A Remedial Life

Chapter Two: Dinnertime Tantrums

"Harry, are you all right?" Hermione questioned from across the table in the characteristically noisy Hogwarts dining hall. "You're not really eating your dinner. You're more mutilating it. Has your pork done something to offend you?"

Ron snorted, as they both watched Harry once again stab his meat with his fork, seemingly trying to murder the cooked animal all over again.

"I'm fine, Hermione. Thank you for your concern," Harry replied evenly as he began shredding the piece of meat off his fork with his knife.

"Yeah, Hermione, what's it to you anyway?" Ron chimed in indignantly, eager to pick another fight with his favorite sparring partner. "Why do you always have to be everyone's mother? First, you're telling Harry to stop playing with his food. Soon you'll be asking if he's done his homework and making him go to bed at a decent hour--Oh wait, you already do."

Hermione tossed Ron a patronizing eyeroll. "Well, forgive me, Ron, for being sensitive to the needs and feelings of others. I forget what a foreign concept that is to you."

"What? Please. I'm loads sensitive. Aren't I Harry? ...Harry? I'm sensitive, right?" Ron shot his friend a look, indicating he needed backup.

Harry, still preoccupied with flogging his pork, just glared at a random spot on the table. Ron and Hermione's bickering had been like muffled echoes to him the whole time, as if he was underwater. Was it possible to be suffocating and breathing at the same time? "Sure Ron, whatever," he said distantly.

"See? Harry thinks I'm sensitive!"

Hermione heaved an exasperated sigh, and gave Ron a look that clearly said, "I need female friends." Then, turning her attention back to the hate brimmed boy in front of her, she asked gently "Now, Harry, really. What's the matter?"

Harry looked up at his friends, his best friends. His whole life before Hogwarts, Harry had never had anyone care if he was all right. And here he was--needing someone to care about him more than ever and having two such someones sitting right in front of him. And he didn't want it. "I have to go," Harry mumbled and quickly abandoned his damaged dinner.

*

"Honestly, Potter, you're just wasting my time," Snape barked, as a weakened Harry clutched the back of the wooden chair in Snape's office for stability. Harry's head was still spinning with images of dementors and Uncle Vernon's hot, angry face, spitting on him before he slammed the cupboard door.

"Trust me, I have better places to be as well," Harry gasped, emotionally and physically winded by the last half hour.

"No, you don't have better places to be! There is no more important place for you to be than here, learning Occlumency," Snape shouted in frustration as he stood in the corner with clenched fists.

Suddenly, something inside of Harry snapped, like his mind and his emotions and his body had all become separate entities, and the only thing that was real to him was the seething anger pulsating through his ambiguous sense of existence. He screamed from a place he didn't know he had inside him, "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU, SEVERUS! You murderous traitor, I'll kill you. I'll murder you like you murdered your parents. You have no idea the cost of betraying the Dark Lord, but I'll make you pay with every fiber of your worthless, disgusting self. I'll cu--" and suddenly Harry took a deep, wheezing breath as if someone had been strangling him and collapsed on the hard floor.