Harry was beginning to wonder if anyone could ever truly come back from the edge of insanity. Voldemort certainly hadn't proved it possible, and even Dumbledore—brilliant as he was—sometimes made Harry question if he was entirely there.

Every power was cursed.

For so long, Harry had lived a life as pitiful as Pettigrew's. But unlike him, he wasn't even lucky enough to have a place to crawl back to. Pettigrew, at least, had the Weasleys. Harry had nothing. No one. Always on the fringes, shuffling from one corner to the next with nothing to hold on to, no one willing to hold him.

When magic had graced his life, he had thrown himself into it without hesitation. The adventures, the friendships—the sheer rush of it all had been intoxicating.

The high was beautiful.

The fall was devastating.

And in the end, the magic he had loved so much hadn't changed the cruel nature of life.

It had only ever been life. Painful, relentless, and unchanged.

A fact his parents weren't able to change—Lily and James.

A few words, a handful of pictures—so little to truly know them by. Yet, as madness crept into his bones, he realized not all of it belonged to the Blacks or to Voldemort's twisted designs. Some of it was theirs. His parents had been just as brilliant as they were mad.

Dumbledore always spoke in vague impressions, weaving half-truths and grand narratives about Lily's sacrifice saving him that night.Love ,yes that was the word.So very simple dumbeldore made it. But it was never so simple.But what would a boy who never known love know of it?And after all, how many Muggle-borns received an introduction to blood magic before even stepping foot in Hogwarts?

His parents had cast something far older, far deeper—a ritual he could barely trace. Blood magic. It demanded two willing sacrifices. The father's role was defense: to defend but then yield in all ways, but never kill. To protect, even to the point of death. The mother's role was sacrifice: to willingly give up her life in exchange for a shield powerful enough to preserve his soul.

But no plan, no matter how carefully crafted, remains untouched by chaos.

Who could have foreseen that Voldemort had already fallen so far, so irreversibly lost? And who could have imagined that Petunia Dursley—the linchpin in Dumbledore's grand design—had no love to give?

A magic bound to love and emotion had been tied to someone who felt neither, or at least not in the way that mattered.

And yet, it had not faded.

Instead, it had festered, twisting in the bile of Petunia's resentment. Warped and malformed, it had survived. And so had he.

All of Dumbledore's plotting, all the fragments of Voldemort's soul, Arcturus Black's incursion—none of it mattered in the end.Because no matter how much he clawed at his own skin, no matter how much he wanted to tear his own skull apart to silence the chaos in his mind—his roots, his foundation, remained the same.

His parents' sacrifice.

The blood magic—whatever its original intent—had kept him safe. No matter how malformed, no matter how malignant it had become, it had shielded him from everything. Even himself.

But to truly free himself from the perils of soul magic, he needed blood magic.

The irony was almost laughable.

No one becomes a master of blood magic overnight. And blood magic experts weren't going to come knocking at his door just because Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, asked them to.

But whatever this was—this twisted, festering thing inside him—it had to be dealt with.

If it was a tumor, it had to be cut out.

Exhumated.

And for all that Harry was, for all that he had endured, he could not stomach the thought of carrying anything in him that was tied to Petunia. The mere idea of it was as revolting as the realization that Voldemort had left a piece of himself lodged in Harry's soul. But perhaps, in some ways, this was even worse.

His mother's magic—his parents' magic—had been warped by Petunia's resentment, clinging to him, rotting, malforming like her own heart.

It was almost a wonder. A bitter marvel of magic.

That there had been so much hatred in her—so much twisted, festering bile—that blood magic could sustain itself on it for years. That her resentment had proven nearly as powerful as his mother's sacrifice, as his father's final stand.

Perhaps, when it came to bitterness of the heart, only one other could rival Petunia.

Snape.

Harry knew little of Snape's past. But he had a feeling. They were soulmates in this, in a way.

He almost wanted to laugh. Maybe he should tell Voldemort. Inform him that it wasn't a Muggle-born's love that had kept him at bay all these years—but a Muggle's resentment.

Would that knowledge be enough to make Voldemort off himself?

But there was no time for humor now. This tumor had to be removed. Completely.

And to replace something, you needed something else to fill its place.

He needed to talk to Sirius.Now.