Half Lives – Chapter Eleven
Hermione and Ron had left Harry in the kitchen after his revelation about his blackouts and James, and had gone directly to Mrs Weasley. They had given her the brief summary, and she had immediately called Dumbledore. He was in a meeting, so he took some time to arrive, and by that time Remus and Sirius had also been fetched and briefed, but it was agreed between the group (much to her irritation) that Harry would be happier if the group was as small as possible, so Mrs Weasley was kindly asked to give them a few minutes. Sadly, Harry's old habits had also kicked in, and he snuck away from the group before Dumbledore could arrive. Quietly he made his way to the safest place he knew- the attic. If he wasn't going to confront the adults about his blackouts, then James wanted Harry to know as much as possible about his father – the more Harry knew, the more he could feed James, and the stronger he would become. Harry may have wanted to talk, but James wasn't going down without a fight.
-0-
Some time later, and James could hear the adults (and Ron and Hermione) getting worried and looking for him. But they were downstairs, and he was safely hidden in amongst the storage boxes. He had felt quite secure and pleased with himself, until Sirius called upon Kreacher. The spiteful House Elf tried to worm his way out of his Master's orders as much as possible, but even he wasn't able to twist 'Find my godson and bring him here immediately, without hurting him' into something fun, so that was how Harry found himself being interrogated in the kitchen about why he had requested help and then run away when it arrived, to the attic of all places.
"I was looking for stuff about my dad." Harry admitted finally. "Sirius told me how the Ministry couldn't destroy his stuff as evidence and when he came back here, he couldn't look at it, so he just stored it in the loft. There's years worth of letters and photos and things up there."
Remus smiled slightly. "It seemed that every time I looked for you, you were in that attic. But, why? You know you can just ask us if you want to know anything." He added gently, a hopeful look in his eye.
When Harry was reluctant to answer, Dumbledore pressed him further. "Please Harry, anything, even as in consequential as the reading of a muggle book could hold the key about what is happening to you. No matter what it is, you can tell us."
"Those books aren't even about magic, headmaster." Harry protested, picking up on the not so subtle reference to his and Hermione's research. "Honest, it's got nothing to do with this."
Hermione glanced between him and the professor unsurely, and sighed. "I'm sorry, Harry, but as the professor said, anything could help right now." She began. "Professor, those books were about muggle psychology." She took a deep breath, looking terribly guilty for betraying his friend, but authority rules. "Harry was worried about Sirius, and he begged me to help him. Harry persuaded Fleur Delacour to get us the books from a muggle library not far from here in her name. We were very careful. We knew neither of us could be on any registry anywhere near here. Fleur was the most abstracted person we could think of."
"And the one Harry wanted to persuade." Ron muttered darkly.
"He just wanted to help." Hermione finished. "Sorry, Harry, but I had to tell them." She didn't dare meet either the eyes of either Harry or Sirius.
"Harry, I-" Sirius began, but Albus quietened him with a hand.
"Thank you, Miss Granger. Remus, can you look over those books for me later?" The other man nodded. "Hexes, enchantments; the usual. We can't risk dismissing the possibility that someone cursed the books intending to hurt the Weasleys through their daughter in law. Now, Harry," he turned serious eyes on the boy, "please continue. I have no doubt that if it was mere curiosity that you would have asked someone here. Is there a reason for this secrecy?"
Sirius made some quiet remonstrations about how Harry shouldn't have been there anyway, as it was full of dangerous artefacts, but Harry pouted and told them against James' better judgement. "I thought, if I knew my father better, when Sirius mistook me for him, I could pretend, and, if Sirius believed I was my father, if he physically heard us say we forgave him and such, he might stop feeling so guilty. So James has been trying to help Sirius move on and get better." He looked at the table again.
"Harry, I told you not to talk to Sirius when he wasn't himself." Remus said tiredly. Harry shrugged.
Dumbledore had fixed Harry with a sharp look however. "Harry, what exactly do you mean when you say "James has been helping"? "
"Like I said, I researched my father, and let Sirius think I was James to help him. But, now, um..." Harry hated his resolutions. They made him talk about things. "...James gets bored. He wants to be out more and more often. At first I just made him be quiet, but he's fighting back, and, and I think sometimes he wins. And then I'm not Harry any more. Well, I am, but I'm not there. James likes that, he finds it funny. Says it's a taste of my own medicine, to be cooped up in the back of our head whilst he's out here having all the fun."
-0-
In the following silence, Dumbledore sighed. He suddenly looked very old. "Harry, I had hoped to have this discussion with you when you were older. I admit that perhaps it would have been best to thrash it out when we first met, but you were so young. I did not want to take that away from you. Youth is measured in more than years, my boy, and it should be treasured dear." He glanced around the others in the room. "I had also hoped to have this conversation in privacy, but I think given the circumstances, this will have to suffice." He looked over his spectacles at the boy seriously. "I have been talking some old colleagues, following trails long gone cold, and generally poking my nose in where it isn't wanted. And from it all I can only come to one conclusion. Now, before I tell you this, you must understand that it is not yet certain. I strongly suspect it, yes, but we have not as of yet proven it. What I have to tell you, Harry, may seem fantastical and deranged, but it is all of it the truth. And it all pertains to the life of one Tom Marvolo Riddle, his quest for immortality, and that scar upon your forehead..."
-0-
"It is my belief," Dumbledore concluded, after shocking them all with the revelation of Voldemort's Horcruxes, "that when you fell through the Veil, the Horcrux embedded in your being was taken by Death. This does make our job slightly easier, as, with the Diary accounted for, we are left with but five Horcruxes, one of which I hope to locate later this summer. Yet we are not all smiles. With Voldemort's Horcrux removed, Harry, your mind had one less soul than it was accustomed to. To rectify this, and return itself to what it saw as the norm, your magic reached out which, with the emotional ties between yourself and your father, and with the strong magic of the dead present within the Veil, resulted the soul of James Potter being, ensnared, shall we say, and incorporated into your own."
Harry gave Dumbledore an incredulous look, but he couldn't deny the heavy, sick weight that had settled in his stomach. He had been a Horcrux? He had Voldemort's soul within him? And he hadn't known?
Sirius delicately cleared his throat.
"No, Sirius," Dumbledore said, anticipating his question, "even if we could obtain James' body without its years of decay, we could never reunite body and soul. At best we would be left with a crude imitation, an Inferius. No spell can reawaken the dead, as we all know too well. Furthermore, it is unlikely that we have his true soul, more, a fragment of it. And as for your next question, no, I do not believe the Horcrux has left any lasting damage with Harry, nor is any small part of it remaining."
Harry was surprised. He hadn't thought of either of those questions. But he had an awful lot more. Just as soon as he stopped feeling shocked and sick, he'd ask...
-0-
"D.I,D!" Hermione yelled out suddenly. So sudden, in fact, that Ron jumped and almost fell off his seat.
"What?" Harry asked.
"Dissociative Identity Disorder." Hermione clarified, apparently.
"What?"
"We came across it whilst reading, Harry." Hermione began in a rush. "I first I thought it might work, you know, for our project-" Harry sighed, Hermione may as well have waved a flag saying 'SIRIUS HAS DEPRESSION'. "-but I discounted it almost straight away, anyway; now with you it fits perfectly!" She shifted in her seat. "Okay Headmaster, I'll go along with your theory that the Veil removed an extra soul, not Harry's, which is why he didn't die, because he's a Horcrux-"
"Was, a Horcrux, Miss Granger." Dumbledore corrected softly.
"But, no matter how fantastical magic is, I just can't see that James Potter's soul would be stolen to replace it. If anything," she continued briskly, "Harry's soul would have rejected another, now that it has finally reached it natural singular state." Dumbledore didn't seem fazed by his young student's lack of faith, and just motioned for her to go on. "But I will concede that the sudden and brutal removal could have been a severe shock to Harry's mind."
"I wasn't shocked." Harry muttered, grumpy at being discussed as a test subject.
"You probably didn't notice." Hermione assured him offhand. "And with the fall out of the Department of Mysteries, everyone being in and out of St Mungo's, Sirius' depression, Remus' suspicion, the Weasleys' arguing, and Harry's ridiculous penchant for self-blame, it's no wonder he felt overwhelmed by the stress, probably compounded by post-traumatic stress disorder, not only from the Ministry, but also from the Triwizard tournament, the Chamber of Secrets, the fight with Quirrell, and from long term emotional abuse at the Dursleys'-"
At that Harry sat up and started to object, but Hermione was on an analytic roll, and she talked straight over him. "This led to Harry suppressing memories and emotions, and, upon withdrawal from reality caused by a tipping point in his stress levels; this suppression resurfaced and is currently being experienced as a separate identity."
She sat back with a happy expression on her face. "Which has decided to call itself James."
-0-
Everyone else looked less than happy. Ron looked slightly constipated, Sirius was gazing at his godson with forlorn guilt, Remus wore a pensive frown, and Dumbledore had steepled his fingers and was watching Harry gravely.
Harry himself, was trying to wandlessly make the ground swallow him whole. He didn't have post-traumatic stress disorder. His childhood at the Dursleys' hadn't been loving, but it wasn't emotional abuse.
"I wasn't abused." He muttered.
"Oh, Harry," Hermione got her annoying I-know-better smile and patted his arm. "Abuse isn't just physical. They starved you of affection, never gave you enough food for a growing boy, and encouraged the whole neighbourhood to persecute you. At the very least that's a strong case for neglect."
"They didn't neglect me!" Harry swung his head up to look at her fiercely. "They only did those things because I was trouble! I threatened their happy little lives."
"They kept you in a cupboard." Ron spoke up for the first time.
"What?" Harry spat. "I never told you."
"The twins." Ron said simply. "When they sprang your trunk free, they could feel it. They didn't want to question and upset you, but they told me later." He looked down at his hands and spoke quietly. "They could feel the self-protective magic a mile off. There were locks on the outside. And you'd written your name on the wall."
"They were scared of me. I was magic. It was for my own good."
The whole kitchen sat in silence.
-0-
Harry scowled and picked at a spare thread on the hem of his t-shirt. Defensive and angry thoughts chased themselves around his head. How dare they make accusations like that? They hadn't been there. They had no idea what had happened. They-
Sirius cleared his throat awkwardly. "Whatever you say, Harry." He said quietly. Harry didn't look up, but he could feel the surprised and sympathetic looks from the room. He could also feel Remus' disapproving and hinting look towards Sirius. "But we will talk of this later." Sirius added.
Harry finally looked up at that. He glanced at Hermione. She looked shocked and slightly scared of what she had caused with her thoughtless words. Harry sighed angrily but didn't meet anyone's eyes. He took pity on them and their silence. "So, you think I've got multiple personality disorder then, Hermione?"