Harry Potter and the Will to Live

Chapter Two: Healers and Unspeakables

Harry Potter and the Will to Live

Dumbledore didn't come the next day like Mrs. Weasley had promised. In fact, the entire week after that he waited, hoping for the Headmaster to come, but he didn't. His birthday passed with four seizures, and everyone who stayed at Grimmauld Place began to get tense and apprehensive.

Harry managed to limit his 'seizures' as he began to call them, to when he was alone or at night, but they happened all the time, whether it was night or day. He was losing his control more often. He went off in his own world for even longer than he had before, thinking of everything more than he really should be. He knew that because every time he tried to think of it, suicide swam through his mind. Harry didn't need to know how disasterous it would be if he just so happened to kill himself and robbed Voldemort of the pleasure.

"Harry! Come down here, please!"

Harry glanced at his friends. They were upstairs in the girls' room playing chess; the girls were reading out of the same magazine.

"Do you think he finally came?" he questioned hopefully.

"Go check," Hermione suggested anxiously from her place on the bed.

Mrs. Weasley was pale and fidgeting when Harry walked in. She took his hands in hers in a gesture of uncertainty. It was then that Harry saw Snape lurking by the table, looking as if he'd rather suffer a hex than be where he was at the moment.

"Harry, dear, Headmaster Dumbledore just received our message. He can't come, so he sent Professor Snape to take you...somewhere." She spoke to him as if he was a little boy who had to go with a nurse for a shot, but had to go alone. She glared at Snape. "He won't tell me where."

"Okay," he took his hands out of hers and shoved them in his pockets. He didn't like people touching him like that, especially if it was out of sympathy. "Where are we going, or are you not allowed to tell me?" he asked his most hated professor with only a little bitterness in his voice.

Normally, he'd have refused to go anywhere with Snape but considering his choices there really wasn't that much more he could do about it. Mrs. Weasley put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off and took a step back.

"We're going to Hogwarts. You don't need your stuff yet."

When Snape pulled out a piece of gum still in the wrapper, he stepped forward to touch it.

"Don't forget to write, Harry," she said tearfully.

He nodded, then sucked in a breath and closed his eyes as he tumbled. He landed unsteadily in the Hospital Wing, grabbing a bedpost to sturdy himself so he wouldn't fall.

"Welcome, Mr. Potter. I've been told that you've been having some problems that I might be able to fix. Severus, we should be fine together from here on out."

Harry swiveled around at the sound of the voice. A witch stood there, her hands fisted on the hips of her jean-clad hips. She looked odd to him with her black fishnet blouse and her dark violet eyes. But she was smiling, so he tried to ease the ever-present tension in his shoulders.

Snape, however, tensed up enough to have Harry watching him suspiciously.

"Dumbledore said to make sure he got settled in."

The girl (she really did look young) rolled her eyes heavenward. "It's been two years since I've been here, Father, not twenty. I'm sure Harry would be a lot more comfortable without you here. Now, please leave," she said forcefully.

Did she just say...? Harry looked at Snape's stony face. For a moment Snape stared at her with a face that Harry had never seen him take on before, then he swept out of the room without another glare or word, his robes flaring out around him as they always did. The girl watched him sadly. Harry noticed how her long, black hair fell to curtain her face from his view. He could nonetheless see that she was a skinny one, and tall. Two details that he could match up with Snape. But there stopped the resemblance as she turned back to him, assessing him with a sigh.

"Yes," she said with a bitter smile, "I'm Snape's daughter. You'll learn about it soon enough, after we check a few things out."

When she simply stood there, Harry shifted uneasily and asked, "What should I call you?"

She smiled at him, one full of dazzling bright white teeth. "Call me Mack."

He smiled at her.

"Do you want to tell me where Professor Dumbledore is or did he tell you to keep me in the dark?"

Mack tilted her head and studied him. "He told me to tell you if I thought it would keep you sane. Since it looks like you're sturdy enough, I will. He's in America, looking into spells and curses for you to use on Voldemort."

"So you know the prophecy," he assumed coolly.

"You know," she said, sounding awed, "I've heard everything possible there is to hear about you. I've talked to teachers, students, and people who have never even seen you before. People in America, in Africa, in France, though quite a few of the French students saw you two years ago."

And he thought she'd be different. She was just the same as everybody else. Assuming who and what he was about without really knowing him at all. Harry despised people who did that. There went his idea of meeting a possibly decent new person, he mused bitterly.

"Your point?" he asked, gesturing.

"My point, Harry, is that they don't know you."

He curled his lip in distaste. "Not many people do." Including you, he didn't say aloud.

"Right." Mack stepped forward, lifted his chin with a tight, efficient move. He met her eyes and wondered how any one could ever have that strong and vibrant a color. Suddenly pain flashed into his mind, traveling through his body like poison injected into the veins leading to his heart. For a minute, he thought it was just one of his normal seizures. Then he noticed he couldn't take his eyes off Mack's. Betrayal had his shackles raising even higher, had his rage bubbling and boiling, waiting to spill over the rim of whatever was holding it back. But he couldn't. He tried to clear his mind, to blank it out completely, but already images of his past were flashing before both of their eyes.

He saw a time where his Uncle had beaten him with a belt for breaking one of his Aunt's antiques. Before his eyes, he relived selected images of his First through Fifth Year, then relived the mistake he had made that took Sirius away from him. His body shook with an anger he felt to the very core of his soul. He cursed her, swearing mentally with every swear word he knew until the connection was broken.

When he opened up his eyes, he was against the far wall, his head aching as if it had been hit. Mack, he realized, was in the same position but across the room, staring at him and glowing yellow. She jumped to her feet and sprinted over the moment he groaned.

"Are you okay?"

"Get the bloody hell away from me!" he shouted, pushing her hand away from his head and yanking himself up without her help. "Who the hell are you? Who do you think gave you permission to do that? What if I didn't know who you are and accidentally cursed you into next year?"

Mack tried to grab his shoulders but he wrenched them away, much as he had to Mrs. Weasley only a few minutes earlier.

"Tell me why!" he snarled furiously.

"Harry-"

"What, was that some test to see if I was some lunatic or something? Or did you do it just to get your jollies off of somebody's grief? Get away from me!" Harry circled around her when she tried to grab him again. If she thought he'd let her talk to him when he was cornered against a wall, she was the one who should be diagnosed a lunatic.

"Harry, calm down!" She was shouting now, too. Her hair was mussed and her eyes...The glow that had surrounded her before had vanished except for her eyes. They were even brighter now, nearly a baby pink color.

"Then start explaining!" he bellowed, his heart beating nearly as much as his head was.

"I had to see if anything or anyone else was in your head! I couldn't have done that if you'd've been aware of what I was going to do. Now just calm down. I'm sorry I hit a nerve, but it was necessary. I promise you, Harry, I didn't do it to hurt you."

"Just hurry up and check me already," he snapped.

"Give me your hand," she said quietly. When he took a step in retreat, she just held her hand out further. "Please, trust me. I need to have your trust."

"What are you going to do?" he asked suspiciously.

"Show you who I am," she said, then grabbed his hand.

...Mack was a little girl again. At the age of six, she thought her life was okay. Her Mommy loved and spent time with her, her dog was named Piety, and her father adored her mother. She was wearing a white silk dressing gown when she, giggling, slipped into the hallway and crept to the living room, but she stopped a foot from the opening. Someone was crying.

She popped her head out a little bit, just enough so she could see. Then she gasped and pulled back. It was You-Know-Who. Her heart beating, she did the one thing her father had told her never to do. She didn't run. Instead, she watched. Her Daddy worked for him. She knew that. She was six, not stupid. Her father was being held back by Uncle Lucius and a group of men she didn't know. He was crying for her Mommy and bleeding on his forehead.

"Daddy..." she said quietly, wanting to run into his arms, but she knew enough not to move, to attract no attention to herself no matter what the costs. She repeated that word to herself, whispering, "Daddy," over and over again to herself to keep from sobbing aloud. This wasn't supposed to happen. Her father had promised her he'd never come here, ever. He'd promised.

Her mother was kneeling on the floor, her face towards the tile, weeping.

"Please!" she whispered. "Please, my Lord. I'll do anything."

"Kiss my robes," he ordered.

Her mother crawled to do as he bid, then let out a high pitched cry when he grabbed her hair and yanked her to her feet. Voldemort was a handsome one, Mack thought. Mother said handsome boys were good, they were kind, but this one wasn't. He threw her mother against the wall. His dark black hair fell into caramel brown eyes. He was a murderer? The one her father worked for? She was confused. She was tired and crying and wanted desperately for her mother to hold her.

Voldemort ripped Suzie Snape's nightgown at the seams. She wore nothing beneath it, so she tried to cover herself, weeping hysterically. Voldemort went to grab her breast.

"Nooo!" Mack shrieked, clutching at the wall in front of her. "Mama!"

She dodged the streak of green light that the handsome Voldemort sent her way, then watched, horrified, as it hit the wall behind her. It was stone. The room made a noise like a huge 'bong' when the color meshed with rock, then zipped back across the room to hit her mother square in the chest.

Harry blinked hard.

"We're even," she said quietly.

Harry had no doubt that they were. "That was before my parents died, wasn't it?" he asked, reaching blindly behind him to find the bed. When he touched the brass, he used it to guide himself so he was sitting. Mack walked across the room, seemingly unbothered about what had just happened. Harry wasn't fooled, but he let it go. If she didn't have a right to question his memories, then he didn't have the right to question hers. She picked up what looked like a small box of wood and glass and carried it over. She sat opposite of him, then sighed.

He began to think that maybe Mack Snape knew a little of what he was going through. Her mother had died, and in a way she had lost the father she'd loved, because of someone's betrayal. Harry wondered if Snape had betrayed them or simply did something that caused Voldemort to attack his family.

"These are just a few tests, okay? This one is a blood sample." She held up an intricate object of silver. She held out her hand and he willingly put his on top. She smiled at him, then laughed when he jerked at the prick.

"What will you do with the blood?" he asked curiously.

She did something with her wand and the blood on the instrument vanished. "I'm sending it to the Unspeakable lab for further testing."

Harry must have paled because she squeezed his hand. "Don't worry about it quite yet. I'm pretty sure it's not that serious."

Harry waited for her to elaborate, but she didn't. More silence as he watched her pull out what looked like ice in a bottle.

"I believe Voldemort has a bit of your blood in him, correct, Harry?"

He nodded obediently.

"And Dumbledore said he believes you have a connection with him because of that scar, right?"

"Right," he echoed.

"Well," she said briskly, meeting his eyes as she uncorked it and poured it into a hand size cauldron. She pulled out a red and green flask and poured equal amounts of them in with the ice-colored potion. "I absolutely believe that is correct, in a way. See, last year Dumbledore said Voldemort entered your body. It hurt, right?"

"Yea," he said with a snort. That pain had been worse than the Cruciatis Curse he'd taken in Fourth Year.

"That's good."

She laughed at his face. "Not that you received pain, but because that means he couldn't just do it easily, or else you wouldn't have felt a thing. He'd have just taken control of you, pushed you back so you'd know what you were doing and what he was saying, but you couldn't or wouldn't be able to do anything. That's what Dumbledore thought might be happening. That's why he sent for me."

"How do you know him?" he asked carefully.

She looked up. "When my Mother died I floo'd here to Dumbledore. Back then, Snape said never go to him."

"So you did the complete opposite because he'd betrayed you."

She nodded, impressed. "I'm glad to see you're observant. I wasn't sure if what Dumbledore told me was true. He does like you, I'll tell you that. Holds you in the highest of regards."

He bit his lip. "I don't know why, honestly." He hesitated, entranced by the fluid way she moved to finish concocting the potion. "I trashed his office a few weeks ago-"

"I know. Minerva told me." Surprisingly, she smiled. "I punched him when I got here, ya' know. Straight in the nose. Nearly broke it, too, unless I was unconsciously exaggerating. I told him about Snape, about what he said and what happened. I had no idea what that green light was." She shook her head, as if looking at it from somebody else's point of view. Almost as if she pitied somebody she had never met. "I was mad because I wanted my Mother. He plucked me up into his arms and let me sleep in his big, velvet bed." Her eyes teared. "He had stuffed animals. Now that's a real man, one who doesn't need to kill people to feel all manly. The next day he found out who my mother's third cousin was, the only who wasn't a part of Voldemort's followers. She lived in France, in a small little village."

"Did Snape ever find you?"

She bit her lip, tears streaming down her face. Mack didn't make a noise though. He wished he could comfort her somehow, but he was scared to touch her in case it offended her. So he decided to stay silent. Maybe she would stop crying then. Maybe she'd stop talking altogether and let Harry go to bed. He was so tired right now.

"No, I'm not sure he even tried. People say he turned bitter after that. I believe them. He used to be cold and cruel, but not as much as he is today. I came here before my Seventh Year. Sara, the distant cousin I was living with, had died, leaving five children in my care. They're living together now, and I'm paying for them with my inheritance."

"He gave it to you?" Harry asked, shocked. "You just showed up out of the blue and he gave you money?"

Her face creased bitterly. "I know. He asked how I was and what happened, and I told him. He gave me pretty much every dime he had. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here, treating him civilly."

"I'm sorry," Harry said sincerely.

She looked scandalized. "Oh, no. Oh, Harry, don't say that. This isn't your fault. Nothing that has ever happened to you has ever been your fault. Your just torturing yourself if you believe that it is. It's an honor to meet you. This is my job, helping people get well, helping them find out what is wrong. And it helps me do something that I've always wanted to do."

There was a large lump in his throat. He tried to swallow it, but it didn't go away. So he did what he could to make his voice sound normal when he spoke.

"What's that?"

"Helping you defeat him. I want him to go down as much as you do, Harry. You've lost more and have more on the line than me, but I want you to win. Dammit, Harry, I want you to win against him. It helps me have hope that other families won't be messed up like ours were if I help. So don't go feeling guilty. It was my choice to come here and face Severus Snape."

"I think about that, too," he admitted. "I want him to die so he can't make other children orphans, so he can't rid a good, hard-working family of a member, or a young child."

She went to grab his hand. He let her, because he was feeling lonely and noticed she was crying again. "Great minds think alike, right?"

He nodded. "Right."

With a watery sigh, she pulled her hand back. "I'm going to ask you some questions," she said with the air of getting the worst over quickly. "I want you to answer them truthfully. Don't leave anything out. I need to know the truth," she said, meeting his eyes to make him understand that the truth must be told.

"How long do you know the outbreaks to last?"

"About five minutes," he said earnestly. "Well, they started out like that. Then it would take me that long to understand where I was and for my body to relax. It always tense up like...like I was preparing myself to suffer."

"Does your body do this before or after the outbreak starts?"

Baffled, Harry shook his head. "Sometimes it happens before, at the same time, and after it."

"Usually?"

"It usually happens before."

A notepad of parchment appeared in her hand. While Harry gaped at her, she scribbled something down with a red peacock quill.

Without looking up, she asked, "How do you feel during them? Is there pain, numbness, are you dizzy, incapable of speech, that sort of thing?"

"It..." It was indescribable, was what it was, Harry mused. He clenched his fist and tried to think of what he thought of and felt during one of his latest seizures. "Its like everything is closing in on me, like the walls around me are shrinking, suffocating me until I can't breathe. I think of a bit of everything, my friends, Voldemort, school, the world in general, but I can't do anything but...think. It's hard to explain," he finished lamely.

"Do you get dizzy?"

"I can't move," he said instantaneously. He laughed uneasily. "And yes, I get really dizzy, as if everything's spinning on its axis. I'm immobilized, but I can still tell what is happening to me. Vaguely, but I can."

"Can you see when you're taken under?" She finally lifted her head up. The way her eyebrows knitted together didn't comfort him at all.

"Everything gets all fuzzy, but I can see big blobs of things. Like people or a door."

"What happens afterward? Do you feel ill?"

He tried to gauge what he'd felt after his latest seizure, then realized he could remember it avidly.

"I was trembling," he admitted quietly, flushing. "My head was spinning and my body felt like jelly."

"Your heart beat. Could you hear it beating in your chest, was your breathing really loud?"

"I-I...honestly don't know, Mack. I'm really out of it when they happen."

"How often do they occur?"

"Truthfully?" he asked uneasily, although he already knew the answer.

Her eyes narrowed. "Of coarse."

"About five times a day," he told her reluctantly.

She blinked, then scribbled down on her parchment.

"Mack?"

"Hmm?"

"What's wrong with me?" he asked, feeling as if his world had just crashed down around his ears, which, in a way, it had been for the past three years.

She tapped her quill down, then looked away and continued to write. "I don't know yet. Personally, I've never seen anything quite like this. Its as if somebody is trying to see your thoughts, or your surroundings, but as if he's far away, trying not to completely connect with you. I don't think its doing anything that bad to you, at least yet. Although, as it looks, you'll probably have to go to St. Mungo's-"

"Why?" He straightened, uncoiling himself like a spring unhampered. If nothing was harming him then why would he have to go to St. Mungo's, where people with disfigured faces and addled brains went? He scolded himself, forcing his shoulders to relax a little. He was being unfair. He remembered the time when Malfoy had used the term 'addled brains' last year and when Neville had attempted to attack him for it.

"Because, as I said, I am one of the top ten Unspeakables who study mental and physical brain intrusions. This is abnormal, and we need to figure out what is going on to see if it can harm you. Maybe you're just fighting off Voldemort's advances. I heard Snape gave you Occlumency lessons this past year." Her voice hinted that she felt sorry for him only for that reason.

"Will the tests hurt?"

"Extremely," she said apologetically but bluntly, "but you mustn't worry about it yet. Your family will be there."

"My family's de-oh, you mean the Weasleys. They're not really family; they're just friends."

"It's an idiot who pushes wonderful people out of their life," she said wisely.

"I'm not pushing them-" Harry started indignantly, then silenced when the notepad of parchment vanished from view. "How do you do that?" he asked weakly.

She laughed. "Practice, Harry." She ruffled his hair just to annoy him. "Lots and lots of practice, and then some more, and then some."

"Sounds tedious," he said honestly.

"You try living with a medicine woman for half your life. She was always repeating herself. That's how you learn. If somebody tells you the world is flat when your just born, and then until you turn seventeen, and then somebody tries to tell you the world is round, what do you think your going to remember?"

"The theory you've been told about your entire life."

"Exactly." She stood to pull on a sweater that was hanging on the bottom of his bedpost. "That's why people who grow up with abusive families think everything's always their fault."

Harry was smart enough to get the hint, and resent it. "My relatives aren't abusive."

"Could have fooled me." She winked cheerfully. "'Night, my troubled friend. Do you mind just sleeping in those clothes?"

Harry let himself fall backwards. "Not at all," he muttered.

"Good. Oh, I'll be sleeping out here, too, in case you have a-"

"Seizure," Harry supplied. "I call them seizures."

"Okay, if you have a seizure."

"What will you do if I have one?" he asked anxiously.

"Oh, just check your pulse, your dilation, hold your hand. You know."

"You won't feed me any potions or any stuff like that?"

"Not unless I have no choice," she answered truthfully.

Not at all comforted at the thought, Harry pushed his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. A moment later Mack blew out the torches, then settled herself into her own bed next to Harry. He turned. He could see the whites of her eyes in the pitch-black darkness. They stared at each other for a while, Harry's heart beating wildly in his chest at the thought of tests at St. Mungo's, at the thought of somebody reading his thoughts while he slept. Then he closed his eyes and concentrated on not having a nightmare.

He should have known better.

* * * * * *

...He was excited. In less than two months, Azkaban would be his to rule. He had big hopes for all that stone and darkness. With the new recruits, he needed somewhere to be able to train them well for battle, to teach them how to win against predictable Aurors. Dumbledore would be betrayed by his own protection spells. The one place, the one safe home for mass criminals, was about to become the property of the Dark Lord, and it would be the first, but most definitely not the last, acquisition of the war.

Oh, no, Dumbledore, he mused to himself ferociously, this isn't the cusp of the war, but the very, very beginning of the end.

Harry Potter was his only problem. He swirled and came face-to-face with his quarters. The room was rich in green velvet and black. No light swept in, but the shadows of the dim blue candlelight drowned him in their fragrance. There was no stopping him now. Snape would be finishing that strengthening potion. That would be enough to give him the strength to enter Hogwarts, or at least attack it enough to wound the Light Side. Then Dumbledore would be forced to both surrender himself and Potter separately or have his precious students blown up to tiny bits.

"Master," someone said loudly outside the door.

"Come in-" He stilled as he felt something prod in his head. The excitement was gone. In its place was pure, black fury. The kind of fury that caused a man to go insane, to murder his own blood relatives.

And Harry Potter was at its center.

* * * * * *

Harry bit his lip as soon as his mind was returned to his own body. Pain reverberated like an echo in his head, as if Voldemort himself had screamed in the center of a cavern and Harry was at the entrance. He sat up, then put his feet on the ground surreptitiously. Instantly, he dug for a piece of parchment in Madam Pomfrey's desk. He found a quill and a bottle of ink, then began to write quickly, not caring if it looked like he was in the middle of bleeding to death.

He was able to recount most of it easily, and when he couldn't, he just had to put his head in his hands and think long and hard. Pain wracked through his body at odd, uneven times. Harry thought Voldemort might be trying to make him distracted so he would forget what he'd seen and heard. But he didn't. Harry just fought by stiffening his muscles whenever they came, ceased to write, and then continued to write with the help of the moonlight pouring through the large, arched glass window.

There was a peck at the window. Harry didn't look up. His letter to Dumbledore was anonymous. He didn't want to have an owl send a very important letter and have somebody follow it. He knew that Dumbledore was in America, somewhere, but he didn't know any specifics. He guessed as he silently let Hedwig into the Hospital Wing that he'd probably have to leave that particular aspect to her.

How was it that this specific owl seemed to be as smart as a human, if not more? he wondered to himself in fond amazement as he stroked one of her wings.

"Hey girl," he said in her ear. He could barely hear himself, but he knew by the way her ears perked up that she did loud and clear. "You're the best, you know that?"

She pushed against his hand, then nipped one of his fingers in approval.

"I'm going to ask that you run your wings bald for me tonight, okay? Dumbledore must get this as soon as possible. Sooner, actually." He tied it to her leg and gave her head a gentle scrub. "Do your best."

She took off in a whirl of cool wind. Harry turned to make sure Mack was still asleep in her bed. Then, just as quietly, he closed the latch and returned to his bed.

He was definitely going to be up for a while.

* * * * * *

"How did you sleep?"

Harry looked up at Professor McGonagall, surprised somebody had spoken to him. They, meaning the Hogwarts Staff (most of them stayed at Hogwarts over summer break), were in the Great Hall, which, to Harry, seemed abandoned. The four House tables were completely empty. Not even a single piece of parchment to represent the dozens of children who would be sitting there in only a two short weeks. The Head Table looked pretty empty, too, because the teachers had made it so they took up shorter space and could sit across from each other. He sat between Mack and Sinistra, Hermione's Runes professor. They were quite talkative, the bunch of them. But until now none of them had actually talked to him.

Not that he wanted them too. It felt too odd to be sitting up here with them. Too odd to be alone with all these teachers without a single young soul among them. Well, Mack could be considered young. She only looked twenty-one, give or take a few years.

Harry hadn't eaten much. He thought it was probably that which had caught her attention, or the fact that he kept his head down and his shoulders slumped. Truth be told, he felt as if he was going to let his head fall straight onto his plate of eggs and toast, and pass out. If it was possible to even make your own body pass out at command.

"Fine," he lied easily.

Snape eyed him unbelievingly. Did he know that Harry had been in Voldemort's head last night? Had he been around when Voldemort had ranted furiously afterwards? Snape was after all an operating agent and might have been the one knocking on Voldemort's door last night. Harry hated him even more for being who he was and what he had done to Mack and Sirius, and even to himself.

"Really?" he asked with a sneer.

Harry leaned back in his chair. Most of the teachers were still talking, but Harry knew better. They had their ears pricked to hear what he had to say.

"Unless you can tell me otherwise, sir, I suggest you believe what I say. Am I allowed to go to the library?" he asked Mack. "Or do you need to be on my back while I walk the isles?"

Mack grinned. "I need to be on your back while you walk the isles. Sorry, Harry."

He rolled his eyes. Standing, he looked at her. "Are you coming, then?"

Mack grabbed a couple of rolls. When she found out that she could carry more if she stuffed the one she held in her hand in her mouth, she grinned at him, chewing furiously.

"Muming," she said.

* * * * * *