A/N: H-hi everyone. *hiding behind Anti-Angry-Readers-Who-Wanted-A-Faster-Update-Sheild* So I didn't update...sorry. But I did go back on one promise that you will be happy about, this chapter ain't filler! Here it is...hope it makes up for two months...

Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter. I also don't own the HetaOni OST, where I stole the chapter title from.

Harry

"Potter. Take a seat."

I toss my bag to the floor and sit down gingerly in one of the hard-backed chairs. I do not allow myself to relax fully. Not with the enemy so close. Yes, it was just Snape. But you never knew. I was starting to fear an agent of the School had infiltrated Hogwarts. Strange hallucinations had been swimming across my vision at the most inopportune of times and my nightmares had been growing worse. When I spoke with the rest of the Flock, they reported similar symptoms.

Poor Iggy, in particular, had looked shaken, forced to relive the agonizing surgery that resulted in the loss of sight. Over and over, again and again, every single night, and sometimes even during the day.

We were all growing weary.

It had been a month since my near death experience, a month since my friends had found out my secret, and a month since I had started medium training. The most fun I've had since I died was the first morning, walking casually into the Great Hall and eating bacon with my friends like nothing was wrong. The expressions on the faces...one word. Priceless.

And then, it seemed, life just...got harder.

My medium powers are progressing well, but not well enough, and I'm starting to fear the spirits will never leave my head. It's still better than the progress on the expiration date issue, which is nonexistent. October has come. Eight months left.

And I'm alone in a room with Snape, who may or may not be evil. Needless to say, I was on my last nerve, extremely jumpy, and really, really wanted to break something. Preferably a white room filled with fancy, shmancy, expensive scientific equipment.

"Ready to begin?" Snape asks. I snap out of my wistful daydream of syringes exploding, their contents sprayed around the room in slow motion, and nod curtly.

"See you," murmurs Dad, as he fades from my mind. "Good luck."

"You know the drill Potter," says Snape. I close my eyes and reach out to the afterlife. By now, this part is easy. It's basically detaching my mind from my body, and placing it in the river of souls constantly flickering across the face of death. I can call forth a spirit at will, but selecting who is harder. I'm just starting to get a grasp on sensing who was good, and who was not.

I feel the millions of pulsing points of light brushing against the border of my consciousness. They're curious, fluttering things, like moths hovering around street lamps. I lie in the gray murk for awhile, until one ventures over.

"Hello?" the soul asks. "Who are you?"

"Harry." I respond, brushing aside the shock that one of them is actually talking to me. Normally they just posses me, and it feels like mere seconds pass before I'm opening my eyes, Snape giving me a slightly strange look for whatever rubbish I may have sprouted.

"Are you alive?"

"Yes."

"Can I visit life through you?"

I can see her now, a young girl, maybe seven. She's wearing a white robe and her dark brown hair is long and tangled, sweeping down to her waist. Her face is babyish, she's barefoot, and her eyes are wide and trusting. Innocent. So she probably didn't die in some horrible, violent circumstance. Maybe a car-crash, or an illness.

Why am I thinking about this?

Why should I care how this girl, this complete stranger, died?

"Yes."

"How do I get there?"

I smile and hold out my hand.

"Take my hand."

She reaches out, wrapping her own, tiny hand around mine. I close my eyes and drift with the currents, allowing the natural pull between my body and life to drag my soul and the girl back to my mind.

I can feel my soul being suppressed and squashed by the burning strength of the dead girl. Is it death that gives her this strength? Her youth? Her innocence, one thing that I am sorely lacking.

Whatever it is, I won't allow myself to be stuffed in some dark corner, forced to be merely a vessel. Not again.

I struggle back and the girl cries out.

"Let me stay!" she screams, and I realize that I am shoving her out, when I merely wanted to stay in my own mind.

"Can't we just share?"

"No! If I let go, you'll just kick me out again! I want control! I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it!"

"Please!" I beg, starting to feel fear coiling inside my body.

"No!" I'm starting to realize the truth. This girl, she's not…she's not an innocent little seven-year-old after all.

"Foolish boy!" She's growing, twisting into a woman covered in scars, with cold gray eyes, short black hair, ivory white skin, and a wicked, feral smirk.

"NO! IT CAN'T BE YOU, NO!"

I'm panicing now, even though I know that really isn't a good idea. If my mind is frenzied, it will be easier for spirits to take it over. Snape has drilled that into me by this point. But this woman, the horrible tortures she inflicted on me, it all makes it impossible to think of anything except pain, pain, and more pain.

Now I'm feeling it physically, I don't know what she's doing but it feels like a thousand needles are piercing my skin over and over. The sensation is not unlike that of the Cruciatus curse, except that everything is gray, and I don't know which way is up and which way is down, and I'm trapped inside my own mind. Am I even giving voice to my agony? Am I screaming, or just sitting in the real world with my eyes closed, seemingly peaceful.

"Stop it! PLEASE, STOP!"

After what feels like another eternity of agony, it all stops and I lie in the hazy mist, eyes wide open, but unable to see anything but gray. And then a giggle echoes through the emptiness.

"It was I who gave you these powers, child. Don't think that I don't understand how they work. Don't think that I gave you the ability to call the dead to benefit you. It was all for me. And soon, child, you'll be back in my grasp. That pain was only a tickle compared to the agony you'll be in when you return to the School."

"No. No. You'll never take me, never, never, never. You can't hurt me anymore."

"But that's the thing," she whispers as the gray fades away. "I can."

I gasp and my eyes flutter open. My back is cold and I'm aching all over. Snape is kneeling next to me, hands on my shoulders, as if he'd been shaking me. I realize that I'm lying on the freezing stone of Snape's office. So that's where the cold came from. I then notice, to my utter humiliation, that tears are running down my face and my throat feels raw. I must have been screaming. Screaming, and crying for that matter.

"Potter," Snape says, and is it my imagination, or is there a hint of relief in his voice? "What happened?"

I stand shakily, not intending on telling him what happened. My gaze drops to the floor and I stand silently, waiting for him to yell at me, to call me weak, to tell me to practice more.

"What happened?" he repeats.

I'm done here.

"I hardly think you need to know sir," I say, still staring at my feet. "I don't intend to continue these lessons."

Call me weak, tell me I'm pathetic for giving up. But I don't want to risk that kind of pain again. I don't want to see that woman again. I'm getting the strangest feeling though, a feeling that I had seen her. Around here, around Hogwarts.

Wait a second...

Her laugh...it sounded...really...

"Umbridge"

Familiar

I've grown too used to this skin, I used that woman's laugh, that annoyingly high-pitched giggle. Did he notice? Of course he did, his observational powers are extraordinary. I have to dispose of the child. Now.

Well I did have a failsafe. I plan, a plot should I slip up. It would be a shame that the child couldn't be studied for longer. Ah, well, there's always the others.

I reach my stuby fingers forward, curling them around the knob of the drawer im front of me. I take a deep breath, open the drawer, and pull out the small, magical, hand-held device. I open it and navigate to Potter's file. My eyes scan the screen, looking for the correct number. Ah. There it is.

I tap the number, and then the delete key

6/10/96

Click. Tap. Tap.

10/27/1995

Today's date.

A small bubble pops up, asking me for the amount of time I want to give the child.

10 seconds.

Done.

Now all I have to do is wait.

Harry

A burning pain flickers across my arm just as Snape opens his mouth to ask again, what happened? I pull up my left sleeve and stare at the date, the tattoo I've grown to loathe more than anything.

The date...it..no...

I look up, meeting Snape's eyes.

"I-"

A swooping, dizzying feeling envelopes me, sending me crashing to my knees. It hurts...

No, stay alive!

my brain cries at me. Keep breathing! Fight! FIGHT! You can beat this, remember! FIGHT!

The voice sounds surprisingly like Hermione's, and part of me, most of me, wants to listen to it. But it would be so good to rest...just for a little while...

No...don't give in...don't sleep...don't die...

"POTTER!" Snape grabs my forearm, turning it over so he can see the date. Upon realizing what has happened, he curses and gives me a horrified look. "Stay alive, Potter! Keep breathing!"

"I'm...sorry..."

The blackness that has been gathering at the edges of my vision swoops in, claiming me as it's own. I feel the last breath of air leave my lungs in a whoosh, feel my heart stutter to a stop. And then there's nothing.

"Umbridge"

I smirk. A minute has passed since I changed the date. Surely he must have succumbed by now. I cross the room and unlock my closet. A woman is unconcious, slumped against the wall. Dolores Umbridge. The real one. A simple memory alteration charm and she, and everyone else, will be none the wiser that I was here.

I placed the charm and sat the woman down at her hideously ugly desk, set a spell in place to wake her up in twenty minutes, grabbed the few possestions that were actually mine, and set off. Within five minutes I was out the door, in the Forbidden Forest, explaining the change of plans to my Eraser subordinates. Basically, the same thing, only eight months in advance.

Now all we had to do was wait for the boy's funeral.

Hermione

My chest is heaving with sobs as the simple brown casket is lowered into the earth. This isn't fair! It isn't! He had until June! We were going to find a cure and celebrate and then...I was going to tell him I loved him! Why did the date change? Why? Why must the good die young?

The funeral isn't large. The date was kept a secret so only those who knew Harry, really knew him, could attend. Otherwise reporters and Ministry officials would have swarmed the place. And it didn't take a genius to figure out that Harry would have despised that.

So here I stand with the entire Flock, The Weasleys, Lupin and Tonks, the fifth year Gryffindors, the Quidditch team, Moody, Dumbledore, and Sirius. He's disguised as Snuffles, of course, but the look on his face...it makes me feel nauseous. Harry was the last tie he had to Lily and James. And now he's gone.

And he can't even greive properly at his funeral. Forced to hide as an animal, not even allowed to give voice to his agony.

It's time. We begin to step forward, one by one, sprinkle a handful of dirt on the casket, and say some final words to Harry. When it's my turn, I close my eyes so I don't have to see the box that my friend lies in, soon to be nothing but dust and memories.

"Where to begin, Harry? The adventures you, Ron, and I had together were some of the best times of my life. Even though we were terrified out of our wits half the time...Harry you were the strongest person I knew. I only wished I could be a courageous as you. You are...were...a true hero. And you were also the person I fell in love with," I ignore the gasps behind me and continue. "I only wish I had the courage to tell you when you were alive." I throw the dirt over the coffin. "Goodbye, Harry. I'll never forget you."

Darkness. Why is it so dark? My eyes are open, wide open, but I can see nothing. Have I gone blind? I try to sit up and my head slams into something hard and solid. I wince and fall back, stars bursting in my vision.

Where am I? What is going on?

It all comes back to me in a rush. The giggle, the change, the exhaustion, the darkness taking over the vision, dying. Death.

And then it makes sense. The reason it's dark, the reason I'm in a box, the reason there's a scent of dirt in the air. I've been buried alive.

I slam my fists against the top of the casket. "LET ME OUT! SOMEONE LET ME OUT!" I know nobody can hear me, I know I'm six feet under. But I've abandoned all reason, focusing on only one out.

I rake my nails against the wood, desperate to escape. It doesn't work, and I collpase back, a hysterical sob bubbling out of my throat. I can't die like this! Why can't it just be over, already? How many times do I have to die? Will this be my final demise? Suffocating in the dark? I hate the dark. I hate closed-in spaces. After the school, those are the two things I fear the most.

How ironic.

Wait a minute...

Is it just my imagination, or do I hear a scraping noise? A shovel? Grave robbers? Any other time I would be horribly angry, I've always hated people who disrespected the dead, but now I'm just relieved. In fact, I would probably hug the person who opened the coffin and let me out.

The lid is flung open, revealing a circle of sinister faces, many of them half-morphed into wolves. So much for the hugging idea.

A woman leans over me, her scarred face twisted into a sinister smile promising nothing but terror and agony.

"Ready to go home?" she asks.

I scream.

A/N: Poor, poor Harry...this was going to happen in June 10th, but the fic would have just dragged on and on with ten chapters of filler so I decided against it. Written to the HetaOni OST vocal covers of Vanity, England's Song, and This is Where I Fall, by Lia1291, on YouTube. Check 'em out, they're really good!

-Winged Quill