Harry was asked to join Dumbledore in the Headmaster's office. He received the note via Hedwig, after almost a year of Dumbledore refusing to meet Harry's eyes. The teen climbed the stairs to the office, his impulsive fear of being Legilimized at the forefront of his mind. This was not Snape, Harry reminded himself as he gave the gargoyle the password. But this was the man who hired Snape for the past decade, a voice in his head thought. Harry repressed the anger simmering inside him as he had been doing his whole life, rare outbursts this year being the exception to that constant. He was not angry at the Headmaster, he was lucky to be here, he was...
"Going to have to resume Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape." Dumbledore's calm voice broke Harry out of his emotional dissociation.
"Excuse me?"
"Harry, I know you have had some... difficulties in the past, but you are going to have to resume Occlumency lessons. Snape had been kind enough to give up time in his schedule to teach-"
"Snape has never taught a damn thing in his life." Harry muttered, but Dumbledore heard.
"Why might you think that, Harry?" Dumbledore's voice rang calm and imploring, like a therapist's might.
"Oh, well, since you've asked. Snape doesn't teach, he lectures and writes instructions on the board before stalking about, berating us as we are trying to work, ignoring or belittling students with questions, and allowing Slytherins to destroy our potions. And if I do, by some miracle, get a potion correctly brewed, he vanishes it in order to give me a zero!"
"Now, Harry, just because you have some disagreements with Severus' teaching methods is no reason to stop attending lessons required to help prevent the rise of Voldemort."
"Methods? You think Snape is trying to help me control my emotions in order to learn Occlumency? Has your beloved Potions Master ever lowered his shields a mere inch to show you his precious methods? No! Snape would never allow you to view our lessons, where he laughs as I get bit by dogs and hit with Petunia's cast iron frying pan! You know what he told me, while witnessing a memory of my uncle attempting to strangle me?! He said 'You deserved that for your Gryffindor arrogance, if your father had been strangled a bit more as a child you might have turned out decent.'
Dumbledore was listening to a teenager burst out a decade of complaints, but all he saw was careful control slowly falling out of his grasp. He tried reasoning with Harry, clearly believing emotion and logic were incompatible. "Nevertheless, my boy, you must-"
"I must?! I must?! I'll have you know, Snape ended the Occlumency lessons, not me!"
"He ended them after you violated the trust between you two by looking through his private belongings, Harry."
"He threw me against a wall in order to get me out! You- You're one to talk about violating trust, Dumbledore. You let me be abused, you sent me back-"
"Abuse is a bit strong, Harry, you're overreacting-"
"You don't get it, do you? YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT ME!" Harry yelled this last bit, giving out a burst of magic that smashed the stone gargoyles outside of the office. Harry had always hated those things. "You- you and Snape both- you were supposed to protect me from harm. You allowed Voldemort into your school, actually twice in my first two years here. I repeatedly put myself in danger to protect your students, your world, and you refuse to discipline the teacher that has been invading my mind for the past year, and worse, you are coercing me into going back to those lessons because if I don't a madman will torture me with my own mind?! A madman already tortures me, Dumbledore, and you are begging me to willingly condemn myself to that."
"Well, admittedly I have not been... the best regarding your safety, Harry. But I do care, and I promise you, Snape does too."
"You aren't getting it, are you? Snape saw all my memories. He saw Dudley- my cousin- he saw them do despicable things to me. And he laughed at me. He called me a pansy and told me how disappointed my father would be that I was a fag. A teacher, a man who has a duty to protect and care for his students, and yes, Headmaster, that is in the Code of Conduct, instead blamed me for being abused by my family and told me my dead father would be ashamed of me because I was raped."
"Harry- I- I didn't know-" Dumbledore's voice revealed his age, and if Harry had not been overwhelmed by the enormity of how much he has been wronged, he would have almost pitied the man for being a centenarian. He was too old to be alive, Harry thought as his emotions continued raging beneath the surface. But Dumbledore had the power here, and Harry would not allow the man to misuse it again. To wrong him, again.
"Now that you do, are you going to send me back to Privet Drive?"
"Harry, he's a child, he can still change-"
Harry immediately lost all life in his voice. He became dull, flattened by the hopelessness that replaced the ashes of his anger. "He's a child, just like Draco was a child when he made buttons berating me and gave them out all over the school. Just like my godfather was when he sent Snape to what would have been his death. Tom Riddle was a child once. Tell me, Professor, do you know why the children in the orphanage feared him? Did you ask?" These questions were rhetorical. "Children are under your care, Dumbledore. You endanger their lives and sanity by mistaking that young equals innocent."
"People change, Harry. Your cousin will see reason. The dementors-"
"He came into my room that night. It was his first time without an audience egging him on, and he damaged my body so badly I had trouble riding the broomstick when the Order picked me up nearly two weeks later. The Dementors made him worse, they made him see what a horrible person he was and he blamed me for making him a bad person." Harry’s voice remained lifeless. He was responding, but his mind was miles away, thinking about Gobstones and Ron and Quidditch and anything not to talk about this to a Headmaster that will never, ever act the way a man with his authority is supposed to.
"Nevertheless, the blood wards protect you-"
"From Voldemort. But nobody protects students from Snape. Nobody protected me from the violence of my aunt and uncle and cousin, nobody protected him from becoming violent. You could have protected me, hell, you could have protected Voldemort. You are not doing your job and my job is not to let myself be tortured in order to save a world that allows you to be in charge. You are better than Umbridge, I give you that. But physically injuring someone is not the only way the job gets done. I will not take anything from Professor Snape again, Headmaster. Not Occlumency, not Potions. I can pass my NEWTs by teaching myself, which is all his class amounts to anyway, in the end. I will kill Voldemort if he attacks me again. But I do not take your orders when it comes to my safety, Dumbledore." And with that, Harry left the room.
Dumbledore wept, not only for losing the loyalty of the Boy Who Lived, but for realizing, for the first time, just how badly he had failed Harry James Potter. Just how badly he had failed Tom Marvolo Riddle. Dumbledore, somewhere in the act of manning a war, had lost his morals, and was, for the first time, grieving for them.