The sound of gagging awoke Ron around midday. He shot up with a yelp and looked around, realizing that he was not in fact in that bloody tent but rather in his own warm bed in Gryffindor Tower. The memories came back to him suddenly and hauntingly – the battle, Voldemort, Harry, Fred…

Fred.

Ron's older brother, one half of a whole, was gone. The boy who played Quidditch with him, who always had something up his sleeve, who made him smile when he was down, was dead.

Fred was dead.

Ron blinked back tears and felt something shift by his side. He turned to find Hermione sitting up, rubbing one eye, much less disoriented than he had been. Her hair was bushier than ever and there were little bags present under her big brown eyes, but to Ron, she had never been so beautiful. Her presence seemed to wash away the pain of Fred's death, because no matter what, she was alive, and life would go on.

"That must be Harry," she said worriedly. "I wonder what could be wrong."

Ron's mind suddenly snapped back to the present, back to reality. He became suddenly wary of the gagging noises that seemed to be coming from the seventh year boys' bathroom, the noises that had pulled him to consciousness in the first place. He sprang from the bed and rushed to the door, knocked twice, and entered. Sure enough, there was Harry, hugging the toilet. He looked up at them as they entered, his bare eyes blearier than normal. He was white as a sheet, shaking like a leaf, almost melting into the floor.

"You okay, mate?" Ron asked nervously. Sure, he had seen plenty of sickness in his life – what with such a large family – but he had never had to actually do anything. Here, with Harry fixing him with a desperate and pain-filled gaze, he felt pressured to take some action of care.

"Of course not, Ronald!" Hermione chastised him, pushing him aside and kneeling next to Harry. She placed a firm hand on his forehead, and he leaned into her touch. She frowned. "He's burning up." She tried to help him to his feet but he collapsed with a yelp, pressing his hands to his stomach. She went to try again, but he curled protectively into himself.

"You can't kip out on the bathroom floor, mate," Ron said half-jokingly.

"It hurts," Harry moaned.

Hermione gently brushed his fringe aside. "What hurts, your stomach?"

"Mm-hmm," Harry nodded.

"Nevertheless," Hermione said, "Ron has a point."

"Always the tone of surprise," Ron muttered, rolling his eyes.

Hermione shook her head at him and turned back to Harry. "You need to get back to bed. Staying here won't help you get any better."

"Standing hurts," Harry muttered.

"We'll make it quick. Ron, can you…?"

"On it." Ron stepped in front of Hermione and took Harry by the armpits. "On three: one…two…three…"

Harry yowled as his best mate lifted him to his feet and slung an arm around his shoulders. Ron was surprised to find he could move relatively quickly out the bathroom door and across the dorm to Harry's mussed-up bed. He lowered him down and stepped back to allow Hermione to fix the covers and tuck him in with a flourish of her wand. His heart sank at the implications – the three of them had been scavenging for months, but while Harry had always been thin, he shouldn't have been that thin.

"Ron?" Hermione called, jolting him from his thoughts.

"Hm? Did you say something?"

"Are you alright?"

Ron sighed, pulled out his wand, and cast Muffliato, so as not to wake his now-dozing friend. "He was light, Hermione. Too light. Like, feather-light." His eyes fell to the dark-haired figure curled up in bed. "It was just like when F…when George and I rescued him from the Dursleys the summer before second year, only I didn't notice it then."

If Hermione noticed his refusal to mention Fred, it didn't show over the sudden fright in her eyes. "You don't think he's been starved?" she asked fearfully.

Unable to stand her horrified face desperately pleading for him to say no, that everything was okay, that Harry was okay, Ron suddenly took an interest in his stocking feet.

"No. No. NO!" Hermione launched herself into his arms and sobbed. Ron rubbed her back soothingly, blinking back his own tears. He reluctantly recalled the morning's events, how Harry had given himself up and died to save everybody. How could someone raised so horribly be so selfless? he wondered.

Hermione sniffed, finally done crying, even as the tears threatened to overflow again. "We should tell the others."

The two of them descended the stairs to the common room and found that everybody else was already gathered. Percy and George were moping in the corner, Bill and Charlie were chatting with their father and Fleur, and Ginny sat with her head on her mother's shoulder. It was Molly who saw them first.

"You two are up early!" she said, plastering a smile on her face and standing up to greet them. "Is Harry still asleep?"

"He is now, but he woke up sick a few minutes ago," Hermione said. "We think…oh, Ron!" She broke, burying her face in Ron's shoulder and sobbing silently.

"You think what?" Molly asked, alarmed. Her gaze shifted from Hermione to Ron. "You think what, Ronald?"

Ron took a deep breath, caressing Hermione's hair in an attempt to soothe not only her, but himself as well. "We think he might have been starved as a child."

Sudden comprehension dawned in everyone's eyes. Bill and Charlie exchanged a concerned look, Percy and George both inhaled sharply, and Arthur and Fleur lunged for Molly and guided her to the couch as she and Ginny simultaneously burst into tears.

George was the first to speak. "Oh, God," he muttered, sinking down onto the windowsill. "You said that before fourth year, Ron, when he first came over…" He looked up, blue eyes finding blue eyes, spilling over with muted tears. "You said they were starving him, and we did nothing!"

"We thought it was a one-time thing, though," Percy said, looking up at everybody's solemn, tear-streaked faces. "At least that's what I thought."

"But we were wrong, Percival!" Molly snapped through her tears. "What does it matter what we thought when the evidence was right there the entire time?!"

Nobody spoke. For the next few minutes, the Gryffindor common room was filled with nothing but the wracking sobs of Molly, Ginny and Hermione. Fleur and the guys let them be, each no doubt reflecting on this horrid realization.

Then Harry vomited.

Molly reacted immediately, instinctually. She leapt up and darted upstairs, wailing ceased and family close behind. At the top of the stairs and through the large wooden door she was greeted with a sight that nearly tore her heart to pieces.

Poor Harry had never looked so miserable in all these years. Not after the third task, not after Sirius died, never. He was whiter than white, shaking like a leaf, his fringe sticking to his forehead. He was leaning over the side of the bed, above a pool of sick that Molly quickly vanished with a wave of her wand. He looked over at her as she approached, his eyes bleary in a way she doubted was due to his lack of glasses. He mumbled incoherently as she eased him back onto his pillows.

"Hush, sweetheart," she said gently, conjuring a glass and casting Aguamenti to fill it with water. "Here you go. Take small sips. That's it." She held the glass steady as Harry drank, one hand on his middle. He let out a sigh when he finished, and she clucked in disappointment. "You'd better drink more later, mister."

"Mummy…" Harry murmured weakly. He sounded like a sick four-year-old, rather than the war-torn seventeen-year-old that he was.

Molly sighed. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. It's only me."

"Mummy…" he murmured again. He looked around at everybody present, squinting as if in an attempt to distinguish them, before his hazy emerald eyes fell on Arthur and his faint voice continued. "Daddy…"

That was all it took. Molly's dam broke again and she sunk into a chair hurriedly conjured by Ginny, pulling the slight form in the bed into an embrace and crying into his mussed-up raven hair. "Oh, my baby…oh, my baby," she wept. "Mummy's here. Mummy's not going anywhere."

"Mummy, my tummy hurts real bad," Harry muttered softly, burying his face in her shoulder.

"I'll go get a potion, buddy," Arthur said, patting Harry's shoulder before turning and departing.

"Thanks, Daddy," Harry said weakly.

Arthur stopped in the doorway and turned, giving Harry a grin and a thumbs-up. "What are families for?" He winked, then continued on his way.

There was silence for a moment before Ron spoke up. "So we're your family now?"

Hermione slapped him upside the head, making Harry chuckle. "We've always been his family, Ronald. Only this time it's…it's…" She faltered, for once in her life unable to find words.

"It's more real," Percy supplied.

"Yes," Hermione said. "It's more real."

"It's not like he's ever had any family before, really, aside from that year with his parents," Ginny put in, gazing softly at her boyfriend in her mother's arms.

"Oh!" Molly exclaimed. "Harry dear, would you mind if I asked you something?"

Harry peered up at her blearily. "What is it, Mummy?"

Molly frowned. "How much did you eat when you were little?"

Harry paused, brow furrowed, before speaking in that tiny voice. "I had to have scraps, and if Dudley left none or I was locked in my cupboard, I could have a piece of bread or a couple potato chips."

"Wait a minute – cupboard?!" Charlie exclaimed.

Harry nodded. "It was under the stairs," he said. "I slept there until the Hogwarts letters came."

"Did your aunt and uncle not have enough room?" Percy asked.

"No, they had room. I got to have Dudley's second bedroom after my first letter came."

"That fat bastard had two rooms and you were forced to live under the stairs?!" George demanded, making his newfound younger brother whimper and curl further into Molly's embrace.

Ginny came over and sat on the other side of the bed, taking Harry's hand and stroking it. "What else?" she asked. "What else did they do?"

Harry gazed hesitantly into her pleading brown eyes for several moments before conceding and letting it all spill out. "All they ever gave me were my glasses. They called me a freak and a burden. I had to cook and clean everything since I took my first step. Everything was my fault. I couldn't ask questions. I was punished for doing better in school than Dudley. If Uncle Vernon got mad or drunk, he'd…" He stopped suddenly, his eyes wide.

"He'd what?" Ginny asked. The fear in the room was almost palpable, perfectly mirroring her own. "What would he do, Harry?"

Harry shut his eyes tight and leaned against Molly. "He'd…he'd…beat me." The last two words came out as barely a squeak, but they seemed to echo loudly around the room. And then he broke, wailing into his surrogate mother's shoulder. Molly pulled him close, her shoulders shaking. Ginny put her head in her arms on the bed and cried. Hermione and Fleur collapsed, sobbing, into Ron and Bill's arms as the two brothers stared straight ahead, pale. Charlie, George and Percy sank onto the nearest beds, their legs suddenly jelly-like. The room knew nothing but the sounds of tears for several long minutes until the door opened and Arthur stepped in, the smell of honey and pomegranate filling the air.

"Here you go, buddy, something for your stomach," the Weasley patriarch said, giving Harry the goblet in his hands. He smiled as his youngest son sipped the potion, then stood up and faced the rest of the room. "Right, now, what's going on here?"

Molly relayed everything, tears pouring down her cheeks, mirrored by everybody else in the room. Harry finished the potion and put the goblet on the nightstand, an action that violently jostled his stomach and made him cry out and clutch it. He burrowed back into Molly's arms and cried as she got to the beatings.

"Oh, my God," Arthur muttered, sitting next to his wife and pulling Harry gently from her embrace. "I'm so sorry, son, I'm so sorry…"

Harry, looking smaller than ever, wailed like an infant until the warmth of his surrogate parents' arms and the comfort of their soothing tones lulled him into sleep.

"I don't understand!" Molly cried. "It should have worked! The potion should have worked!"

Harry's sleep, it transpired, had lasted all of five minutes. He now lay hyperventilating in Ginny's arms, clutching his stomach like a lifeline. Arthur had gone for help immediately, Molly was pacing back and forth in a panic, and everybody else sat nearby, watching uneasily.

It felt like forever before Arthur returned, Madam Pomfrey trailing behind.

"Oh, my!" the matron cried the moment she saw the terrified teen. She rushed to his bedside and carefully took him from a somewhat reluctant Ginny. "Arthur says he's been having stomach problems for about twenty minutes now?"

"Yes, ma'am," Ginny said.

"Hmmm…" Madam Pomfrey gently pulled Harry's shirt up by the hem, exposing his rather bony abdomen. "Right then. Tell me if this hurts, Mr. Potter." She pressed two fingers against multiple points on his middle, eliciting a cry each and every time. She finally finished and pulled his shirt back down, allowing him to clutch and cradle his stomach.

"Well?" Molly asked impatiently.

"I've…I've never seen anyone have such severe pain spread completely across the abdomen before," Poppy admitted, her brow furrowed. "Could it be…?"

"What? Could it be what?!" Molly demanded.

"Chimaera Fever."

Molly's face went blank. "Chimaera what?"

"Chimaera Fever. It's a chronic illness that causes severe and random abdominal pains, weakening of the immune system, and transfiguration of diseases into the norovirus."

"Does that mean he can't be an Auror, if he's so sick all the time?" Hermione asked, her face begging Madam Pomfrey to say otherwise. She really cared about her friend – her brother – and couldn't bear to see him not live his dream.

"No worries, Miss Granger," Madam Pomfrey said with the first smile anyone in the room had seen in what felt like forever. "Mr. Potter will be able to achieve his ambitions. He will not be ill constantly, and the adrenaline of mortal peril keeps the symptoms at bay."

Hermione smiled a watery smile.

"What causes…this?" Arthur asked, indicating the writhing Harry, unable to recall the exact name of the disease.

"Long-term physical, mental or emotional strain or peril," Madam Pomfrey replied. "Chimaera Fever is one of the rarest magical diseases out there – only ten cases have been previously recorded throughout history. I have no doubt that the triggering cause in Mr. Potter's case is this final battle with that…monster." She spat that last word with as much venom as she could muster.

Percy's eyes narrowed thoughtfully behind his horn-rimmed glasses. "You don't think abuse could be a contributing factor, do you?"

"Child abuse? Has Mr. Potter been abused?" Madam Pomfrey asked, her eyes wide.

"You didn't see the signs, either?" Molly asked.

Madam Pomfrey shook her head. "Was his abuse physical?"

"Yes, and mental and emotional, too," Bill piped up.

"Oh, my God," Madam Pomfrey sighed. "I really should have known. Poor thing."

"Is there anything you can do for him?" Ginny asked, rubbing her boyfriend's too-thin belly.

"I'm afraid there is not," Madam Pomfrey said. "That's why the Stomach Soother I prescribed failed to work." She looked around at Hermione and the Weasleys, some watching Harry and Ginny, others tuned intensely to her diagnosis. "The only remedies are time and love, two things I'm sure Mr. Potter has, now more than ever."