(These are just falling out of my head. For those of you loving the LTverse, my bad.)

But I needed one more touch
Another taste of heavenly rush
And I believe; I believe it so...

Whose side am I on? Whose side am I..?
Whose side am I on? Whose side am I.?

And the fever began to spread
From my heart down to my legs
But the room was so quiet
Oh...

And although I wasn't losing my mind
It was a chorus so sublime
But the room is too quiet
(Oh, the fever)

I was looking for a breath of life
A little touch of heavenly light
But all the choirs in my head sang "no".

Breath of life, Florence and the machine

"Ah, I see you're awake my boy. It seems that I've greatly misjudged your level of malnourishment. I've had Severus prepare you some potions that will help you heal."

Harry didn't even have time to blink once before the headmaster finished his speech.

He wasn't sure malnourishment was his problem, he felt fine. Better now, in fact, than he had been before the whole kidnapping business.

He took the potion from the elderly man regardless, nodding his thanks.

The Headmaster motioned his head for him to drink it, so he took the stopper from the bottle and downed it at once.

He regretted it the very second the liquid met his tongue.

It was as if fire were melting him down the middle, and he rasped in shock; his throat feeling to burnt to scream. All the while Dumbledore watched him with a sympathetic smile, and Harry continued to gag, glaring daggers at the man who had given him the potion.

It passed quickly, leaving his throat raw and something feeling wrong in his gut.

"What was that?" He whispered, not managing anything louder.

"A strong replenishing potion. You'll need to take three more for the full effect."

Harry's eyebrow rose, his mouth slightly open.

"Oh, I doubt that," He said, incredulous. Surely those potions did more harm than good.

"It's the only way to undo the damage you sustained in that place." His headmaster said gravely, and Harry held back a scoff.

"I'm pretty sure I felt much better before I had that potion," He argued. He wasn't going to be taking that potion again, not any time soon.

"I'm afraid I must insist," The warning was clear, and Harry bit his lip and crossed his arms, sensing defeat and not enjoying it.

Dumbledore left him to sleep, which he did. From waking up feeling just fine, he felt awful and run down.

"You can't drink another one of those potions." The Other said without preamble, seeming slightly panicked.

Harry shared it's panic for a second, before he realised what that meant.

"It's damaging you?" Harry asked, smiling. He thanked his Headmasters genius. He should have known that the older man would have figured it out. He had never had anything to worry about.

"It's damaging US," The Creature said, though it was watching him with concern, their noses almost touching the fusion was so progressed.

"What's it doing?" Harry asked, trying to understate his happiness.

"Slowing the transition, breaking the barrier between these dreams and your waking self."

"So I'll know all I know here, there?" Harry pressed, hope bubbling up, along with another emotion he couldn't put his finger on.

"Yes." The Other was very stoic, watching him with disdain, clearly suspecting that Harry was happier about this than what it had hoped.

"You're glad," It said, disappointment thick in its voice.

"We're not far enough along," It said before Harry could answer.

"Fuck, you cant be serious. All this effort for nothing are you fucking serious!?" It seemed to want to tear away from him, to beat the walls with its fists, though he couldn't pull away.

He ended up dragging Harry into pacing, while the Other threw its one arm in the air, stopped, dragged its hand down its face in exasperation, glared at his other half, then started pacing again.

"You cant be serious." It repeated, sounding more disbelieving now, less violent.

"Damn that man, I swear, wait till Tom gets his hands on that bastard I cant fucking wait till his bloods all up the damn walls like a new lick of fucking paint." It didn't take a breath while it ranted.

He suddenly pinned the Boy Who Lived against the far 'Wall', growling.

"Do you understand what will happen if you keep taking that potion? It will destroy the part of me you created. You'll forever be a half thing. Doesn't that bother you? Make your stomach turn like you're going to vomit? I know it does me. I don't want to go back to what I was. Barely here, hardly aware, waiting. You'll end up rebuilding me anyway, don't you see? You'll always put your bad shit on me, I'm a magnet for it, and your damn righteous self is all to eager to let it go. We'll do this again, I can assure you. Maybe in twenty years, when your Headmaster is dead and buried, who will save you then?" The Creature went from reasonable, to begging, to angry, then to threatening.

Harry did feel sick in the stomach, though he was certain it was because of the fact that this creature was glued to him. Surely that was it.

Harry had another dream that night.

He was laid bare on a table, his eyes open. He couldn't feel his glasses, but he could see just fine.

Slitted red eyes stared into his, glaring.

"He's too stubborn. Clearly something more needs to be done."

"I agree." Harry said, though he didn't try to say anything. The words came out regardless of what he wanted.

The dream woke him up, alone in the dark hospital wing. The dream disturbed him.

Something about it made it feel like it had actually happened.

The dream gave way to something different in his head, a niggling in the back of his mind, like he was just about to remember something else.

He fell back asleep with the distinct feeling he was forgetting something important.

"Oh Harry, I'm so sorry!" Hermione said as soon as his eyes fluttered, and Harry groaned, wishing that he could get a break.

"It's okay 'Mione. You didn't know. I didn't know."

Ron, Hermione, and to Harry's surprise, Neville, stood around his bed looking concerned.

"Dumbledore says that I might be more malnourished than he thought. He's got me on these awful potions to try and fix it." For some reason the mention of potions brought back the feeling of forgetting something. He frowned slightly and blinked, trying to force the answers out of his mind.

"How are you feeling mate?" Ron asked, and he was tired of being asked this. Surely there was a limit to how many times he could be asked before he snapped?

"Err, alright. I woke up yesterday feeling really good, actually, then I had the potion and felt awful."

"Sometimes you have to get worse to get better," Hermione intoned in her 'I'm reciting this from memory' voice.

"Yeah I suppose." Harry couldn't help but feel this wasn't the case, at least not with what was happening to him. Though surely his headmaster wouldn't give him something to make him intentionally worse.

Would he?

Again, a memory tried to surface, with flashing dark eyes and blackness, just as suddenly as it came, it was gone.

His friends left him to rest, though he felt he had done enough resting in the past few days. He was tired of being tired.

His headmaster came in not long after, giving him the potion and making him feel worse than the first time, he threw it up straight away, though he was assured that it didn't matter, the potion would do its job regardless.

He was sceptical, though he was glad he didn't have to go through it again.

He once again told the older man that he felt worse now than he did before, but the man just smiled politely and waved him off.

Harry frowned, feeling sick and horrible. He couldn't help but feel he was missing something, like someone had given him good reason not to take the potion. But surely he would remember that?

This left him wary about the next two doses. If he felt horrid now, what would the next one do? And the one after?

He'd been told that he would be staying in the hospital wing until he'd taken all the doses. This made him feel even more annoyed and uncomfortable, how many times did he have to go through shit like this?

The hospital wing felt more like home than his dorm room.

Dumbledore left him be, and since his friends would be in class right now, Harry decided to get some rest.

The potion seemed to exhaust him, and he had a splitting headache, right down the centre of his face.

The Creature was grey and sickly. It was sweating and panting as if it had run a marathon, and it was glaring at him accusingly.

Where they were joined ached as if it had been set alight.

"Let me tell you a story, Harry." The way it said his name was like an accusation.

"You might even remember." It added.

"When you were five, your cousin got a pit bull for his birthday. Remember? By the time it was about six months old, your uncle paid some dog school to train it. This damn thing was almost the size of you by then, do you remember?" It seemed desperate for Harry to recall, and he did remember something.

A dogs jaws inches from his face, screaming and crying, and a disjointed high pitched voice comforting him, strengthening him, calling for him to fight back.

"That fat fuck told the thing to get you once, on the way to the park one day. No one else was around. I was barely forming in your head but I could see what was about to happen. It pinned you quick and went straight for your face. You didn't know what to do, so I helped you. I harnessed some of your growing magic and sent it right into the dogs brain. It turned tail and went for your cousins jugular instead. He was damn lucky some old man passed by. From then on that dog would only attack whoever told it to attack. That was handy, wasn't it? That I was there, I mean. You'd probably be dead. Or heavily maimed."

Harry remembered. The Dursley's had the dog put down, it was to dangerous for Dudley. It attacked him at least once a week because the idiot never learned. But Harry didn't see the point of this story.

"Yeah I remember. So?"

"You thanked me afterwards, called me your friend." It pressed, and Harry sighed.

"I was a child and you saved me. I thanked you. I didn't understand what you were. Do you think that one incident when I was a child is going to change anything?"

"I had hoped it would help you see that I'm not simply your negative emotions. Though a lot of me is. I'll freely admit that I'm mostly your hate, violence, greed and other assorted 'horrible' things. But originally, all I was was a little bubble of abandoned kindness. I cant tell you everything, because now it seems as if you'll recall all this before your time. But Voldemort should stand testament to the fact that no man should be without half himself. Which he is, I can assure you. You'll end up like him. Or worse. Only where he knows he is cruel and unforgiving, you'll fully believe that you're just and righteous."

All Harry could connect in his head was that the Creature was originally happiness, presumably Voldemort's happiness.

"So you're his abandoned emotions?" Harry's eyes were wide, though he didn't know why he had never thought of it.

"That's not what I was getting at," It seemed wary, like it wanted to push away from him again.

"Well that's what I got from it. You're not just a piece of his magic, are you?"

"I never said that's all I was," It said, becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

"That's what you let me believe," Harry pressed.

"Don't drink the potion, Harry. I'm warning you."

"A month ago, you were a crazy ass demon thing telling me you hoped Voldemort would eat my skin." Harry said, raising his eyebrows in challenge.

"A month ago, I was almost entirely your emotions. Now some are back in you. Don't you feel more balanced? Besides, how could I feel compassion towards you, when all you wanted was to see me gone?"

"I still want to see you gone." Harry corrected, stubbornly ignoring the truth in the Other's words. Nothing that was born in Voldemort could be good.

"I can't be gone!" It screamed at him, spitting in his eyes.

"I'll be with you till the day you fucking die!"

Harry woke with an angry voice ringing in his ears, making him frown in confusion.

He felt conflicted about something he couldn't even remember.

"Don't drink the potion, Harry. I'm warning you." Rang in his head like a bell toll, repeating over and over, until it was to quiet for him to hear.

When his headmaster came to give him the potion, Harry took it and stared at the bottle before taking it, feeling increasingly worried by it, and hoping that the bottle might give him answers.

When it did not, he turned to Dumbledore.

"Sir, this isn't a nourishment potion, is it?"

The headmaster didn't miss a beat. "Of course it is, what would make you think that it isn't?"

Harry frowned at the bottle he was turning in his hands.

"I- I don't know," Harry answered, because he couldn't explain the feeling he had.

"I wouldn't lie to you my boy. Drink up, you'll feel better."

Harry didn't agree with that logic, but he unstopped the bottle anyway, bringing it to his lips and watching his headmaster for any signs of deceit.

At first he thought that this dose was easier to take, it went down without burning, tasting only mildly disgusting.

After a few seconds though, pain spread from his stomach through to every limb, moving so thoroughly that he felt it in his tongue.

He let out a scream that startled the Headmaster, who stood and reached for Harry.

"Don't you touch me you piece of shit," Harry rasped out, rolling off the bed to escape the man, howling when he hit the ground.

The pain had intensified so that he had to check that he was not legitimately being cleaved in half.

"You just wait! Just wait!" He yelled at the headmaster, though he didn't actually mean to say anything. He wasn't even sure what he meant.

"Harry, let it go," Dumbledore soothed, though he looked alarmed.

Harry growled and thrashed till he made himself sick, throwing up on the floor once again. The potion burned coming up, serving to make him choke on the vomit.

He expected to pass out soon, or he hoped for it. No one could take this much without losing grip.