The substance was silvery tones of purple, blue, and grey and thick like honey. He had never studied a memory before, or held one in his hand, separated only by a thin bit of glass. It was strange that something so fragile-looking, could have so much power over it's owner. He shifted the glass, and watched the viscoelastic substance shift almost serenely at the movement. The idea disturbed him.

He felt oddly as though he should both shove it as far away from his person as possible, but also that he should cling to it desperately. He settled on pushing it under his pillow, but kept his hand curled around the vial.

He is still. His feet are bare, and the rocks are sharp, and he dare not move without careful consideration. There is a boy up ahead; tall and lanky and certain of his movements. His feet are also bare, but he knows just where to step.

He takes a step, and pauses, and the older boy up ahead turns to look at him with impatience. He takes another step, and another, and finds the faster he goes, the less he pauses to think of what will happen if he missteps. That is, he is sure, the only reason he makes it to the entrance of the cave. The darkness swallows them.

OoOoOoO

Reality pulled and tugged relentlessly at Devlin's senses, until he was awake, his dream shedding from him like snake-skin. Immediately, his hand groped under his pillow and curled under the vial protectively.

He climbed off the high four-poster bed and onto the chill dungeon floor, stumbling towards his school chest. After a moment of consideration, he put the vial in the chest his father had bought him, rather than the one his Grandfather might have charmed in ways he wouldn't know. Later, he would find somewhere safer for it to be.

He got dressed and cast a freshening charm on himself rather than take a shower. His dorm mates snoozed on as he rushed out the door.

He needed a moment of peace, and he found it in the Astronomy Tower. Older students seemed to enjoy coming to the spot for what they claimed was some peace and quiet, although he had his suspicions that being quiet wasn't really their goal.

The view from the window was rather like looking down upon someone else' creation, and he found himself smiling. The sun rose pink and rose colored, beautiful in a way Devlin did not quite think he appreciated fully. If only he could fly like his Grandfather!

"You are up early, Mr. Potter."

He forced his muscles to remain as they had been, while he mastered the urge to twist around. Past, present and all the possible futures whirled around him, shaking his mind fully awake. He tried to center himself.

"Yes, quite on purpose. Since coming out after curfew to find some peace and quiet is quite frowned upon, I have to find it during the wee hours of the morning, unfortunately." He thought of the boy in his dreams that looked just like him, and he turned slowly at the elbows so that he leaned casually against the bottom of the window in replica of the way the boy had leaned against the porch railings in his dream. His chest pounded with the primal instinct to run like a cornered animal.

"Ah yes, very true," Dumbledore said, in that kindly way, as if years of prior bemusements were shifting through his mind. "Although that never did seem to give your father pause."

"I do not think my father was ever one to break the rules for peace and quiet." Slowly his played confidence began to seep into his blood and feel half-real. The primal desire lingered like foul-smelling smoke, but it was no longer powerful enough to constrict his heart and lungs.

Dumbledore chuckled as he approached him.

"Alas, there is also much truth in that!" He said, nodding slowly. He seemed lost in the past for a moment. Devlin didn't take his eyes off him, and he felt Dumbledore purposefully did not look at him."I often come up here to watch the sunrise. I find it to be a rejuvenating experience."

Never having been kidnapped by Voldemort, Devlin might have assumed nothing of this encounter; a mere coincidence, he would think. But Devlin was not a regular boy, and all the blindness had been flushed out of him long ago.

There was silence. A thestral flew above the tree line; Devlin could feel Dumbledore's eyes upon it, a sort of sadness at the edges of his thoughtful frown.

"Your father once flew on one of those creatures," Dumbledore said, chuckling. Devlin did not remark upon his words; though he was quite aware they had been an invitation to engage in conversation.

"Was he always a monster, sir?" Instead, he picked and chose what suited him; chose the invitation while he picked a new subject. Dumbledore looked back at the sunrise. In that moment, as Devlin turned to regard him, he appeared neither kind nor unkind; only sad and full of heavy thoughts.

"No. At least, he was not practiced enough for that title. He was a little boy full of spite and anger who felt different and ostracized. I do think, or at least I choose to think, that had he been born into a family and had a destination in which he knew he belonged and was wanted - his path in life would have been very different. By the time I knew him, it was too late. He had built an image of himself already, and it kept those who would have helped him - at bay. He was unable to accept that he was the problem, because he saw no problem at all."

"What do you think he would have been like?" He ate in Dumbledore's words and expressions in a way he would later feel revolted by, but this was possibly the only man alive that had known his Grandfather as a small child, instead of as a terrifying peer. Like William, he had a morbid curiosity about the subject, and this morning he felt as though a weight had been lifted, as if the bars of his prison creaked and cracked just a bit more, and he found less fear in looking out.

Dumbledore turned to him, the rising sun alighting his blue eyes, as he looked over his half-moon spectacles at him.

"I rather think he would have been like you, Devlin. Although, I suspect he had more to overcome than you, and I do not think you could have ever been, in any environment, made to be entirely him."

"I don't understand. If you think it was his environment, then why would the same thing not happen to me?"

There was something powerful in Dumbledore's eyes; something sad and kind all at once. He leaned down just slightly and smiled at him.

"Have I ever told you about the first time we met?" Dumbledore did not need his reply or permission to continue. "You were half a year old - the age at which it is considered safe to Disapparate with an infant. I quite felt like it was, as the Muggles might say, 'Christmas in July.' I had waited, impatiently I might add, what had seemed forever to see Harry with you. I traveled to your Welcoming Party, equally delighted to see the boy I had known being a father as I was to see his son. You were in your mother's arms when I saw you first. A tiny little thing with a tuft of dark hair, and dark green eyes that seemed more magical than the wand in my hand. You would not look at me, so preoccupied by the crowd, and your mother remarked that it was to be presumed you were looking for your father. He was, apparently, your favorite. Indeed, all Harry had to do was come into your sight, and you would become delighted! Harry handed you to me sometime later, and it was only with his encouraging smile that your assessment of me seemed to shift from stranger to friend; you smiled up at me, as though his show of trust had been all you had needed, and tugged on my beard happily. Even then, I could see you sought out his guidance. That you trusted him completely and that he, in turn, would make any sacrifice for you. When Alexandra told me, years later, what she had learned about her blood, she had no doubts about your goodness and neither had I; you felt love and gave love, and it was clear how completely you were able to connect with your world. These are things Voldemort had always been missing. So you see, while a boy born without might be able acquire these things, a boy born with them can never entirely lose them."

Devlin always felt uncomfortable when people spoke of him as a young boy; before he had been kidnapped. It sat strangely in his head; hearing about a boy he could hardly remember. Maria said she did not remember being a baby either, though - he had asked her quite pointedly once, just to make sure there wasn't something wrong with his head. This was worse; this comparison of Grandfather and him. He had sought it out hungrily, but now it tasted somehow sour. There was a certainty in the Headmaster's eyes that Devlin recognized as knowledge; more of it than he was telling Devlin.

And still, the morbid curiosity that had started with his Grandfather and somehow spread to the topic of himself, propelled him forward.

"Everyone likes to say these things about me, Headmaster," he said. He should stop talking, but the words clawed up his throat and tumbled out of his mouth. Dumbledore's eyes were a clear crystal blue; he could see all the separate shades that made up the complex coloring. Snape did not rush through the archway to rescue him and Devlin was not entirely sure he wanted that. "But - I don't remember being that boy. Maybe you're right - about that boy with love and trust being unable to lose it, but maybe you're forgetting that when being yourself makes everything like a nightmare, you stop being yourself. There will always be a boy in me who has none of it, and when I'm scared, he makes me numb."

Dumbledore drew back, his blue eyes misty with tears that Devlin did not understand. He had half-expected the Headmaster to draw his wand. There was a moment of silence. Devlin stood perfectly still.

"That is called self-preservation, Devlin," he said, after a time. His voice was calm, though the tears were threatening to fall, "and I am terribly saddened to hear that you have experienced it so often as to make you feel as though it is a permanent part of your personality."

Devlin looked away; the sun was shifting beautifully in the sky and he felt even less like he was able to appreciate it.

"Everyone has a right to self-preservation, Devlin. It neither makes us cruel nor a monster. It is a natural thing, built into every person alive; even Tom. Indeed, it is only very powerful circumstances that allow us to overcome our own self-preservation."

"Like my Grandmother," he said, unsure why he had. Dumbledore hummed in agreement.

"Yes, Lily certainly did set aside her self preservation to protect her child." Dumbledore shifted and his robes crinkled. "Your father has made sacrifices for his children as well; changed tactics, spent years looking for you, learned to be cunning rather than just brave. While I am not saying that one is better, or harder, than the other; I do often believe that they are more equal than people usually initially consider. Changing ourself is often a sacrifice that takes years of constant regard and determination."

"I used to tell my father that, to him, Voldemort was the monster and to Voldemort, he was the monster. And I used to tell him that neither of them seemed exactly like monsters to me. And…I can say it, say he's a monster, but I still can't really see him entirely that way."

"You have a good heart, Devlin - like your father and your grandmother."

"Do you think of him like a monster?" As the words slipped off his tongue he came to realize that Dumbledore really was one of the few left who understood Voldemort as more than he had become to everyone else. That, though he was feet shorter and decades younger, they were probably the only two people alive who could converse like this about Tom Riddle.

Dumbledore's brow drew down.

"You know, that is a very interesting question," he said. He lips pressed together as he looked out the window thoughtfully. "I suppose, more often than not, I still think of Tom as a sixteen year old boy."

"Why sixteen?"

Dumbledore's eyes flickered with something like realization, and he seemed to become aware he had just been about to say aloud his thoughts to a mere boy.

"I suppose that was the year I became certain of the path he had chosen."

But Devlin knew there had been something else.

OoOoOoOoOoO

"Do you want tea?" She had a foot-high pile of ward patterns to proof-read for the Ministry, and Harry wasn't due back from work for at least an hour. The attack on Hogsmeade had been, for her office, the Muggle equivalent of a terrible flood. Anyone with insurance claiming damage to their wards would need to be reviewed by the Ministry; and reading low-quality wards was much harder than reading the elegant script of traditional ones.

Dumbledore smiled.

"No thank you," he said. "I know you are terribly busy; I just require a moment of your precious time."

Dumbledore had the strange way of saying such cliche things and truly meaning them and whereas she should have believed most wizards thought her time was anything but 'precious,' she never doubted Dumbledore (at least in these instances) said what he meant and meant what he said.

"Alright, then." She sat down at the kitchen table to join him. "Are you sure you don't want Harry here as well?"

Dumbledore's lips pursed.

"I think that, should I tell Harry this, he would rush into imminent danger." Alexandra groaned but nodded, and Dumbledore chuckled softly. "I was speaking to Devlin-" Alexandra felt her mind snap to attention; she wasn't sure she wanted Devlin speaking to anyone alone who had the sort of influence that Dumbledore (or Voldemort, for that matter) did. "And he asked me a very thoughtful question, which in turn, made me recall something about Tom. Harry told me that Tom brought Devlin to a house, not the camp. I think I may know where this house is located."

Alexandra's mind rushed around her, her thoughts organizing themselves into a web of possibilities, but none was more curious than what Devlin and Dumbledore had been speaking about. Of course, Dumbledore was an intelligent man, and the fact that he had mentioned the conversation at all meant he had wanted Alexandra to be curious.

"And you thought, if you told Harry - he would rush off to this address?"

She held her curiosity to herself, at least for now. Dumbledore took a lemon candy out of his pocket and plopped it in his mouth. Buying himself a moment.

"Not only did I suspect such, but I knew he would fail to take down the wards."

"But you suspect something different would happen, with my attempt?"

"I do. Of course, I am not suggesting you make an immediate or individual attempt, but when the Order goes there, you will be necessary."

"Why?"

"Because I suspect that you, like Devlin, could walk right through the wards."

"That would be a foolish condition to weave into wards. Voldemort makes his wards tighter than the weave in one of Molly's holiday sweaters if you wash and dry them." Dumbledore's brow rose with humor. "Not that I have ever ruined one of her sweaters Albus…"

"No, of course not." His lips twitched with suppressed laughter. "I encourage you to think of a few things: the last time you encountered wards that were purely his own, and the distinctness of his magic."

"I've never encountered wards that were just his. If he didn't mask his magic with others, we would find it surmountably easier to trace." She frowned. "Are you suggesting these are old wards?"

"Yes. I am suggesting these are wards he made before he split his soul - and thus with a different magical signature." Alexandra summoned herself a cup of hot black coffee.

"Before Devlin-"

"Before even you, Alexandra."

"…so before his rise. Because Voldemort is not a stupid man when it comes to plain facts; he knew there was a possibility, as long as he conducted himself the way he clearly did, that such a gap in his wards would be detrimental."

"Indeed. These wards must have been placed before there was any possibility of magical blood relatives."

"Why bring Devlin there?"

"For the same intrinsic reasons he chose Harry over Neville."

OoOoOoO

Snape had commanded him to arrive after curfew, of course, but had made no attempt to make sure his passage was uninterrupted. Filch was old and grumpy, and he often complained that the dungeons made his bones hurt, but his orange cat (a replacement, his father had once said), seemed to like the dungeons enough to cause trouble for trouble-makers. It took some work, and a bit of a trick he had learned as a little boy, but she turned around and left him alone.

He did not knock. He felt as though he had been through enough getting there as it were. Never mind that he was there for a job and not for a favor.

Snape was no longer dressed in his teaching robes. He wore grey slacks and a white button down shirt, both of which were covered by a well-stained black apron. There was a potion simmering in front of him, and precisely prepared ingredients laid out around him.

"Sit down," he ordered, before he had even looked to make sure it was Devlin.

He did not sit; he wandered toward the Pensieve on the desk. Since Snape had only wished him not to be a disturbance, he did not seem overly annoyed. A few minutes later, the Professor had reached a point that he could turn the heat down on the potion and cast a stasis charm.

"Have you seen one before?" He asked, coming up behind him so that Devlin's instincts forced him to turn around. Without the apron he looked even more like a regular man. His teaching robes were confining while concealing at the same time; buttons all the way to his chin, outer robe that billowed like concealing wings around him. Now, in just slacks and a tucked-in button down, he looked suddenly almost fragile. He was lean and lanky, his skin the color of someone who spent most of their time inside, his face smooth near his mouth but wrinkled at his brow. Devlin wondered what he would look like with his hair cut short, and wondered why he bothered to keep it long at all.

"Yes," he said, effectively drawing himself back to reality.

"I shall therefore assume that you have also been inside of one."

"Indeed. More than once."

Snape nodded curtly.

"But, for clarification, you have never been asked or shown how to do this, correct?"

He had asked the same question, much more specifically, the night before. Clearly he was not clarifying Devlin's knowledge, but his truthfulness.

"Knowing how to alter memories would be something the Dark Lord would certainly avoid teaching me."

Snape regarded him, even as he continued to wipe the potion residue from his hands with a rag.

"It is not an art that can be taught were ability does not already exist. Indeed, I do not intend to teach you at all. I wish to see how your mind construes the process."

"So your plan is just to shove me into a Pensieve with some random memory?"

"No," Snape said, as he vanished the rag. "I did not intend the Pensieve for you, at all."

His face was expressionless. Devlin looked at him in replica; nothing here, nothing there, nothing, nothing, nothing.

"So, just to clarify. Have you ever done, or asked another person, to do what you expect me to do?"

Snape smiled; a poisoned knowing smile.

"Your brain is different. I do not yet know if this difference is genetic (something you inherited from your infamous grandfather), or unique to yourself because of the way Crucio effected you."

"You suspect this why?"

Snape leaned forward, just enough to make the height differences abundantly clear.

"You have an imagination that is astounding," he said, while he regarded Devlin in a manner Devlin thought more befitting of a rare potions ingredient than another human. "I do not know if it because, like the Dark Lord, your mother, and your grandmother, you are especially intelligent - more intelligent than me, if it is so, or because you are a child and therefore this gift will shed from you as you grow, or because you have a part of your mind that should be separate from the rest of it, and Crucio made the barrier crumble."

"It hasn't crumbled," he said, staring up at the Professor. "There is a world of nothingness in-between us, but my wolf can walk through it and all it does is cling to him, whereas it consumes me."

Snape's brow drew down in true curiosity.

"Nevertheless, I intend to see if you can alter a memory inside of your own mind."

"I think I would have figured that out if I could have. It would have made things much easier."

"Often it is easier to recognize the flaws of others than to see our own. The same is true for all mental exercises; a memory of your own will be harder to separate and dissect than one that is not organically your own."

The logic of it made sense, but he still felt uncertain.

"Is it safe to put someone else's memory inside of your own mind?"

"Yes, although there can be a moment of pain, and I recommend confining it quickly. Your mind will try to make sense of it in it's own way and that is exactly what we do not want."

"What makes you so certain I will know how to separate this memory?"

"It will feel reminiscent of one of his mental attacks. You will be very aware. I am certain you can confine the memory, because you confine many of your memories already. You keep them locked behind bars; sometimes you even keep yourself there. You do not allow your mind to make sense of those memories, either."

There were times in Devlin's life that he had experienced this sensation before, of course, but the older he became the more bizarre it seemed to feel. Devlin had built that prison in his head the first time he saw William's father, which had been a day or so after he first saw a man die - the man his grandfather had killed the day Geoffrey had saved him. He had known, without out really knowing, why he had sometimes hidden himself behind the same bars, but he had never had the words. The words felt like a breathtaking piece of music, resonating with every fiber of his being. Knowing why made him feel weak in the knees so that all he could do was nod up at Snape. He was a precisely logical person, and he had locked those memories away from his logic. Because understanding them would be never being able to forget.

Yes, he though, as Snape continued to talk about what he wanted Devlin to do to this memory, he could separate the memory from his mind. Obviously, he could do that.

OoOoOoOoO

Snape's wand fit smoothly into the stout vial, and the memory collected at the tip of his wand without much persuasion. Severus did not seem overly concerned, and Devlin, weighing the evidence of how Severus seemed intent to keep him alive, decided neither should he. Snape approached. The memory dangled from the wand, and when it connected with his head, he had the sensation of a cold chill creeping into the base of his skull.

Then it happened. Snape had been right, it was alike, and yet so distinctly different, all at once. It was like hot steam, whereas legilimency was cool fog, but it curled and stretched into his mind in the same way. Seeped into his mind and seemed to solidify inside of him; it's tracks like that of a clawed beast, roaming restlessly.

His eyes fluttered, his heart heaved, and there was an all-consuming knowingness that filled him: something not right was in his mind. The dungeon room flickered in and out of his vision as his mind clung survivalistically to reality. Snape was in front of him; dark eyes, indifferent expression.

He is running. He is running so fast he has the momentary sensation that he could be flying. He is the wolf. The predator. The nothingness surrounds him, trying to attach itself to him; but his fur repels it in the same way it repels magical spells. He runs faster; harder, quicker, desperately. He is almost there; he can sense it. Almost there. Almost there.

He lunges.

There was a moment, caught between the capture of the something which did not belong and his purposeful spiral down into his mind, in which Devlin was momentarily aware of reality. He felt his knees buckle uselessly beneath him. His eyelids were like marble and so he anticipated the stone but could not see it coming.

And then, he stopped. There were hands around his middle, lifting him, and a voice by his ears.

"Don't think, Devlin. Just do what has to be done. You can do this."

He awoke into the meadow.

The air tasted like Spring; wet and fresh and full of possibility. There were insects humming in the tall grass. His cheek was pressed against the soft green grass and beneath his head, as though he had fallen sleep, was his hand. Immediately he could feel the vial, just as he had felt it that morning in his bed beneath his pillow. He lifted himself onto his knees and opened his fingers carefully.

He watched the viscoelastic substance shift slowly as he brought it up to his face; it was darker now and stickier - as though it were decaying, and he knew then that this would need to happen quickly. Whatever 'it' was; he still wasn't sure.

Devlin stumbled to his feet. The grass was as high as his waist and he had to wade through it like water. Eventually that was exactly what he found. A pond; the color of nothingness.

His wolf was waiting on the other side, settled almost ominously on his haunches, coat as dark as coal, eyes a glowing amber. He did not speak, merely looked into the water.

Devlin stepped closer.

There was a sense of knowingness that floated up from his stomach, even as a terrible unknowingness pushed down from his head. He should be well used to his instincts, a hum of knowledge without clear origin, but somehow, each time he encountered them, they felt as new as before. Perhap instincts were a bit like a Phoenix; reborn from the ashes of destruction.

The vial was burning in his hands.

The pond was the color of nothingness, and his wolf leaned over on the other side as if to illustrate how they were the same color.

Devlin wasn't sure why, but he stepped closer to the edge of the pond. The wolf looked at him as though he wanted to say something, but the Knowingness told Devlin that this time, the wolf wasn't a bit boyish. He could not speak. Indeed, Devlin felt as far from the wolfish boy as he ever had.

He crouched at the edge of the water and across the pound his wolf did the same. His paw and his wolf's paw. His feet - sneakered in those atrocious red things his father had bought him over the summer - and his wolf's forefeet. Now he was in as deep as his knees, and his wolf had just begun to swim. Another step; it was by his waist. He dropped the vial, and it slid into the smooth blackness of the water.

Because, really, where was he to put something that shouldn't touch him except where nothing was? The Nothingness was the perfect place.

His wolf treaded in the water to reach him, only his dark head still above the water. They met in the middle, and then his wolf opened his mouth and bit him where another wolf had bit him so long ago, and dragged him under into the nothingness.

He awoke, bodiless, into the memory.

He had expected Snape. Instead, for a moment, he thought he was staring at himself.