He lay face down, listening to the silence. He was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching. Nobody else was there. He was not perfectly sure that he was there himself.

A long time later, or maybe no time at all, it came to him that he must exist, must be more than disembodied thought, because he was lying, definitely lying, on some surface. Therefore he had a sense of touch, and the thing against which he lay existed too.

Almost as soon as he had reached this conclusion, Harry became conscious that he was naked. Convinced as he was of his total solitude, this did not concern him, but it did intrigue him slightly. He wondered whether, as he could feel, he would be able to see. In opening them, he discovered that he had eyes.

He lay in a bright mist, though it was not like mist he had ever experienced before. His surroundings were not hidden by cloudy vapor; rather the cloudy vapor had not yet formed into surroundings. The floor on which he lay seemed to be white, neither warm nor cold, but simply there, a flat, blank something on which to be.

He sat up. His body appeared unscathed. He touched his face. He was not wearing glasses anymore.

Then a noise reached him through the unformed nothingness that surrounded him: the small soft thumpings of something that flapped, flailed, and struggled. It was a pitiful noise, yet also slightly indecent. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was eavesdropping on something furtive, shameful.

For the first time, he wished he were clothed.

Barely had the wish formed in his head then robes appeared a short distance away. He took them and pulled them on: They were soft, clean, and warm. It was extraordinary how they had appeared, just like that, the moment he had wanted them…

He stood up, looking around. Where was he? The longer he looked, the more there was to see. A great domed glass roof glittered high above him in sunlight. Perhaps it was a palace. All was hushed and still, except for those odd thumping and whimpering noises coming from somewhere close by in the mist…

Harry turned slowly on the spot, and his surroundings seemed to invent themselves before his eyes. A wide-open space, bright and clean, a hall larger by far than the Great Hall, with that clear, domed glass ceiling. It was quite empty. He was the only person there, except for -

He recoiled. He had spotted the thing that was making the noises. It had the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath.

He was afraid of it. Small and fragile and wounded though it was, he did not want to approach it. Nevertheless he drew slowly nearer, ready to jump back at any moment. Soon he stood near enough to touch it, yet he could not bring himself to do it. He felt like a coward. He ought to comfort it, but it repulsed him.

"You can't help it, son."

He spun around to face the voice. His parents were walking towards him, his mother is an emerald green dress, his father in midnight blue robes. His mother came to him and hugged him. It was not the smothering, bone-crushing hug of Mrs. Weasley's or the brief, rib-cracking hug of Hermione, but it conveyed love and acceptance beyond what either of the others provided. Harry returned the hug, tears leaking from his eyes.

"My boy," Lily said, releasing him, with warmth and love beyond any that Harry knew. Harry noticed that there were tears in the corners of her eyes. "My baby boy."

James hugged him next. It was a bit more brief, but conveyed the same feeling as his mother's. "Let's talk. Walk and talk."

Harry, smiling despite the tears running down his face, nodded. As they started walking, Harry had to ask. "Am I dead?"

"No!" his mother denied, so loudly and passionately that he jumped. "No," she said more quietly. "No, this is a result of two opposing forces being forced together, with you, Harry, caught in the middle."

"You remember the diary," his father asked, to which Harry nodded. "When it told you that it was a memory, it lied. It was a soul, or a fragment, at least."

Harry's eyes widened at this revelation. "So, when Dumbledore said Voldemort left some of his power in me - "

" - he meant a fragment of his soul, yes." Lily replied. "That fragment, however, never had any control over any part of your life. You've not been influenced by it, nor has it influenced anyone around you. The only thing that it could do was connect you to Voldemort, if he had a body, and give you Parseltongue. With the way it was removed, something may remain, but not something sinister or dark."

"Your mother's right, Harry," James jumped in. "You might have a bit of extra knowledge that you don't remember from where you got, the link may still be open for a time, or you may still be a Parseltongue. We really don't know."

Harry nodded. "So, the thing back there… ?"

Lily and James both nodded as James spoke, "Yes, that a piece of Voldemort's soul. It's just as mutilated as the two others from the ritual and the other one you sent here, after you saved that cute redhead."

James smirked at Harry as he blushed. Lily slapped her husband's arm, glaring lightly at him. "James, behave."

James merely laughed. Lily huffed in response, a small smile gracing her lips as she looked away from her husband. Harry smiled warmly as he looked at his parents, their love for each other was obvious.

"I wish Severus treated you better," Lily said, changing the subject. "He never used to be so petty."

"He always was," James disagreed. "He was just obsessed with you, so he never tried to show it to you."

"No," Lily denied. "Before we went to Hogwarts, he wasn't as bad. Oh, he was still a bit petty and vindictive, but not as much as he was after he was sorted into Slytherin. You probably made it worse, though."

James looked vaguely guilty. "Probably. Didn't mean he would have been an angel, though. He did still hang out with the future Death-Eaters, and it's not like Sirius, Remus, Peter, and I drove Snivellus right into their arms, he was already on that path."

It was then that Harry figured out precisely who they were talking about. "You were friends with Snape?!"

"I was," Lily stated simply. "He was my best friend before going to Hogwarts, after Petunia got jealous of me. He was the one who told me about magic. We started drifting apart after he was sorted into Slytherin. He fell in with the Death-Eaters, Malfoy, Avery, Mulciber."

"The Marauders weren't exactly saints," James jumped in, "and I will admit that we were harsher on Snape than on some of the other students in our year, but we never hexed students for merely being muggleborn, like Snape and his friends did. Snape didn't join in on that pastime much until after Lily ended their friendship in our fifth year."

"Why'd you end it then?" Harry asked, confused as to both why his mother would ever let her friendship die and that she didn't end her friendship with Snape sooner.

"He called me a mudblood," Lily replied, frown on her face. "After I tried to help him."

Harry nodded. That made sense to him.

James looked at his wife and son before he spoke. "Lily, why don't we tell him some stories, while he's still here. He's not here for much longer, so let's not end our first meeting with him in a while on a sour note."

Harry's eyes were shining at the idea of hearing some stories about his parents. The pair told him as many stories as they could.

"It's time for you to go back," James said, after finishing a story about a prank he pulled.

"We love you, but we want you to live, Harry. Be happy, make friends, get married," Lily said.

"Maybe to a certain cute redhead," James teased.

Lily smacked his arm again. "We want you to live a long and happy life, even if that means we won't see you for many, many years to come."

Harry hugged both his parents. He simply said, "I love you."

"We love you, too, son," James said.

As the embrace ended, the world around Harry faded to white.

AN: This was a rather emotional chapter for me to write. I am honestly a little choked up even now by how bittersweet this chapter turned out.

Uploaded Sept. 18th, 2020, Edited Jan 10th, 2025