Harry Potter Breaking Free

As the Delacour ladies learned the context of Harry's memory, they found themselves unable to fully comprehend what the toddler was experiencing. They couldn't. It was too awful, too inhumane, too... everything. The one thing that the Delacours did fully understand was that the Harry that they were looking at didn't have much time left to salvage his situation. After just one look at the toddler's body, both ladies knew exactly what he was experiencing...

Harry Potter was in the midst of experiencing his death throes.

In truth, Harry had been at death's door for quite a while now, as slowly, ever so slowly, his body fell apart. His body had betrayed him over and over for what felt like his entire existence. Harry Potter's brain didn't work well anymore. He was slow and dizzy, but he did still have memories.

Harry Potter remembered a before. He remembered warmth, good smells, a comforting embrace... He knew those things existed, and he wanted to experience them again.

Toddler Harry began to get angry. Without truly understanding what he was getting so upset over, he railed against the injustice of it all, and he strained to do something about it. He poured every scrap of his will into that one desperate idea. He poured his entire focus on making a change, any change, because Harry Potter wanted to live!

All of the sudden, Harry felt the presence of some indescribable... something, just at the range of his understanding. It was a feeling of... potential. Toddler Harry grabbed onto it like a man drowning and held on for dear life while screaming internally "help me! I don't want to die, I want to live!"

There was a bright green light and his body was enveloped in a river of soothing magic.

Over time, toddler Harry Potter began to feel relief. He felt his worst pains begin to ease. He was also able to think again, and was so comforted by that fact that he immediately fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Harry, Fleur and Appoline collapsed out of the memory in a tangled heap of limbs at which point they didn't even try to separate. Instead, they held onto each other, desperately seeking comfort. Harry curled into a ball and shook uncontrollably as he started hyperventilating for real.

The ladies on top of Harry were pouring both healing and positive emotions like care, love and comfort into him. They were crying and shaking just at the sight of what had happened to Harry as a toddler. The boy's skin had been peeling off and he'd possessed different sized malformed parts instead of working limbs. He'd been stowed in that damned cupboard like garbage as his body slowly fell to pieces, and he hadn't experienced a single moment of human kindness that entire damned time. Fleur and Appoline didn't move for several minutes. They just held Harry tightly as if he was trying to get away.

When Harry's breathing finally evened out, he uncurled from his ball and looked up at the ceiling. He took in the two ladies curled up next to/on top of him, and then he smiled for their benefit. "Thank you ladies. I don't know what I'd have done without you. Now... We're almost done."

Slowly rising back up to his shaky feet, Harry turned around to face the two Veela hovering nearby. This time, the smile he gave his two female friends was entirely unfeigned. Appoline and Fleur really truly cared about him, and he could feel that much in their magic... Reaching out, he rested his hands atop the Delacour ladies' shoulders. "Look, we all know if I'd confronted my past alone, I'd never have emerged a sane man again. I can't begin to describe to you how grateful I am. Thank you again."

Both Appoline and Fleur just shook their heads while smiling to the best of their ability. Harry didn't owe them anything and he knew it.

Harry slowly approached the last black book and picked it up.

...

Out in the real world, Adrien was sitting in a chair while watching over his wife, daughter and Harry Potter. The boy was quite obviously having a very hard time of it. Over the last half an hour (two and a half hours Mindscape time), Harry Potter had shook, writhed, screamed, cried, sobbed, flailed, shuddered and gasped. He'd shown all the hallmark signs of someone being tortured to death by Cruciatus, and it was unnerving for Adrien to witness even here on the outside.

His wife and daughter weren't showing such intense reactions but they'd definitely be dehydrated when they returned, because they'd been crying off and on for four hours straight. Adrien began to worry that Harry Potter's life was doing damage to his family.

Just as Adrien was becoming truly concerned, Harry shuddered and went still. Adrien ran up and checked the boy's vitals, only to find that he was physically fine and sleeping. Several minutes went by where there was no outward movement by the young man. Finally, just as Adrien was thinking of trying a very strong Enervate spell to wake the boy up, Harry's eyes snapped open by themselves.

For several seconds, Harry just lay there staring at the ceiling, with a thoroughly exhausted expression upon his face. Then, he turned towards Adrien and coughed to clear his throat. "Your family," he whispered out. "Your family saved me my sanity. I am forever in your debt."

Adrien nodded and leaned closer. "My wife and daughter?"

"We are here," replied Appoline, coming out of her trance. She looked like she could sleep for a week.

Fleur awoke from her trance a single second later, at which point she immediately began staring at Harry with her usual laser-like intensity. Despite looking just as drained as her mother, she quickly moved to settle on the edge of Harry's bed. She then did something that surprised her father into slack jawed stillness. She leaned in closer so that she could start rubbing softly at Harry's chest.

Harry appeared to be just as surprised as Adrien, because his eyes snapped open, and he gasped in a deep breath.

"Will you show us 'Arry?" Fleur's voice was just above a whisper as she leaned in and grabbed Harry by the shoulder. "We aren't done until you face this. You need to be beyond this."

Appoline looked torn at first but after several moments passed she finally nodded her agreement. "Arry, we are here for you and this is the time."

For several moments, Harry continued to look at the ceiling, without any outward emotion on his face. While Adrien had no idea what his wife and daughter were talking about, he could easily see that the girls were asking a lot from the young man lying between them.

....

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