraggled. Her face was tear-streaked and her normally uncontrollable hair had risen to new heights of messiness. Ron reached out and put his arm around her and she turned and pressed her face to his chest sobbing quietly.

"How long?" he asked.

"Two days since we found you on the floor next to the chest," answered Ron. "You really gave us a scare. We brought a healer to have a look at you. He said there was nothing he could do and we just had to wait to see."

"Secret?" asked Harry, still not feeling up to full sentences. Every word was another lightning bolt of pain inside his skull.

Hermione took her face from Ron's chest and wiped her red rimmed eyes.

"I side along Apparated him inside the tent. He had a few problems while he was here, like trying to remember which room you were in, but he could check you over easy enough without seeing anything outside of this room."

"He told us not to take you through the Floo or to try and Apparate you, just in case."

Harry felt himself start to sink back into unconsciousness, but he had enough energy to say one last thing.

"Sorry."

Then blackness reclaimed him with open arms.

The next time he woke, his head felt much better. Another potion bottle of headache cure was on his side table, along with his glasses, but he was alone in the room. Harry sat up and downed the potion, feeling its positive affects immediately.

A small wave of dizziness overtook him as he made to stand up, causing him to sit on the edge of the bed for a few moments until everything stopped spinning. After that he was able to get changed and make his way to the main room where he found Ron sitting at the table reading.

Seeing Harry's weakened state, Ron rushed over to help him.

"I'm fine," Harry said trying to wave off the redheads help.

Ron snorted his disbelief.

"You have to come up with something better to say, you know? Nobody believes that one anymore. Now how about something to eat, it's been three days since you last had anything besides potions."

Harry readily agreed and was soon devouring a typical Ron breakfast; everything he could lay his hands on.

Ron sat silently for a while, watching him as he ate. There was obviously something on his mind, but Harry, somewhat ashamed at his actions, wasn't in a mood to go prying for answers.

"Hermione thinks it's her fault," Ron said at last.

Harry kept eating and didn't reply, even though Ron's words shocked him. That was not what he expected to be bothering his friend.

"She seems to think you came home and saw us – er - together, and kind of freaked out."

Harry watched his plate and chewed his food carefully. Was that what happened? It all seemed a bit blurry. He remembered what he had done, and his reasons, they still seemed solid, but what if he was wrong and Hermione right? It wouldn't be the first time she knew him better than he knew himself. Had seeing them together freaked him out?

Worse yet, he had failed; the memory was not inside his head.

"She thinks you might be scared of getting left alone, that you might want us to call it off."

Harry couldn't let that one go without comment. "That's just stupid," he said, between mouthfuls.

"That's what I said!" agreed Ron. "I told her you weren't that mental. Well not before you tried to stick somebody else's thoughts in your head anyway. Now I suppose it wouldn't surprise me if you started talking a bit crazy, Nitwit, blubber and such."

Harry laughed, choking on his food, and Ron smiled broadly.

"You really did freak her out, Harry. She didn't sleep while you were out of it. She must have read every book on brain damage and mental healing ten times over, and ran the diagnostic spells she learned at least once every five minute," said Ron. "It was lucky you picked up some decent healing books in your shopping trips or she probably would have gone and bought everything in the shop.

Harry felt incredibly guilty for making them worry so much.

"I had to try, Ron," he said. "I had to. There must be a way to get to it."

Ron leaned forward on the table, the smile replaced by a serious look. "Why Harry? It's just a bunch of spells and stuff. Nothing in there could be that important or old Dumbledore would have left you a note or something."

Harry shook his head. "He didn't get time to. Snape killed him before he finished."

"Then how do you know there is anything in there worth risking your mind for Harry?" came Hermione's voice, as she entered the room.

She looked better. She was patting her wet hair with a large fluffy towel and was wearing a dressing gown covered in pictures of flying snitches, apparently having just come from the shower.

"It's not just that," said Harry. "I need to know more, I need to learn stuff quicker than I can with books."

"Then practice more!" she said, standing with her hands on her hips. "You know you can learn anything. You are a great wizard - don't snort! You are a great wizard, but you need to focus. I have seen you cast a spell not one in a million wizards could do. That Patronus was not a fluke! It shows exactly what you can do if you put your mind to it."

"I tried when I was fighting Snape, all right, Hermione?" he said bitterly. "I put everything I had into it and he knocked me down like a bloody first year. I couldn't lay a finger on him. Don't you get it? I don't have years to become a great dueller, and nobody, not even you, can learn fast enough. It's not possible, and if I can't even handle Snape or a bunch of thugs, how do you think I am going to go against Voldemort?"

Ron had been sitting quietly as the two snapped at each other, but he stood up and put his arms around Hermione, drawing her into his embrace to calm her down as tears welled in her eyes.

"You won t be alone," Ron said to Harry, as he gently stroked the back of Hermione's head. "That's how you are going to do it. We are going to be there with you, all the way."

Harry slammed his mouth shut and forced himself to calm. He stood up, walked slowly over, and gently took Hermione from Ron's arms.

"I am sorry, Hermione," he said. "I am so sorry for putting you through that, but it is probably going to get worse. We are all likely to get hurt somewhere along the line."

"I thought you were going to die, or worse, be damaged," she sobbed into his chest, making his own eyes water at the sound of her sadness. "And I thought it was because of me, because of you seeing Ron and me."

Harry laughed and kissed the top of her head. He breathed in the sweet, fresh smell of her wet hair and hugged her tightly.

"Nothing could make me happier than the two of you together," he said, but his heart wasn't in it. It was going to take time.

He looked at Ron, and nodded his head. Ron hesitantly wrapped his long arms around the both of them and hugged.

It wouldn't do any good to argue with them; they wouldn't understand, but he wasn't going to change his mind. Not again. When it came to the end, he was going to go on alone, like he had always planned.

Over breakfast they filled Harry in on the aftermath of his escape from Knockturn Alley. As he had suspected, their attackers had practically ignored Ron and Hermione and gone after him, leaving them to follow up the rear and pick off a couple of the stragglers, once they had left their magically darkened room. Ron had tossed the darkness powder at the store window, hoping to cover their attackers, but a stray spell had hit it before it was out of the room, trapping them in its effect.

They fought a brief battle in the dead end alley and overheard orders to 'ignore the others and follow the boy'.

Not being able to follow him or his pursuers, the two of them Apparated back to Grimmauld place and waited anxiously. When Arthur's Floo call came it had been an enormous relief, as they were both close panicking and calling in the Order, the Ministry, and anybody else who might be able to help.

Harry had to be coaxed into telling them about leading his chasers to their deaths. Reluctantly he told them the story, not omitting anything that he could remember, not even how he had almost decided to try and save them from the monsters in the lake.

"It was you or them," Ron told him in his typical 'anything but sympathetic' manner, "and I personally am happy it was lousy Death Eaters and not you."

"We don't even know if they were Death Eaters," protested Harry.

"Yes, we do," Hermione said, taking a skull faced mask from a bag. "We found this in the portable swamp."

Harry picked up the mask and turned it over in his hands. It felt hard, and dry - like bone.

"You can't feel bad about it, Harry," Ron tried to reassure him. "They sold their soul the minute they let old snake face burn his mark in their arm."

Harry chuckled at Ron's new way of referring to Voldemort. While it may not have been the same as saying his name outright, it was definite improvement over the 'You-Know-Who' business.

In truth, Harry didn't actually feel that guilty; he felt numb.

He knew he should feel bad that people had died, but people were dieing everyday. It was not his responsibility for the Death Eaters to have been there either. They had been following him, intent on harm, and he had not purposely led them into a lethal trap, so it was hardly his fault that they had died.

And yet he felt he should have been feeling guilty. Was he becoming as hard as his enemies who often killed indiscriminately? Was he turning into a monster because he didn't feel anything at the death of another human being?

"Come on, Harry," Ron said, seeing the thoughtful look on Harry's face. "These are probably the same animals that have been killing people left, right and centre. Just because you haven't been reading the paper doesn't mean it has stopped happening you know!"

"Ron!" Hermione admonished.

Harry stood up weakly.

"I am going back to bed," he said.

Behind him he could hear Hermione and Ron arguing, but he didn't listen to their words. For a long time he lay in bed reliving the battle and its aftermath.

Why should he feel guilty about the deaths of people who were trying to kill him? The mask proved that at least one of them was Voldemort's henchman, so the rest were either Death Eaters too, or were following the orders of one. In the Department of Mysteries, Harry and his friends had not used lethal force to defend themselves, and the ability of their opponents to get up and return to battle had almost cost all of them their lives.

Would he have killed them if he had known it would have saved Sirius's life?

That was a very hard question to answer, since he knew that believing it and actually doing it were two different things. Draco was a perfect example of that.

Despite Lucius's brainwashing and a childhood trained in a lifestyle of hatred, Draco had been unable to complete his task and take Dumbledore's life when he had him at his mercy. Even with the possible price of his failure heavily weighing the balance, Draco had chosen not to become a killer, so what chance did Harry have?

Harry despised the thought of cold blooded murder, but was there really any difference to that and killing in the heat of battle? If he had a chance to strike Voldemort down from behind, would he hesitate? Was he man enough to handle taking the responsibility of killing somebody in something other than self defence? Could he even do it then?

The fight in the toilet that had almost ended Draco's life had shattered Harry. He had become frantic at the thought of having killed one of his most hated opponents, and while he didn't feel anything like that remorse for the Death Eaters that had died in Voldemort's cave, Harry himself had not been the one to strike them down.

He needed to toughen up, of that there was no doubt. In the grip of anger, he hadn't been able to enjoy causing pain enough to make the Crucio work, so he doubted if he could ever master his hatred enough to make the killing curse do its job, but there were other ways though, other spells and attacks that could be just as fatal. A cutting hex or blasting curse were more than capable of ending a life, if it hit in the right place or at the right time. All it took was the willpower to follow through.

During the fight with the Death Eaters, he had not really been trying to kill them. The spells he used could have been lethal, but it had been Harry's intent to hurt them, not actually kill. The next time somebody was trying to kill him, he was going to pull no punches; he had to do his utmost to kill or disable his opponents on purpose.

The pain in his head seemed to return in full force as his mind ran out of control. Harry sat up and gulped down another pain relieving potion. As the magic done its work and his head felt like it was slowly returning to normal size, he lay back down, but his thoughts kept tumbling over themselves.

It was time to grow up, to put aside his misgivings and weaknesses and accept the consequences of his actions before they were thrust upon him. His world was at war; his friends and their families were in constant mortal danger; there was a madman who would stop at nothing after him; he couldn't hold onto childhood innocence or ignorance any longer.

It went further than just accepting people were going to die. The attempt to put a memory from Dumbledore's Chest into his head was another try to take a short cut; to find an easy way out. He needed to stop focussing on the easy path and put all his energy into the long haul. He knew his efforts to practice and learn had really only being half-hearted – that Hermione was more committed to success than he was – that had to change.

It was unrealistic to expect to change overnight, that accepting the seriousness of his situation and changing his habits was going to take time and effort, but until he really buckled down and applied himself, he was never going to be anything more than a mediocre wizard at best, and that wasn't going to be good enough.

Sleep was long time coming, and when it did, it was filled with nightmares of Inferi armies following him everywhere he went, murdering everybody they found, and the whole time he knew he could stop them, if only he knew the right spell.