A/N: Well, here it is, (un)lucky chapter thirteen! I don't own Maximum Ride, Harry Potter, or both. And you and I both know that that's probably a good thing.

Chapter Thirteen: Memories

Harry

"Well...um...you see..." I stammer, scratching the back of my neck. I'm panicking slightly, okay, a lot. How am I supposed to explain the horrors I went through to them? What's more, how am I to explain my death sentence?

"I think, Mr. Potter, that this discussion would best be continued in a more private location," says McGonagall. "Poppy, may we use your office?"

"Certainly."

I climb out of the hospital bed, swallow, gather my courage, and walk into the office. Calm down, says a voice, and I startle a bit, before realizing that it must be Dad. They aren't going to kill you, they aren't going to hurt you in any way. You have nothing to fear.

But what will they think of me?

They will think no less of you, I promise.

I'm more worried that they will pity me.

Of course they will. But honestly Harry, you deserve some pity after what you've been through, and what you will go through.

By this point, I've taken a seat in the office, and the mental conversation ends. I suppose Dad's right about me deserving pity, not many fifteen-year-olds have had their DNA altered after all, but I still want none. I don't want to see the looks that Dumbledore, McGonagall and... oh God, Sirius...will give me.

"So Mr. Potter?" asks Snape. "Explain."

"I-I don't-I don't want to talk about it."

"Well I don't either, Potter, but some things must be done. And we have a right to know why you're back from the dead, and why you have wings growing out of your back!"

I shiver, wrapping my arms around myself. Just being asked about it brings back memories, cold, dark, water, electricity, pain, fear, screams of agony...

I won't talk about it. I can't talk about it. Because I don't want to remember. Ever.

Severus

"Albus, this isn't going to help, I say we use Legilimency-"

"You know as well as I that performing Legilimency would force him to re-live whatever trauma he went through. It would make him distrust us all the more."

I roll my eyes. So Potter's getting coddling and comfort because he's too fragile to face the past. He needs to face it now, or he'll never get over whatever it is that's made him this way.

"I can be careful. It's rather simple for me to find memories without alerting the person, you know that."

"But I don't want to risk you slipping."

"If he starts screaming, snap me out of it. Easy enough."

Albus sighs in resignation. I can see that he knows it's the only solution, we'd never be able to get the boy to talk about his memories.

"Very well Severus."

"Albus I don't think-"

"Minerva, it's the only way we can know what's wrong with him."

The lioness shakes her head, but not in protest, instead slowly, sadly. She knows that this boy, this child has gone through unspeakable horrors, probably beyond our comprehension. She doesn't want to believe it, but she's being forced to.

"Potter? Look at me."

He glances up at me, his green eyes wide with fear. And I slip into his mind.

The boy was young, staring out the window, longing to join the children playing on the street.

He was being chased around school by several overly-large Muggle boys.

Sitting on the school chimney, with no idea how he got there.

Chased out of the house by an ugly dog.

These weren't it, these were all wrong. I was focusing on misery, sadness, confusion. But they were too broad, too many memories fit those categories. Far too many for a child. It seemed that he had buried the true trauma deep within his head, unconsciously directing searchers to the less painful pain. I shake my head and dive deeper,

Potter was lying on a forest floor, staring numbly into space, tears streaming down his face, broken down and weak. This memory is connected to several others, all of which I am sure will lead me to the answer I'm seeking. I grab a random thread and allow myself to be pulled along.

Sprinting through a green, leafy maze. The third task. Turn a corner. Something was wrong. The hedges were dissolving, replaced by pristine white walls. Bruises and gashes were appearing on the boy, and his champion's robes were replaced by a tattered grey uniform. He was barefoot, and sprinting like his life depended on it. His eyes, determined and nervous in the third task, seemed to acquire an aura of desperation, and absolute terror. What in Merlin's name was going on?

He paused, very slightly, at an intersection. Almost instantly a band around his ankle buzzed, sending a jolt of electricity through the boy's body. He screamed and collapsed to the floor of the maze. Wires, which I could now see built into the floor, heated up, burning his bare flesh. Silently crying, the boy got to his feet and was off again, sprinting for all he was worth.

My eyes widen in horror, and I grab another thread of memory, allowing myself to escape the horror before me, though I know it will be replaced with another. So was this his secret? Was he some kind of lab rat, an experiment? Is that why the boy has wings?

Now he was lying on the floor of a cage, staring out through the bars like a broken animal. Footsteps approach and he curls into himself, bringing his knees up to his chest in the back-most corner of the cage, eyes full of fear. Clicking shoes echo through the hallway, and I can also hear what sounds like wheels, maybe some sort of cart. A man in a white coat, who definitely looks like some sort of Muggle scientist, starts giving out...food?-ugh-and water, to the inhabitants of the cages. I recognize Max Martinez, along with Angel Ride, Fang Walker, and Nudge Elloway. They greedily take the food, and I wonder how long it's been since they've eaten. The scientist stops at Potter's cage, but only gives him water, before moving on.

"Still no food?" asks Martinez.

"None," replies Potter, guzzling down the water.

"How long has it been?" questions Walker, looking uncharacteristically sympathetic for Potter.

"A week and a half? Two weeks?" says Potter wearily, curling up, obviously trying to sleep. "I dunno, I've lost count."

The footsteps and wheels are approaching again, only this time, I hear laughter. Potter shrinks back again, absolute terror now filling his features. The wheels stop in front of his cage, and a hideous wolf-man-mutant-thing bends down, grinning at Potter evilly.

"Hungry, Freak?"

The boy doesn't say anything, only glares. Stubborn Gryffindor.

"Well, it's time for dinner!" says the...thing...mock-cheerily, bending down and unlatching the boy's cage, roughly pulling him out by the arm.

He throws Potter on the cart, chaining him down with heavy iron shackles. A scientist steps forward, holding what looks like some sort of clamp. The boy struggles wildly against his chains, but they, of course, do not give. The scientist forces the clamp in his mouth, the boy attempting to spit it out. He slaps him across the face, before grabbing a tube and shoving it through the clamp. He coughs, choking on the tube as it's forced down his throat. The other children watch the scene in horror. I want nothing more than to let them go, unchain Potter, and hex the things silly. But I can only watch.

"Let him go!" screams Martinez. The scientist ignores her, but the wolf-man turns to her, smiling.

"This is the only way he's getting food this week! So it's this or starvation!" he says, then grins even larger. "And we think he's looking a bit peaky...so we think he should eat three square meals a day! Isn't that wonderful!"

The boys eyes widen in horror as he writhes against his bonds, obviously in horrible pain. Bile rises in my throat, I'm sick that anyone would do this to a child, and enjoy it. It was just...

As the wolf-man laughs, and some sort of liquid dribbles down the tube into Potter's stomach, his eyes narrow in anger. Angrier and angrier until, with a loud shattering sound, the machine breaks. The scientist lets out a horrified gasp, then immediately turns to Potter, yanking the tube out of his throat. He stares at Potter in fascination.

"How remarkable. I shall have to inform my supervisors about this...they'll want to know what just happened...more tests, experiments, maybe the force-feeding brought it on..." He mumbles to himself and Potter begins to shake with fear, it's clear that this scientist is planning new and more horrible torment.

Potter's thrown back in his cage and the last thing I see before the memory dissolves is him vomiting up blood...

I'm shaking violently but I manage to grab a new memory. I decide to take the approach of grabbing the strands in quick succession, so I can get the full picture, and hopefully the scenes wouldn't horrify me if they only a few seconds were shown.

It's worse in a way, because I can see everything that's been done to him, even if it's only a few seconds of each.

Hanging from his wrists twenty feet in the air, thrashing in terror as the room slowly filled with water. Sprinting on a treadmill for hours, shocked if he so much as tried to slow down. Injected with a plague virus, left to suffer for hours before the cure was administered. Burned with a branding iron, then covered with molten metal when he refused to scream. Tied to a table, water dripping onto his forehead at random intervals, slowly driving him mad. Thrown in a room with venomous snakes, him frantically trying to talk them into letting him live. His arm snapped to test a new medicine to fix broken bones. When it worked, after hours of agony, they tried it on his legs, arms, ribs, even spine. Horror after horror flashes before my eyes, and I wonder in shock how he managed to stay sane.

Martinez and Walker carry him from the laboratory, flying away free. He's weak with mental torture and screaming with agony as poison courses through his veins. Even his escape from the hellhole couldn't be painless.

And now...

Expiration dates? What are expiration dates?" he asks, confused.

"All of us, we have these...dates programed into us."

"What happens on the date?" he asks, fear flitting into his eyes, as he, and I, start to draw an awful conclusion. Oh Merlin, Potter...was he dying? Even as I watched this, was his time running out?

"I think you already know the answer to that."

He sinks to the ground in horror, and I feel numb as Potter's last, worst secret is revealed.

"NO! Please Max, please tell me I'm not dying! Please..."

"I-I'm sorry."

"...no." I feel about ready to throw up at the look on his face, an unparalleled, raw terror that no child should ever feel.

"Why? Why, why, WHY?"

"Harry..."

"Please, Max. Please...just...go..."

The memory fades...

...I am standing in the hospital wing. Here in reality, only minutes, maybe even seconds, have passed. I stumble away from Potter in shock. He looks at me in confusion.

"Merlin, Potter," I gasp. "How are you still sane?"

"H-how did you-"

"It's called Legilimecy, Harry," says Albus. "It allows the user to see a persons thoughts, feelings...and memories."

"So you saw-" His eyes grow wide with dread and he backs away from me. "The summer? All of it?"

I nod. "Yes."

"Even-" He gestures to his arm with his right hand. Again, I nod.

"You weren't supposed to find out though! Nobody was, especially not you!" He's starting to hyperventilate, panicking, looking about two seconds from bolting for the window.

"Regardless-"

"Because if you know, they will know too. And they'll come for me and-and take me back to that place. And I don't want to-I don't, I don't I-please Professor, I'll do anything, anything, just don't tell anybody. Because if word gets around that I'm here, if people, if the Order, if you start talking, then they'll, they'll-" He stops his panic-filled, barely follow-able monologue and starts sobbing. "Please."

Minerva, Poppy, and Albus stare at the two of us in horror. I know that they're thinking the same thing; what was in those memories?

In this moment, with the sobbing child on the ground, with the horrors of his summer fresh in my mind, with my colleagues watching us in shock, words fail me for the first time ever. So I say the first two words that come to my lips, and the two words that are probably the last thing I should have said.

"He's dying."

And when I've gotten out those words, ignoring the horror-struck looks of the others in the room, I flee the room, find the nearest bedpan, drop to my knees, and vomit up everything I've eaten in the past week.

A/N: So I tried to be less cliffhanger-y at the end...didn't work out so well. Sorry...but the next chapter should be up soon, probably before I update my other two fics, mostly because I know exactly the direction I want the next chapter to go in, but wanted to cut off this chapter before it got too long. Anyway, farewell, goodnight (if you're in my timezone at least) and I'll see you all next time!

-Winged Quil