Harry sat shaking on the stone classroom floor, eyes shut tight with the pain of a memory he would rather have forgotten. It was one he had been dreaming about however, and so it was the first order of business to learn how to occlude it from his mind.
Leaning on the desk with uncharacteristically shaky hands was Severus, shaken by what he had just seen in the boy's mind. Harry had not expelled him from his mind, as that was not the task, but rather when the boy had begun shaking with fear of the memory, Severus had ended the spell and removed himself.
"What was I seeing?"
Harry looked up, suddenly angry. "You saw." He didn't want to repeat the incident out loud.
"I saw," Severus repeated, successfully gaining some control over his voice. "I was also unable to shut the memory away, which means that you will not be capable of this task on your own. From personal experience I can tell you that these are memories that must first be confronted before they may be tamed."
Harry pushed himself up off the floor, shaking still but angry. "And how the hell am I supposed to do that?"
Severus sighed and worked to stay cool and collected for his pupil's sake. "Tell me what I was seeing."
Harry crossed his arms and turned away, stalking across the room. He turned back once and then turned away again, standing silently for a few moments as he collected his thoughts.
"You saw me tied in the shed with a bowl of dog food next to me."
"For what offense were you placed there?"
"Does it matter?" Harry spat out, spinning around to face him. "Why do you assume I did something to deserve it?"
"Nobody could do something to deserve to be treated inhumanely. I wondered if the Muggles you lived with believed they had a logical reason to such a horrid thing to you."
Harry glared at him and then stared at the floor, arms crossed again as he leaned against a desk.
"I got better grades than Dudley. They think I'm some sort of animal, and I did better in school than Dudley then what did that make him?"
"What grade did you get?"
Harry threw his hands down, feeling exasperated. "Does it really matter?"
Standing straight Severus fell into teacher mode and said, "In this case it is important to explore the subject thoroughly so you can have a firm grasp of what happened, and your feelings about it. If you do not yet have a firm grasp of it, you will not be able to occlude the memory in time of need. It will nag at you until you deal with it."
Harry sighed now and closed his eyes. "I got straight A's. Dudley got D's. It was the year before I came to Hogwarts and when they let me back in the house at the end of the weekend I was sunburned and dirty and I hated myself because I was just like a dog."
"Do you believe this now?"
"No," Harry spat it out, although in the back of his mind he held a different answer. At a searching look from Severus however he rolled his eyes and said softly, "Sometimes."
"Why?"
Biting his lip now Harry thought about it for nearly ten minutes before he went on to tell Severus that smart people weren't the cause for the deaths of others, but stupid animals could be, and thus far he had managed to get Cedric and Sirius both killed. The more he thought on those events, and how certain other people treated him, he thought there must be a reason for these things.
