Title: Can't Take the Sky
Author: Cluegirl
Team: Wartime
Genre(s): Hurt/Comfort & Horror
Prompt: Draught of the Living Death
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: See Snarry Games post for warnings.
Word Count: 58,500 +/-
Disclaimer: No profit has been made in my borrowing Ms. Rowling's characters and world without permission or profit. No animals were harmed in the writing of this fanfic, your mileage may vary, property sold as-is, no tagbacks, void where prohibited, please do not look into laser with remaining eyeball.
Betae: amanuensis1, kaiz, and Ann too. The League of Extraordinary Betae, yo!

Summary: One thing Dumbledore never told Harry about horcruxes, is that they are harder to destroy than to create.

Can't Take the Sky

~* August 16th, 1997 *~

Harry Potter dreamed of flying.

That in itself was nothing new. He had always dreamed of it, long before he'd even known that broomsticks and thestrals and motorbikes could possibly take him high above the trees; above the sound of scolding, scornful voices; out of arm's and foot's and belt's and thrown stone's reach. Up high enough that Little Whinging would only be a grimy sort of smudge on the green velvet patchwork, peaceful under the wide-open sky. Just like those aerial pictures taken from the satellites that Harry had seen in Dudley's contraband National Geographic magazines.

African women with naked breasts never featured in Harry's dreams, but those great, big skies certainly did. In his dreams, he knew the language of clouds and wind. In his dreams, he was never hungry, never cold, and even the dark of night was ablaze with stars and faint music, the moon whispering secrets in his ears. In his dreams, Harry never, ever fell.

This dreaming was different though. This time, the earth below him was a baleful thing, ragged and hungry, and filled with pain. It reached up for him whenever he tired, and its touch was agony. A glint of gold became a woman's screech, a man's howl, a dragon's shriek, a roar of fire and force, and whelming, twisting heat, crushing weight, burning, drowning, screaming, fighting, trapped, dying-

His only escape lay in height, cold, and darkness. He wasn't a coward. He just couldn't think of a way to fight a horror that big. So he dreamed of flying with every desperate ounce of his will.

The clouds helped him, soothing his burns with cool, damp caresses, their deep murmurs meaningless but comforting. They lifted him away from the smothering heat when he was too weary to continue. The moon filled him with a silvery peace, which sounded almost like singing at times, and at others, stroked along his skin with a gentle, whispering touch that he couldn't stop -- didn’t want to stop -- himself arching into. When orgasm washed over him, and he sobbed his release in steaming breaths to the stars, Harry felt the rattle of thunder beneath him, the brief glare of cloud-rage lightning...

And then he dreamed of rain.

Far below, the fire died with a grinding, hissing roar. Belching steam and spite, the sullen glow folded in on itself and gradually died. Harry watched it go with a sick sort of relief in his belly, too weary now even to fight for altitude as the thick, velvety clouds began to lower him to the scorched earth.

"No," he whispered, hearing his own voice for the first time since the dream began, clutching his fingers tight in the cool, fluffy cloudstuff. "Not yet. Please..."

"Yes," replied the moon at his back. "It's time. Wake up now."

Harry struggled, but weakly. Flying so long had drained him, but to fall now, down toward that grimy little town, toward that twisted, sooty house that smelled of raised fists and angry words and hopelessness -- how could he possibly want that? Why hadn't it all burned up and blown away? Why would the sky leave him there, of all places?

"Why?"

"Because you've slept for nine bloody days now, and your next course of potions must be taken by mouth, not topically," came the irate reply. "Now wake up!" Something pinched the back of his leg, just above his knee -- pinched it hard.

Harry yelped, twisting hard, and kicking the hands away from his leg. His hands slipped in cold, slick sheets, and he had to fling his whole weight sideways to wrench himself around and get his back to a wall.

Snape.

Harry's breath snagged in his throat, and his stomach gave a twist at the sight of the black robed man sitting calmly there on the bed, wiping something greasy from his hands. He glanced wildly around the room, searching for his wand, his friends, some clue to tell him where he was, and why the bloody fuck Snape was sitting there at the end of the bed, looking at Harry like he was something a thestral threw up. Four blank walls stared back at him, grey and grimy and cold. No windows, no glimmer of sunlight. A Death Eater cell? But no, the doorway just visible over Snape's shoulder had no bars, didn't even look like it had a door in, and through it, Harry could see part of an easy chair, and books all up and down the wall behind it. They'd never give him books!

But they'd never give him a bed either, would they? And the mattress beneath him was narrow and hard, but it wasn't the bare floor, or a bloody rack! He swallowed, his eyes drawn to the table crammed into the corner at its foot. Rough-hewn and black with age, it was littered with bloody rags, pots and jars of various sizes, and a drift of bottles that looked to be the only clean things in the room. Turning his eyes back to the man who had probably brewed them all, Harry wondered why he was just sitting there? Why wasn't Snape hexing, snarling, trying to murder him... unless...

Harry glanced back at the empty bottles, and his stomach churned. The rising panic must have shown on his face, because Snape rolled his eyes in disgust.

"Why yes, Potter, I did, in point of fact, repair your broken jaw, cheek, ribs and arm, and re-grow your eye, your fingernails, your hair, and most of your skin purely because I wanted you to be healthy when I poisoned you." He flung his towel onto the small table by the door, and stood. "Imbecile."

Harry swallowed, mouth so dry his throat clicked. Then the pain registered: a tight-pulled ache in his legs, belly and face, with a feverish sort of stiffness in every joint, and a pounding just starting up the back of his skull. He looked down, winced to see the shiny mass of scars on his naked thighs, the top of one foot, and raised his hand to see more of the same. He only just stopped himself reaching to touch his face as well.

"What..." his voice creaked. He swallowed again. "What happened? How did-" His hand seized in a sudden cramp, and Harry curled about it, his panic returning. Where the hell was he?

"You truly don't remember?" Snape asked, the ugly sneer fading a bit.

Harry was already shaking his head, more refusal than denial, because he didn't know what he remembered. It was all vague, and muzzy. Something about water, and fire, and... he swallowed, looked hard at his red, scabbed feet, and tried to piece it together: They had gone after the locket -- the real one. The one they'd found in the curio cabinet at Grimmauld Place and thrown into the rubbish, nearly a year before Harry had even known what a Horcrux was. They had found it at another one of the Black family houses, and... He shook his head. He didn't remember any fire there. Just sunlight and roses, and narked off house elves.

"You don't recall breaking into Monkshood Cottage with your two little friends?" Snape went on, sidling closer. "You don't recall blackmailing the house elves to let you search the place?"

He hadn't! He'd only told them to leave him alone, and because he was the Black heir, they didn't have a choice. Hermione hadn't liked it, but none of them knew when Narcissa Malfoy would be coming back there, and they didn't have time to arse about. Blinking at the onslaught of memory and hoping he could get Snape to fill in the rest, Harry folded his arms about his shivering chest and drew his knees up in front. He eyed the blanket around the foot of the bed and concentrated on keeping his face impassive.

Snape took another step, and his voice turned nastily pleased. "You don't recall sending Granger and Weasley away without even searching the room to be sure you were alone?" Harry's head snapped up at that, but before he could question, Snape thrust a bottle at him. "Drink this." His smile was as ugly as his voice had been, and Harry glared.

"Not on your life."

"Not on yours either," he smirked, hand unwavering. "That stage of your healing is past. Your good looks are all that remains at stake now."

"No!" Harry tried to slap the bottle to the ground, but he was sore and slow, and Snape snatched it away with a curse. "I watched you kill him! He was helpless, and you did it anyway! No fucking way I'm trusting you now!" If he thought Harry cared a farthing for another scar or two, it just showed how little he knew about anything. He'd live with a bag over his head before he'd take anything Snape handed him.

A muscle jumped in Snape's jaw and he blew his breath out hard through his nose. Harry curled his fists as tight as they would go, ready despite the pain, to fight whatever the bastard meant to try. Wand or no wand, he would go down fighting, not begging for mercy!

But Snape did not, as Harry expected, lunge for his nose, to cut off his air and force his mouth open. Instead, he smiled -- a cold, loathing thing, -- and pulled his own wand from his sleeve. "Spare me the dramatics, Potter," he said, and tapped his wand against the bottle. The surly reddish potion inside disappeared abruptly. "It's not as though I actually need your cooperation, now you're awake."

"What?" Harry sat up straighter, alarmed. Then that black wand pointed at him, and he felt a sudden, inexplicable cramp, high up in his belly. He swallowed hard, fury rising in his throat as Snape's expression turned smug. "Fuck you!" he hissed, and crammed two fingers as far back into his throat as he could manage.

"Stop that, you infernal brat," Snape bellowed, yanking his wand back out. Harry lunged at him, knocking it from his grip before the tip had cleared his sleeve, but his hand refused to close properly when he snatched at the wand. It clattered to the floor, and Snape was on him before Harry could dive after it, a great, grappling weight in scratchy wool robes.

But there was something Harry had learned in his years at Hogwarts: once you took away their wands, wizards were bloody useless in a piss-up. They couldn't run, couldn't dodge, couldn't kick, couldn't take or deliver a punch, and with the exception of the Weasleys, couldn't flat-out scrap if their lives depended on it. Harry could do all those things -- Dudley and his friends had given him plenty of practice at it, after all.

Harry didn't need a wand to make his attacker hurt, and hurt badly, and sore, queasy, and furious, he set out to prove exactly that. Snape was lean, wiry and strong, but Harry was too. And Harry wasn't afraid to bash his head at that great, greasy nose, to kick at Snape's bony knees, to pinch the soft flesh under his arms, to punch at his belly, to bite whenever a hand came close to his face, and to rip at handfuls of that long, greasy hair. He employed every single dirty trick Dudley had ever used on him, and he did it with relish.

Bottles crashed around them, bedding and rags tangling fists and feet, robes and hair tearing as they rolled about the tiny room. Harry'd just got an elbow-jab at Snape's throat, sent him reeling back and gagging, won himself enough slack to almost slither free and run. He was reaching for the bed's leg, when Snape's hand came down like a vise between his legs, and twisted.

Harry's breath fled in a squeak, his vision strobing red as the pain shocked through him. Another crushing yank halted his instinctive kick, and still a third destroyed even the slightest inclination to squirm or, in fact, to do anything but curl up tight and whimper. A hand wove roughly into his fringe though, and stopped even that furtive motion, pulling his face up to the light, putting it nose to nose with his enemy.

"Think, Potter, just for a moment or two," Snape hissed, breath hot on his cheek. "If I meant to poison you, I could have done so a thousand ways before this. Even you must realize that I did not need your cooperation to kill you. If I wanted you dead, would I have allowed you to awaken at all?"

Harry struggled for breath, every muscle tense as he glared at those black eyes and recalled a thousand arguments gone before. "Yes," he gritted, "You would. Voldemo -- Ah!" he yelped at another squeeze, then struggled on. "Vol. De. Mort wants to kill me himself. You know he said so."

Snape made a rude noise. "You heard me say so, to stop Yancey from killing you at Hogwarts, you useless fool!"

"I heard him say it!" Harry leaned in, showing his teeth in fury. "He said it the night-" The night Cedric Diggory was killed. The night Wormtail used my blood to bring him back. The night you went back to him. Harry took a deep breath, and tried again. "He said as much the night of the third Tri-wizard trial."

The hand between his legs eased just the tiniest bit. "And what else did the Dark Lord say?" Snape asked, sounding almost curious. He had one leg thrown over Harry's, pinning his knee to the floor, and his body was twisted so that even if Harry could sling his other knee into play, it would at best hit Snape in the shoulder. Not a good enough hit to get free on.

"What, is your memory going, Sir?" Harry jeered. "It's only been two years, but I remember that night in the graveyard clear as a bell."

But Snape didn't take the bait. "I was not there that night, Potter," he said. "I did not answer the summons, as you know, having seen me at Hogwarts upon your return. Now what else did he say?"

Harry closed his eyes and bit shut his lips.

The hand in his fringe tightened and gave his head a jerk. "Potter..." Snape's voice was thick with warning. Harry clenched his eyes shut tighter. Then the grip gave loose all of a sudden, but before Harry could move, Snape grabbed his face in both hands, using his entire body to pin Harry to the floor. "Enough of your secrets, boy," he snarled. "Tell me what he said!"

"Go on then," Harry yelled back, grabbing Snape's wrists. "Rip it out of my mind if you want it so badly! It's not like you ever wanted me to learn how to stop you!"

That gave the greasy bastard a moment's pause, but after a searching moment, the old familiar sneer was back in place. "Grateful as I am for the invitation, I've had enough exposure to what passes for your brain to last me several lifetimes." Harry, beyond fighting rage, finally noticed that his hands were closing properly again. He flicked a glance at his reddened, scar-twisted knuckles, but couldn't tell if they were better than before or not. Snape, saw though, and wiped a thumb across Harry's cheek in a parody of kindness. "I merely wish to understand your reasoning, Potter, assuming you have any," he said. "What in seven hells could have inspired you to break into a house where you knew you were likely to encounter the wife of a Death Eater who has tried to kill you more than once? And what made you decide to steal that particular dark artefact once you were there?"

No point pretending then. Harry took a breath, and met his gaze, straining to focus so close. "Given that you're a loyal Death Eater yourself, Sir, I don't think I need to tell you why I was there, or what I was doing. If you were there, and you know I took it, then you know enough."

Snape hissed, furious. "Oh, I know well enough that you didn't even think to cast the most basic shielding spell on yourself, or containment on it before you made off with it, you bloody idiot! And I know that you tried to get yourself and your little friends killed the very next night, down in the Chamber of Secrets!"

Harry flinched, blinked as more shadows took shape in his mind: icy water, smell of dust and decay in the air, a hunched, shuffling figure that he thought for a moment he knew, Hermione's stifled yelp, Ron's sudden, horrified cursing at his back...

"Tell me what in seven hells made you decide to smash not one, but TWO objects which you knew for a fact were not only dangerous, but deadly!" Snape's face was going red, his voice rising, and his grip on Harry's face trembling and taut. "And to do it with a basilisk's fang, which you knew to be so poisonous that merely handling it could easily have killed you on its own! Has your adoring press coverage convinced you of your own invulnerability, or did you just imagine you were too important to be subject to the basic rules of magic?"

All the pieces fell into place, the memory whole and horrible for one single, freezing moment. Then he slammed most of it behind a door in his mind, and focused on the important part. "It worked," he gritted through his teeth, digging his fingers into those thin wrists, but unable to leverage them away. "It worked. The locket and the cup..." damn. Had Snape known about the cup? Too late now. "They're destroyed. And my blood protected me..." Snape shifted, his bony elbow finding a bruise across Harry's ribs, making him abruptly remember stone serpents crashing to the floor as the Chamber of Secrets filled up with howling flame. "The curse," his voice shook. He swallowed hard. "That's why I sent Ron and Hermione away. The curse, on both the cup and the locket, was cast before... before he took my blood. It couldn't kill me --"

"Your blood protected you?" Snape shouted back. "Your mother's magic didn't do you much good against the interchange explosion, you idiot! Destroying one -- worse yet, TWO dark artefacts with another! Merlin's beard, didn't the Headmaster tell you the first thing about his-"

Harry saw red, this time from a wholly different kind of pain. "The Headmaster didn't tell me much about a lot of things," he shouted, jabbing his fist into the Snape's ribs, just under his armpit. The man grunted, and flinched just enough that Harry could finally get the leverage to throw him off and get to his feet. There was no question as he did, that whatever potion Snape had spelled into him was making the scars fade, lifting the bone-deep aches he'd awoken with. It really did seem to be just a healing potion, but that only made Harry angrier. "And thanks to you, now he never will," he added, snatching the blanket from the foot of the bed to cover himself.

Snape only sat there on the floor for a long moment, robes flared out around his legs, hands spread wide on his knees. He looked like he was waiting for something, but when all Harry did was stare back at him, he seemed to come to a decision. He reached beneath the bed, recovered his wand, and jammed it back into his sleeve. Harry let himself drop back down onto the bed then, and began to tug the bedding back up where it belonged while Snape cleared up what had fallen from the table when they'd rolled into it.

The cleanup didn't last nearly long enough to calm the uncertainty Harry felt boiling under his belly. "It did work," he muttered, and told himself it was for his own ears. "They're destroyed. They couldn't have survived that."

Slapping dust from his knees, Snape gave him a considering look, then crossed his arms over his chest: "Yes. They are destroyed. And through luck alone, it seems, you avoided being destroyed along with them. You do realize that Narcissa Malfoy had to leave that house now that you've been there, don't you?"

Harry looked up, confused. "Why? It's not like I burned the place down. She wasn't supposed to be there when we went. Nobody was."

"YOU were not supposed to be there," Snape said, though his voice lacked heat. Then he sighed loudly. "But you couldn't have stopped to think that your presence in her house would give her yet another dangerous secret, could you? Never were one to consider anyone's troubles but your own, after all. Hardly enough that she's unable to live in her own home, or to see her own son while you and the Dark Lord try and kill each other, now she's reduced to-"

"Wait," Harry cut him off, cold and angry. "You are not going to make me feel guilty for taking back something that didn't even belong to her in the first place. Especially when I didn't so much as say a harsh word to her while I did it! If she's got to move house now, well I can think of a lot of people who have it worse, and they didn't even marry Death Eaters!" He slashed his hand through the air, wishing he had his wand just for a second or two. "If her house has to be such a big secret from Voldemort, what were you even doing there?"

"Where did you get the idea to use the fang on the cup and the locket?" Snape fired back. "Was it Granger's notion?"

So that was how it would work. Harry tucked his feet up under the edge of the blanket, and composed his answer. "Second year, when Tom Riddle's diary tried to kill Ginny in the Chamber of Secrets, I stabbed it with the basilisk fang, and that destroyed it. Ginny seemed okay afterward." he said. "If it worked then, I figured it would work again." There. Direct enough, even if it did leave out the desperate retreat when spell after spell didn't work, didn't work, didn't stop it, didn't even make the awful thing bleed. It left out the iron-cold hands holding his head underneath the water, the mad grab for a weapon he could barely see, and the blind luck that made him catch the fang without cutting himself on it. Snape didn't need to know any of that, damn it. Determined, Harry tried his own question again. "What were you doing at Mrs. Malfoy's house?"

"I was bringing her news of her son, and examining her for curse-signs," Snape replied without hesitation. "Her elves were alarmed by her failing health, and came to fetch me about thirty minutes before you broke into the place. You found her locket there on the fireside table because I had already determined that it was the source of her illness, and taken it away from her. How did you know that her locket was linked to the Dark Lord?"

"It wasn't hers!" Harry couldn't stop the anger in his voice, and Snape stared at him, all eyebrow, waiting for him to explain. "Kreacher stole it from Grimmauld Place two years ago. He took it to Mrs. Malfoy when he betrayed Sirius, and I figured she'd probably had it ever since."

The eyebrow didn't drop. "One must wonder just what you offered Kreacher to make him overlook his hatred of the Order enough to tell you that."

"He didn't have a choice," Harry admitted, remembering how the surly elf's face had twisted with agony and loathing as he'd fought Harry's command. "He's... he was my elf then. I made him tell me where it was." Snape just kept looking at him, and eventually, Harry sighed. "He didn't want to say, but he wasn't strong enough to fight the direct order. It was too much for his heart though. He died." And begged, as he'd done so, for Harry to mount his head onto the wall, along with his ancestors'. And though he hadn't the first idea how to go about getting it done, Harry had promised the sorry creature exactly that before he died.

"Hmph. No doubt the filthy wretch is more content now anyway," Snape said. "Now, what did you-"

"No," Harry told him. "My turn. If it was you who got me out of the fire, why didn't you take me to Hospital?" Harry held up a hand as Snape's face turned scornful. "And don't give me bollocks about being a wanted criminal, because if you could get into Hogwarts in the first place, you could have got me to the infirmary!"

Snape stared at him for a long moment, as though puzzling him out. "I did not get you out of the fire, as it happens," he answered after awhile. "However, I did remove you from the infirmary." This time it was Snape who put up his hand. "With Madam Pomfrey's permission, and your consent, though I suppose I oughtn't to be surprised that you do not remember giving it. You were far too lucid and sensible to have been rightly yourself at the time."

Harry bit his lips and forced his temper down. "Why? Why would Pomfrey send me with you? Why not take me to St. Mungo's, if she couldn't heal me herself?"

"For Madam Pomfrey, I shall not answer," Snape said. "You will recall what happened on your own soon enough, and if not, then I shall show you my memory of it when you are calmer. As for why you are here -- and no, you needn't bother to ask where here is, Potter, -- and not at St Mungo's, it is that those hacks haven't the first idea how to treat injuries like yours."

"Bollocks!"

"Dark heeds dark more readily than it does light, Potter," Snape fired back. "However no lily-handed healer would have dared to make or apply the potions I did, even if they knew to try. Under their care, the healing you accomplished here in nine days' time would have taken up nine months... Though, by all means, do continue to pick at the scabs if you wish the scars to become permanent." Caught out, Harry glared, but stopped scratching at his arm and folded his hands in his lap. Snape gave a snort, and rolled his eyes. "I might add that the Dark Lord has servants even in St. Mungo's. Oh yes, Potter. There are those who have standing orders, should you ever turn up at that hospital, and once the Order had relaxed its vigilance, they would have acted!"

Harry made a rude noise, but that was all he could really manage. He remembered all too well how Wormtail had got about for years under the Order's noses, not to mention the fake Moody in Harry's third year. He shivered, and chaffed his arms. "Can't you cast a warming spell or something?" he grumbled. "It's freezing in here."

"There is a chilling charm on you," Snape replied. "Once the scars have faded it will cease. Who in the Order knows what you are doing now?"

"Well, unless you owled them to say that you were having me up for tea, none of them."

"Try not to be more puerile than you must be, Potter," he snarled. "Who knows about the horcruxes?"

Harry looked at him for a long moment, undecided. "Didn't the Headmaster tell you about them?"

He wasn't surprised when Snape shook his head. "Regulus Black told me about them, long ago. The implications were not difficult to read, once the diary came to light. Albus'... attempt to destroy the Gaunt signet rendered my suspicions into certainty." He looked up again, and caught Harry's gaze with a bitter eye. "Surely you did not suppose you were the only one the old man kept secrets from?"

Actually, Harry had thought exactly that. He examined his foot, which had been wrinkled and shiny with scar just a few minutes past. Now it looked almost back to normal. "His... the Headmaster's hand," Harry ventured. "That was because of the ring?"

"Yes," Snape sighed, looking fixedly at the wall. "He tried to destroy the horcrux with light magic, and it not only fought back, it nearly killed him." Then he looked once more at Harry, and that shuttered-off look turned into pure annoyance. "Now answer the question, Potter; who KNOWS?"

"Ron and Hermione." He answered before he could think of a reason not to. "And Dobby. No one else." Something like relief washed over Snape's features, and it made Harry's stomach grip up again. "You think there's a traitor in the..." he couldn't finish the sentence, the irony of it was so choking thick.

Giving him a disgusted sneer, Snape stood. "Always, Potter. Enough questions. Lie down and rest now."

"No," Harry protested, unfurling his legs from the blanket.

He froze as Snape's wand whipped out to point at his nose. "Lie down and rest," the dark man growled, "or I will bind you down and dose you insensible!"

"No!" Harry shouted, suddenly angry beyond sense. "Tell me why! Tell me why you killed him!"

The wand flickered. Green, vine-like ropes shot out from the bedstead, and wrestled Harry down flat. "If you must ask, Potter," Snape said as the sheets and blanket slithered into place around Harry, despite his struggles, "then you would not understand the answer."

Harry's next words never made it to his lips, so fast did the blackness of sleep whelm him under.

~* August 17th, 1997 *~

He didn't dream of flying this time. There was no wind, no sky, no moon and no cloud to ease the absolute darkness. He could touch nothing, could get no sense of direction, or movement, or depth -- only time.

The one thing of which Harry was certain, was that every second passing, each moment he spent there in that darkness, his task was escaping farther from his grasp. But try as he might, he could find nothing against which to struggle. He could thrash, he could shout, he could push with all his might, but the darkness did not so much as shiver around him.

And he realized, as the minutes bled away, that he was beginning to forget exactly what it was he meant to do in the first place.

He woke with a lurch and a shout, heart hammering, sheets stuck clammy and damp to his skin. It was only after several tense moments of searching the darkened room that Harry could remember where he was.

Snape's mysterious 'here'. Healed and unbound, but wandless, and no less trapped than when he'd been tied down to the bed. The only light in the little cell came from the adjoining room; a flickering, yellow glow that made the outline of the doorway dance along the floor. He could see glints of metal bindings on the spines of the books, but the chair had been moved sometime while he slept. Clearly... he blinked twice and touched his cheek, but he didn't find his glasses there. Casting about the room, he couldn't see them anywhere, in fact. The little table at the foot of his bed had been cleared off and there was nothing else except a bare stool and a metal pot, which Harry guessed was meant to serve for a toilet.

Snape had said something about his eyes, hadn't he? Harry shivered, imagining Snape's cold fingers touching his face, then shook it off. Maybe it was a temporary charm, or something to stop Harry stumbling about and breaking things while Snape was keeping him there. It would probably fade as soon as he got away.

Speaking of which...

"Hello?" he called, but there was no reply. Slipping from the bed, he tugged loose a sheet to wrap around him and went to have a look at the rest of 'here' while he could do so without Snape looming over him.

The first room was a study; walls piled high with books whose titles were spelled to shift and blur whenever Harry tried to focus on them. There was only one, regally threadbare chair, a portrait of a dark-haired, somber woman over the fireplace, and a book-littered desk beside that. He tried to have a look at the open books, but they snapped shut as he drew near, so he knew better than to try and pick one up.

The room's one other doorway led to a potions workroom, very much like the one Snape had back at Hogwarts. Only in this one, Harry didn't recognize most of the things floating in their jars. Nor did he really want to. The whole place just felt dark; suffocating, enfolding, crushing.

Panting a little, he backed out and sought the relative light of the study. Dropping into the chair -- which was as comfortable as it looked to be -- Harry made himself calm down and think, stretching his bare feet out toward the fire and drawing patterns in the nap of the chair's grubby upholstery. There hadn't been another door -- nothing that didn't lead to one of the three places he'd already been able to find -- and that just didn't make any sense at all. Because Snape had to get in somehow, didn't he?

He couldn't just be apparating in and out, because that would be careless, and Snape might have been a murderous, vindictive, hateful bastard and a traitor, but he just wasn't careless. He wouldn't have all this stuff, his books and his potions supplies, in a place where he wouldn't be able to get to them, should something happen to his wand.

"There has to be a door," he said to himself, eyeing the bookshelves for some sign that one of them might possibly move. They all looked rickety, as though it was only the inward press of the walls, and the weight of the books that was keeping them upright at all. "There has to be..."

Then he took a second look at the painting. It was big enough, certainly, and if it hadn't been hung nearly six feet off the floor, Harry would have suspected it at first glance. But then six feet wouldn't be much of a jump down for a lanky bastard like Snape, would it? And if you pushed the desk over in front of the fireplace and put the chair just next to it... Harry scrambled to his feet, and began to move the furniture.

The woman in the painting watched him, her dark eyes calm and unsurprised as he clambered onto the stone mantle and came nose to nose with her at last. Harry glanced over her painting, noting the dull grey landscape just visible through her window, and that she, like Snape, seemed to like her library piled in a jumble of books around her. Oddly, her hand rested next to a round bowl of water, like a fishbowl, but without the fish inside. She herself wasn't what anybody would call 'pretty'. It was clear that she'd helped set the pattern for Snape's looks; the high, square brow, the darkly glittering eyes and thin mouth. On her though, the sum added up to something closer to sorrow than the ingrained resentment that seemed to live in Snape's face. She didn't look much like Harry remembered of Snape's mum from that faded newspaper clipping Hermione had dug up, but he supposed she could have been an older relative easily enough.

"I don't suppose you'd mind opening, would you, ma'am?" Harry asked. Courtesy didn't cost anything, after all, and it didn't seem as though she already hated him, like Snape did...

"I'm afraid not, young man," she answered with a shake of her head. "And I'd rather you did not go prizing at my frame, either. You see, I was painted with my wand," she pulled the pale length of wood from her sleeve and displayed it. "And as I've waited quite a few years to meet you, I had really much rather not start our acquaintance out on a hostile note."

"But you won't let me leave?" Disarmed despite himself, Harry stepped back down to the table. It seemed more polite than crowding close to her canvas, after all.

"It isn't safe just now," she explained dismissively. "You'd be seen if I let you go now. It's best to wait a bit."

"Seen by whom?" Harry tried to make the question innocent, but he got the impression she wasn't fooled.

"Seen by Severus' other student, of course. I understand the two of you don't exactly get on?" Her smirk let Harry know he hadn't managed to keep the reaction from his face. "Severus is keeping the boy busy enough to keep him out of trouble, but we both think you'd be a dangerous distraction. One Draco Malfoy cannot afford, with two sides of a war hunting for his head, wouldn't you agree?"

That time he didn't try to stop his snort. "Not really. If Snape's not going to turn him over to Voldemort, then why keep him around at all? I mean if the Death Eaters want him, then --"

"Tsk. Now you're just being thick," she cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Now let me see those eyes, if you please." Wary and annoyed, Harry looked up. She searched his gaze for a long moment, and then her face broke into a smile. It was the kind of smile Harry just knew he would never see on Snape's face -- full of pleasure, satisfaction, a quiet sort of joy, and something like relief as well. "Yes... I thought it would be you."

"I'm sorry." Harry blinked, still confused. "I don't understand. We haven't met, have we?"

She had a quiet laugh, the kind Harry had learned when he was little, the kind you make when you're happy, and you don't want someone else to hear and come take the happiness away. "No. We haven't, and we never will, but for here in this little priest-hole. My name is Eileen Prince-Snape, and I died a year or so before you were born. But I've seen you before, Chosen One," Her long, pale fingers caressed the water bowl, which suddenly looked much more like a gazing crystal than a fishbowl. "I've seen you quite a few times."

More prophesy... Harry felt ill. "Look, um... Ma'am," he sighed. "Please don't take this personally, but I really don't put much stock in all that stuff." He waved a hand at her water bowl, and the deck of cards he could just see in the shadow of her sleeve. "We had to take it in school, you see, and Professor Trelawney's kind of..."

She laughed again, and this time, it was louder. "Oh, believe me, young man, I went to school with Sybil Trelawney, and I wouldn't believe a word out of her mouth either. Especially given that she slept through every accurate prediction she ever made. All two of them, from what I understand." Harry couldn't bring himself to smile at that, given how Trelawney's predictions had made his own life hell, but for Eileen's sake, he tried. "Did you know she once read my palm, and tried to convince me that I'd die in childbirth? At the age of seventeen?" She made a face. "Clearly she missed that mark. However, just as you do not judge all Slytherins by Draco Malfoy, I shall ask that you not judge all diviners by old Yawney Trelawney."

Harry nodded and looked away, embarrassed. "I suppose you're going to tell me what you predicted now?" He wasn't looking forward to it, but he figured he had no choice, unless he wanted the guardian of the only exit narked at him.

He glanced back up when she didn't answer, and found her watching him with a smirk that made her face disturbingly familiar. But her eyes, at least, weren't cruel when she shook her head. "No, I don't think that's necessary. My predictions would only distract you just now, and we can't have that." Her smirk turned into a knowing smile, which Harry found, if possible, even more disturbing. "After all, you didn't need to know about my past predictions for them to be true, did you?"

"What?" Harry asked, suddenly riveted. "What's come true already?"

But his only answer was another flash of that smirk as she turned her head to look behind her. "Oh dear," she said in the most falsely innocent voice Harry had ever heard, "Severus is coming down. Best get out of the way, Mr. Potter, he looks in a bit of a temper..." Harry jumped to the floor and backed away, heart hammering. "The table too!" Eileen hissed, "and hurry up!"

He grabbed the thing, and dragged it back toward its previous place, the sheet slipping off his shoulder and trailing under his feet as he went. But a creak, and a hiss of angry breath from behind him let Harry know that he hadn't moved fast enough. He turned to find Snape standing on the mantle piece, the painting swung aside and empty as books flew from the shelves to form steps down to the floor. He looked about like normal: furious.

"What are you doing?" he snarled.

Harry wrapped the sheet close, and stood up straight. "Putting your desk back. And I didn't touch anything else in here, before you accuse me of it, so you can just keep your pants up."

"Damn your eyes." The books stopped flying, and Snape stormed down into the room, banging the portrait shut behind him. "You've no business being in my study!"

Harry had to laugh at that. "I've no business being in your house at all, but here I am." He'd had enough of accusations that weren't his fault, and this was just another one of them. He nodded up at the painting by way of changing the subject. "What's your mother been saying about me?"

Snape stopped, face going white, wand frozen mid-arc as he turned to glare at the painting, whose subject had not reappeared. Then his face went red and blotchy, and he banished the book-steps back to their places with a savage slash of his wand.

Intrigued, Harry pressed. "Well? She said they've been coming true. I've a right to know."

"Divination is a sham, Potter," Snape's voice was cold as lead. "If she could truly read the future in water, do you imagine she would have married her own murderer?"

"Well maybe she did it because she knew it would give her you." The words were out of his mouth before Harry'd even fully thought of them. He'd have grabbed them back and swallowed them if he could, but at Snape's ferocious look, he only boosted his chin in defiance. "Didn't Dumbledore say that a mother's love is the most powerful magic of all?"

Snape turned away, his back rigid, his arms straight and hard at his sides. Harry wrapped his sheet tighter, leaned against the table, and waited for the verdict. After a moment, Snape took a deep breath, blew it out hard. "If you're well enough to invade my privacy and interrogate my paintings," he said, striding through to the sleeping cell and pulling a cloth bundle from his pocket. "Then you're fit to assist in the final part of your treatment. Come and get dressed."

Harry followed, and picked up the clothes as Snape enlarged them to proper size. The green sweatshirt looked comfortable enough, but he held up jeans doubtfully. They looked far too small.

"Not elegant enough for you?" Snape sneered. "Do pardon me for not hiring a private designer to outfit you as befits the Hero of Bloody Gryff-"

"Oh, belt up and give me the pants," Harry growled back.

Snape raised an eyebrow, then turned and walked from the room, saying, "Get them yourself, Hero."

"What about my wand then?" Harry asked as he pulled the clothes on.

"Still where you dropped it in the Chamber of Secrets, I should think," Snape's voice came back from the study.

"What? You just left it there?"

"I, Potter? Surely you must have realized by now that had I been faced with the choice of leaping into a pit filled with fire to save you, or leaving you to reap the whirlwind on your own, we would be having quite a different conversation just now."

Yeah. Right. Which was why he'd healed Harry at all, instead of handing him over to the Dark Lord. Harry pulled on the sweatshirt, and shook his head. "Then if you didn't get me out, who did?"

"I've no idea," Snape answered. "Though I'd hazard a guess that your Weasley friends, Hagrid, and Headmistress McGonagall were most likely involved. So you needn't worry. They'll have recovered your wand by now."

"But the fire!" Harry yelped, zipping up hastily and rushing after him. "What if it-"

Snape's look of pure disgust stopped him cold. "You're worried that your phoenix core wand might have perished in flames..." He shook his head. "Sometimes, Potter, the depth of your ignorance astonishes even me." Turning back to the table, he put his wand to his temple, drew out a long, silvery thread of memory, and dropped it into a pensieve Harry was certain hadn't been anywhere in the study before.

Remembering the last of Snape's memories he'd glimpsed, Harry turned away to stare at the fire. But the cruel amusement in Snape's voice proved he'd seen Harry's face anyhow. "I'll forbid you to look in it if you prefer," he said, "but as there is a time consideration in play, might I suggest that you simply make an effort to learn what you need to know without playing childish games?"

Harry felt his face go hot, despite all he could do to stop it. "What is it?" he asked. "The memory, I mean; what's it of?"

But the dark man only smirked at him, turned on his heel, and strode into the little workroom. "Join me when you've finished," he called back. "There is work to be done, and I'll not have you sitting idle while I do it."

~* August 7th, 1997 *~

"Harry's dead!" the ghost wailed, bursting out of the kitchen drain in a burst of grey, soapy water. Alarmed, Draco scrambled back from the sink, jostling a small, crowded table, half-full of dishes as she made a grab to hug him. "Oh, it's horrible! Whatever shall we doooooo!? He's dead, Draco, and he didn't even stay to keep me company after the horrid dead thing drowned him, and he promised he'd visit, and now he's gone, and-"

"Cease that wailing at once!" Snape appeared in the little kitchen's doorway, all towering fury, and Myrtle squeaked and ducked back into the drain. "Get back out here!" he bellowed. "Explain yourself at once!"

Still leaning on the table, white-faced and shaking, Draco gave a loud gulp. "He... Potter's dead?"

"Don't be stupid," Snape barked. "Of course he isn't. And what would a bloody hysterical ghost know about it if he was?"

"I saw it! Myrtle's voice came out of the drain with a strange, tinny sort of outrage. "The nasty horrid dead man put him under the water down in the secret room where the drains all lead. He pushed him down and held him there!" She paused for another wail, then worked her head out of the tap to glare. "And then there was an awful bang, and I ran away."

"What dead man?" Draco asked, stepping forward. "Myrtle, what secret room do you mean?"

"What manner of bang, damn you?" Snape shouted over him.

"I don't know," the ghost admitted. "I got scared. Don't shout at me!"

But the blotchy red staining Snape's face made it plain he was going to do just that. Harry, fully well aware that he wasn't even there, took a step back from it. "YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD, YOU ECTOPLASMIC NINNY! WHY THE BLOODY HELL WOULD YOU-"

He might have gone on a good deal longer, but just then something came through the wall, massive, and blindingly silver. Harry squinted as the low, bulky shape stood up on two legs, towering to the ceiling, its enormous paws spread wide. It was a bear Patronus, Harry realized, and it was angry.

And it was looking directly at Snape.

"What the hell is that?" Draco squeaked, his back pressed to the far wall, wand in hand.

Snape didn't spare him a glance, but Harry noticed that his skin had gone chalky white, and his face quite, quite still. "It is a messenger," he said at last. The bear gave a silent roar and carved the air with its claws again. Harry wondered, suddenly, if Patronuses could attack other things than just Dementors. But before it came to that, Snape sighed and looked at the floor. "Very well," he said, and just like that, the giant silver bear disappeared.

"What do you mean, 'Very well?" Draco asked, his voice squeaky with nerves. "What's going on? What did it want?"

"Nothing that need concern you," Snape answered, leaving the kitchen. Harry scrambled to follow just as fast as Draco did. In the next room -- a much larger version of the study Harry knew he stood in now -- Snape was pulling a traveling cloak from the wall. "I must go for a while. Remember my conditions to your staying here; do not touch the floo, do not answer the door, and above all, do NOT go snooping in my rooms!"

"No!" Draco shouted, drawing his wand. "You can't just leave like that and tell me not to ask! I'm not stupid, you know!"

Harry would have debated that. Snape, though, didn't bother. His wand was out of his sleeve and moving before he'd even turned around. As soon as Harry saw the blankly confused expression cross Draco's pinched features, he realized what he'd seen. Obliviatus as it was meant to be used. Impressed despite himself, Harry watched Snape cast the spell again, this time at the ghost, still weeping in his kitchen drain. Only this time, he took special care to watch the wand movement -- just by way of practice, of course.

Then Snape threw a handful of powder into the floo, and stepped in with a savage mutter Harry wasn't close enough to hear. And the shabby, book-crowded room whirled away in a shower of green sparks

When the swirling stopped, Harry recognized the Hogwarts infirmary at once. He didn't have to smell the too-clean air with its faint tang of potions to know it. He'd had time in the past six years to memorize every possible view of the place -- at least what was visible from the patient's cots, anyway.

This particular corner of it though, he hadn't seen. A quick look around it as Snape brushed the soot from his robes, revealed a large, square desk, littered with files, more tall file cases lining the walls, each carefully labeled with student's names. The ones on the desk, unsurprisingly, all bore Harry's name.

Snape gave the little office only a passing glance before slipping out into the infirmary proper. Harry followed him, wondering a little at how Snape could dare to come back here after what he had done. More importantly who would order him to do so, and expect him to obey. But perhaps the way Snape kept carefully to the deepest shadows as he approached the only lighted area of the vast room meant that he was wondering the same things himself.

Harry hung back as well. It was one thing to know he'd been injured -- and if Myrtle was to be believed, nearly drowned, -- but that didn't mean Harry wanted much to see himself there in the bed. Especially when he remembered the look of his burn-scarred skin when he'd first properly awoken. He didn't want to see that. Not on anybody, but especially not on himself.

So instead, he looked for other people; Ron and Hermione, Hagrid, Professor McGonagall, Molly, Remus -- SOMEBODY who cared about him should have been there, shouldn't they? But there was only one figure in the vast room besides the dark bundle in the bed, and the looming presence behind Harry, and that was Madam Pomfrey. The bear Patronus had to have been hers then. But why had she sent it to fetch Snape of all people?

After a moment or two, the mediwitch stood, and charmed a basin of water, a pile of bloody bandages, and ripped, burned clothing to follow her as she left the bedside.

Snape waited to speak until she had just passed by his lurking place. "What are you doing?"

"Oh!" She jumped, and the basin sloshed a little pinkish water on the floor. Then she smiled, clearly relieved, and bustled forward to catch Snape's arm. "Severus, it's you. Good, good. He's this way."

"The others?" he asked, resisting her grip and looking pointedly around the darkened infirmary, as though he thought the Order might be waiting to leap from the shadows.

Pomfrey shook her head, and tugged his arm again. "I sent them all away before I sent for you. Warded the doors, and told them not to even try coming back for at least two days." Then he let her tug him into motion, and she carried on in an intense whisper as she led him toward the light. "Injuries like these, I'd have done so anyhow; I can hardly afford to waste time on questions and commentary with a patient in this state."

"Then I repeat my question," Snape said, tugging his arm from her grip and stopping dead in the middle of the aisle. "You know I am not welcome on this ground, Poppy. Why have you asked me to come back here? What are you up to?"

She gave him such a fierce look, even Harry stepped back from it. "I am making a choice, Severus Snape," she hissed. "Now it's your turn. Will you carry on playing the villain to an unconvinced audience, or will you be the man I know you are, and help me save that boy's life?"

Harry followed the vicious jab of her finger through the air; he couldn't help it. He couldn't not look at the thick, lumpy pile of bandages, vaguely boy-shaped under the lights. He couldn't really see any skin, just patches of raw red and bloodless grey between the wrappings that just didn't seem to stay white. His head... nearly his whole head was wrapped up, and he'd have thought it couldn't be him, if he weren't able to make out the ruins of a Weasley jumper and his favorite t-shirt in the rag pile still floating behind the Mediwitch.

It was him. That thing in the bed really was him. God.

Behind him, Harry heard Snape hiss a breath through his nose. "What happened to him?" he whispered after a long moment.

"I'm not entirely certain," she replied. "Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger were not precisely clear with their story. Hagrid said he found Mr. Potter half-burned, face up in some kind of cistern underneath the castle... and there was some nonsense about an Inferius as well, and he was clutching that half-melted cup over there, but at that point, I didn't much care to listen to the details." Harry gasped, realizing that the twisted, blackened lump of metal was actually gold. A closer look at it, and he found the split, bulging shape of Slytherin's locket fused into the bottom of it.

It had worked then!

Pomfrey drew the curtains around to shield the cot from the windows and door, and continued. "He wasn't breathing when they brought him to me, Severus. His magic was still present and strong, his eyes... his eye was light responsive, his heartbeat erratic, but not weak. I cleared the water from his lungs, and I tried to treat his burns as well, but..." she flicked a worried glance at the bed, as though she couldn't bear to look for too long. "But I could tell pretty quickly there was more at work here than just fire. The burns are still developing. I've managed to slow them down to almost nothing, but I can't stop the damage, and I don't know how to turn it back. And through it all, I can't seem to stop thinking of Albus, and his awful accident with his hand last summer..."

Snape flinched just a little, around the eyes. If Harry hadn't been staring at the man, he'd never have seen it. "That's why you summoned me?" he asked.

Pomfrey nodded. "Yes. I want you to do for Harry what you did for Albus."

"I murdered Albus, Poppy," Snape said. Just as cold as you please, not a trace of guilt or contrition on his face, only loathing. He might have been talking about treading on an ant. Killing rage bloomed into Harry's belly all over again.

But Pomfrey got to him first, slapping Snape so hard and quick he staggered back into the cot. "How dare you?" she whispered as his face reddened on one side, and his wand came free of his sleeve. "I have saved your life, young man! I have cleaned you and soothed you and mended your body more times than I can count." She slapped his wand away from herself and caught his heavy traveling cloak in both her hands. "I have held you through Cruciatus tremors that lasted days, and I never exposed your secrets to anyone! Don't you DARE lie to me now!"

Harry had never actually seen Snape at a loss for words before; lips parted over clenched teeth, breath frozen behind. His eyes glittered, but before he could give their malice form, a shrill whistling made them both jump apart.

"What's happening?" Snape demanded, whirling to face the bed as Pomfrey checked her pocket watch and cursed under her breath.

"He's throwing off the breathing charm again," Pomfrey cried, shoving him aside and waving her wand over his... Harry's... the patient's still chest. "Come on, young man," she said. "Don't you give up on me now!" But Harry could see how the spell just slid away, like water across a smooth stone. Again and again, she cast it, but those greyish, waxy lips didn't brighten, the one green, staring eye didn't sharpen with awareness.

Harry felt his own chest aching as he watched, and he had to force himself to breathe, remembering that he could. This was a memory. It hadn't ended here, it couldn't have done. But why was Snape just standing there? Why did he look scared? Why didn't he do something?

Then Snape flinched, gasped, and Harry whipped back around just in time to see the staring eye... blink.

"Yes!" Harry shouted in relief. But then a moment later, Pomfrey cast the spell again, her voice beginning to crack with emotion. And again, the pale blue spell just rolled uselessly away to the floor. He wasn't breathing. He wasn't.

"MOVE!" Snape roared, and shoved the mediwitch aside as he dove to his knees. He grabbed that bandaged head by the neck, tilted it far back in one hand while he pinched the nose shut with the other. And then he covered the blue lips with his own, and forced the empty lungs to fill.

Harry gaped, astonished beyond any clear emotion as he watched the man he'd hated more than any other blow breath after breath into his mouth. Saving him. Again. Despite all he'd just said. Harry glanced at Pomfrey, hovering just behind, hands in her apron, eyes filling with tears, and an odd little smile on her face.

There came a soft noise, damp and weak. The Harry on the bed coughed, pushing weakly at Snape's hand until it released his nose. "Ron?" he asked, and coughed again as Snape sat back onto his heels. "Herm... mi'ne?"

Snape looked back at Pomfrey, who dabbed at her eyes and answered. "They're just fine, dear," she said. "You frightened us all terribly though."

"Potter," Snape interrupted, his voice angry and rough. "You will tell me exactly what happened. What the devil were you doing in the Chamber of Secrets? Who was in there with you?"

The Harry on the bed blinked hard, rolled his head in Snape's hand, as though he hadn't the strength to even think of lifting away from the touch. "Dung," he said, his voice creaking and rough. "Fletcher. Followed him... there... to get --" one bandaged hand lifted, only a little bit, but managed to point at the ruined lump of gold on his bedside table. "Cup... back."

"Impossible!" Snape managed not to shout, but it plainly took some doing. "Albus and I sealed that chamber four years ago, and we searched it first -- there was no such cup there, only the basilisk carcass, and that, we burned to the bones!"

"The horcrux..." Again, that stilted movement. Harry winced to hear the pain in his own voice. "Let him... in. Has a piece of... his soul..."

Pomfrey made a strangled sound, and immediately cast a shielding spell on the ruined cup. "Whose soul, Harry?" she asked, clearly struggling to keep her soothing tone. "This Fletcher fellow's?"

"No..." Another cough. Harry thought he saw Snape's thumb ghost across his bandaged cheek as they waited it out. "Volde -- Ah! Ow!"

"You told that no-account thief your plans?" Snape hissed, fingers clenching as though offering comfort was the farthest thing from his mind. Harry, seized with a bizarrely bi-focused sense of déjà vu, shivered as more of his memory shook free of its prison. "Potter, you imbecile! Mundungus Fletcher is a-"

"No!" he gasped, pushing his club-like hand at Snape's chest. "He... stole it from... from me. Last year." Fletcher couldn't have known what it was he'd taken from Grimmauld place, Harry realized with a sickened turn of his stomach. He'd only known it was gold, and therefore valuable. And just like the diary had with Ginny, the greedy fragment of Voldemort's soul had kept itself close, kept itself secret, until it drank away all that had made the ragged beggar who he was.

"And now?" Snape's question was cool, and deathly quiet.

"Dead," Harry gasped, and a shudder wracked him. "Dead. He's... was... dead..." The green eye went glassy again, his breath fluttered, then stopped in his throat. Pomfrey's watch made another horrified racket.

Staring, Harry stuffed his knuckles into his mouth and focused on his own breathing. He still had to flinch when Snape slapped him, his spread hand coming away with bits of blistered skin clinging to it. Then Snape leaned over him again, pressed his mouth, and took a deep breath. Before he could blow it out though, Harry struggled awake again, his yelp collapsing into helpless coughs almost at once.

"Harry dear," Pomfrey asked as Snape sat back on his heels, and wiped his mouth on his wrist. "Do you mean to say that the man -- the living man who stole the..." she glanced at the golden lump and quelled a shudder, "the horcrux from you had become... an Inferius?"

The bandaged head nodded. Snape swore. "You're absolutely certain of it?"

Harry glared. "Wasn't a ghost!" he managed, "wasn't grey..."

"I do not care if it was puce, you idiot! I asked you if-"

Pomfrey laid a hand on Snape's shoulder and shook her head. "Severus, I found claw wounds, defensive bruises, and even bite marks on the boy, all aside from the burns and crushing trauma. No ghost could have done that. Horrible as it is, he's telling the truth." She tugged at him as Harry's eye drifted closed in exhaustion, urged him to his feet.

"I must go," he told her. "I must be sure he... the Inferius has been properly dispatched."

"Severus."

"Damn it, woman," Snape shook her hand off his arm. "You do not know what you are asking me to do!"

"I know it stopped Albus' death for a year," she shouted back at him. "A year, Severus! When I could do nothing!"

"I do not-"

She cut him off with a slash of her hand. "I am not sure that boy will keep breathing through the night! Buy me the time to work out how to heal him. You owe it to me, Severus."

Harry looked away, unable to stomach the manic loathing in Snape's eyes, the fierce rictus of hatred as he glanced back toward the cot... but then a rustle of movement drew all eyes there. Harry -- the patient in the bed was struggling to sit up, the single uncovered eye blazing a fevered green. Pomfrey rushed over, pressed him back down, but Harry didn't even glance at her. He was watching Snape as though his life depended on it.

"You said... you could stopper death," he whispered.

Snape blinked. "What?"

"You said so. First day." He gasped as Pomfrey's wand flickered above him. Harry remembered the sensation of sudden cold with a shiver. "Brew fame, bottle glory...stopper death," he struggled on. "Wrote it down..." His breathing faltered for a moment, but his gaze sharpened again after only a second. "Do it... Do it, please."

Harry himself though, was watching Snape's face; watching the blood drain from it, watching that glitter -- the same one that he'd seen in Snape's eyes atop the Astronomy tower, just before the green light flew. Did Snape hate him that much? As much as he'd hated Dumbledore? But then that awful look was shuttered away.

Snape set his jaw, straightened his shoulders, and gave one crisp nod.

And then the memory swirled away, like water down the drain.

~* August 17th *~

Severus, listening from his little workroom, knew the instant Potter raised his head from the pensieve. A gulp of air, a ragged, half-strangled sob, a mumble that might equally have been curses, or prayer. Then a shuffle of bare feet, a slouching thump, and the creak of Severus' grandfather's old reading chair as the boy flung himself into it -- no doubt for a good, long sulk.

Well, let him sulk then. Potter had asked for this -- no matter how shocked he might find the looming spectre of his own death, he had bloody well asked for it, no less than had the meddling Mediwitch. Severus saw no more reason to sugar coat the consequences of Potter's recklessness than he had ever seen for sweetening medicinal potions. Albus' chances had been worse, after all, and he had borne up under them.

Severus firmly quashed the shiver which accompanied the memory; Potter was not only better off than Albus had been, he would also have the benefit of Severus' desperate studies and improvised remedies in his mentor's year of decline. Not that the brat would be glad to know it. Most likely, at the first mention of the Headmaster's suffering, the ungrateful wretch would boil over into hatred and accusations, and begin plotting ways to attack Severus all over again.

Severus had more important things to do than to listen to that. And besides, the nature of the spell they would attempt relied on trust -- or in the case of himself and Potter, on detente, at very least. Assassination attempts would definitely undermine the potions' efficacy. So Severus decided to make good use of Potter's quiet while he had it, and focused his attention on the unsavory matter at hand.

Brewing had always been Severus' meditation: the clack of knife to board like rhythmic counting beads; the rasp of the mortar scraping the pestle's curve like a mantra hissed under the breath; the gurgle of the simmering cauldron like water rolling a prayer wheel over, and over, and over. He brewed to clear his mind, and he brewed to soothe his temper, and he brewed to calm his soul. All of which contributed to his utter hatred of the fact that he had been required to share his beloved meditation with class after class of lead-fingered, fart-witted, mole-eyed dunderheads who hadn't the first scrap of respect for the brewer's art, and would rather be gorging themselves on chocolate frogs and rancid-pus flavored jellybeans than to so much as read the bloody instructions, and get their potions within a stone's throw of correct!

His knife slipped, the charmed blade skidding off his thumbnail and jabbing deep into the board. Severus cursed under his breath. Damn it, what the hell was Potter doing out there, anyway? He took a deep breath, and blew it out again, reminding himself to just ignore the boy. Of course it would be a shock, what he had seen. What child Potter's age ever really imagined he could die, let alone stared the fact of his mortality straight in the eye?

At seventeen, what child could really understand just how far it was possible to fall?

The knife slipped again, this time mangling the hellebore root instead of slicing it cleanly. Severus cursed again, this time well over his breath. Then he slapped the silver knife down onto the board and stormed into his private study.

"Potter," he barked as he caught sight of the boy, sitting like a lump in the reading chair, and staring at nothing. "Accustomed as you may be to having your every need attended to by others, I should think by now you knew better than to expect such indulgence from me. I distinctly recall telling you to join me in the workroom once you had finished."

Potter gave a slow blink, but didn't turn his head away from the fire. "You don't want me in there," he said in a leaden voice. "You never did want me in your potions class..."

Severus clenched his fists, readying a proper setting-down in his mind, but a flicker of movement above the mantle drew his eye before the words won free. His mother was back in her portrait. She watched him in silence, her face set in that expression Severus had come to loathe over the years; the one that spoke of disappointment and forgiveness in equal measures. The one that reminded him that he was acting out of spite. Again.

He took a cleansing breath, took a hard look at the leggy youth, legs curled underneath him, tousled head resting in the cradle of the chair's wing, watching the flames with his eyes full of endings. Unacceptable. Severus flexed his fingers, made the joints crack, and replied. "Nevertheless. I require assistance, and your hands are unoccupied. Your performance in last year's Potions class proved you capable of following instruction when you chose to, ergo you will come and assist me."

He turned on his heel then, and returned to his worktable without checking whether Potter would follow or not. Let it not be said that he had not made the effort, at least. Surprisingly though, the boy did come in straight away; quietly, without fanfare or tantrum, but moving slowly, as though he pushed his limbs through deep water.

Severus shoved the hellebore and the knife across the board at him. "Even slices," he said, and pointed at the few he had already done. "Exactly so thick, and yes, it matters." Then he whirled away, and fetched down his sealed, warded jar of dried Carrion Scarabs, their limbs making faint ticking noises against the glass as he poured three into his mortar for grinding. He had two left. Enough to send him to Azkaban if they were found, but then that was the case with most of the ingredients, not to mention books, that Severus kept down here. Precious and dark and -- as the war loomed closer to every home, and people hid behind superstition and cheap morality rather than facing the complexities of reality -- getting harder and harder to find.

The knife made a soft click as Potter set it aside, and Severus looked up. But the criticism died on his tongue; the slices were perfect, every one. With a grunt, he swept the hellebore aside and pushed over the next ingredient, barking his instructions in clear, short sentences, and then watching carefully while Potter followed them exactly. The boy's face showed no flicker of resentment, no petulance, no impatience with his task. In fact, it showed no living emotion whatsoever. His movements were spare, languid and unhurried, and his eyes, unshielded by those ridiculous glasses now that Severus had taken the opportunity to correct his myopia, were now calm, blank, and glassy as he worked.

Severus longed to prick that calm, to burst it like a soap bubble. It wasn't spitefulness to stir the boy up a bit, after all, and it most certainly was not envy. The curse needed no help from a teenager's natural inclination to self-obsession and despair. Potter had important work to do, little as Severus liked to admit it, and allowing the boy to sink into ennui would be nothing short of disaster.

"I wonder," he said, "can you actually realize the import of what you have asked me to do, Potter?" There. That, at least, brought a glint of thought to those green eyes. "Stoppering your death is not a salvation, you know. At best, it is a reprieve. Enough of those." He waved his hand at the pile of parsed, husked belladonna seeds. "Put them into the mercury now." As before, Potter's obedience came without comment, and as before, Severus loathed it.

"Toad's eyes," he snapped. "And take care you don't burst them."

"How many?" Well, two words were better than dumb silence.

"Five," Severus said, and slapped the box down in front of him. "It is not... impossible that destroying the Dark Lord may end the curse he put upon his horcruxes, however it is equally likely that it will not. The breaking of this curse, if it proves possible at all, will be an endeavor entirely separate from what we do here today."

One black eye fell loose with a plop, and Potter flipped the dead toad over as though he were not listening at all. Severus clenched his teeth and tried again. "Do you hear me, boy? This will not save you! If you are taking this step out of cowardice," he couldn't help snarling the word, "then you will be sorely disappointed. What I offer is neither immortality, nor invulnerability, it is merely a perpetuation of the time you have left before you die." He set the stirring rod aside, lest it betray how his hands trembled. "The reprieve itself is finite."

"I know," the boy said, looking up at last as he set the eyeless toad aside and reached for another. "I don't expect I'll live much past Voldemort anyhow." The name made Severus' mark twitch, but if Potter noticed his wince, he gave no indication. "It'll be fine."

"Unacceptable!" Severus banged his palm onto the worktop, and at last Potter jumped awake. "I will not waste my time if you intend to simply give up, roll over, and die! You must fight this curse, Potter, harder than you have fought anything in your wretched life, or the time I gain you will slip between your fingers like sand!" He reached across the table, caught Potter's shirtfront, and used it to haul the brat close. "I will not have it! I will not do this again only to watch you succumb without a struggle, do you hear me?"

Potter blinked twice, frowned as though puzzled. "Why?" he asked, as though he truly did not know.

Rage filled up Severus' mouth, but for once it did not come with words. He could not only stare, appalled and furious, at the boy who was not precisely a boy, nor had ever properly been just a boy. Poppy's healing magic and Severus' potions had removed from his face all evidence of the disaster in the Chamber of Secrets, reshaping his cheek and brow to their natural, delicate architecture, smoothing the skin over them to flawless velvet without so much as a suggestion of scarring. Their work had been perfect, and yet somehow they had failed. Failed in a way that neither magic nor logic could answer for. Potter's face was not that of a boy, nor yet that of a tragic angel, nor of a martyr, nor of a hero. It was a face too hard for boyishness, too beautiful for manliness, too timeless for youth, too weary for wisdom; he could have been an Old God's feral child, but for the yawning gulf where his innocence ought to have been.

The first time he had seen eyes like that, Severus had damned them to his mother's face. And within a month, she had closed them forever. The second time he saw such eyes, he'd damned himself so deeply that he was able to curse his only friend off the edge of the Astronomy Tower. This time, Severus found he had no condemnation left; only an inexplicable sorrow, and a weariness to his very bones.

It would not do; not with Potter so hollow himself. He took a deep breath and dug deep into his memories of their occlumency lessons, Potter's petulance at Grimmauld Place, his insolence in classes, his sullenness in detentions, his recklessness with Severus' old potions book. Yes. There at last was the spark he needed.

"I am no longer your teacher, Potter, thank all that is merciful in the world," Severus said, rounding the table to catch the boy's arm and frog march him back to the bedroom. "If you want that answer, I suggest you make some effort to discover whether your mother left you her brains as well as her eyes, and work it out yourself!" Then he thrust Potter down onto the bed, whirled on his heel, and went back to work, confident that his head of steam would carry him through the rest of the brewing with ire to spare.

It did not, of course; once he resumed the familiar routines of his meditation, Severus' anger dissipated like frost in warm air. But the confrontation had grounded something within him, something he neither needed, nor wished to examine with more care. He missed no step in his brewing, wasted not a grain of his dwindling materials, counted precisely each stir, each minute, and as usual, produced exactly the desired result. A simple pleasure in the face of what was yet to come, but Severus was glad of it all the same.

Reaching into the hidden pocket of his robes, he found the thimble-sized chalice and restored it to its proper dimensions. He had taken to carrying it on his person at all times the year before, when neither he, nor Albus had been able to guess when it might be needed. He'd had it with him on that last, horrible night, when Potter had chased him from the grounds, screaming hatred and half-formed curses with every breath. He might have got rid of it, he supposed. He might have sold it to Borgin and Burkes, for it was certainly as dark and as rare as anything in their shop. Or he might have just melted the damned thing down, ground the onyx cabochons down for potions, and tried to forget how it had failed him. How he had failed Albus. But he hadn't. He'd kept it, and bloody lucky for Potter that he had, as well.

Severus poured a precise measure of the draught into the leaden chalice, and carried it out with level, measured strides that tipped not so much as a drop over the edge.

Potter, curled once more into the old reading chair, looked up from studying the fire. This time though, his eyes were focused, cleared of their drifting apathy, and suffused with a grim certainty as he stood. Merlin help them all.

Severus offered the chalice, but did not release it when Potter's fingers curled around. Instead, he tangled their fingers together, and swept his wand from his sleeve. Potter jerked back, but wisely froze when the wand pressed its silent warning into the soft vee of his throat where the shirt pulled aside. The boy swallowed, and his eyes darkened with the beginnings of anger as Severus held his gaze.

"Do you trust me, Potter?" he asked. The boy flinched again, as though the question stirred a memory which pained him. He flicked his glance away, but Severus gave the wand a little push. "Do you trust me with your life?"

He pressed his lips, eyes narrowed and wary, and Severus smiled grimly. "No half measures here, Potter," he said. "Either you make the decision right now that you will entrust me with your life, your future, or else I pour this into the fire and send you back home, and you use the time you have left to try to find another option." An option that neither Severus, nor Albus had been able to discover in a full year's worth of desperate research. An option that, toward the end, Severus had begun to believe might not even exist. An option which now, he had dredge his faith for once more -- to hope enough for the both of them, somehow.

Potter's eyes narrowed speculatively, and he looked at their hands, entwined about the goblet. "I know what the curse is doing to me," he said at length. "I can feel everything speeding up, while I'm just slowing down, like treacle in the cold. I can feel myself drifting away... not caring." He swallowed, and once more sought Severus' gaze. "I need to care. It's the only way I can do it. And I have to do it."

Severus felt his lip curl. "A martyr to the end, I see," he said.

Oddly, Potter smiled at that, and shrugged. "If you like."

"I do not."

"Oh." And he shrugged again, and sighed. "I hate you for so many reasons, Snape," he said after a considering pause. "I reckon you're the last person in the world I'll stop caring about, even if you betray me to Voldemort in the end." A little laugh then, dry and utterly without humour. "At least I'll have the hatred to hold on to."

Severus closed his eyes, took a calming breath. "Do you trust me with your life, Potter," he asked through his teeth. "Answer the God-damned question!"

But Potter shook his head. "No, I don't. Not with my life. But I reckon I can trust you with my death." Severus scowled, but Potter only smirked in reply, and patted his wand hand. "Don't worry, Professor," he said. "I'll be out of your life soon enough."

Severus let him take the goblet, and stood by, dry eyed, to watch him drink.

Surprise crossed Potter's features at his first swallow. He stopped, licking his lips. "Sweet?"

"Life usually is," Severus nodded, "to the dying. Drink it all."

And Potter did, barely finishing the last drops before the cramps hit him. The goblet fell from his fingers as he clutched at his belly, and Severus had to lunge to stop the boy from crumpling to the stone floor. Easing Potter down, Severus held him still as the tremours coursed through his slight, wiry body. "What..." he gasped, clutched at Severus' hands. "What's happening?"

"It's working." The words were dust on Severus' tongue.

"It hurts!"

"Yes," Severus said. "Living does."

~* August 31st, 1997 *~

"Look," Harry cried at last, slamming his fork down and pushing back his chair. "I've told you all I know, all right?" Hermione opened her mouth, but he gave her no time to speak. "I woke up in Charing Cross Station that Friday morning with my wand in my hand and a five pound note in my pocket." He ticked off the points on his fingers. "I came back here to Grimmauld Place. I had a shower. I firecalled Hogwarts and told Headmistress McGonagall that I was home. And since that day, over and over again, I have had to tell you, her, Remus, Shacklebolt, Ron's parents, Hagrid, Tonks, and everybody else who's come to poke at me that I DON'T REMEMBER ANYTHING ELSE!"

"Harry," Hermione said, her eyes full of reproach. "It's not as if we-"

"I don't remember where I was," he said through his teeth, furious with her bulldog persistence, with Ron's watchful silence, with his own agitation, and above all, with bloody, buggering Snape for putting him, in a position where he had no choice but to lie to the friends he wanted most to trust. But Harry knew, as surely as he knew his own name that he did not have the time it would take to make them accept what he had allowed ... well...asked Snape to do to him. And from the moment he'd swallowed his own death, from the moment his stomach had twisted in knots, and Snape's wiry arms had anchored him to his own bones, Harry had not stopped feeling the passage of time.

Idle seconds itched, wasted minutes burned. Having to say the same thing again and again, even after he'd stopped thinking of new ways to say it just made Harry want to scream. "I don't remember who healed me," he growled the lie at his two dearest friends. "I don't have any idea how they did it, and what's more, I don't actually CARE! It really doesn't matter to me, except that it means I'm not in hospital anymore, so I can get back to finding the rest of Voldemort's horcruxes!"

"How can you say that?" Hermione shot to her feet, hardly noticing as the ever-present stack of books beside her plate toppled over. "How can you say it doesn't matter? Harry, anything could have happened to you while you were gone! All the scanning spells say there's something different about you now, and none of them can say what! You were nearly dead when Hagrid got to you!"

He looked away as she dashed furious tears from her eyes. "Yeah. Nearly. But don't you think something like that would change me just a bit?"

"It hasn't before," Ron put in, his voice strangely quiet. "Not like this, anyhow."

"Well maybe this time I fucking grew up a little!" Harry pulled off his useless glasses and pinched at the bridge of his nose. "Fuck. Sorry. I'm just really tired of talking about this when we have more important things to be thinking about."

"But Harry," Hermione came around the table, reaching out for his arm. "What if this disappearance of yours turns out later on to be something we should have prepared against?"

"And what if obsessing about this means we don't pay attention to something really important until it's too late to stop it?" he asked in return, quelling the urge to shake off her touch. "Remember first year, when we were all busy watching Snape, and we missed that it was Quirrell who was after the Stone all along?"

"Remember your dreams in fifth year?" Ron asked, finally getting up himself. "You didn't want to pay attention to those either." And Sirius got killed because of it. He didn't add the last part, but all three of them heard it clearly.

Harry looked at his fist, held tight against his side, and concentrated on uncurling his fingers one by one. "Look," he said, only when he'd done it. "I know neither one of you wanted to leave me alone in the Chamber. I remember how hard I had to argue to get you to go, and I can see how having me disappear from the infirmary after that would scare you. Maybe even make you feel guilty. I know it only means that you care about me, and you want to stand by me, like proper best friends should do." He covered Hermione's hand with his, as much to stop his nervous tremble as hers. "That matters to me, because I do want you standing by me, and I do want to rely on your help. But right now, what you're doing is. Not. Helpful."

"What we're doing?" Hermione cried, "Caring about you?"

Harry shook his head. "Nagging me. Getting distracted from the horcruxes, and getting angry at me when I try to get us back on track."

"That's the problem, Harry! Since you've come back, it's like that's all you think about." Ron threw up his hands. "There's more to life than horcruxes, mate!"

"No, Ron," Harry answered, holding his friend's gaze and trying to push home the truth with every ounce of his will. "There really isn't. Not until the horcruxes are gone, and Voldemort with them. I'm sorry, but I need to focus on them, and I need for you -- both of you -- to let me!"

They looked at each other for a silent moment, as though discussing his request through the mysterious silence of those-who-have-snogged-each-other. It was uncomfortably like actually watching them snog, and to stop himself fidgeting, Harry took the opportunity to check his watch. Then he swore. Quarter till eleven. Snape would be there soon!

"What is it, Harry?"

He gave Hermione a rueful grin. "It's nearly curfew. McGonagall's going to give me a detention if I make you late on the first night of classes. I bet she'll come here to make me serve them, too."

Ron laughed, but caught his school robe off the wall hook as he headed out of the kitchen. "Nah. She'll make you serve them on a broom during Quidditch games, is what. Number of new players we've got this year, Gryffindor's gonna get murdered!"

Following after, Hermione snorted. "She ought to make you come to the Great Hall for dinner, and be sure you actually eat something instead of just moving your food around your plate." Harry rolled his eyes, and as expected, she rose to the bait. "No, it's not just nagging, and you know it. You're really starting to upset Dobby, and that's just not fair to him."

"Yes, mum," he said, turning on the library threshold to accept a hug from her. "I'll try, I promise."

"We'll bring you something from Honeydukes on Saturday," Ron offered, steering Hermione toward the fireplace, and digging one-handed in the floo jar. "They've got some brilliant new caramels. You'll love them. See ya! Gryffindor Tower!" He threw the powder in, while she was still tutting, and dragged the both of them into the spinning green flames.

Harry took a deep breath as the fire gulped, fizzled, and spun them away. It was a guilty relief to be alone at last, to be able to relax the ferocious grip he'd been keeping on his focus so that he wouldn't drift away where his friends could see him. He closed his eyes, let the air and the wire-strung tension leak away, hands braced on the reading chair's back, so he needn't worry about balance.

He didn't feel sleepy as such, just... quiet, calm, and very, very still. No thoughts, no emotions, not even idle musings in the back of his brain as he stood there and just breathed, in and out again. This must have been what Snape meant, back in fifth year when he kept telling Harry to 'clear his mind'. He'd been utter pants at explaining it...

Breathe in... that had been funny, hadn't it?

Breathe out... Perhaps a little.

There was a rushing sound, light flaring red through his closed eyelids.

Breathe in... He ought to look...

"Potter, I told you to be sure you were alone before eleven! The timing of the dosage is absolutely critical, you idiot! What did you mean to prove by keeping me waiting so long?" Oh. Only Snape, then. Breathe out...No need. "Potter, answer me!"

Breathe in... Answer him... answer him... answer...

"Bugger," Snape growled. His boot heels rang across the floor. Harry distantly felt himself caught by the shoulder, whipped around, and bent backward. One wiry arm supported his shoulders while a hand pried his lips apart and thrust something cold between them. His mouth filled up with cold/heat and for a moment, even the breathing stopped.

In the hallway, the grandfather clock began to toll. One... two... three... four...

"Swallow it, boy," Snape growled in his ear, closing Harry's mouth, and stroking his throat so gently that he felt the liquid go down before he even realized he had obeyed. "Good."

Eight... nine... Harry's eyes flew wide as the draught hit him -- a dash of ice water over the head, with a firewhiskey kick in the belly. He screamed, knees buckling, hands catching at Snape's robes as pure, refined life jolted through his body.

But Snape didn't let him fall. His grip on the back of Harry's neck was a painful comfort, the weight of his palm on Harry's belly both a ground, and a torment as Harry's cock hardened like iron in his pants. Mortified, terrified, Harry could only close his eyes, and try not to rut against the tight bind of his own flies while he waited for the storm to pass. It tasted sweet, like before, and the pain was like he'd remembered, but nothing like this had happened!

"Relax, boy," the dark voice murmured in his ear, as though Snape had been somehow reading his thoughts. "It means nothing more than that you are still alive." Pushing him upright again, Snape held Harry steady until his legs agreed to take on the burden. "I'll assume you'd like a moment alone?"

Harry groaned and put his hands over his face. But the floor did not open wide and swallow him down, nor did Snape curl up and die right there on the library carpet, nor did the straining, painful erection disappear. At last, he mustered every scrap of dignity he could, turned around, and walked, stiff-legged, to the toilet.

If Snape laughed, at least he did it silently.

Inside, Harry shut the door, turned the taps on full, and wasted no time in taking himself in hand. He leaned against the door and tugged at his prick, too humiliated and desperate to even spit into his hand first. He just wanted... he wanted... There -- Ah! He bit his lip, threw back his head, and gave himself over into the bursting relief. No thoughts, no fantasies, no images conjured up behind his eyes to help him take a healthy interest, this. No, it was purely animal, hot and hungry, and so bloody hard Harry thought he might fall over with the force of it.

It took him longer to catch his breath than it had to come.

"Bloody hell," he grumbled, looking up at his reflection as he washed the thick, sticky spunk from his fingers. His lip was swollen where he'd bitten, his cheeks were flushed, his hair even more tousled than usual. "Means nothing," he told himself. "Just means you're alive..."

"You keep telling yourself that, dear," the mirror smirked.

Harry groaned. "I'll bet Dumbledore didn't have to deal with that when HE did this!" Then he shuddered, and did up his trousers as quickly as he could. "Right. NOT thinking about Dumbledore wanking. Definitely not!" A warning glance at the mirror. "Not. A. Word..." His reflection mimed locking its lips and chucking the key down the bog. Harry slapped off the taps, and went back to face Snape while he could still bear the thought.

He found the man just where he'd feared he might -- standing over the library desk, looking down at the maps and books he, Ron, and Hermione had left out when Dobby called them in for dinner.

"Hey!" He stormed across the room, and pointedly started slapping the books shut. "That's private!"

Snape made a rude noise in his throat. "Oh, do forgive me, Potter. I know how highly you respect all matters of privacy, after all-"

"No, stop it," he insisted, rolling the maps up and shrinking them to fit into the cigar box. "This isn't some stupid contest, Snape, I mean it. I can't let you see those kinds of things, and you bloody well know why!"

Black eyes narrowed, blazing. "Let us pretend I know no such thing, shall we?" He folded his arms over his breast, and towered. "Explain."

Harry rolled his eyes. "You can't know what we're looking for, or where we're going next, not while you're taking his orders!" Snape's lips pressed, but Harry cut off the tirade with a slash of his hand. "Look, even assuming you didn't intend to betray us, he can't drag it out of your mind if you don't know it, right?"

The glare didn't waver. "As I recall, Potter," Snape said after a long glower, "it is your occlumency you ought to be worrying about, not mine." And then, as he'd half expected it would, that glare turned smug, as if Snape were remembering Harry on his knees.

And Harry, who hadn't ever really forgot it himself, fetched up a gloating smile of his own, and picked up the last book on the desk. It was a slim volume, just the right size to be held between Harry's thumb and his first two fingers, which he took care to spread wide as he brandished it in Snape's face. Wouldn't want to obscure the title, after all.

Snape's fingers twitched. "Where the devil did you get a copy of Kokoro no Mamogaru?" Confused, Harry turned the book, and read the title again, but it looked like Guardian of the Mind, just as it had when he'd first found it. "And it's under a translation charm as well, isn't it?" Snape's voice rose in outrage, and the monster in Harry's chest just purred.

"Reckon so," Harry shrugged, not bothering to hide his grin. "You know, one thing the Blacks did right was their library. I found it over here, with all the rest of the dark mind magic references," he said as he tucked the book into place. "I guess you don't have a copy of your own, then?"

Snape's face twisted with loathing, but for once, he decided not to say whatever poisonous retort he had sprouting on his tongue. Instead, he choked it down, boosted his chin, and swirled out of the library in a flapping black dudgeon.

"Where are you going then?" Harry called after him. No harm being polite, after all, was there?

"Tea," the reply came back, and Harry had to smile. Apparently he wasn't the only one who had missed Grimmauld Place's ever-full, ever-fresh tea tin while at Shape's place. He used a quick locking spell on the desk drawers, shrunk and pocketed the cigar box for good measure, then followed along to the kitchen.

He winced as he came to the door, however -- the sink was full, and several of the cooking pots were industriously washing themselves, but Dobby remained out of sight, having pointedly left the plates on the table for last, in protest of how little Harry had eaten. And to make matters worse, now Snape was looming there glaring at Harry's still-full plate as though it had insulted his mother.

"Elf," he snapped at the scrubbing sink-full of pans. "Tell me what Potter has been eating?"

The washing stopped, and the kitchen was silent for a long moment. Harry closed his eyes with an inward groan. Maybe Dobby would just keep quiet?

But no, of course Snape had to push buttons. "Clearly it isn't much," he drawled, "So what exactly have you been trying to feed him?"

Dobby pinged into view, ears back, eyes wide, quivering with nervous outrage. "Dobby cooks all Harry Potter's favorites for him," the elf squeaked. "Dobby knows what Harry Potter likes to eat!"

Harry could just see Snape's lip curl. "Clearly, Dobby does not, or else Harry Potter would actually be eating."

"Oi," Harry cried, rushing into the kitchen and grabbing for the chip-pan. "Stop it! Dobby, put it down right now! Stop hitting yourself! And you," he turned on Snape, and brandished the frothy pan at him, "You leave him alone! It's not Dobby's fault!"

All eyebrow, Snape waved a hand at Harry's plate. "Then explain this."

"I just..." Harry sighed, and slung the pan back into the sink. "It's not that I'm not hungry. I'm always hungry..." He shrugged, and stuck his hands in his pockets. "It's just that nothing tastes good since... you know."

Snape rolled his eyes. "Potter, surely you did not imagine you students were served food and sweets in those quantities because of the Headmaster's indulgent nature! Your magic must come from somewhere, and sugary food is the first, best source of fuel you..." his eyes narrowed, and suddenly he had his wand in hand and pointed at Harry's grumbling belly. "Wretched brat, don't you dare vomit that potion back up," he snarled.

Harry swallowed hard, and reached for a glass of water. "Then quit talking about sweets," he managed, once the hot, acid sick had retreated from his throat. "I can't even stand the smell of... that stuff any more." Dobby burst into noisy tears against his leg, knocking all his hats off at once. Harry gingerly patted his wrinkled head. "Sorry Dobby. Look, it's not your fault, okay?"

"Elf," Snape cut in, banishing the remains of Harry's dinner, along with all the rest of the food on the table. "Go and procure a small, very fresh fillet of beef. Cook it blue-rare, with absolutely no salt, and bring it at once."

Dobby raised his head from Harry's thigh, and gave Snape a watery glare. "Harry Potter likes beef cooked well!"

"Just do as I have said!" Harry cleared his throat, folded his arms over his chest, and glared, and Snape rolled his eyes. "Please." Dobby blinked, then looked up at Harry for confirmation. He nodded, not from any hope of it working, but because he didn't think he could take any more tears, and Dobby's ears pricked up at once.

"No salt," Snape barked when the elf disappeared. "Remember that!"

"This is because of the curse, isn't it?" Harry asked after a long, uncomfortable moment of silence. "Because of what it's... how it's changing me? Dumbledore didn't..." he shook his head, tried again. "I mean, he still..." he tried a sip of water. "The lemon drops and all, you know?"

Snape held Harry's gaze levelly, and nodded. "It is the most likely conclusion to make, yes."

Somehow hearing it put so plainly almost made him feel better. "So, what now?" he gamely forced a grin. "I've got to eat brains, do I?"

That steely gaze didn't even begin to smile as Snape came around the table, sliding his wand back into his sleeve. "Potter, you have got to eat. Full stop," he said, leaning around Harry to reach down the tea tin and china teapot. "Finding what you can eat is a simple process of elimination. If you find yourself revolted by the details, then I suggest you leave the matter to your elf and I, and just make an effort to eat what is put in front of you without indulging your damnable curiousity."

"No," Harry mused, watching the dark leaves pour off the spoon. "I mean, I guess it's not all that different to eating sausages, is it?" Snape did that eyebrow thing again, and Harry shrugged. "You know, all the bits that nobody but a Scot would eat whole?" He couldn't fight down a shudder at the thought. "Maybe I should just stick with sausages though. It'd have to be easier to eat those kinds of things ground up..."

The noise Snape made might almost have been a laugh. "Certainly an option, so long as certain spices are not included," he said, pouring hot water over the tealeaves. "Although you might not enjoy the texture of undercooked sausage much." Harry took another sip of water to quell the nausea that idea brought on, and Snape definitely snickered at him then. The bastard. "In the meantime," he went on, setting the teapot aside, and turning to face Harry, "I shall send back some specialized nutritive potions by owl. The curse is depleting your reserves too much already, and you cannot afford the luxury of squeamishness."

If he'd moved faster, if his eyes had glanced away, if his face had shown one trace of the hatred Harry was used to seeing there, Harry would have ducked, backed up, batted Snape's reaching hands away before they could take hold of his head, and tip it up to the light. As it was, Harry bunched his fists tight, and held his breath as that dark, intense stare examined him.

"Perhaps a mild soporific as well," Snape said, but not as though he was talking to Harry. "There is more than want of food at work here... and sleep deprivation will make the drain faster."

Harry could feel Snape's thumb resting just by the hinge of his jaw, where his pulse pushed against it. His fingers were strangely soft for as strong as Harry knew Snape's hands to be. They felt hot against his scalp and neck, and Harry took a nervy, shaky breath as he felt an appalling jolt of interest below his waist.

Just the potion. Means nothing. Christ, don't let him look down.

"Are you going to check my teeth too?" he asked when he could stand no more.

Snape's mouth twitched, but he didn't let go. "I am considering it," he said, his breath stirring Harry's fringe. "Why, is there a reason I ought to do?" Harry glared, but before he could push away, Dobby reappeared with a ping, and a wafting scent of hot, bloody meat.

The smell of the food hit him like a storm. His mouth filled up with it, his eyes stretched wide, his very skin quivered with want. He felt a tugging at his hands, and realized distantly that he'd wound his fists into Snape's robes. Embarrassed, Harry let go and backed up, smoothing his damp palms on his thighs.

"Go on, then," Snape huffed, but not as though it really bothered him.

Harry wasn't quite able to stop himself lunging for the table, but as soon as the first bite hit his tongue, he no longer cared a thing for dignity. Snape could sneer about his table manners all he wanted, so long as he didn't get in Harry's way!

But he only snorted, and left the kitchen as behind Harry's chair, Dobby burst into joyful tears.

~* September 14th, 1997 *~

He stood nose to nose with Potter, fists wound tight in the brat's shirtfront, wand an unyielding knot between fabric and fingers. His heart and head pounded too hard for even the shadow of a spell to form in his mind, his breath was a storming fury through clenched teeth. Severus teetered on the far edge of a very bad night, stared Potter in his too green eyes, and waited to see which of them would fall first.

"You," Potter managed to force words through his teeth, not yielding an inch despite the thrumming tension under Severus' hands, "are really, really starting to piss me off, Snape."

Only starting? They had been screaming insults at each other almost from the moment Potter had swallowed the bloody draught! And worse yet, they were squabbling over shoes, mud, and bloody carpets, while with every word the idiot said, Severus could read a fruitless two weeks' search for the Dark Lord's horcruxes between! How dare he blame Severus for the fight?

But before he could form the words, Potter flexed his fingers loose of Severus' robes, and continued. "Thank you for bringing the draught, but I don't appreciate being your whipping boy now any more than I did when I was in your classes. I don't know what's up your arse tonight, but-"

Severus gave him another shove, massing the impudent wretch back only a step as he snarled. "Up my arse, you-" he gave Potter a shake, pulled him to his toes. "Shall I show you then? Give you a glimpse of how I spent my pleasant evening whilst you were wasting time, and playing with your-"

Potter's brows drew down, and he gave a fierce wriggle, driving the point of his knee into Severus' thigh -- a deliberate miss, but enough to shock loose his grip on Potter's clothes. "AND, since we happen to be in MY house," he went on, planting both hands against Severus' chest as though he meant to shove. "I think YOU probably ought to get the fuck out, before we both take this somewhere it shouldn't go!"

Oh, it should go there, Severus thought through a haze of red. He caught Potter's wrists, squeezed, felt the bones creak. Let him try and wriggle loose now. Should have gone there years ago. The words wouldn't come. His breath was too thick, filling up his throat, filling up his mouth, leaving no room for anything but --

"You want to know why I don't trust you with my life?" Potter hissed, not flinching. Then he broke their stare, looked down at his own trapped wrists, and back up. "Well there you go, Sir."

It was like taking a bucket of cold water over the head, or a kick to the belly. It was more than a bad day he was teetering on, Severus realized; it was the Rubicon, and what swam in its depths, he was unprepared to discover. Especially at the expense of his draught's power to save Potter, himself, and the Wizarding world from Voldemort's notions of social improvement.

Severus closed his eyes, gentled his grip, but did not release it. He took a deep breath, and then another, and a third as well before he allowed himself to answer. "It... may have been an error in judgment to come here after leaving the Dark Lord's assembly of his followers," he managed.

"But... the potion. You said I had to take it every two weeks, exactly."

"It could have been administered by your elf, I suppose," Severus said, releasing Potter's wrists at last. "Or Granger. Even Weasley, if your faith in them remains unshaken-"

"No."

Severus blinked, as much taken aback by the lack of rage as by the denial itself. Potter raked his hands through his hair and turned to sling himself onto the library sofa with a sigh. "They can't do it -- they can't know about it. You know they can't. They'd stop everything to try and find a way to break the curse. They'd never let me do what I..." the green eyes blinked up to meet his gaze. For a second, Severus thought he saw a plea in them.

But only for a second. "Look, would it help to talk about it? The meeting, I mean?" Severus stared at him, and the idiot shrugged, and nodded toward a chair. "Well, if you're going to unload on me anyhow, I'd like to know what's really bothering you, instead of fighting about your muddy damned shoes."

Unaccountably, Severus found himself sitting down. But he did not smile, nor did he feel the urge for long, once he began. "The Dark Lord is going mad." He shook his head when Potter's lips quirked upward. "No, not in the way he has always been; not cunning, not the madness of genius and guile. He... his fears become certainties, his whims, obsessions. And his taste for suffering..." Severus could not quell the tremble which came with those scream-tinted memories. "It is the madness of a rabid dog with him now; as like to savage friend as foe."

"Is it the horcruxes?" Potter asked, though his voice hinted that he knew already.

Severus nodded, and scrubbed at his face. "He has lost forever, pieces of himself which were never meant to be detached. On some level, he must surely sense his soul's destruction. He is so far from human now, one can hardly perceive what once he was."

"Then why? Why the hell do the Death Eaters stay with him if it's that bad?" Potter proved his ignorance with that one, ingenuous question. "Why the hell do you stay?"

"He who would ride the tiger may never dismount," Severus said by way of an answer. He was weary now, in the wake of their earlier screaming match, and tired of the way his hands trembled, and his right eye twitched at the corner. He rolled his head back against the chair, and stared at the coffered ceiling while Potter chewed the thought down.

"So nobody wants to be first," he said at last. "And I'll bet he's good at turning people against each other, too. I'll bet you Death Eaters don't trust each other any more than you trust him, do you?"

Severus let go a mirthless laugh. "So you can be taught. Imagine."

"Yeah, I was surprised myself," Potter shot back. "But apparently when I get a teacher who's any good, and not just out to humiliate me, I do pretty well." Severus shot the brat a glare, but found Potter staring at the ceiling too. "I don't suppose you could arrange for him to kill Bellatrix Lestrange, could you?" he mused, settling deeper against the sofa. "Maybe with some torture first? Oh, and Wormtail too, while you're at it."

Severus snorted, and dropped his head back himself. Between Bellatrix' graceless attempts to curry his favour, and Wormtail's sly sniffing after his heels, the suggestion did have merit. Still... "Settle your blood grudges yourself, you hypocrite. I am not your assassin." Albus Dumbledore's assassin perhaps, but not yours... He shut that thought away, and turned the tables. "Quid pro quo, Potter."

"What?"

"Tit for tat. Your turn. What had you so unreasonable earlier? Other than your lamentable housekeeping and stain removal skills?"

There was a long silence, and then a gusting sigh. "There was an Order meeting yesterday," Potter said to the ceiling. "Remus was here."

"And?"

"I had to lie to him. Again."

"Well yes, I daresay he would have enough experience to find elements of the curse familiar," Severus said, sitting up straight and stretching his still-muddy boots toward the fire. "Being a dark creature himself surely must lend itself to recognizing a fellow curse-bearer." Potter stayed as he had been, staring upward, and pressing his lips closed. "Though, of course, he could not have guessed at the true nature of your curse," Severus mused, watching the boy's face. "I rather doubt he has ever seen a living man beset by the Inferium curse, after all.

There. That brought the loyal twit upright again. "Why wouldn't he? He was a really good teacher, you know."

"If Lupin had been as good a teacher as you claim," Severus pricked that righteous anger with the truth and a smirk, "you would have known that he could never have seen a curse-reaction like yours, because Inferium is not supposed to work on the living.

"But Dung was, and Mrs. Malfoy too, you said --"

Severus waved him silent. "Yes, yes, and yes. But this effect is an aberration. Just as the living do not manifest as ghosts, the living are not supposed to become inferi."

Then a strange, still expression settled over Potter's face. His lips neither twisted, compressed, nor chewed, his eyes sliding into focus on eternity as he murmured. "And neither can live while the other survives..."

Bloody hell. Not more prophesy! Eileen's portrait had been smug beyond the telling of it, ever since she'd met the other half of her insane fancies face to canvas. Severus had begun to give serious thought to the question of whether wizarding paintings could be obliviated, but he didn't hold out much hope for it. He toed Potter's knee to shake him out of it. "What are you wittering on about?" he growled when the boy looked over.

Still looking a bit queer, Potter only shook his head. "It's nothing. Look, what should I tell Remus about it?" he deftly dodged the question. "He's sure to ask again the next time he sees me."

"What did you tell him yesterday?"

Potter shrugged, and stared at his shoes as though they were fascinating. "Stress, insomnia, nothing specific, really."

Severus raised an eyebrow. "And he believed you?"

"Not really. But I don't think he wanted to push."

Severus let his lip curl at that. "Of course he didn't. He never could manage to do anything that might make someone uncomfortable, after all..."

Potter gave him a filthy look, and thrust himself out of the low sofa. "Yeah, as if you'd act any different if it was Draco fucking Malfoy turning into a fucking zombie under your nose!"

Then he turned on his heel and stormed from the room, slamming the door so hard it rattled the pictures on the walls.

"There is a difference, you ignorant wretch!" Severus shouted after him. As he'd expected, the pounding on the stairs ceased, and gave over to a brittle, waiting silence.

He schooled the smirk from his face before following Potter out into the hallway, but only out of deference to the Potion's need for harmony. The boy stood on the landing, stiff-backed, staring at the photographs that ranged up the ascending wall. His fists were knotted and trembling at his sides. "Is there?" he asked in a colourless voice. "Guess I hadn't noticed."

"You idiot," Severus put on his lecturing voice and braced his arms over his chest. "The two are markedly different. It's no wonder you've-"

"No, really," Potter cut him off without looking back, though his voice turned bright and sarcastic. "We're just the same, when it comes to you; both just cardboard cutouts, standing in for our fathers. Only difference is that you wish you could have killed my father yourself, while his, you just wish you could have fucked."

Severus hissed a breath through his nose, unsure where his outrage should begin. Something in Potter's bearing stopped him though, something was teetering on an edge in that unruly head, some door opening that had been shut before this. With an instinct born of long years' handling of delicate, volatile potions, Severus chose his approach.

"I did, actually," he said. Potter whirled, eyes wide and blazing, his wand rising as Severus went on, unmoved. "Fuck Lucius Malfoy, that is."

Potter froze, blinking as the words sank in. "You..."

Severus nodded, and refused to look at all discomfited. "Strategy, Potter. I required strong allies to defend me against strong enemies. Being valuable to Malfoy was a good way to gain that."

"Then you didn't really..."

Severus smirked. The boy had actually been about to admit he was capable of love? Miracles abounded, but he managed not to laugh. "Regardless of any feelings which I might have had, Mr. Potter, it did not take long to realize that Lucius Malfoy was too dangerous not to keep close by. Tell me, do you know what a sociopath is?"

Potter tilted his head, but Severus had an odd feeling the boy wasn't considering the question at all. "A sadistic bastard who doesn't care who he hurts, so long as he gets his own way?" He descended a step at that. "A prick who was born without a conscience or a shred of decency?" Another step, his face coming into the light now, so his eyes gleamed dangerously. "A sick fucking son-of-a-bitch who thinks its funny to use a little girl as his weapon, almost get her killed doing it, and not even care?"

Ah. So they came to it at last. Severus nodded, and uncrossed his arms. "So you had a visit from Miss Ginevra then." It was not a question, and he did not bother to pretend it was. "I take it the Headmistress' allowances for weekend visits have extended to the girl as well?"

A muscle jumped in Potter's jaw, and he looked down, silent for a long time. "Ron and Hermione snuck her out." His voice had gone flat again. "They wanted to surprise me. Cheer me up." Severus waited for the rest, but he didn't have to for long. "It was... awful. She couldn't bear to look at me, let alone come near, and-"

Severus hissed alarm, storming up the steps to catch Potter's arm in a crushing grip. "You told her? You bloody idiot!"

"I didn't have to." Potter said, unresisting. "It was like... like she already knew. Like she could sense it on me." A shudder coursed through him, and the boy turned his face to the shadows again. "She... she told me I felt different to her. She said I felt like ... She said-"

"Potter," Severus gave his arm a shake, just enough to center him, to pull him up from his spiral. "She had prolonged contact with Tom Riddle's diary, and it nearly killed her. She could no more have emerged from that unchanged, than could you after the cup and locket nearly killed you. Do you not remember me telling you that dark heeds to dark?"

Potter flinched. "No! I'm not-"

Severus gave him another shake. "No, Potter. No more hiding, no more equivocating; you asked me for the potion, and you drank it, and it changed you! I refuse to allow any kindly delusion regarding what that means!" Potter tugged harder, tried to back up the stairs again, but Severus held fast. "You felt hunger for her, didn't you? You wanted her, and not in the way you did before, not in any fumbling teenaged sort of passion. Not this time."

"No!" Potter