Disappear

St. Mungo's

"Tree," said the Healer.

Harry stared up at the ceiling, his legs resting on the table and answered in a bored voice, "Sirius."

"Owl," she said, glancing at her clipboard.

"Sirius."

"Quidditch." The Healer gave what seemed like an encouraging smile at Harry this time.

He hesitated slightly before answering this time. "...Grim."

"School."

"Padfoot..."

"London."

"Black." And Grimmauld Place, he thought involuntarily. Sirius hated that place, but Dumbledore forced him to stay...

"People don't like being locked up! You did the same to me all last summer!"

"Wall," said the Healer.

"Sirius, Sirius, Sirius!" Harry finally shouted, bringing his legs off the table with a clunk. "Look! I don't want to do this word association thing anymore, I've got other things on my mind."

"Like Sirius, for example?"

"Yes!"

"He must be a pretty important person in your life," said the Healer.

"...I don't want to talk about Sirius."

There was a pause, and Harry sensed the Healer staring at him

"It's okay to cry," she said carefully.

"I'm not going to cry," Harry yelled, suddenly angry "I don't cry! I'm not like Cho!"

The Healer wrote something down on the clipboard and Harry looked away and stared at the walls.

Sirius sat at his desk and tapped his quill impatiently on the desk. Hundreds of pictures of Harry Potter stared down at him; pictures of Harry when he was just starting at Hogwarts; blurry pictures of a child Deatheater, mostly just of his cloak as it whipped round the corner; and several pictures of him holding up an ID, looking at the camera as though unsure why he was there.

Sirius scooted his chair back until he could see into the next cubicle and said, "Williamson, do you have the statement back from the Weasley's yet?"

A brown-haired man with a ponytail looked around. "The statement?" he said blankly, before remembering. "Oh yeah, Mr Weasley gave one after I cornered him in the Atrium but the rest of the family hasn't. I think they're concerned you'll mention their names; they don't want the public to know. Maybe you should go talk to them, reassure them or something."

Sirius sighed before standing up and kicking his chair back under the desk. "I may as well go talk to them now," he said. "I've got nothing else to do; I finished those Azkaban reports on Bellatrix hours ago."

But before he took even one step, a paper aeroplane flew out of the lift and jabbed him in the eye.

He swore and tore it out of the air, one eye screwed shut as he read it.

"Tell Kingsley I've just gone to Lily and James', will you?" he asked Williamson when he finished reading.

"Sure," said Williamson absently, already busy on some other report.

Sirius stepped out of the fireplace and looked at the five people already seated around the kitchen table.

"I came as fast as I could," he said. "What's the matter with him then?"

Dumbledore motioned for Sirius to sit down and said, "I have the transcript from a recent session with Harry and one of the Healers. In earlier sessions he had been surly and uncommunicative but when the Healer tried word association it revealed something new."

Dumbledore handed over the piece of parchment and Sirius glanced through it quickly.

"But it's all about me," he started incredulously and looked at the other four as though expecting them to tell him it was all a big joke. But all James, Lily, Remus and Peter did was stare at him grimly. "But-but-" he started to say again.

He glared down at the parchment and read it through again. He finally looked up.

"Why does he keep saying my name to all those different words? Look, 'Sirius', 'Sirius', 'Black', 'Padfoot' ... and even 'Grim' is on there!"

Peter spoke up; a serious and careful look on his face. "Albus thinks that Harry might have become obsessed with you, because ... because you were the first person he saw after he escaped from Voldemort."

"He's also seen you the most," put in Lily.

"Me?" said Sirius in despair. "Why me? What did I ever do?"

"It's not anything you've done," James said, trying to reassure Sirius, a worried look on his face. "It could have happened to anyone. If Harry had seen Peter or Remus or even some stranger first, he probably would have latched onto them instead."

"I shouldn't have even gone to the trial then," Sirius said, downcast. "It probably made things even worse."

"I didn't think the situation was that serious then, or I would've stopped you," said Dumbledore. "But I would advise you, Sirius, not to visit him in St Mungo's. In fact, you should stay away from him until we can find out more about this."

Harry stared at the two patients sitting across from him, both wearing the same blue St Mungo's uniform.

The younger man was twitching terribly as he tried to eat his lunch. Bits of food kept falling off his shaking fork. The older man with greying hair kept glancing around nervously and jumping every time there was a loud noise.

Harry realised his mouth was hanging open and quickly shut it.

The greying man suddenly reached over with his fork and grabbed a slice of Harry's quiche, set it down on his plate and started to eat it.

"Hey!" Harry said, indignantly. "That's my food!"

The greying man just looked at him and said, "I'm not stupid enough to eat from my own plate, that food is poisoned. You're trying to poison me!"

Harry could hardly think of a response to this and just stared at him, utterly confused.

"D-d-don't take any n-n-n-notice of him," the other man spoke up, stuttering, his hand shaking so much that his fork fell onto the table. "He's m-m-mad." He looked down at his plate again, still for a second.

"BAM!" he suddenly shouted, and slammed his hand down on the table, making Harry and the plates jump.

The greying man finally finished Harry's quiche and looked up, as though searching for someone else to steal food from. His eyes stopped on a small group of perfectly innocent patients on the other side of the room.

"Oi! Stop trying to filch my stuff!" he shouted, getting up and running over.

Harry stared after the man before turning back to his meal and picking morosely at his food with his fork.

"Okay, Harry," said Smethwyk. "Now, you've just killed the Basilisk and destroyed the teenage form of You-Know-Who. What happened next?"

"Um-well, that was when Ginny woke up and started crying. She was crying because ... well, um, because she upset of course. She'd almost been killed. I helped her up and we went back to Ron. Then Fawkes took us out of the Chamber ... which I'm still not going to tell you where it was-"

"Perfectly understandable Harry."

"And-and then we took Ginny back to Mr and Mrs Weasley. Er-and Dumbledore gave me and Ron each a 'Special Award for Services to the School' or something like that. Vol-sorry-You-Know-Who has one as well, because everyone thought it was him who had sealed the Chamber of Secrets."

"That is a fascinating story, Harry," said Smethwyk, smiling pleasantly.

"Er-it did actually happen, you know," said Harry, slightly unsure.

"Of course it did," Smethywk said, putting the piece of parchment with the previous conversation on it into a file marked 'Harry Potter's fantasy world'. Harry glared at it.

Smethywk looked up and folded his hands. "Now Harry. I thought we'd try something new today. I'd like you to write a letter. It can be to anyone; a friend, God, Sirius ... anyone. But I'd like you to write to your parents. You don't have to send it, just write down your feelings."

He handed Harry a sheet of parchment.

Dear Mum and Dad,

I don't even know why I'm writing this. I wouldn't even bother if Smethwyk hadn't put me up to this. It's so stupid, I know that you're both dead. And unless owls can deliver letters to dead people, what's the point?

So since I can't write to my real mum and dad I've decided to write to you two. You know who you are, the two Deatheaters who took Polyjuice potion or something to try and pretend to be my parents. Well, ha ha. Really funny. It's not enough that I'm an orphan and I've had Voldemort after me ever since I was born, no, you've got to mess me up even more.

I'm not going to fall for it. Whoever you are you're going to pay. I'm going to learn Avada Kedavra and when I do you two will be the ones I'll test it on. Or maybe I'll find myself a Dementor and let it kiss the two of you, because even the killing curse is too good for you.

What you did was sick.

Harry

Lily stared at James in disbelief. She felt her throat become tight with emotion. She sat down on the sofa and clenched her fists.

"Lily?" James said softly, "you shouldn't pay any attention to that letter. I don't even know why they sent it; they shouldn't be allowed to do that. Look, next time I visit St. Mungo's I'll-"

"I hate him."

"Harry?" James said automatically, cut off from his rant.

"Voldemort," said Lily in clenched teeth. "He did this. He did it to our son," she said, the words almost too thick with tears to speak. "He couldn't be content with having Harry as a Deatheater, he had to - he had to do this to-to-"

She clenched her fists even tighter this time but James reached over and pulled her into a hug and she broke down.

Dumbledore carefully folded up the letter that Lily and James had sent him and leaned back, twiddling a quill thoughtfully as he went over a particular sentence from Harry's letter in his head.

"...I've had Voldemort after me ever since I was born..."

Harry leaned carefully against the wall next to the door separating the long-term ward from the rest of St. Mungo's, pretending to be fiddling with a Rubix cube that he found inside the rec. room.

A Healer walked past and gave Harry an annoyed look, who quickly became engrossed in the Rubix cube. Sighing slightly, the Healer turning to the door and whispered a spell before the doors swung open. Harry watched carefully as the Healer walked out and suddenly moved his right foot, catching the door before it closed.

The Healer was still walking down the corridor, unaware that anything had happened. Harry paused warily and quickly walked out when it became clear that there was no one around.

He half-walked and half-ran down the corridors, his nerves constantly on edge. When his ears caught the sudden snatch of conversation, he slammed into the wall quicker than he'd had to think. He looked around for an escape, his heart thudding in his chest. Seeing a door marked 'Eye Damage' he quickly darted in and shut the door.

He slid down onto the ground so that he was invisible to anyone in the corridor and waited until the footsteps and voices had faded.

He stood up slowly, trying not to make a sound and turned around, fully intending to get out of here and make another escape attempt before his eyes were caught by a bushy head of hair.

Harry gasped and quickly moved over to the bed.

"Hermione?" he said, hardly daring to believe it.

Hermione turned her head towards him.

"What happened, Hermione?" Harry asked and gently touched the bandage that was covering her eyes.

"Who's there?" said Hermione, her voice groggy with sleep.

"It's me Harry, how did you get like this?"

"Urgh ... I-I did a spell wrong..." Hermione murmured, and buried herself deeper into the bed. Harry suspected she wasn't fully awake. "I was trying to - change my eye colour or something ... I can't really remember. It went wrong though..."

"How long have you been here?" Harry asked. Maybe she doesn't know about the Ministry being after me, he thought eagerly. Hermione's sensible, she'll believe me.

"Um - only overnight," Hermione said sleepily, and rubbed absently at the bandages around her eyes. "...Who is it?" she said again.

"Harry," said Harry patiently. "Look, Hermione, could you-"

But anything he had been about to say was cut off suddenly by a loud bang as the door flew off its hinges. Hermione screamed and someone started yelling, "PUT YOUR HANDS UP! STEP AWAY FROM THE GIRL!"

Harry twisted around but he couldn't see anything through the plaster dust in the air. He tried to stand up but a curse suddenly threw him to the other side off the room where he hit the wall with a sickening crack. His head spun but all he could do was lie in a heap and moan in pain.

Cords wrapped themselves tightly around him and he could hear Hermione asking in a panicked voice what was going on.

"What's happening - Who was that - What are you-"

"Just stay calm," said another voice. "That was Harry Potter but-"

There was something halfway between a gasp and a scream and Hermione's voice saying, "Oh God," before the swimming in Harry's head turned to blackness.

Harry glared at the dark wall in front of him and let out a yell of anger before kicking it. He clenched his fists and pummelled the cushioned floor.

"Bastards!" he screamed.

He'd been locked in here for two days now. When he came to after the Aurors had stunned him, he had been locked inside this room. He'd yelled but no one had answered. There were no windows, no door, no furniture and the walls had been charmed with some sort of cushioning spell.

He slid down onto the floor, which was surprisingly comfortable and curled up, clenching his fists. Where was everyone? Where were all the people that were supposed to help him? Dumbledore, Remus, Hermione, Ron, Luna...

Luna...

"Loopy, loony Luna," said Harry absently, rolling on his back and staring at the ceiling. She believed everything that was written in the Quibbler ... maybe she'd believe him.

There was a strange sound from the right wall, like stones shifting. Harry turned his head over and watched as a door materialised in the wall. He sat up quickly and an imposing figure swept in.

"Come on Harry," said Dumbledore. "We're taking you out of here."