Mirage

Harry left St. Mungo's against the Healers' advice. He hitched a ride home on the Knight Bus and packed a few robes and a couple of casual Muggle outfits into a trunk. He was surprised to find his wand sitting on the nightstand next to his bed. Still bruised and sore, but convinced that he had to find Snape, Harry Apparated to the narrow road off Privet Drive.

It was early afternoon, and the road was characteristically deserted. A few brown spots that could have been blood stained the pavement; other than that, there was no evidence of his attack. Harry was not certain what he had hoped to find. He wandered down the road to the park where he had spent so many hours as a child and sat on one of the swings. It was growing dark when he Apparated to Spinner's End.

Harry had never visited the small, dilapidated house before, but he knew well where it was located. After the end of the war, Harry had taken it upon himself to find out all he could about Severus Snape. The place was even more depressing than he had imagined it: with peeling paint and hanging shutters, it reeked of abandonment with a hint of despair. Harry knew before he entered the house that he would not find Snape inside...the thick mantle of dust that covered the floor and the cobwebs that hung from the rafters had not been disturbed in a very long time. He suddenly felt lost and stupid. The boy who had defeated the Dark Lord had become the man who could not even hold his own life together. There in the dark, amidst the abandoned books and crumbling furniture, Harry sank to his knees and wept.

The voice came out of the darkness like a disembodied whisper. "Self-pity, Potter? How dreadfully unbecoming."

Harry jumped to his feet and whirled around in the direction of the voice, his wand drawn, his free hand furiously swatting at the tears on his cheeks.

"It was you. I knew it," he accused.

Snape's eyebrow shot up in a way that Harry knew only too well. "I made no effort to conceal my identity."

Harry's confidence wavered...why had Snape revealed himself to him after allowing everyone to think he was dead for so long? Harry felt like a fool for not having thought about it earlier.

Harry's uncertainty must have shown on his face, because Snape added, "It became painfully obvious you could use my help."

"You know what's happening to me, then?"

"No, but I think we should discuss it...at a more comfortable location, perhaps."

Harry sheathed his wand, and Snape withdrew his.

"Where are we going?" Harry asked nervously as he allowed Snape to take his arm.

"My home," Snape said casually.

"You don't live here?"

"No, but I had a feeling you would come looking for me."

Before Harry could ask any more questions, his stomach dropped and he was whisked away into the vortex of Disapparition.

They came to a stop on a quiet street lined with small cottages and neatly pruned trees. Snape's home was unassuming but tidy, set at the end of the road in a shaded cul-de-sac.

"This is a Muggle neighbourhood," Harry observed as they entered the house.

"Does that surprise you?" Snape asked over his shoulder as he flicked on an electric light-switch and removed his cloak.

"No," Harry conceded after a moment. It did not seem strange when he considered that Snape had grown up in a Muggle district, if not one as nice as this one.

The living room was small and cosy, furnished with soft chairs, a large sofa, a few end-tables and the inevitable bookshelves. A piano pushed against the far corner seemed strangely out of place.

"Tea?"

Harry dismissed Snape's offer with a terse shake of his head. "Where have you been?"

Snape sank into a stuffed chair and motioned for Harry to take a seat on the sofa across from him. "I've been right here."

"Why didn't you...?"

Snape halted Harry's inquiry with a raised hand. "We're not here to talk about me."

Fair enough, Harry thought. "How did you find me, then?"

"I followed you... from Malfoy Manor."

Harry was confused. "I haven't been to Malfoy Manor in years, since before the end of the war."

"Mr Potter, I can't help you if you're going to lie to me." Snape's voice was soft, but there was no sympathy in his steely gaze.

An uncomfortable warmth spread through Harry's body, the same way it had during his school days each time Snape had accused him of lying when he was actually telling the truth.

"I'm not lying," he ground out.

Snape's lips narrowed into an angry slash and his eyes glinted. "I saw you leave Lucius' home not three days ago, the same day of your attack, in fact."

Harry could not think of a single reason why he would visit Lucius Malfoy...Snape had to be lying. His anger flared. "You're the one who's lying! I don't know what you're playing at, Snape, but I'm going to figure it out, and when I do, I will kill you for it!"

Snape's warning to stop came too late. Harry had jumped to his feet and tried to Disapparate. Pain ripped through his insides and his body was hurled into the air before it landed on the carpeted floor with a muted thud.

He didn't know how much time had passed when he awoke on a soft bed. The room was dark except for a thin sliver of light that filtered in through the partially open door. There was a moment of panic at not recognizing his surroundings before Harry heard Snape's voice.

"How do you feel?" Snape asked from a chair across the room.

"Like I've been splinched and put together wrong. What happened?" Harry groaned.

"You tried to Disapparate, and the Anti-Apparition wards stopped you."

Harry cautiously raised his arms and wiggled his legs; everything seemed to be attached and in place.

"You could have warned me," he muttered.

"I tried, but as usual, your impulsivity became your downfall, Mr Potter."

"I wasn't lying," Harry argued.

"I believe you. Trouble is, neither was I." Snape left his chair to pace around the room.

"If I've been to Malfoy Manor recently, I don't remember it."

"Does that happen to you often, not remembering where you've been?"

Harry nodded, afraid Snape would ask him more about it. It was the one thing he dreaded talking about, the thing he could not explain.

"Do you know why you didn't have your wand with you the night of your attack?" Snape asked next, and Harry tried hard not to let his relief show.

"Ginny took it. She doesn't think it's safe for me to carry one. Maybe she's right."

"It seems to me it isn't safe for you not to carry one. Have you sought help for your amnesia?"

Harry nodded. "I've been examined by every healer, curse-breaker and mediwizard in the Wizarding world, along with several 'well-respected' Muggle doctors; they all agree I'm crazy."

Snape stopped pacing and tilted his head to glance at Harry. "Then maybe you are...all the more reason to find out what your connection is to Lucius Malfoy."

"I already told you, Snape; I don't remember being at Malfoy Manor. Maybe someone is using Polyjuice."

But Snape did not look convinced.

"The answer is hidden in your mind, and there's a way to extract it," Snape said softly, and Harry couldn't believe that Snape was suggesting it, or that he himself was considering it.

The Healers at St. Mungo's had said that the use of Legilimency was too risky in his condition and would most likely only yield marginal results given the fact that Harry had no conscious recollection of the events in question. Bile rose to Harry's throat when he remembered what it had been like back in his fourth year, to have Snape rip into his mind and rifle through his most intimate memories like so much accumulated baggage. Yet, the lure of answers was too strong where all else had failed.

Harry pushed himself up on the bed and braced his head against the headboard.

"Do it."

Snape hesitated. "You should get some sleep tonight. Perhaps tomorrow, when you're more rested and have had time to consider my offer."

Harry shook his head. "No. Do it now, before I change my mind."

There was no intrusive jolt or flutter of panic this time. Snape had not asked him to, but Harry thought of Lucius Malfoy as he had seen him the last time, dressed in his royal-blue robes, standing smug and pleased as he and his family received a full pardon from the Wizengamot.

"Don't do that," Snape reprimanded.

"Do what?"

"Impel a specific memory forward and exclude others. Just let your thoughts wander; that shouldn't be too difficult for you."

A snide retort occurred to Harry and Snape sneered. "That's more like it," he whispered.

Harry could feel Snape riffling through his thoughts; the process felt intrusive, but not invasive, and after a few minutes, it suddenly stopped. Snape was staring down at Harry with a perplexed expression on his face.

"What happened?" Harry asked.

"We are both tired; we should have waited," Snape said after a moment. "You will be safe here; get some sleep and we'll try again in the morning."

Harry tried to get some sleep as Snape had suggested, but sleep was a nightmare. Often, it seemed as if he were sleeping all the time. Other times, there seemed to be no dividing line between the time of going to bed at night and waking up in the morning. Sometimes he would wake up without going to sleep, and many times he had gone to sleep only to wake up not the next morning, but at some undefined time in an unrecognisable place.

These things were not new. All his life Harry had been accused of doing things he knew he had not done, had been recognised by people he was certain he had never met, had heard things no one else could hear. When it had been revealed to him at the age of eleven that he was a wizard, Harry had clung to that fact as a logical explanation for the early strange occurrences. But the incidents had become not only more frequent, but more menacing over the years, especially after Voldemort's death, until they could no longer be justified by magic or hidden away.

He lay restless and wakeful, knowing that in the morning he would have to tell this to Snape if he wanted the wizard's help. Yet Harry was not certain he could bring himself to tell. He was still awake in the sunless moments before dawn. His eyes darted around the bedroom at shapes indistinct in the semi-darkness, and he became overwhelmed by a strange stirring inside him that made it impossible for him to remain in the room even for the extra moment required for him to put on his coat and grab his wand.

He bolted from the bed and found his way down the stairs. He was in Snape's living room; then he was standing by the front door, his hand on the doorknob. He stepped out into the frigid night. The door closed softly behind him, and Harry looked around, trying to orient himself.

It looked like his street. The house just down the way, with white shutters and a griffin knocker looked like his house. It was ridiculous. How could he have gotten home in the split second between walking out of Snape's door and now, without a wand?

The door with the griffin knocker swung open, and Hermione ran out.

"Harry! Thank God. We were so worried." She threw her arms around him and then stepped back to carefully appraise his appearance.

He allowed her to guide him into the quiet house. Ron hovered nervously by the kitchen door.

"You found him! Is he all right? Where was he?" Ginny asked when she entered the room.

"I don't know. I saw him through the window, wandering the street just outside. He seems unharmed."

They were talking around him, like he wasn't even there; and Harry wondered if he was there at all or if it was all a dream.

This time there was a phone call to the Muggle doctor, and blue, orange and white pills...an 'adjustment,' the doctor had called it, since the blue, green, white combination of pills didn't seem to be working as well as expected. Hermione was bustling around the bedroom, laying out a clean change of clothes for Harry and assuring him that there was a logical explanation, and that it was going to be all right. Someone should force a dose of reality down that woman's throat, Harry thought bitterly as he stared at the pills in his hand.

"It all seemed so real," he said.

"The doctor said delusions often seem that way, but what you did was dangerous, Harry. We were lucky you stayed close to the house this time," Hermione explained

"I just thought... He believed me, Hermione, and he was willing to help me."

Hermione smiled sadly at him. "But it wasn't real, Harry. You and I both know Snape is dead...we saw him die," she said softly.

"I know," he conceded. It was the mistrust that got him worse than the pity. Sometimes it seemed easier to go along with the notion that he was crazy than to see the look of disbelief in others' eyes when he tried to convince them otherwise.

Harry swallowed the pills and gingerly removed his t-shirt. He heard a gasp from the bedroom door.

"What have you done to yourself?"

Ginny was staring at his chest, and Harry looked down to see two small, silver rings dangling from his nipples, which explained the soreness he had felt with every brush of the cotton fabric over his chest.

Harry shrugged. "It's no big deal; I thought it would look cool," he lied.

Apparently the lies were easier to swallow than the truth, because Ginny wriggled her nose and smiled hesitantly at him.

"It is kind of sexy," she purred after a moment.

Harry chuckled...a mirthless sound that seemed ripped from his vocal cords. "I'm going to take a shower; call me when dinner is ready."

He escaped into the bathroom and locked the door behind him. A stranger stared back at him from the mirror above the bathroom sink: a stranger with beard stubble, pale skin, hollow eyes and pierced nipples that he did not remember getting pierced. A closer examination of the nipple-rings revealed that they were each crafted in the shape of a coiled snake encrusted with diminutive diamond eyes. Bile rose into Harry's throat and the room went black. In a fit of anger, he grabbed one of the rings and yanked: hard. Metal ripped through pink flesh, and Harry cried out.

There was a loud bang on the door.

"Harry, are you alright?" Ginny's voice asked.

"I'm fine!" Harry snapped, reaching for a towel with which to staunch the flow of blood.

When he had calmed his breathing, Harry carefully removed both rings and set them down by the sink before discarding the rest of his clothes and climbing into the shower. The spray of warm water stung his battered body, and Harry wondered how much more he could take.