Snarry Games :: Loupgarou1750 :: Death and the Open Mind

Title: Death and the Open Mind
Author: loupgarou1750
Team: Snitch
Genre(s): Alive and Kicking (EWE)
Prompt(s): Can You Hear Me?/Last Hope
Rating: NC-17 (barely)
Warning/Kinks: *Het (mild,) underage (Harry/Ginny immediately post-War,) ageplay, caning (fantasy only), language*
Word Count: 44,000 +/-
Summary: Harry's having nightmares, blurting out rude things, causing trauma, generally behaving badly, and thinks he may be going mad.
A/N: As ever, to my beloved Perfica and Team Capitan extraodinaire joanwilder, heartfelt gratitude for their excellent beta work. To perverse_idyll, more heartfelt gratitude for letting me scream and screaming with me, and for moral support above and beyond. Additionally, I owe a debt to Granada Television, the late Jeremy Brett, David Burke, Edward Hardwicke, Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson for keeping me sane during the process. And last, but definitely not least, to the Snarry_games mods, massive thanks for your patience again and your willingness to extend my deadline to the outer limits. The characters in this fic belong to JK Rowling and her various business associates and not to me. Lyrics quoted are from Carrickfergus (trad. music of unknown author), and Like A Prayer (words and music by Madonna and Patrick Leonard)

Death and the Open Mind

MAY

Dark. Then light. Two diamond slivers. Too bright, they slash, pierce, rend, tear. So sharp he screams. Then dark again. Blessed dark. Cold dark. Perfect dark denying even the possibility of light.

Sleep. Then dreams. Blazing emeralds. Dull, amorphous shadows that flicker, fade, reform into a pale, worried face. Fading back into shadows. Into black. Into Dark.

Diamond light. Bloodred pain. Greenglass splinters. Anger. Effort. Agony. Nothing.

And still nothing. And more nothing. And still more. Nothing which is close to peace which is closer to death which is the definition of desire.

Harry wasn't sure when the nightmares had started. He wasn't sure they could properly be called nightmares because he didn't think anything ever happened in them — no monsters, no one died, he wasn't running away, or being hurt. He would wake, unable to remember the specifics of the dreams that left him shaking and disoriented, sometimes terrified, and always feeling lonelier than ever. Nightmares. What other word was there?

Jaw tightening, Ginny responded with, "I know. And no, I'm not going. And no, I'm not going to argue with you again. You weren't here, Harry. You don't know how it was."

"I know. We've been over it and over it and over it. Do you need me to say he was a hero? Yes, absolutely, without a doubt he was a hero. He was also a bastard, responsible for George's ear and... Can we please not go over this again? You go. Pay your respects. I'll be here when you get home."

It was frustrating. Although she was clearly upset, Ginny's tone was so mild, so reasonable, there was nothing Harry could legitimately take offense at, no handle to grab onto that would justify the fight he hungered for. If he tried, if he pushed it, she had the unanswerable tactic of pulling her shirt up and showing him again the whip scars left by one of the Carrows, not that he needed reminding, not that he didn't feel the raw horror of them every time they made love.

Still, he thought she should come to the funeral, if not to show respect for Snape then for him. He needed her.

"He had no choice," Harry tried, unable to let it drop even though he knew it was pointless.

And that's what it's really about, isn't it? Harry thought angrily. It was nothing to do with Snape at all; she was still furious that Harry had gone off with Ron and Hermione, leaving her behind.

"Maybe after some more time has passed...I'm just not ready to forgive and forget. Not yet."

A grey mist crept over Hogwarts' grounds, so thick Harry couldn't see his feet which were wet and cold from walking across the grass. He looked bitterly at the assembled group: McGonagall, Flitwick, Hagrid, and surprisingly Binns – Harry'd never seen him outside the castle and the ghostly professor seemed less substantial than usual, fainter than the mist swirling about their legs – that was it for the professors. Madam Pomfrey was there as well, but no students except himself and Hermione. None but McGonagall and Hagrid from the Order, no one from the Ministry, neither Malfoys nor Weasleys bothered to attend. It was only Snape, after all.

Harry looked at Hermione and mouthed, "Ron?" but she just shrugged and shook her head. After all they'd been through together, Ron's absence felt a greater betrayal than Ginny's. Harry clenched his fists in anger and looked away.

McGonagall and Flitwick took their wands out and then Snape's body came, shrouded in white, floating just above the surface of the fog. A winding sheet encased the body from toes to neck, leaving the sallow face uncovered, a few strands of black hair escaping, exposing more of Snape's unlovely visage than he had ever allowed in life. Even though he knew to expect it, Harry felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. Madam Pomfrey's charm to preserve the body until burial had worked better than he'd expected; cheeks as full as they ever were — which wasn't saying much — and eyes rounded under their lids, Snape looked as if he were only sleeping, as if at any moment his chest would rise and fall and rise again, as if his eyes would open and his lips curl in the all too familiar sneer.

Once more Harry looked angrily at the ridiculously small group that had come to see Snape off, and then back at Snape's face, placid in death as it never had been in life.

This is all, then? After all I've done? They couldn't even give me the respect of showing up?

Harry's anger and sense of loss bewildered him. What was Snape to him, after all? Snape's love for Lily, and the knowledge of what he had sacrificed to bring about Voldemort's downfall, were not enough to explain the sour taste of grief that filled Harry's throat. He stuck his hand in his pocket and rolled around the vial of Snape's memories he'd carried with him. Maybe Ginny was right. Maybe this was nothing more than a weird fixation. Maybe his grief was for all the questions about his mother that would now never be answered. Maybe it was his saving people thing, and the knowledge that he hadn't saved Snape, hadn't even tried.

Snape's small crypt, built of some dull grey stone, appeared mean and cramped sitting in the shadow of Dumbledore's massive white tomb. There had been protests when the spot had been announced. How dare they put the traitor, a Death Eater, next to the man he'd killed? Public outrage was one of the reasons the interment had been delayed so long. Shockingly it had been Professor Trelawney who'd come up with the argument that seemed to shut down the complainers. "For good or ill he was beloved by Albus Dumbledore. Who are we to argue?" In spite of that, Trelawney was not at the funeral.

Harry did not hear the words that accompanied Snape to his rest, refused to speak any of his own. Where's the fairness in this? played over and over in his mind. When they were done, when Snape was forever shut away in his dark crypt, Harry shook off Hermione's consoling hand, walked quickly to the gates and Disapparated.

Grimmauld Place felt as cold and dank as Snape's crypt even though a fire blazed in the grate and Ginny was waiting for him as she'd promised. He returned her hug halfheartedly before disengaging himself and moving across the room to the drinks cabinet.

"You didn't have to stay," he said, still spoiling for the fight he hadn't managed that morning.

"How was it?" she asked quietly after Harry had poured himself a double measure of firewhisky and finally settled in. He had first ensconced himself in among the sofa's pillows, then, not wanting her to sit next to him, shifted to a wingback chair near the window.

Harry swirled the firewhisky around in his glass, took a big gulp and started coughing. He wasn't used to drinking, but he was cold and it seemed like the kind of thing one did after a funeral. He was embarrassed by his lack of finesse and now his throat burned. "Smashing success. The throngs raged and wept and rent their clothes – all seven of us. The evil, filthy bastard is finally locked away where he can do no more harm. You must be pleased."

Ginny refused to rise to the bait. "Mum sent food – steak and mushroom pie, from the smell of it. You like that and I know you didn't eat this morning."

"Funeral meats." Harry laughed hollowly. "I'm not hungry." His fingers sought the vial in his pocket; he had intended to leave the memories with Snape's body.

Rising halfway from his seat, Harry hurled his glass, and the sudden roar of firewhisky-fueled flame filled the room. "I'm not hungry!" he shouted as the fire died down again. He sank back into his chair, digging his palms into his eyes. "Go back to the Burrow. I'm not fit company tonight."

"How long are you planning to punish me for not going?" Ginny asked, standing in front of him, her arms folded across her breasts.

Overwhelmed with tiredness and anger he couldn't explain, Harry let his head fall against the tall back of his armchair. "Such a sheltered life you've had. If you think this is punishment, you don't know the meaning of the word," he said nastily. Then, feeling guilty, he opened his eyes, looked at her and added, "We'll talk tomorrow, yeah? I'm sorry. Really, I just need to be alone tonight."

"Noon, midnight, what's the difference? Is being left alone too much to ask?" He was nearly shouting again and he didn't know why. Ginny hadn't done anything to earn that kind of rage. His fingers twitched with the urge to slap her, but the look on her face made him feel as if he'd deliberately crushed a puffskein between his fingers. "I'm sorry, Gin. I'm just really, really tired. You said I was restless last night, right? And–"

"No, I'm sorry. I know today was hard on you, and I know you're disappointed that I didn't go with you." She made a motion as if to stroke his arm and Harry jerked away, his eyes narrowing. Ginny let her hand fall back to her side. "Maybe after you eat something and take a nap you'll feel better. It'd probably be smart for me to spend the night in my own bed tonight, anyway. I think Mum may be getting a little suspicious. Even with all the uproar, she doesn't miss much."

She let herself out and Harry was asleep in his chair before the front door snicked shut.

Bitter cold. Impenetrable dark. Restless. Anxious. Confused.

Above, the grey Portland stone of Waterloo bridge, its visibility at odds with the moonless sky. Far ahead, an antipathy of people, backs rigid, walking away, leaving him behind. He opens his mouth. No sound comes out. No sound at all, only the echo of footsteps. "Come back," he screams, to no avail. No sound comes out. A solitary figure stops, turns, looks, shrugs, walks away. He raises his arm and waves it furiously. "Come back!" No sound comes out.

Flailing in his sleep, Harry smacked himself in the head and woke with a start and a shout. "Fuck," he said, rubbing his bruised cheek.

"Shut up," Harry said aloud to the voice in his head. "Walking away from what? I don't even know what that was about! I was dreaming. It was a dream, that's all." Out of habit he reached for Ginny and found her side of the bed empty, which explained why he felt so cold. What he couldn't explain was why he was in bed instead of downstairs in his chair; he didn't remember coming to bed.

In the kitchen he set the kettle to boil and idly opened a cupboard as he waited. In confusion he stared at a half-eaten pie. He couldn't remember eating, but it was true he didn't feel nearly as hungry as he should after a day's fast. Shaking his head, he took out the pie and cut himself a neat slab, warmed it with a charm and sat down to eat. Without thinking, he salted it before taking a bite, something he never did with Molly's food.

And there was a thought that made sense, finally. He had died, and come back. He had killed Voldemort, and lived. Was it any wonder the world seemed different to him? Any wonder things looked and tasted and felt flat?

JUNE

The Headmaster's office looked much the same for all it was the Headmistress's office now. Dumbledore's things were where they had always been. McGonagall had yet to make it fully hers, but then it had only been a few weeks. Harry shook his head in wonder; a year seemed more likely.

"...Spinner's End," Harry said. He mopped his face with his hands, surprised to discover he'd continued their conversation while woolgathering.

"Yes," McGonagall answered. "I don't suppose there's much left there, nothing of value, but whatever there is, I'd hate for the Ministry to get their hands on it. Severus wouldn't be half pleased, and we owe him that much at least."

Harry sighed. "I'm so tired, Professor. Couldn't this wait? I haven't had a minute to myself since–" He waved his hand vaguely, not wanting to bring up Snape's funeral day.

"I know you are, Harry," she responded, and the kindness in her voice made his eyes burn. "I could ask Neville–"

"Longbottom? Are you mad?" Rage at the idea of Neville Longbottom in Snape's house flared in Harry's chest and his jaw tensed.

McGonagall's lips pursed in irritation but otherwise she ignored his outburst. "Or perhaps Bill Weasley."

"But I hate to ask Bill, what with Fred and–" McGonagall's eyelashes dampened.

"No, you're right," Harry said with a sigh of resignation. "It ought to be me, I suppose, although I doubt Snape would agree. Will you tell Ginny? I hate to ask, but she's angry enough with me as it is lately. If I go traipsing off again so soon..." He let his words fall away. "Tell her I'll be back soon. Tell her...everything will be all right, that's it's just this one last thing and then it will all be over. Tell her—" Again Harry's words trailed off. He had to tell her himself; he couldn't just disappear to Spinner's End, he had to go home first. Ginny would have every right to be annoyed. They had promised each other some uninterrupted time once everybody had been laid to rest, but the truth was he'd hadn't spent much time with her lately. Harry closed his eyes and let his head fall against the back of his chair.

Dumbledore's office, recognizable, nearly unchanged. Delicate instruments, solid furniture, portraits, shifting, moving, rearranging themselves. He looks wildly around, straining to identify the difference after the dancing patterns stop, but it all looks exactly as it had before. No sign of the truncated year spent trying to minimize damage while rigidly maintaining the cold façade that obviously came all to easily. Minerva's tentative imprint visible here and there, but her occupation of the office has been too short; the presence of one Severus Snape, spy, misanthrope, murderer, and yes, hero is marked only by a small silver cauldron on an otherwise empty shelf. A pathetic reminder of a too brief sojourn in this office, on this earth. He throws a hand up to shield his eyes as the dizzying frantic dance starts again.

Feeling embarrassed, Harry knuckled sleep from his eyes. He would have sworn he'd only closed them for a minute, but a glance out the window showed the sun nearly gone. Professor McGonagall's absence and a blanket tucked in around his shoulders only added to his embarrassment. His tiredness was inexplicable. It was true he hadn't been sleeping well, but he hadn't done anything all day beyond chatting with the Headmistress. Rising, he folded the blanket and draped it over the chair's high back, then looked around the office, his eyes lighting on Snape's small silver cauldron. Seeing it gave him a strange sense of melancholy. Shrugging the feeling off, he walked to the fireplace and picked up the can of Floo powder.

"Headmaster!" Harry exclaimed, looking up at Dumbledore's portrait. "You're awake! How are you, sir?"

A low chuckle came from the portrait and Dumbledore's eyes, although heavy-lidded with sleep, twinkled much as they had done in life. A painted hand pensively rubbed a painted forehead. "Sleepy, I'm afraid. Very sleepy. As you look to be."

"Yeah, well...it's been a long year," Harry answered, his lips twisting in a wry smile.

"An exceptional year for you, Harry. I am so very proud of you, you know." Dumbledore's portrait gave a contagiously jaw-cracking yawn.

"I'm glad," Harry began, before succumbing to an enormous yawn of his own, "glad it's over. At least, I was glad it was over, but now it looks as if I still have things to do." He shook his head and yawned again. "Me, in Snape's house. It's a good thing he's already dead; I think the irritation might have done him in otherwise."

Dumbledore's eyes shone with mirth as he laughed again. "I think you underestimate our dear Severus." The light in his eyes dimmed as Harry swayed with weariness. "You should pass the night here, Harry. I'm sure Minerva wouldn't mind."

"No, no," Dumbledore laughed. "Minerva is a generous soul, but that perhaps would be taking things a bit too far. I am aware you never cared for Floo travel at the best of times and we do have guest rooms, you know. The keys are in Minerva's desk. Right hand drawer."

Tapping an age-spotted hand against his lips as he stifled a yawn, Dumbledore continued, "Now, if you'll excuse me, my dear lad, I still have difficulty remaining awake for more than a few minutes at a time, and you should get some sleep as well. I daresay things will look different in the morning."

"Maybe I will stay," Harry said, masking his irritation. He opened the desk drawer and took out a key. "Good night, Headmaster."

"One more thing, Harry, if you don't mind. In the morning, before you go, would you look in on Fawkes? Minerva says he hasn't been seen since Severus' funeral. One of the students swears she heard phoenix song coming from my tomb a few days ago. Perhaps you would be so kind as to check? If he's not at my tomb, try Severus' crypt. Fawkes was always quite fond of him."

"Thank you. Then, with your kind permission, I think I'll just close my eyes for a bit. Sleep well, Harry."

Cold. Dark. The air is foul, the stench of millennia. The taste of rot furs tongue and teeth. The chittering squeaks of mice, of bats. The wet scrape of worms, the dry rustle of insect wings, tiny skeletal feet brushing across eyelids, along cheeks, over lips and gums. Over all and through all and into all the suffocating miasma of rot and waste and death and despair.

Gasping, Harry jerked awake. He blinked in the faint light cast by a guttering candle, fumbled for his glasses and looked wildly around the room, disoriented by unfamiliar surroundings and by the sweat streaming down his face even as his body tensed against the bone-jarring coldness.

"Bloody hell, no wonder. The fire's gone out." He found his wand and directed a vehement Incendio at the hearth, but the resulting blaze didn't seem to touch the coldness locked in his bones. What was it? What had he dreamed? Garbage and crawly things. But, as all the others had done before, the disturbing dream flickered and faded, leaving behind only distress and the urgent need for a scalding, skin-stripping bath followed by a quick escape.

The water was blissfully hot — god bless magical plumbing — but no amount of soap and brutal scrubbing with the rough flannel erased the disturbing stench his dream had left in his nostrils.

Death. This is what death smells like. Be grateful your experience of it was so brief.

He was grateful and yet...part of him wished he hadn't come back. Not to this, not to these near-nightmares and never-ending obligations. Harry frowned; the bath had chased away the coldness, but he was still as exhausted as if he hadn't slept at all and was awash with dread. Wanting nothing half so much as to go home, collapse into his own bed and stay there for the next month, Harry toweled off and quickly dressed. He found the room's Floo powder on the mantel, threw a handful into the fire. The flames roared, flaring green, and Harry was just about to step through when he remembered his promise to look in on Fawkes and his pending visit to Spinner's End.

"Damn it!" Harry yelled to the room at large. "Why does it always bloody have to be me? Kill Voldemort, clean Snape's house, rescue Fawkes. I'll be cleaning chimneys for the entire wizarding world if I don't learn to say 'no' soon." He sighed. He liked Fawkes, couldn't bear the idea of Dumbledore's gorgeous familiar mouldering away in the dank, dark tomb. "Fine. Fine! Fawkes. Snape's house. And then I'm done with it! Maybe I'll go back to the Dursleys'. They won't care if I crawl into my cupboard, as long as I never crawl back out. Harry, my lad, you're due a vacation. When this is over..." He didn't complete the thought. Harry had no idea what he would do if the wizarding world finally left him to himself.

There's no reason to wait. Fawkes can take care of himself. If you give in to this, you'll give in to every request anyone ever has of you. Alive or dead, flesh or paint, Albus Dumbledore is a meddling old man. Saying no won't kill you.

"I can say 'no'," Harry said, not quite believing it. "I can't just say 'no'." Jumper in hand, Harry twitched aside the curtains to see what the weather was like and was dismayed to see black sky out a rain-streaked window. It wasn't even dawn yet. If he remembered right, the window faced east, but there wasn't even a glimmer of light on the horizon. Given the sky's current darkness, the time he'd finally collapsed in the big bed, the still burning candle, the amount of time he'd spent stripping his skin in the bath, he knew he couldn't have slept more than three hours, four at the outside. No wonder he was exhausted.

You've been operating at the whim of others for too long; it is time to do something for yourself alone.

The thought just made him sad. He'd been alone for far too much of his life already.

"Get a grip, Harry," he said to the empty room. "You're just tired. It will all look better when you get some uninterrupted sleep. Go home. There's no point in going to Dumbledore's tomb, there's no way to get inside. If Fawkes is in there, there's nothing you can do about it. Besides, it's raining."

He thought about Dumbledore suggesting he could try Snape's crypt, but Harry didn't want to. He knew himself. If he visited the crypt, he'd feel obligated to talk and he had no idea at all what he could say beyond, 'I'm sorry.' What good would that do? What good would it do to talk to Snape at all? It wasn't as if the son of a bitch had ever listened to anything he'd had to say anyway, and he was dead, damn it! Harry had the vague feeling that it was too soon, he would lose something ineffable if he went now.

It wasn't the Headmaster, just his portrait. It's not him. It's only an approximate facsimile exhibiting Albus Dumbledore's dominant character trait — habitual manipulation.

Feeling more than a little guilty and very disloyal, Harry grabbed the can of Floo powder again. "Spinner's End," he called, not realising until that moment that he wasn't going to go back to Grimmauld Place first.

Harry tumbled to his knees in a haze of ash and banged his head on the brickwork of the ridiculously small grate. "Fucking Snape! Leave it to him to have a fireplace small enough to decapitate a visitor," he snarled, rubbing an egg-sized knot on his forehead. Staggering to his feet, he peered irritably around a small, gloomy, dank and downright depressing sitting room. The vague odour of mould and a strong smell of dust made him sneeze. "What a dump! Makes my cupboard look like the Ritz. Hello? Anybody here?"

Yawning, Harry staggered over to the dilapidated sofa and collapsed onto it. His abrupt movement caused the sofa to bang into an occasional table and the resulting vibration of the table shook a precariously perched lamp, sending a cascade of dust down the shade and onto Harry's head before the lamp crashed to the floor.

This is not your house. You're a guest and you might consider not bringing it crashing down around your ears until you've completed your task.

"Not before I get some sleep," Harry said, stretching out on the sofa. He jerked as a sprung spring attempted to punch a hole in his bum, banging the back of his head on the sofa's carved wooden arm.

"Then why is it talking to me?" Harry asked aloud, half afraid the house might answer.

He winced. Just being in Spinner's End was making him mental. He needed to get a grip; it wasn't the house. The voice in his head, the one he thought of as his inner critic, had been more vocal than usual for weeks. Guilt, he suspected. Although he wasn't really sure what he had to feel guilty about; he'd done everything he was supposed to, hadn't he? Except...his hand sought the vial in his pocket — a piece of unfinished business that could, he supposed, account for the near constant self-criticism.

"As soon as I've finished here. I'll take it back." Speaking aloud in the silence made him feel both less lonely and neurotic.

He shifted again in his uncomfortable makeshift bed before finally giving up. "Tea, that's what I need. Tea and something to keep my belly from sticking to my spine. I hope Snape was well supplied."

A thirty second prowl revealed the whole of the house's downstairs — sitting room, kitchen, cramped bath. There had to be an upstairs, unless Snape and his parents had all slept in the bathtub, but he hadn't spotted a staircase. Well, there was time enough to look after he'd had his tea. There would be beds upstairs and nobody to object if he commandeered one for the night. Harry told himself that the ripple of irritation down his spine was caused by the mere thought of sleeping in Snape's bed — "I'll bet the pillows are greasy" — not any malevolence from the house itself.

There was a battered kettle on the stove and he found tea in the first cupboard he investigated. Prying the lid off the tin, he sniffed and decided it was fresh enough. Igniting the stove taxed his minimal ability with household charms.

Harry smiled to himself. At Hogwarts the house-elves provided everything, Mrs Weasley at the Burrow, Kreacher or Ginny at Grimmauld Place. He was, at least when it came to a magical kitchen, most definitely an ignorant Muggle. Although given his upbringing, spoiled seemed unnecessarily harsh. It wasn't as if he didn't know how to cook and clean.

Snorting at the thought, Harry dredged up the simple household charm from some dim recess of his memory, ignited the stove and set the kettle to boil. His stomach rumbled. As with the tea, he found a loaf of bread in the first place he looked; kept reasonably fresh under a charm, it offered some proof that Snape had been here not too long before his death.

"Must be why he liked the dungeons, growing up in this damp like some kind of mushroom."

He instinctively recognized the butter keeper for what it was, although he'd never seen one before that he knew of, and though the water within was tepid and oily with floating grey tendrils of whatever, the butter was fine once he'd scraped off the mouldy top layer. The same cupboard that had held the tea also had an unlabelled jar that looked like it might just be jam. He twisted the lid and sniffed it as he had done with the tea. The smell was vaguely familiar.

Hah! Snape would be proud. Harry grinned and could almost hear the snort of disdain. Gurdyroot jam. Amazing what people came up with. Uncertain how to toast the bread, Harry decided to skip that step and slathered a slice with butter and jam until it was nearly twice its original thickness. Taking a big bite, he decided that Gurdyroot made a better potions ingredient than confection.

When the kettle boiled, Harry mashed the tea, leaving it to get good and strong while he finished off his bread and prepared another slice even thicker than the first. When he had eaten the second, already feeling warmer and much revived, he poured himself a big mug and dumped in four spoonfuls of sugar. Mug in hand, feeling like an intruder and yet strangely at home, he set off to explore Snape's house.

There wouldn't be much to explore; two rooms down probably meant two up, if only he could find a staircase. Wandering back into the sitting room and seeing nothing, Harry shrugged. There were advantages to being a wizard; one could hide a staircase, and another, unable to find the hidden staircase, could Apparate to the next floor.

He was right, two rooms up, with a staircase leading down between them. Snape's was easy to identify, with books spilling off every flat surface, including several on a small table that also held a mortar and pestle. The other bedroom showed signs of past occupancy and hasty departure; the bed was unmade, a few articles of dusty clothing strewn about, a teacup and a piece of rock-hard toast on a plate. On a desk by the window there was a strange wire wheel mounted to stand upright and Harry spun it idly while he contemplated whose room this might have been. Who the hell would Snape share his house with?

Shrugging off the unanswerable, Harry stepped back into Snape's room. If he was to gather Snape's effects, it seemed the logical place to start. The clothes cupboard yielded nothing worth salvaging: an old robe in a style long out of fashion and, incongruously, a pair of tatty, mud-encrusted Muggle trousers and a grimy T-shirt. A drawer in a small desk held broken quills, a crumbling rubber, wisps of dust and nothing else. There was nothing then, except the books. Sighing, Harry cast his gaze over the packed shelves and tottering stacks.

The silence of the house, the pitifulness of Snape's room, the metallic whine of the apparently still moving weird wheel in the adjacent room made his skin crawl. He tried to shake it off by speaking out loud. "I shouldn't even bother with the books. Who would care?"

Think of the use you got from the Prince's Potions text. You wouldn't want the Ministry to get their hands on private journals.

"Heh," Harry chuckled. "I wonder if Snape kept a diary. That alone would be worth my effort." Speaking out loud did help dispel his case of nerves, but he shuddered as he imagined how livid Snape would be if he had kept a diary and Harry found it. "There could be something of use here somewhere, after all, but fuck me! Where do I start in this mess? They can't all be useful."

Depressed at the size of his task — he wouldn't get back to Grimmauld Place today — and for lack of a better idea, Harry grabbed the top volume off the closest pile and sat down on the bed, sneezing as both book and duvet sent up choking clouds of dust.

A wash of bright light glared off the pages of the book. Startled, and half-blinded, Harry looked up to see the midday sun beaming through the window. He shook himself, startled to realise a few hours had passed while he sat engrossed in his reading. Closing the book, he looked at the cover in some confusion: Prolegomena to the Esoteric Arts. Harry had no idea what that even meant, and flipping back through some of the pages he'd just read, he realised he didn't understand half the words — yet the sense of it seemed clear enough, and he had a new understanding of Dark Arts spells as evil by intent rather than design. It was a new and surprising experience for him, reading magical theory and enjoying it, but then he'd had a knack for Defense, and this sort of stuff went hand in hand with that.

Trailing his finger down the last page he'd read, Harry was tempted to crawl into bed with the book; he'd just got to a really interesting part about an ancient warrior king which would make terrific bedtime reading. Resisting temptation, he snapped the book shut. He'd never get Snape's belongings packed up at this rate. "No more lollygagging, Potter, my lad," he said to himself. "You've got to at least make a start or you'll never get to the end." His stomach took that moment to remind him that several hours had passed. Standing, Harry stretched then walked over to the window. The storm had merely abated for the moment, just long enough for the sun to briefly break through, and now the clouds were gathering again. As he stood there the sky darkened as the sun passed behind the clouds again and a fresh onslaught of rain beat against the windows. From the other room he could hear the eerie sound of the wire wheel spinning again. As before, it made his skin crawl.

The idea of Snape sharing a house with Wormtail was almost as disturbing as the idea of Wormtail all by itself. Harry shook his head. Once again his imagination was running away with him. Perhaps Snape had once had a pet guinea pig. The room the wheel was in was smaller than this one, so it'd likely been Snape's when he was a boy. It didn't matter. If the wheel was spinning again, it meant that there was a draft; the window was probably ajar in that room. He'd check it on his way to find something to eat.

Deciding that Snape's room likely held the most important things to keep from the Ministry's clutches, Harry decided that after he'd eaten he'd come back up here and shrink Snape's belongings — he'd gotten quite good at it during the endless camping trip earlier that year — and then sort through them when he was back in Grimmauld Place. Tonight, he would sleep here, in Snape's bed, because there was no way he was spending the night in Wormtail's room, and start going through the downstairs in the morning.

Pleased with his plan, Harry glanced around Snape's room once more and spied a small wooden chest. He could use that to transport Snape's stuff after he'd shrunk everything. He flipped the box's lid to discover a Pensieve nestled in excelsior, and smiled. He didn't have one of his own; now he could look at the memories one more time before depositing the vial with Snape's body.

Food dry as ashes in his mouth. Spitting it out is unthinkable, swallowing unbearable and suddenly he is choking, struggling in the light of the tower's flames. He's running, still choking, a fist-sized chunk of something in his throat. The cliff looms up in front of him, casting shadows, and he is falling over the edge, but it is not him, he is only watching, watching as the someone falls, a naked man trapped between fire and stone.

"I know, but I didn't see you for two before. I'd got used to having you in my bed and out of the habit of doing without."

"My bed, I think you mean." Harry found himself uncomfortable with the idea of Ginny living here — not that she was, but that was where things seemed to be heading. He loved her, the regular sex was great, only it was too soon.

"Yes, yes, your bed. Take me to it this instant, you wretched man!" Ginny pressed the back of her hand melodramatically against her forehead and feigned a swoon. "I declare, if I don't get some soon, I might expire from longing." Grabbing Harry's arm, she dragged him up the stairs. Before he could even get his jumper off, she was naked and sprawled atop the duvet, legs spread wide, hands massaging her full breasts.

Mouth twisting, Harry told himself he hadn't just thought that, but looking at her, at the way the soft flesh of hip and thigh spread on the mattress, her heavy breasts flattened on her chest, at the vee of red hair between her legs, he felt a wave of revulsion that he didn't understand. He'd always thought she was cute, even before sixth year when he'd suddenly realised he loved her. There wasn't a man in England who wouldn't want her in his bed, so what was wrong with him? Harry told himself he was just tired, that everything would be all right as soon as he touched her, but he had to look away as he slowly finished undressing.

Harry shook his head as if he could dislodge the disturbing and disloyal thought that way. Bill was good-looking, sure, very good-looking, but Harry hadn't thought of him that way in years, not since he'd been a kid with a bit of a secret crush on Ron's glamourous curse-breaker brother. Harry peeled his T-shirt over his head, kicking his trainers off at the same time. Even if Bill wasn't straight, Harry was.

Guilt and dread slowed his hands as he removed his trousers and pants. He banished all thoughts of Bill, took a deep breath and willed his expression into one of happiness and desire, yet when he turned back to Ginny, he was still soft.

As Harry stretched out a hand to gently brush her hair from her face, he was suddenly assaulted — and there really was no other word for it, so suddenly did it come on — by an image of Bill as he had seen him one lucky time, naked, fresh out of the shower, wearing nothing but a towel around his slim hips. In his mind's eye it was Bill's long hair he was about too touch, Bill's high cheekbone his fingers would brush, Bill's broad, muscular shoulders and tapered waist. Harry felt a surge of lust that seemed almost foreign. He jerked his hand back. Sure, he had occasionally populated his fantasies with boys and men, yes, even Bill, but never before in Ginny's presence. It was the timing and the clarity of the vision that was so disconcerting, not the image itself. It was also the realisation that his sudden erection was for Bill, not Ginny.

"Harry?" Ginny asked, searching his eyes, a peevish expression on her face. "What just happened?"

"Nothing," Harry replied quickly, forcing the image of Bill from his mind. He lifted the covers and slid into bed just as quickly, hoping that she hadn't seen his hard-on.

"There's something you're not telling me. You're going off again, aren't you?" Her voice was rising in anger. "Some other task that no one can handle but you? Or you, my brother and his girlfriend?"

"No! Nothing like that. I'm not going anywhere! I don't even know where you got that! I'm just tired, I think. I'm still not sleeping well, still having those strange dreams, and being at Snape's was really weird, you know? Sometimes it almost seemed like he haunted the place. Ginny, I swear, there's nothing I'm not telling you. I'm not leaving again. I promised we'd have time together this summer, just the two of us, and I meant it, but...would you mind if we...you know...a bit later? You've got every right to be angry 'cause I took off without saying good-bye, and I want to make it up to you, I do, but I think I'll fall over if I don't get at least a nap soon."

Leaning over him, Ginny looked at Harry with such an expression of mingled suspicion and disappointment, it made him want to laugh. Wisely, he didn't, but instead nestled against her, his back to her front, still trying to hide his erection, and asked in a plaintive voice, "Would you mind just holding me for a bit? I'm so tired, but I really missed you, missed your arms around me."

And that seemed to be the right note to strike. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the high flush of anger had faded completely from Ginny's freckled face, replaced by a warm smile. She curled an arm under his head for a pillow and wrapped her other around his chest.

If I live to be a thousand, I'll never understand women. What happened to 'if I don't get some soon'? Her brother would fuck you through the mattress.

Mindful lest the hand resting on his chest should stray lower, Harry clasped it in his. He brushed his lips across her knuckles and, resolutely banishing all thoughts of Bill, went to sleep.

Lucius. Gorgeous, desirable, unmitigated prick. Snape's house is filthy, I should probably dust before I go. School robes sliding up, revealing perfect, pale white thighs, two inches more, just two inches. Snowing in King's Cross station, clouds dumping bucketfuls, naked, face down, crawling, crawling, crawling. Long, perfectly manicured finger tracing circles round a perfectly formed kneecap. Insufferable tease. He knows I'm hard, knows I'm aching for him. Choices, Harry. No, don't touch! It's crying. Stop its crying. Bloodred tears reflected in mirrored bloodred glass pouring bloodred river tumbling drowning man. Severussss. Silly boy, did you think? With you? A clump of bloody snow, with a muffled thump, falls in the child's mouth, silencing it. I know you want me.

"Harry? What's the matter?" Ginny asked sleepily. She turned and snuggled closer. Her eyes flew open and she looked at him with concern. "You're shaking!" Ginny rubbed her hands briskly up and down Harry's arms, trying to warm him. "What's wrong?"

"'M'not cold. Fucking dreams! I think I may need to see someone, Gin. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Does St Mungo's even have psychiatrists?" He buried his face in the space between her neck and shoulder, inhaling the warm, familiar scent of her.

"Maybe Madam Pomfrey would give you some Dreamless Sleep. If you go to St Mungo's, it'll be in the Prophet next day, you know it will."

Trembling fear was replaced with shaking rage. "Is that all you care about? Don't want the Boy Who Lived's image tarnished because it will reflect badly on you? For fuck's sake, Gin!"

Groaning, Harry clutched at Ginny's hand. He didn't know where the thought had come from, or why he'd spewed it out without thinking. "I'm sorry! I know that's not what you meant! I don't know why I said that. God! These fucking dreams are twisting me inside out!"

He could see Ginny's fight to keep her composure, to not retaliate in kind. He wanted to hit himself for hurting her, hug her for not hating him.

Closing his eyes, Harry blessed her for keeping her temper. "God, I don't even know. I...I was back in King's Cross. Um...there was snow and Lucius Malfoy was doing a striptease and something about Snape. It sounds so stupid!" Harry's face was hot and he found, to his horror, he had to keep his hips away from Ginny's.

"Lucius Malfoy doing a striptease?" Ginny's laugh sounded a little forced, but at least she was laughing. "I thought you were having a nightmare, not a wet-dream. Lucius Malfoy! Well, it does have a sort of disturbing appeal, I suppose."

"It's not funny! It was a nightmare!" Harry protested. "It was...I don't know what it was."

"So is that—" She pulled Harry's hips to hers. "—for me, Lucius, or is it just a random morning stiffy?" Licking his ear, she whispered, "I don't really care, as long as I reap the benefit."

Pushing her away, Harry swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat on the edge, shoulders slumped in misery, jaw and neck tight with anger. "Damn it! Leave off, can't you? Why the devil is it always about you? I'm freaking out here!"

"Don't be such a bear, Harry," she said, curling herself around his hips and sneaking a hand over his thigh. "You were gone for days. I missed you. We didn't last night. You're hard. I'm horny. Why shouldn't we? Let me help you chase the dream away."

Harry stood abruptly. "Don't you have to get home before you mother finds out you didn't sleep in your bed?"

Flopping onto her back, Ginny laughed again. It still sounded forced. "Mum thinks I'm at Hermione's. I don't have to go. I'll send her an owl in a bit — it's too early yet — and tell her I'm going to spend the day with you."

"Fine, suit yourself," Harry said grumpily. "Kreacher! Breakfast in fifteen minutes!" He turned back to Ginny. "I'm going to take a shower. Alone."

"You're being impossible!" Rolling out of bed, Ginny grabbed her clothes and began to hurriedly put them on. "Maybe I will go home. There doesn't seem much point in staying here! Enjoy your shower."

"I intend to!" Harry shouted, banging the bedroom door behind him as he stomped off to the bathroom.

Mind filled with ideas he had no business having, Harry pulled off in the shower, forcing himself to say Ginny's name as he came, although she had barely figured into his fantasies. For a moment he felt unbelievably sick and dirty. Out of nowhere he thought of fifth year Occlumency lessons. He could do that now, clear his mind, make it blank, empty himself of all emotion. The water ran cold before he managed it, but he felt better afterwards, better than he had in weeks.

The good feeling lasted through getting dressed and eating breakfast. Ginny was nowhere to be seen and he was relieved. He wasn't mad at her, not really. His upset had more to do with embarrassment than anything, embarrassment brought about by not getting hard when she was lying naked on her bed, and then springing instant wood when he imagined her brother. He really did need to get a grip. His life had been weird enough without suddenly turning queer.

There was a loud crack and Kreacher suddenly appeared. "Master," he said, bowing low, his snout-like nose almost touching his knees.

"Ohhh," Kreacher wailed, his tiny hands tugging hard on his bat-like ears. "Kreacher is a bad elf!"

"Stop it! I order you not to hurt yourself!" Harry waited until the little elf had let go of his ears. "You just surprised me. You're not bad. Just don't... You just startled me, OK? You didn't do anything wrong. Now, what did you want?"

"The blood-traitor girl—" Kreacher suddenly dropped to the ground and began banging his head on the floor. "Kreacher should not have said that! Kreacher has been told!"

Harry sighed. "Stop! No hurting yourself. I absolutely forbid it! Won't you ever learn? Get up! Now, what about Ginny?"

"Master said no one was to go in that room, Master Regulus's room, but the girl—"

He could hear Kreacher calling after him, but Harry didn't listen as he pounded up the stairs to the top floor. His earlier good mood had vanished completely, overcome by a blood-boiling rage.

"How dare you?" he screamed as he burst through the door to Regulus's room. "What the fuck gives you the right?"

"It's just nothing! You have no business in here! Get out! Get the fuck out! Out of this room and out of my house! You had no right!"

JULY

The room that had been Regulus Black's was now, by virtue of the stacks of books and boxes rescued from Spinner's end, Snape's room. Snape's books. Snape's Pensieve. Snape's memories. All of them were now Harry's. In some deep part of himself, Harry realised he spent too much time in that room, knew it probably wasn't healthy to isolate himself. But it seemed that the more time he spent in there, the fewer nightmares he had, and the critical voice in his head was mostly silent. On balance it seemed a fair trade.

Harry sat on the floor in Snape's room, his wand dancing circles around the small vial resting in his palm. By this point, he could pick and choose. Drawing a single silvery thread from the vial was as easy as pulling one from his own head. Indeed, he had viewed them so often he could probably have extracted Snape's memories from his own temple as easily as he could from the vial.

Just then, a young and weedy looking Snape was hiding in the bushes, greedily watching Lily and Petunia on the swings. Harry smiled; it had shocked him when he first realised he didn't hate Snape anymore, that he had, in fact, grown rather fond of the gangly boy with his pathetic clothes and his fierce want. It didn't hurt, of course, to know that Snape had been on his side — or Lily's anyway — after all, nor to understand that he and the former Potions master had more in common than he'd ever realised. At nine, Harry had been equally lonely, equally a laughingstock, equally hungry for a friend of his own.

On that day, watching Lily laugh with her friend Severus, Harry had another somewhat startling revelation; he liked his mother better with Snape than he did when she was with James and Sirius. She seemed kinder, braver, somehow more worthy of love and devotion. That all Snape's memories confirmed James and Sirius as matching fuckwits came as no surprise at all. Harry had trodden that path in Snape's memories repeatedly since fifth year Occlumency lessons. Feelings of disloyalty to his father and godfather had long since faded, but this new view of Lily was disturbing and it made Harry feel guilty.

That his parents and godfather had been brave, Harry had no doubt, and their love for Harry himself was also unquestioned, but he didn't want to be like them — or Snape, for that matter — decent to those he cared about and an absolute berk to everyone else.

Pensively, Harry put the memories back in the vial and capped it. Bouncing it up and down on his palm, he thought about Ginny and his other friends. He'd have to do better.

Immense flames lick at the night sky, eating it up, little tongues of fire licking their lips. In the glare of the great blaze a figure can be seen dark against the illuminated tower. Flying. Or falling. He opens his mouth in a voiceless scream as smoke rises, blotting out the falling man, the fighting men. In the classroom, limned by firelight, Albus Dumbledore raises his wand and mutters, "Detention." Outside himself he can see himself walking away, a thin figure with slumped shoulders in a tattered robe .

After yet another night plagued by nightmares, a fierce headache was starting up behind Harry's left eyeball. Ginny's rising anger and accompanying strident voice wasn't helping at all.

"Kreacher!" Harry bellowed, cutting right through whatever it was Ginny was saying. He'd only been half-listening anyway; it wasn't as if he hadn't heard it before. Several times.

"He's at Hog—" Ginny began, but was cut off by a loud crack as the house-elf suddenly appeared in the kitchen.

"Christ, Kreacher, look at this mess!" Harry gestured to the sink full of dirty dishes.

"Kreacher is sorry," Kreacher said, bowing so low the tips of his ears nearly scraped the floor, "but Master sent Kreacher—"

Lazy little rodent. He's not to be trusted, you know. He'd as soon stick a knife in your back as look at you.

"Whatever!" yelled Harry. "Stop banging your head on the floor and just get it cleaned up!" He turned away from the grovelling house-elf and rounded on his girlfriend. "Ginny, give it a rest. I'm still not sleeping well. I've got things on my mind. I'm sorry we haven't fucked in awhile, but I'm just not up to three, four, five times a week. It's like you've suddenly become sex crazy or something. "

"Just because you're a slut and constantly gagging for it, doesn't mean the rest of us—

"Fuck!" Harry screamed as Ginny Disapparated with an unusually loud crack. "Come back! I didn't mean it! I don't even know why I said it!"

The restaurant was small enough that Harry spotted Hermione and Ron immediately.

Their heads were tilted towards each other, a private world unto themselves. He'd hardly seen them since the end of the war. While he had been drifting away, they had obviously grown even closer. For a moment Harry felt the too familiar, sick wave of loneliness, but then Hermione looked up and smiled. Harry couldn't keep from rolling his eyes good-naturedly as she immediately waved him over, quivering with excitement like a racehorse at the starting gate.

Good lord, she's obnoxious. Completely deranged in her quest to be noticed . Hasn't changed a bit since she was eleven. I would have thought she'd have at least managed to do something about that hair.

Jarring his skull with his palm as if he could physically dislodge the thoughts, Harry muttered, "Oh Christ! Not again! Not now! Would you just shut up? Just this once." He gave a passing waiter a sheepish grin. "Sorry. Talking to myself. Uh, I see my friends." He waved at them and ducked past the waiter.

"Steady on," Harry whispered to himself as he traversed the short distance to their table. "They're your friends. Smile and nod and keep your bloody mouth shut."

"Hi Harry!" By that point Hermione was nearly jumping up and down with excitement. Ron, on the other hand, was unnaturally still, a worried but defiant expression on his face.

What's he sulking about? He's the one who behaved like an arse. Or he's pissed off about his little whore of a sister.

Squeezing his forehead, trying to still the voice that weeks before ceased confining its criticisms to himself, Harry bit back the words that wanted to come tumbling out after the thought. Forcing his mouth into a sheepish smile, Harry instead said, "I can't believe I haven't seen you guys since May." The look on Ron's face was half the reason he hadn't.

Ron winced and Harry grinned at him, leaning over to give his friend a comradely punch on the shoulder. "Why are you looking at me like I'm the chopper come to chop off your head? No hard feelings. I know why you didn't go. I don't blame you." Pleased at the way the lie rolled smoothly from his tongue, and truly wanting bygones to be bygones, Harry gave Ron another big grin before hugging Hermione and then slipping into his seat. "And if you're angry about Ginny, we've made up. Again."

Ron grinned and shrugged. "You don't need to tell me, mate. I've been living with her for years. And yeah, the funeral, sorry, but what with George's ear and—"

Harry almost sagged with relief. He hadn't been relishing dealing with Ron's temper and defensiveness. "Really, no hard feelings."

"We've got news!" Hermione exclaimed, waving a hand in front of Harry's nose, drawing obvious attention to the new ring on her finger.

Fabulous. A whole new generation of redheaded brats, now with added frizzy hair. She had better never take that ring off; it's too tiny to find again.

"You're such a prick sometimes," Ron snarled. "We aren't all heir to the Black and Potter vaults."

"Oh shit! Ron, I'm so sorry. I was just taking the piss. I didn't mean it. It's a beautiful ring. Congratulations." Although he really wanted to slink to the floor under the table, Harry stood and went around to hug his friends. "That's brilliant! I'm really happy for you."

"You're still a prick, but you're also best man if you want to be." For once Ron's anger seemed to fade as quickly as it flared.

"Of course I want to be! Oh shit, this means new dress robes, doesn't it? Don't let your mum pick yours."

Ron laughed, but Hermione still looked hurt. "Ginny says you've been being unbearably rude lately."

"Ginny's just narked because we haven't had sex for a while," Harry blurted out and felt the tips of his ears flame.

"Uh, Harry. My sister." Ron raised his eyebrows for emphasis and both Hermione and Harry laughed. Harry also breathed a sigh of relief.

"Yeah, sorry again. Completely uncalled for, and absolutely none of your business. Look, I'm just going crawl under the table for a while. Let me know when the food arrives. You two just talk wedding plans, or something."

"Not because I want to know, because you know, my sister, but why? I thought you two were going at it like rabbits."

Because eventually latent homosexuality will out and Bill Weasley is much better-looking.

"Shut it, Hermione," Harry muttered, turning even redder. "And it really is none of your business, either one of you."

"'Course it isn't, but that doesn't mean you're going to get out of telling us. We told you our big secret. Which, by the way," Ron looked sternly at Harry, "is a secret. Mum'll have kittens. She thinks we're too young. She's a fine one to talk. She was pregnant with Bill at my age."

"Come on, do tell us," Hermione urged. "We haven't seen you in ages. You need to catch us up, and that includes what's going on with you and Ginny."

Harry didn't know what to say. Hermione and Ron were his friends, his best friends. He'd always told them everything, and he'd intended to tell them everything tonight — his nightmares, the nagging voice in his head, the weirdness at Spinner's End, Snape's room — but if he told them, he'd have to tell them he thought he might be going mad. They were so excited to see him, and excited about their engagement, he just couldn't spoil that.

The chains are too tight, tighter than they need to be, tighter than they should be, tighter than they were the time before and the time before that. A sea of plum robes, stern faces reflecting derision, hatred, disappointment. In front of him, the Interrogator, back to him, her long red hair clashing with the colour of her robes.

"It was you. You who did this to me! You!"

"No!" he cries, wounded. She should know better. She does know better. "I wasn't even there!"

"You suffered and you wanted to make me suffer!" She refuses to look at him, refuses to let him see her face, refuses to acknowledge her betrayal.

"I tried to stop it! What could I have done?" He is sobbing now, blubbering into his hands. "What could I have done?"

"Guilty," comes the verdict and still she will not look at him, not even to show her triumph.

The instant he awoke, before his eyelids even fluttered open, panic solidified into a hard, choking stone in Harry's chest. He couldn't move! Hands pinned in a cruel grip at his sides, a heavy, confining weight on his legs. He thrashed on the bed, trying to free himself, afraid to open his eyes and see the chair, the chains, the plum-coloured robes.

Managing, with difficulty, to draw air into his lungs, Harry opened his eyes to see Ginny's smiling face leaning over him. "Oh fuck! Let me up, just for a second. I need to catch my breath. Fuck, I'm glad it's you!"

"Who else were you expecting to find in your bed?" She laughed as she said it, but Harry could see faint suspicion in her eyes. Straightening up, she released her grip on his wrists.

"No, yeah. Another dream." He still found breathing difficult. Shaking his head to clear it, Harry gave her a halfhearted smile. He put his arms around her. "Nobody but you. Not ever. Nobody else but you." His hands stroked slowly down her back and he tried not to shudder as he felt the raised scars under his fingertips. "I'm so sorry," Harry whispered. "I don't know what else I could have done."

He thought of Bill's scars. Scars that were not his fault. Closing his eyes, Harry pulled Ginny down into a kiss. He hoped she couldn't taste guilt on his lips.

"Three years! How did I not know it would take three years? You'd think that's information they'd give out right from the start!"

Harry let the Ministry's letter drop from his hand, ignoring it as it fluttered to the kitchen floor. He leaned his elbows on the work top and let his head, which seemed to spend more time pressed into his hands than upright these days, assume its favourite position.

"Professor McGonagall told us, Harry. During our career advice meetings." Hermione closed her eyes and scrunched up her face as she always did when trying to remember something exactly.

"Hermione, you know I love you, right? Good, because then you'll know that I mean this in the friendliest possible way: shut the fuck up! I really don't need to hear 'I told you so' right now. And you don't need to recite what McGonagall said — if she even said anything, because I certainly don't remember her doing so — it's all in the letter. Three years, five NEWTs, nothing below Exceeds, background check, character and aptitude tests." Harry sank into a chair, his face glum. "Well, at least I should get a passing grade on the background check."

Ron snorted and punched Harry's shoulder. "Good one. Pass the background check. Heh. Cheer up, Harry. Did you read the part where they exempted us from NEWTs?"

"Not exempted, Ron," Hermione said, her hands on her hips. "You'll have to pass an equivalency exam."

"Yeah, well, it won't be the same, will it? I mean, it's bound to be easier, or they'd just make us sit for NEWTs, right, Harry?"

"Wait," Harry said, looking at Hermione suspiciously. "What do you mean 'you'll have to pass'? What about you?"

"Hermione!" exclaimed Ron, sounding hurt. "We're all supposed to be in this together."

"We're not the fucking Three Musketeers," Harry said irritably. "If Hermione wants to abandon us—"

"Oh honestly, you two! I am not abandoning you! I'll help you revise, of course I will, but I have other things I have to deal with. Becoming an Auror doesn't fit into my plans."

"My parents—" Hermione broke off suddenly, tears welling up in her eyes. "You've forgotten about my parents, Ron. They haven't fully recovered and I..."

Harry had stopped listening. Altering her parents' memories had seemed like a good way to protect them. Hermione really needed to get over the guilt.

"Oh, nothing," Harry said. "I just..." He waved a hand vaguely in the air. "Um, if training is going to take three years, we'll need more than just the two sets of robes." Bending over, Harry picked up the letter he'd dropped and looked at it. "What else? A spare wand. Books. A Potions kit." He groaned. "It's just like starting Hogwarts all over again."

As much as he loved the Weasleys and thought of them as family, Harry really hadn't wanted to spend his birthday at the Burrow. He had been spending the day as he wanted to spend it, in Snape's room with Snape's memories of Lily, daydreaming about spending his birthday with his mother, when Ginny had dragged him off.

"You are not spending your birthday in here. I swear, Harry, you're starting to worry me. This obsession with Snape's memories is not natural."

"I'm not obsessed with his memories," Harry sighed. "It's my mum, Ginny. It's all I have of her, Snape's memories and those photographs." He pointed to the photo album Hagrid had given him years before, the photo album that he'd kept in Snape's room for the last month. "I was just thinking, imagining, you know, what it would be like to spend my birthday with her," he said wistfully.

Kneeling behind Harry where he sat on the floor, Ginny wrapped her arms around him. "Come with me to the Burrow. Mum's cooking all your favourites. My mum and dad knew yours, maybe they can tell you some stories about your parents to add to your collection. Please, Harry? I can't bear to think of you spending your birthday alone."

Harry jumped. That particular voice in his head was usually silent when he was in Snape's room; it was part of the reason he spent so much time there.

Not knowing how to explain further, Harry had given in and gone to the Burrow. He tried very hard to not resent it.

Somehow, inexplicably, it was made worse because it wasn't just Ginny and her parents. Practically the entire Weasley clan was there, only Charlie missing, and of course, Fred. Harry had forgotten how annoying Percy could be, and he'd never really realised how much he disliked Fleur. He'd always thought Ginny was unreasonable on the subject of her sister-in-law, but Harry was beginning to come around to her point of view.

The way she bills and coos over Bill, the way she hangs off him is revolting. She's like some species of bizarre French parasite.

Laughing, Harry bent his head to whisper the thought into Ron's ear, but pulled back just in time as he remembered that Ron was nearly as stupid on the subject of Fleur as Bill.

At that moment, Arthur stood up from the table, signalling the end of dinner and sparing Harry trying to come up with something. "Harry, I have a little something out in the shed I think you'd like to see."

"More Muggle crap?" Harry asked, then clapped his hand over his mouth. "I'm so sorry, Mr Weasley, that's not what I meant at all."

Percy and George smiled, but Bill, Ron and Ginny glared daggers at Harry. Arthur himself merely smiled. "I daresay it is as you say, crap, I don't even know if it works or what it's supposed to do. I thought you might help me out, but never mind. We can look at it some other time. I think Molly would rather you open your presents now, anyway."

"What is the matter with you?" Ginny whispered angrily as she pushed her chair back from the table. "You hurt Dad's feelings."

"I don't know," Harry whispered back miserably. "It just came out." He wished he was back in Snape's room where the voice in his head was usually silent.

Everybody gathered around the fireplace in the sitting room. Molly smiled brightly at Harry. "Cheer up, dear. Arthur is a little single-minded about his collection. It does him good to be reminded that not everyone shares his interests."

Harry knew that was supposed to make him feel better, but it only made him feel worse.

"Now," Molly said, clapping her hands together, "we have presents for Harry, of course, but because having you all here makes it almost seem like Christmas, and because what with Harry and Ron's training, and Bill and Fleur spending Christmas with her family—" Here Molly paused and gave her oldest son a sad little smile. "Yes, well, since we won't have you all home for Christmas, I have a little gift for everyone now." She waved her wand and wrapped packages tumbled through the air. A small pile landed in Harry's lap and everybody else got one.

"Aw, Mum, you shouldn't have," George said. "I mean, you really shouldn't have."

Harry felt the package that was like everyone else's and groaned — a sweater. A thought passed through his mind and out his mouth before he even registered it. "Fred probably died just so he didn't have to wear one of these ever again."

All the blood that had just drained out of everyone else's faces flooded Harry's. He didn't even try to explain or apologise. No apology could make up for what he'd just done. He was only vaguely aware of Arthur and Ginny leading a sobbing Molly from the room. He felt dizzy and the room seemed to flicker out of focus. He blinked, opening his eyes to see Ron towering over him, fists clenched.

Scrambling to his feet, Harry tensed, waiting for the blow. Ron was going to beat him bloody and Harry wasn't even going to try to stop him. He wanted Ron to hit him.

It's one thing to take your punishment like a man, it's entirely another to be stupid. Don't tense up. Keep you muscles relaxed, your limbs loose. It will hurt less that way.

For a moment, Ron just glared at him, swaying a little, fists raised in front of his chest like a boxer. Harry began to think maybe he wasn't going to be struck after all, but just in case, he forced his muscles to relax. In the end, he wasn't sure it helped at all. Ron suddenly lashed out, catching Harry on the edge of his jaw, snapping his head back, nearly breaking his neck. It hurt like nothing had ever hurt, like nothing should ever hurt.

Nodding, gingerly rubbing his jaw, Harry said, "They ought to classify your fists as Unforgivables. Are you satisfied?"

"NO! You fucking wanker! What in hell is the matter with you? You don't speak to my mother that way! I should pound you into the fucking ground!"

"Get out, Harry," Bill said through clenched teeth, "before George and I decide to give you more of the same."

"I'm sorry!" Harry yelled. "I didn't mean it! I don't know why I said it! Please, let me talk to her. I wouldn't hurt your mum for the world!"

"NO! You've got to... Look, I've been...something strange is happening to me! You know me! You know I would never say something like that if I were in my right mind!" It was horrible to say it, horrible to admit it to them, to himself, but Harry realised it was true; he was going mad, he needed help.

"Fuck you, Potter!" Ron roared. "You're not mental, you're just a self-centred prick with a head three sizes too large! You've always been like this! Well, I'm not falling for it again! You apologise and it means nothing! Get out of our house, leave my family alone! We want nothing to do with you anymore!"

"Ron, no!" Hermione cried, trying to calm her boyfriend down with a hand on his shoulder. "You don't mean it!"

"I do mean it!" With a great heave of his shoulders, Ron dislodged her hand and nearly freed himself from Bill and George.

"That's enough!" Arthur sounded like Harry had never heard him before, his words cutting through the yelling like a sword. He turned to Harry, his face grim and sad. "Harry, Molly would like to speak with you. I'm not in favour of it myself, but she insists. I never thought a son of mine — and yes, we do think of you as a son — would ever...I've a mind to turn you over my knee."

AUGUST

The green light of the killing curse paints every face a sickly hue. Albus falls. Lily screams. It blazes from the Dark Lord's wand, his own wand, Nagini's eyes. Draco cowers in a corner. Albus falls. Lily screams. They circle around him, wands raised, hate-twisted faces. "Coward! Coward! Coward!" He is Albus Dumbledore falling. He is Severus Snape dying. He is Lily Potter screaming. He is a baby wailing in the sickly green light. And NO. And NO. And NO! He will not die! He cannot die! He is running, seeking, searching, falling, failing, dying.

Dread made Harry's feet drag as he shuffled, slump-shouldered down the long grey corridor. He knew he looked like shit: eyes sunk deep within dark circles of puffy flesh, hair sticking up in clumps, face pale and haggard. He neared the end of the corridor and the right hand turn that would lead him to the second door on the right where his interview would be held, and his feet dragged even more. He was tempted to just turn around and walk away, give up on his own before the sure disaster that awaited him forced him out.

Stopping just short of the right hand turn, Harry took a crumpled piece of parchment from a pocket in his robes and reads the results for the hundredth time. They didn't look any better than they had the first time. He'd passed the background check, but otherwise he'd nearly blown the special qualifying exams they'd set for him and Ron. The only thing he'd done well at was Potions. And wasn't that a laugh? He had no idea how he'd pulled that one out of his hat, but every time he'd been about to do the wrong thing, the right thing to do had suddenly come to him out of nowhere. The rest of the exam hadn't gone at all well — Transfigurations, Charms, even Defence, his choice of spells and his wandwork had shown all the knowledge and subtlety of a first year. He had found himself doubting things he absolutely knew for certain, and his hesitancy had come through with every move he'd made. He'd only barely scraped by.

Shoving the parchment back in his pocket, Harry slumped to the floor, huddling with his arms wrapped around his bent knees. He still had the interview to get through — it was a miracle he'd even made it that far — and if he made it through that there was still the character and aptitude tests. How was he supposed to prove he had any character at all when he was quite possibly going mad? And how would he prove he was actually quite adept at Defence when he was so tired he could barely raise his wand, let alone use it?

You might as well face it. You're not Auror material. Go home. You have money. Use it. Take a trip. Ask Minerva for a teaching job if you must. Just abandon this foolishness.

Harry yawned so widely his jaw made a popping sound. Tiredly, he dragged himself upright, then hesitated, trying to figure out if he should go forwards or turn back. He'd just decided to go through with it when he heard raised voices coming from around the corner. It sounded like...Hermione and Ron. Harry knew he shouldn't listen, that he should make some noise to announce his presence, but he hadn't seen Ron since his birthday, the most miserable night of his existence. Creeping a little closer, Harry flattened himself against the wall to listen.

"Not anymore, he isn't! You were there. You heard him. Nobody talks to my mum that way and gets away with it."

"Be reasonable. Your mum's forgiven him, why can't you? Oh Ron, if you'd only go see him, you'd feel differently. He looks terrible."

There was a sound that Harry took to be Hermione stamping her foot. It made him smile a little wistfully. "Ronald Weasley! There isn't one of you who hasn't made fun of or groaned about your mother's sweaters at one time or another. Every Christmas, for example."

Harry heard a soft chuckle. "Yeah, he would have. But that doesn't make it right!"

"No, of course it doesn't make it right. Harry feels horrible. Truly horrible. I don't think he's slept more than a handful of hours since his birthday. He's a complete mess. I think he was telling the truth when he said there's something wrong with him. Give him a chance, Ron. If you can't be nice to him, just don't treat him like a leper in front of the interviewer. Can you at least do that much? For me, if not for Harry?"

"Good." There was the distinct sound of a big, sloppy kiss. Harry waited a couple of heartbeats, then cleared his throat loudly before walking around the corner.

"I know," Harry said again. "It won't mean much to you, I suppose, but I am sorry. I love your mum. I even love her sweaters."

Ron glared at him, but to his surprise, Harry was pretty sure he saw the corner of his friend's mouth twitch as if he wanted to smile.

The option for further testing of the waters was stopped as a sour-faced man in red Auror robes that could have used a good steam press stalked into the room and eyed Harry with distaste. "Harry James Potter? Ronald Bilius Weasley? This way." He jerked a thumb towards a door with a small plaque that read Ralph Rupert Rumplety, Associate Assistant Director.

"Good luck!" Hermione exclaimed brightly. She kissed Ron's cheek, then hugged Harry.

Harry and Ron followed the man into a dingy, cluttered office. "Sit," the man barked. "I'm Ralph Rumplety." He pronounced it Rafe. "You will address me as sir, or Auror Rumplety." Harry wanted to roll his eyes — even Kingsley hadn't insisted on being called Auror Shacklebolt — but he wisely held back. "If you're lucky enough to pass the background check, the character assessment, and the Defence Aptitude Test, I'll be your lead." He pulled a file from a teetering stack on the desk, opened it, then looked from Ron to Harry then back to Ron. "Ronald Weasley?"

"Any relation to Arthur Weasley in Detection and Confiscation?" The man smiled roguishly. It was rather a creepy smile, revealing as it did several large gaps between crooked, brown teeth. "Stupid question. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, eh? Well, I hope you inherited more from your da than his red hair. Good man, Arthur. We need more in the Ministry like him. Dispensation from NEWTs, eh? Arthur pulled some strings. No? Here on your own merits, are you?" He flipped over some pages in Ron's file. "Exam results look good. Bright lad. I'm sure there's no need to worry about your character assessment, being Arthur's son." He stood and shook Ron's hand. "Welcome aboard, young Weasley. We'll work you hard, but I'm sure you'll be up to it. Arthur and Molly raise good stock from what I've seen of your brothers. Barring Weatherby, of course," the trainer smiled. "There's a runt in every litter and I'm glad it's not you."

Ron beamed like a four-year-old with a new crup. Turning to Harry he gave him a thumbs-up. The interviewer smiled at him, then sat down, pulled another file from the stack and frowned. "Well, well, well. What have we here? Harry James Potter." Pursing his lips in distaste he added, "Saviour of the wizarding world, is it? Think a lot of yourself, do you, Potter?"

"Shut your gob! You'll speak when you're spoken to and not before. Your celebrity won't serve you in here, boy. I don't play favourites and if I did, well, you wouldn't be one of them. You've a cocky look about you. Got it from your father, I presume. I knew James Potter," he sneered. "We went through training together back in the day. He was insubordinate. Always going off half-cocked. Thought he was better than everyone else. And you look to be the same. As I said, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

The trainer stood and came to stand directly in front of Harry, towering over him and looking down with a malevolent smile. "I don't care if you killed You Know Who." He jabbed a finger into Harry's chest. "You're not special. Not in my corps. You're a grunt like every other grunt and you'll obey the rules or I'll bounce you out of here so fast your arse'll catch fire. I'll not stand for a prima donna, are we clear?"

"Don't take that attitude with me, Potter," he spat. "You look like shite. Up all night drinking, was it? Think your fame means you don't have to pull your weight? I've broken better men than you. Man, hah!" He looked Harry up and down with disgust written on every line of his face. "Pansy's more like it. You a poof, boy?"

"Well, we'll see, won't we? I won't have you ogling the other trainees, boy, so keep your nose clean and your eyes to yourself and maybe, just maybe, I'll turn you into something that's not ashamed to look in the mirror."

Standing again, the trainer waved sheets of parchment from the file while he glared down his nose at Harry. "Your exam results were pathetic, but you killed You Know Who, or so they say. Let's see some proof of your abilities, boy. Confringo!"

Someone was singing. Loudly and off-key, notes rising and falling in a way that made Harry feel decidedly seasick. Opening his eyes just made it worse, so he closed them again, marvelling at how much that tiny little movement could hurt.

I'm DRUNK today and I'm rarely so-o-ber, a handsome RO-ver from to-own to town. Oh but I am SICK now and my days are nu-um-bered, so come all ye YOUNG men and lay-ay me dowwwwwwwwwn.

The realisation that the singing was inside his own head made Harry feel dizzier than ever.

"Madam Pomfrey?" Harry shook his head in confusion and then immediately regretted it. "I'm at Hogwarts? Why am I at Hogwarts? What happened? I can't remember? Why can't I remember?"

"Shhh. It will do your head no good to become agitated. You've been injured. Which now makes seven years out of seven I've known you." The nurse smiled at him. "You were brought to Hogwarts, I believe, to avoid publicity. I'm sure you're quite sick of seeing yourself in the Prophet, although I've a suspicion that it has more to do with your trainer not wanting to explain why he cursed Harry Potter. The nerve of that man! Casting Confringo on a trainee, and without warning too!"

That sounded vaguely familiar, but the details were still muzzy. Everything was muzzy. Even with his glasses on, Madam Pomfrey looked like an Impressionist painting.

"Well, you have had a rather severe blow to the head, dear. Flying desk part, or so Ron Weasley tells me. And there's the medication I've given you to numb the pain. It does tend to make one a little loopy."

"Nothing, really. Just a song stuck in my head for some reason." He wished he hadn't said that, because the same verse started up again.

"When can I go home?" Somehow, being back in this particular childhood haunt wasn't comforting. Grimmauld Place seemed appealing by comparison.

"Oh, not until tomorrow, dear. Now, sit up. It's time to take some more medicine." Madam Pomfrey raised a vial to Harry's lips.

Half-rising, Harry dashed the vial from her hand, sending it spinning across the room to smash against a wall, leaving an oily blue streak.

"Foolish old woman! You are long past the limits of your usefulness and should retire before you accidentally kill someone!" Harry recoiled from the torrent of words spilling over his lips but couldn't seem to stop them. "You over-medicate! You have always over-medicated! Has it never once occurred to you that as long as everything is right with the mind, the body wants to heal itself and will better be able to do so if not polluted with all your ridiculous patent medicines and patently useless nostrums?"

"Shit!" Harry yelled, once more horrified by something he'd said without meaning to. What the hell was happening to him? A too familiar wave of sick fear assailed him. Clutching his head, he vomited over the side of the bed.

"No, Hermione. We can't. He'll be booted from Auror training and if we take him to St Mungo's, it'll be all over the papers. And, I don't know, what if they put him in a locked ward or something? It's not as if he's dangerous."

Harry didn't care. He wanted to know what they were saying and as long as he didn't do something stupid, they'd never know he was hiding in the pantry. Harry shifted slightly and knocked something off a shelf. Groaning in frustration, he opened the pantry door and stepped into the kitchen.

"Hermione!" Ron said with some heat. "Look, Harry. It's not like we think you're barking or anything, but you did get a rather nasty crack on the head. Fucking Rumplety. What the hell did he think he was doing?"

"He hates me. He fucking hates me. Did you notice? He's exactly like Snape. 'Harry Potter, our new celebrity.'"

That is the single smartest idea you've ever had. In point of fact, it may be the only smart idea you've ever had.

"Rumplety's got it in for me. We've not even started training and already he's tried to kill me."

"Hermione! He cast Confringo!" Ron and Harry exclaimed in unison. "I didn't even have my wand out and he didn't give me any kind of warning," Harry continued hotly. "And it was just a preliminary interview. What the hell was he doing, throwing curses at me? He could have killed me! Oh god, this is going to be a very long three years."

"Heh. Not if he kills you before then." Ron laughed and ducked as Harry swung his fist. "Don't worry, mate. We'll get you through it. Three years will pass in no time and we'll be Aurors, just like we've wanted to be since forever."

Two weeks after he left the infirmary, Harry was sure that deciding to become an Auror was the biggest mistake he'd ever made in his life.

If you had half the brain of a jobberknoll, you'd have realised that before you landed in the infirmary. Face it, you're just not cut out for the job.

He was exhausted, out of sorts, and every bone and muscle in his body ached. He really could have used Madam Pomfrey's painkilling potion now; it couldn't possibly make him feel any muzzier than he did already and maybe the potion would silence the fucking voice in his head.

If the aches, pains, sleeplessness, and the fact that AAD Auror Rumplety had it in for him, weren't bad enough, Harry himself seemed bent on a course of self-destruction and the voice in his head egged him on. With the exception of brewing poisons and antidotes, for which he apparently had a previously untapped aptitude, he couldn't do anything right. A mock battle with Harry as team leader had resulted in three 'dead' trainees. When Rumplety, with admittedly some justification, had torn him a new arsehole in front of the entire group, Harry had gone off his nut, screaming that he'd never had a worse instructor in his life. That had resulted in an official reprimand and two days' suspension.

And if that hadn't been bad enough, Harry had come home, battered, bruised and ashamed, to find Ginny waiting for him. When she'd tried to jolly him out of his bad mood, he'd gone ballistic. Their screaming match had turned into a bout of angry sex, which would have been fine, perfect even, if Harry hadn't been tormented with images of Bill and Sirius and Oliver Wood the whole time. He'd been so horny and freaked out, he'd rolled Ginny over and fucked her from behind. Frankly, it had been the best sex they'd ever had. Ginny had screamed and moaned and urged him on, but when they were through, she'd gotten angry again and stormed out. He hadn't seen her since, but his prick was raw from reliving the experience.

A heavy sigh turned into an agonized groan as Harry rolled over and looked at the clock. Yesterday had been the second day of his suspension; he had orders to report back to training at seven o'clock and it was almost half six now. Forcing himself out of bed, he yelled at Kreacher, "I need breakfast in five minutes and I've got to be able to take it with me. Can you manage?" There was, of course, no answer. Ginny wasn't the only one who wasn't speaking to him. Still, he knew Kreacher would at least hand him a boiled egg on the way out.

"Cutting it close, mate," Ron said as Harry slid into the seat next to him. "Rumplety's disappointed, I bet. He's been looking from his watch to the door every couple of seconds for the last ten minutes, and the way he was smiling I wouldn't have wanted to be you if you'd been late."

Other than Potions — which Harry was pleased to see was on the agenda for that morning — the only good thing about mucking up in training was that Ron was a shining star by comparison. It was like he had his own private source of Felix Felicis. Still, Harry couldn't begrudge Ron his success; he'd had a hard time living in the shadow of five older brothers and an internationally famous best friend.

"So glad you decided to join us, Potter." The way Rumplety said Potter raised Harry's hackles. The man was worse than Snape, if that was possible. "I hope your little vacation put you in a better frame of mind."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Much better, sir." Harry smiled pleasantly as if Rumplety had just enquired after his health.

Rumplety's eyes narrowed and he scowled. "One of these days you're going to go too far, boy!" he snapped. "Do me the honour of making that day today. It will give me great pleasure to take you down another peg. Of course that could do irreparable harm to your career, since you only scrape by the minimum height requirement. I knew your father was a depraved sort of fellow, but I hadn't realised he'd mated with a house-elf."

Digging his fingernails into the palm of his hand, Harry closed his eyes, took a deep breath, blinked twice, and said nothing.

This is ridiculous! You don't even want to be an Auror anymore. What kind of man doesn't stand up for his mother?

"My mother was not a house-elf. She was a brave woman who died facing down Lord Voldemort, sir," Harry gritted out. He smiled when Rumplety flinched at the name. "Scared by the mere mention of Voldemort's name, sir?"

Rumplety's face turned the colour of beetroot. Someone in the class snickered. There was a moment of dead silence before Rumplety spoke again, his voice harsh but shaky. He looked away from Harry. "Today you're going to brew a poison, so pay strict attention. The Flesh Eating Philtre is a NEWT-level potion, so I expect you to be able to brew it without instruction."

Harry and Ron paled. Smiling nastily, Rumplety moved to stand in front of them. "Team up, two or three to a team. Potter and Weasley, I usually prefer to separate you two, but today, you'll work together." The trainer was obviously getting great pleasure from Harry and Ron's discomfiture. They hadn't gone through seventh year, they hadn't taken NEWT-level potions, and their equivalency exam had in truth been much less than that.

When he had made them squirm sufficiently, Rumplety returned his attention to the group at large. "Each work station has seventy-two ingredients laid out. This poison requires less than a tenth of those ingredients and you have everything you need at hand. You have fifty minutes. Begin."

"No," Harry said shortly. He sneaked a look at the station next to them, but a massive trainee named Madwaller was standing in such a way as to block Harry's view.

"Don't talk to me for a minute." An image of the Half-Blood Prince's Potions text had flashed through his mind. Ron started to say something else, but Harry held up a warning finger as he imagined himself flipping through the book. Harry smiled. "Keep your eye on Snape Junior." He nodded at Rumplety. "And if he looks this way, distract him."

Taking his wand from his pocket, Harry checked again to make sure the trainer was otherwise occupied. "Accio aconite!" he said softly, flicking his wand.

"Half-Blood Prince," Harry mouthed and matched Ron's sudden grin with one of his own.

Truthfully, he was a little nervous. He hadn't had any problems yet when they made potions, but if his brain was playing tricks on him, he'd get Ron in trouble as well as himself. He couldn't actually remember reading the particular page he was seeing in his minds eye, but the Prince's notes were clear enough. He pushed a sheaf of hellebore at Ron and began to pluck the dried flowers off the aconite.

"Snape would be proud, don't you think?" a grinning Harry asked as he deftly began mixing ingredients. He flicked his eyes upwards to check on Rumplety, who was in the middle of a discussion across the room. "Ready?" he asked Ron, preparing to tip in the aconite flowers and getting a big smile in response.

Later, it would seem to Harry that time had slowed down. He could recall every detail: the cerulean blue of the liquid bubbling gently in their cauldron; the deep purple of the aconite blossoms; someone laughing a couple of stations over; the way Ron's wide grin turned to a look of abject horror. Their potion had begun to heave and churn as if there were something alive in its depths. And then it exploded.

In a panic, Harry shoved Ron violently to one side. He snatched his wand from the table, as thick globs of molten liquid began to rain down. Harry threw a shield up, but it wasn't enough. Ron's arms, windmilling in an effort to stay upright, flailed outside the confines of the shield. The sickening stench of burning flesh had filled the room, overpowering even the disgusting smell emanating from the smoking cauldron as Ron screamed in pain and crumpled to the ground.

Oh good. At long last you have decided to rejoin the living. I was getting bored.

Blinking myopically in the bright light, Harry looked around, trying to see who was talking. The room he was in was unfamiliar and empty. An open window looked out on the tops of trees and let in a breeze as hot as a blast furnace. It was only when Harry tried to stand up that he realised he was on the floor. As he tried to push up, his arms felt as useless as a newborn's.

That worked out rather better than I thought it would. I suspect you can kiss your career as the Ministry's youngest Auror good-bye after today. A result devoutly to be wished for.

With effort, Harry shifted his body until it was supported by a wall and managed to sit upright, discovering at the same time that his glasses were clenched in his fist. One lens was shattered, but he put them on anyway and looked around the room again. There still wasn't much to see — a desk covered with files, two chairs, and a bin overflowing with wads of crumpled paper — and no source for the mocking voice.

"Who's there?" Harry waited tensely for a response. He was scared and he didn't really know why. The voice hadn't said anything threatening.

Why there's no one at all, just you and the contents of your exceedingly thick skull.

It slowly dawned on Harry that he was in Rumplety's office, and with that realisation, the memory of what had happened came flooding back. "RON!" he bellowed, trying to stand once again and failing.

Head still whirling at the implications of I know no more than you, Harry turned towards the source of the new voice. Rumplety, drawn up to his full, intimidating height, arms crossed over his chest, stood in the doorway, sneering down.

Rumplety, face turning red, screamed, "GET UP! STAND AT ATTENTION WHEN YOU SPEAK TO ME!" A fine mist sprayed from his lips and Harry was glad he was across the room.

Seemingly from out of nowhere a wand appeared in Rumplety's hand and pointed threateningly at Harry. Pointlessly, Harry threw his arms up to protect his head, and once more asked, "Ron?" Light shot from the wand's tip. Harry was suddenly on his feet and completely immobilised, only the wall at his back keeping him from falling over. Before he understood quite what was happening, Rumplety's fist was tangled in Harry's shirtfront and his sneering face was inches from Harry's own. "You are a menace who shouldn't be allowed to walk free!"

"Mr Weasley will be fine, no thanks to you, Potter. Concussion, a few scrapes and bruises, and one exceedingly nasty burn. It seems you saw the error of your ways at the last possible moment and shielded him from the worst of the blast." Rumplety's thin lips twisted into a sneer that would have done Snape proud. "No doubt," he said, dropping his voice to a threatening murmur, "the Minister will award you some kind of medal for bravery, but that will do little for your overblown reputation once it is discovered that you are the first trainee in fifteen years to be thrown out on your ear!"

Good man! One day, hopefully sooner rather than later, I shall invite you over for tea. We can discuss the finer points of Potter-thrashing.

Filled with self-loathing, Harry blurted out the thought and then just stood there, staring at Rumplety in confusion.

"And there's all the verification that I need. You're mad, Potter. Get out of my office, and get out of my corps! I suggest you check yourself into St Mungo's, perhaps a course of electrospell therapy will cure you, but I suspect you'll spend the rest of your days in a padded room. NOW GET OUT!"

The late evening sun knifed through the open window, concentrating all its fading strength on boosting Harry's headache. He sat at his kitchen table, elbows on his knees, head in his hands and stomach in his throat. A cup of tea hovered in front of him, but he was more than a little afraid to drink it, not entirely sure Kreacher wouldn't have reverted to his old loyalties; he really shouldn't have yelled at the little guy, but sometimes the obsequious attention got on his nerves, and right now his nerves were too shattered to cope with one more thing.

He'd nearly killed Ron. Nearly killed him in a stupid fucking potions accident. Feeling his gorge rise again, Harry sprang from his chair, only barely making it to the sink in time to avoid splattering the floor. He stood bent over the sink for several minutes after his stomach emptied, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Turning on the tap, he watched his mess swirl down the drain, then cupped his hand under the water's flow, rinsed his mouth and spat. Groggily, stomach muscles aching, he made his way back to his chair, batting the teacup away irritably.

Oh, do stop pouting. It's beyond tedious. Weasley will be fine. A simple burn salve will take care everything. I'm sure he's already home being annoyed beyond endurance by Granger's screechy attention.

Harry's world suddenly turned on end. "Who are you?" he whispered. Asking the question scared him. Believing there was someone to address the question to scared him worse.

I rather like Rumplety. Sound teaching methods. Knows his material and clearly isn't one of your simpering sycophants.

And still the world wouldn't right itself. It seemed to tilt even further, because the answer simply wasn't possible and yet it was the only answer that made sense.

"I...I don't know what's worse, nearly killing my best friend, or thinking I was mad, or discovering I'm not and that you are...what are you? Possessing me? You can't be. You're dead!"

Not exactly. Not quite. At least, I don't think I'm dead. No, I'm sure I'm not. I'm merely...separated from my body.

Without any inflection at all, Harry said, "This isn't happening. It isn't possible."

There was a prolonged silence. Harry stared blankly at a wall for several long minutes and then exploded. "YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Another wave of nausea forced him back to the sink.

Actually, my mother was a rather mild-mannered witch. Had to be to put up with my father all those years. Now, if you had said 'son of a bastard' I might be forced to agree with you.

"YOU COULD HAVE KILLED HIM! YOU COULD HAVE MADE ME KILL HIM!" Harry spat, rinsed both his mouth and the sink again, but remained bent over, staring blindly into the drain. Never mind Snape. His friendship with Ron was over forever. Probably with Hermione and Ginny and the entire Weasley family as well. They'd never forgive him for this.

I find that idea quite cheering. Having to endure them as well as you has been endlessly provoking. Be that as it may, I'm sure it's an inaccurate assessment. Your shield saved Mr Weasley from rather more harm than the explosion would have caused without it, but even had you not produced the shield — and loathe as I am to do so, I commend you on your quick reaction — he would not have been killed. He could have swallowed pints of the stuff and suffered no worse than a very bad stomach ache. Of course the potion for internal burns is rather disgusting to force down, but that's neither here nor there.

Staggering back to the table, Harry collapsed into his seat and returned his head to his hands. "Why?" he asked finally, his voice cracking. "Why are you doing this to me? To hell with me! Why did you make me hurt Ron?"

Weasley was incidental. Merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. Typical of him, I must say.

You do realise there is no need for you to speak aloud, let alone shout, don't you? It only slows down the process and makes me endure every piece of drivel twice.

That didn't even bear thinking about as far as Harry was concerned. Not just yet, anyway.

"How is that not reading my mind? FUCK! Don't change the subject! Why have you been sabotaging me? Because it has been you, hasn't it? Putting answers into my head, making me doubt the things I know. I didn't remember that page in the Prince's book. You put it into my head. Why, damn you?"

The chances of an Auror being killed are quite high, doubly so if the Auror is the reckless Harry Potter. It's in my best interests that you remain alive until I can figure out how to escape from your rabbit warren of a mind and return to myself, or barring that, die as I should have done.

"Yeah, you should have done. You really bloody well should have done! To think that I felt guilty! To think I was pissed off at Ron and Ginny because they wouldn't go to your funeral. You fucking arsehole! Why am I even talking to you? Go away!"

Believe me, Potter, if I had any idea how to do so, I would be gone already. Your cranial cavity is not what I'd call a stimulating environment.

"No, I don't believe you. I don't believe this. I can't hear you all the time, therefore you aren't always here, therefore you can go away! KREACHER!"

The house-elf appeared at his elbow, muttering something that included, "Master thinks nothing of yelling at poor Kreacher. Oh no. Kreacher is only dirt under Master's heels."

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," said Harry, not really meaning it. "I'm having a very bad day. Please make the teacup stop following me about. I won't drink it. I can't keep anything down anyway. I'm going to bed. If Hermione or any of the Weasleys try to contact me, you have to wake me up. OK? I really am sorry I yelled. You're a great house-elf and I appreciate everything you do. Truly."

The teacup was no longer dogging his footsteps, but Kreacher was still muttering as Harry started to walk out of the kitchen.

"Shut up, can't you? Oh fuck. Not you, Kreacher! You," Harry whispered as he hastily left the kitchen, "go wherever it is you go when you go someplace. I want to be alone."

The room itself is odd, impossible. Each of the four walls is shorter than the two walls it abuts, the ceiling doesn't seem to join any of them although there are no other visible supports and pubic hair so blond and so fine it looks like he doesn't have any. He might shave, it's not unheard of, and the walls are obviously transparent although nothing, nothing at all, can be seen through them: no colour, no absence of colour, no trees or grass or even other walls can match the bloody annoying beauty of that proud pureblood cock. A withered, blackened hand holds a wand made for a giant, a wand large enough to vault the tower, a wand large enough to stop the little death, the look of ecstasy on his haughty face as he ejaculates the killing curse in a fountain of green.

Thrashing wildly, Harry fought to kick the sweat-damp covers off the bed then bolted for the bathroom three storeys down. He had nothing left to vomit, but he hung over the toilet bowl, gut cramping, trying desperately to rid himself of his own stomach.

"What?" Harry gasped. "Was that you? Was that your dream? What kind of sick, twisted fuck are you?"

I believe the sick and twisted portion of that was your doing. I was simply indulging in a somewhat pleasant memory.

"Lucius Malfoy. It was you! Ginny laughed at me! All those fucking dreams, they were all you! God, if you weren't dead already, I'd fucking KILL you!"

If my dreams were unpleasant, then I consider myself partially revenged for the trauma of inhabiting the desolate wasteland that is your mind. And I'm not dead.

"What do you mean you're not dead? Of course you're dead. I was there when you died. I watched you die and I was at your funeral. And Lucius fucking Malfoy? God, I need a bath. I feel like I'll never be clean again!"

Oh please. Pot. Kettle. As if you didn't spend the entirety of your sixth year wanting to get under Draco's robes.

"I'm going to talk to Kingsley. Maybe he'll be willing to pull some strings." Fuck Snape. Harry was going to become an Auror.

"Harry, maybe you should think about whether you really want to be an Auror. You know Defense. That kind of mistake makes no sense unless you're subconsciously trying to fail. I've read about things like this."

"Of course I want to be an Auror!" Harry exclaimed indignantly. "It's all I've ever wanted to be. Hermione, don't you see? I didn't make a mistake. Or I did, because...damn. It's not me that's doing all these things. Well, I mean, yes, I'm the one doing them, but it's not my fault."

"Oh Harry. There's no shame in admitting it. Everybody knows you wouldn't deliberately hurt Ron. And you don't have to be an Auror just because that's what you thought you wanted to do when you were fifteen, or just because Ron still wants to be one. There are other things you could do."

Harry snorted. "Like what? Kill Dark Lords for a living? Never mind. It doesn't matter what else I can do, because what I want to do is become an Auror. Hermione, you have to listen to me. I know it's going to sound fantastic, but I'm not making this up and I'm not going mental! You remember what happened at the Burrow? What I said to Mrs Weasley and my fight with Ron? I got every detail right on the potions portion of the exam. You know I'm not capable of that, not without the Prince's book in my hand, and that's gone forever." Running his hand through his hair distractedly, Harry rose and started to pace. "The dreams. The aconite in the potion. Doing things I would never do. Saying things I would never say. Don't you see?"

Positively radiating concern, Hermione patted Harry's arm. "No, I don't see. I'm sorry, but I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. Of course I remember the night at the Burrow, but you've been under tremendous stress for the last year. You died and came back; you defeated Voldemort; you've lost good friends, people who were very important to you, Lupin, Tonks, Fred, even Snape—"

"Snape! That's exactly what I'm trying to tell you! Hermione, that bastard isn't dead! At least I don't think he's dead; he says he isn't anyway. I'm not really sure about the metaphysical implications of this. I mean, if your body's dead, how can you be alive, but if your brain is alive, how can you be dead? But then you start to think about portraits and ghosts and resurrection stones and—"

I think the more interesting question is how can the body continue to function when the brain has so obviously atrophied?

"Harry?" Hermione's hand found Harry's arm again but he shrugged it off, then let his own hand rampage through his hair again until he it stood completely on end.

"Hermione, no! I wasn't telling you to shut up! Why would I? You hadn't said anything." Said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Harry, I am trying to help. You're obviously overwrought. The accident, being kicked out of training..."

Of course that probably would have happened eventually anyway, even without my assistance.

Hermione looked more scared than hurt or angry, and inched nervously towards the door. Groaning, Harry held his hands up in a placating manner. "Again, not you. I do realise what this sounds like. I'm sure at this moment you're convinced I've gone completely off my nut, but I haven't. You have to believe me."

Why would she believe you? Are you even listening to yourself? I am intimately familiar with the situation and even I am beginning to doubt your sanity. Perhaps if you bang your head against the wall you'll split it open—

"Sh–" Harry began, then bit the word off with a sharp click of his teeth. He would not rise to the lure this time. Snape, of course, continued as if Harry hadn't even tried to speak.

—perhaps simultaneously freeing my consciousness from the tight confines of your skull and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have indeed gone off your nut. It's a pity I can't sit back and relax with a nice smoke. This does look like it's going to be a rather good show.

She looked at him as if that was the craziest thing she'd heard so far. "It's raining cats and dogs out there, Harry, and it's freezing!"

"I know! I just thought maybe I wouldn't be able to hear him over the wind! And NO! I am not insane! Fine." It was Harry's turn to put a hand on Hermione's arm. "Look, you sit there. Please. Just sit. I'm going to put on some music. And no, I am not insane. I'll explain it in a minute. Music first. Room to pace. And then, I'll explain everything."

He turned the knob on the wireless and soon crashing guitars signalled the beginning of the Weird Sisters' cover of It's Not the Wizard, It's the Wand.

Erecgh! I didn't even like the original of this song when I was twelve with admittedly poor taste in music.

Harry raised the volume. Turning to Hermione he said, "Can you hear me all right?" He took several paces across the room and asked, "How about now? Good." He paced back to Hermione and immediately turned again.

"All those things I mentioned before...OK, no, I'll start at the beginning." Pacing faster, Harry tried to think; he wasn't even sure where the beginning lay.

I'm beginning to see the advantages of having neither a stomach nor a gag reflex. Would you settle down? I'm sloshing around in here like a rubber duck in the bath.

"You can slosh around? Doesn't that sort of imply some—" Harry waved his hands vaguely. "—sort of...I don't know, physical state of being?"

"Snape," Harry said simply. "I'm talking to Severus I'm-In-Here-Sucking-Your-Brain Snape. I know it sounds crazy. I do. I know it. But Hermione, so help me god, or whatever the wizarding equivalent is, I'm not... You've just got to listen to me. No! Don't say anything until I'm done. When I'm done I promise I'll make plans to go to St Mungo's and get checked."

Harry's fingers curled and his hand trembled in front of his lips as he desperately tried to find the words. He stared into the distance somewhere over Hermione's right shoulder. "I started having dreams, right after the battle, the very first night and pretty regularly since then. I can't remember them when I wake up, or no more than snatches of them. It's always dark and sometimes there's pain and almost always loneliness and they're like nightmares but not really. I think...I think they're Snape's dreams."

As soon as he said the words, Harry knew he hadn't gotten it quite right, but he wasn't far off the mark, either. "Then I started having these thoughts." He rolled his eyes. "Usually really rude thoughts. They just flitted through my head, almost always accompanied by this feeling of intense irritability. At first, they were just directed at me. Insulting me. I thought it was just my inner critic. You know those thoughts you get that tell you you're worthless, that you can't possibly succeed? Or am I the only one who has these thoughts?"

Ignoring Snape was getting marginally easier. Hermione's nod of understanding also helped. "Good. So then the thoughts became directed out, towards other people. That feeling of anger at everything just kept getting bigger and when these thoughts popped into my head, they'd spew out of my mouth. I couldn't believe that I was thinking those things, let alone saying them out loud. I'm surprised Ron and his brothers didn't kill me when I said that to Mrs Weasley. Mrs Weasley of all people. I don't feel that way about her! She the closest thing I have to a mother!"

"Let me see if I've got this. You're exhausted, you've had a very trying year, you're having nightmares, saying rude things, you nearly blew up your oldest friend and therefore you think you're possessed by the ghost of Severus Snape?"

A grin flickered around the edges of Harry's lips. "When you put it that way... Let me finish, OK? When I sat the Auror Training exam, the first thing up was Potions. I looked at the instructions and knew I was doomed, but then suddenly it was all clear. There was a voice, or a thought, I don't know how to describe it, but I had the thought 'this is second year stuff' and then I could sort of hear explanations and instructions in my head and I did everything exactly right! I thought I was just pulling this stuff out of the dim recesses—"

Harry mentally thrust two fingers at Snape. "—of my mind. Maybe I had learned something from the Prince after all. I'm almost done, I swear. The rest of the exams went differently. Every time I was even a little doubtful about something, I would start arguing with myself internally; it seemed like part of me thought one thing and part of me thought another, and the part of me that thought another won out more times than it should have. I nearly failed the Transfiguration portion. And just scraped by on Charms as well. I did better at Defence, but even there...I almost used a dark spell, Hermione! I only barely caught myself in time!"

Pulling a chair in front of Hermione, Harry sat, arms resting on his thighs, staring intently, willing her to understand and accept. "In my first days of training, when the instructor was such an arsehole to me and I went off on him, that was all me. The bastard treated me exactly like Snape treated me first year."

As I said previously, I myself thought he seemed an excellent instructor. First time in years I've approved of any of the Ministry's hires.

"It made me furious. And that anger felt so normal that I realised all those other times, yelling at Mrs Weasley, hadn't felt normal. The anger hadn't felt like my anger. And then came the partner exercise...don't look at your watch! I'm almost done. If that had been a real situation instead of an exercise, Withers, Walpole and Merkin would have been killed. And then the voice said, 'You don't want to be an Auror anyway.' And that's when I first had an inkling the voice in my head wasn't mine, because I do want to be an Auror. I had never doubted that before."

The silence in the room seemed like a physical presence as Harry stared at Hermione, and Hermione stared at the floor. She did seem somewhat calmer; Harry hoped it was a good sign. Tired of waiting for her to say something, he opened his mouth, then closed it as she spoke at last.

"I don't know what to think, Harry. I've always thought spirit possession was ridiculous, but then I didn't believe in ghosts before I went to Hogwarts." She smiled weakly. "I do think you need to see someone at St Mungo's. No, don't get angry. I'm not saying you're mad, I'm just saying...maybe you should definitely rule out the possibility? Or there could be a physical reason for your symptoms. I've heard inner ear problems sometimes... And maybe...maybe if they say there's nothing wrong with you, I could do some research on possession, find out if it's real."

"Yeah, great! Absolutely, I'll go to St Mungo's," Harry lied, having absolutely no intention of doing any such thing. "But don't wait to you see what you can find out. Start now, yeah? I'd give every thing I own to get this prick out of my head." Shut up, Harry thought at Snape. Don't say a damn thing. I'll give you your chance when she's gone. "You're a brick, Hermione. Um, listen. Could you not say anything to anybody else. Not just yet. Not even Ron. Please?"

SEPTEMBER

Smoke billowing back across its scarlet flanks, the Hogwarts Express left platform nine and-three-quarters. The flood of wizarding humanity come to see the returning students off faded away, leaving behind a very lonely Harry Potter. He kept an arm raised in farewell until the train was little more than a speck in the distance, then morosely let it fall back to his side.

"That's it then," Harry said, leaning against the barrier, eyes still gazing down the tracks. "I feel like I'll never see her again. Stupid, eh? Feeling sorry for myself, I guess. Ginny off to school. Ron in training. Hermione back to her parents. Everyone off to school, jobs and family except me. What the hell am I going to do with myself?"

If current attitude is any indication, I suspect you're going to mope around for the rest of your life. You're well shut of the Weasley chit. I'll take any wager you care to make that she'll come home at Christmas with a new boyfriend.

"I wonder if Catholic priests can really perform exorcisms," Harry said bitterly. "I can't be shut of you fast enough."

I still think you should stop lying about the house and do as Granger asked. Go to St Mungo's. I promise, I'll be silent for the duration. I won't make you think, say, or do anything. It will all be you.

"Why?" Harry asked suspiciously. "Why do you keep harping on this? I'm not mad. You of all people know that I'm not, that this is real."

Do you lead a completely unexamined life, stupid boy? Ah, no, I'm the stupid one. Of course you do. If you paid any attention to anything, you'd realise your friends are worrying about you. How many times has Granger asked you if you've seen a Healer yet? A scroll saying you're fit as a fiddle won't hurt anything and it might help. And stop doing that! We are not dolls for your amusement!

Grinning sheepishly, Harry put down his wand and let the images of nine year old Snape and Lily disappear into the swirling mist of memories within Snape's Pensieve. "Sorry. I just like watching the two of you together. You're so damn cute."

Harry laughed. He was beginning to learn some things about Snape; the man simply couldn't tolerate anything that remotely resembled a compliment, no matter how vague.

"You still haven't said why you want me to. Look, even Ginny hasn't noticed anything. Believe me, if she thought I'd gone 'round the twist, she'd have said something. And I'm careful. I've learned not to blurt out everything you think. I don't talk to you in front of people. They're not worried about me."

Miss Weasley may be attempting to put on a brave front, although I suspect if the Prophet gets wind of your erratic behaviour she'll find an excuse to break it off with you. Surely you don't think she cares a whit for anything but your celebrity?

You're not as careful as you believe. Do you realise when you think no one is around or paying any attention, you argue with me? You pace, you wave your arms, you mutter. Do you really think Hermione Granger has failed to notice? Trust me, I'm not saying these things out of any concern for you! It's in my own best interest. I am trapped inside you and we must figure out why that happened and what we can do to end it. That can't be done if you're in an insane asylum!

"I'll be more careful," Harry said. "But I'm not going to St Mungo's. That's the fastest route into the Prophet's headlines and you know it."

Harry jumped. "Shit! Don't do that! You scared me out of a year's growth, and before you say it, yes, I know I can't afford that. Couldn't you knock, or something. Ow! Not funny!" Harry exclaimed as his head started throbbing from the inside out.

"Very funny, you sadistic bastard. How did you do that anyway? Never mind. Don't do it again. Clear your throat or, or I don't know, something less invasive at any rate."

"It's not burning. It's burr nore." Harry could feel Snape staring at him, which was a hundred times weirder than a voice in his head. In his head it could be anybody's voice; it could be his own voice. But he'd never, ever stared at himself with his arms crossed and his lip curled in a mocking grin. "It's not my fault I never learned French. Black butter, all right? Now, go away. I don't want you here tonight." Harry returned his attention to his pan. The butter very nearly had burned. He swirled it around with a practiced twist of his wrist and then turned the heat off under it. Pulling a bowl out of a cupboard, he began to mix ingredients.

"No, I'm not. I like pepper. And you don't even know what I'm making, so shut up."

Spicy is one thing, but at the rate you're going, you may as well just shove a handful of peppercorns in her mouth and be done with it. It will be inedible.

"Then it's a damn good thing you don't have to eat it, isn't it? I'm not cooking for you, I'm cooking for me and Ginny. Can't you just go do whatever it is you do when you're not annoying the pants off me?"

"What‽ As if, Snape! And it's not like you'd know anything about it. You were so fucking homely I bet you had to rub a lust potion into your right hand to get it to cooperate."

There was a split second of silence and for that instant Harry thought he'd won the round. But Snape had never had been one to allow him the last word.

"Lalala, I can't hear you." Harry flicked the radio on; the disk jockey said something about tickets for an upcoming concert. Closing his eyes for a moment, Harry felt for Snape's presence, but it seemed the man, spectre, whatever he was, had at last taken himself off to wherever it was he went when he wasn't making Harry crazy. Familiar guitar chords started up and Harry grinned. He remembered this one; Dudley had demanded Uncle Vernon buy it for him for no other reason than he'd heard Aunt Petunia exclaiming in horror over the video and then for months had played it whenever she hadn't immediately given way to one of his demands. Pivoting his hips, Harry grabbed a knife and danced over to the wooden counter. He began singing along with the radio as he cut up vegetables, his knife, hands, hips and feet moving with the music.

"♫I hear your voice, it's like an angel sighing. I have no choice, I hear your voice. Feels like flying. I close my eyes, oh god I think I'm falling, out of the sky. I close my eyes.♫"

Snape‛s sudden re-emergence caused Harry‛s hand to jerk. The knife jumped and slashed across his index finger. "For fuck‛s sake!" he yelled before sucking his bleeding finger into his mouth. It was really very annoying that he couldn‛t turn his back on the greasy, ugly, pompous, snarky, maddeningly interfering son of a bitch.

"I count on it," Harry snapped. "Now go away like a good little poltergeist. I was enjoying your absence immensely." Harry turned up the radio, cranking up his determination to ignore Snape at the same time.

I've never heard such caterwauling. I'll have nightmares, no doubt. I'll be sure to inflict them upon you as well.

"♫When you call my name, it's like a little prayer, I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there.♫"

"♫In the midnight hour I can feel your power, just like a prayer you know I'll take you there.♫"

If that's what you want, all you need to do is ask. The logistics might be unusual, but certainly not insurmountable.

"Snape, shut it, please. I've already got a girlfriend. I promise, if I find myself needing another, I'll look you up. Now, go away. Ginny's going to be here in twenty minutes and I still need to shower."

Ah, wise decision. You'll be able to use the interlude to get rid of that inappropriate erection.

If Harry had been assured that doing so would finally excise Snape from his mind, he would have used his cooking knife to lobotomise himself.

A cool breeze fluttered the curtains and tickled the hairs at Harry's neck as he lay propped up on his elbows in front of the new French windows. They were, Harry thought, one of Snape's better ideas, even though figuring out how to create them had taken a few hours' search to find the spell and several days before he'd managed to create more than a hole in the wall. The upside was Harry had been kept occupied, the downside was Snape being unbearably smug about the whole thing. Harry smiled.

"Where do you go when you go?" he asked idly, picking up a fluffy ball of dust and sending it floating wobbily through the air with a puff of breath.

I don't go anywhere. There's nowhere I can go. I am trapped in this arid wasteland.

"Yeah, well, maybe the aridness...aridity? Whatever. Maybe it'll dry up some of the grease in your metaphysical hair. You do go somewhere. I can feel it when you come back. It's like...a breath of fresh irritation rippling down my spine."

One can simply close the door entirely. In most cases it is preferable to obscure the fact that one is Occluding, but under the circumstances I find that a waste of effort.

"You know you could have told me that years ago. Easier starting place. I might have done better if we'd started at the beginning, you wanker."

Forgive me thinking you might have done some reading on your own, or at least had Miss Granger read the relevant bits to you.

Pushing up off his hands and rolling into a sitting position, Harry glared out the window. "You never told me there was a text!"

Hogwarts has a most impressive library. You should have done your own research.

"You bastard! You would have rather Voldemort invade my mind on a nightly basis than give me one small piece of information that might have helped me! Why did Dumbledore trust you again? You bastard! So Occlumency doesn't have to involve pushing other thoughts to the forefront, you can just hide everything?"

There are no limits to your idiocy, are there? How is it possible you couldn't work that out for yourself? If you don't care that the Legilimens knows you're Occluding—

"Yeah, I've worked that bit out, thank you. Do you still know what I'm thinking when you're Occluding?"

Not usually. I could monitor all your drivel, but that would hardly be soothing. Even as a purely mental entity, I need rest.

"So if I could just drop a shield you wouldn't be able to... What would happen to you if I did that? Are you part of my mind, or separate?"

With a scowl, Harry wandered to a bookcase and took down a dusty volume. "I wonder if there's a way I can create a mental black box and close you up in it."

I am under the impression that's exactly what has happened. Your entire mind is a closed box of dust and gloom...and pornography.

"Good," said Harry, smiling smugly as he slapped the book closed. "I'll take that as agreement that you'll give me a brush-up on remedial potions. I suggest, for your own benefit, you do it right this time. Shall we start now?"

Several boxes were open on the floor of Snape's room and Harry was digging through them in turn. It was curiosity, nothing more; he wasn't looking for anything in particular, just trying to learn more about the man inside his head. "You're dead. They're my things now."

I am not dead. And even if I were, you most certainly would not have been my legatee. Your infernal nosiness is almost enough to make me regret getting you booted from Auror training. Stop it! Put that back this instant and close that box.

A bright red T-shirt with the legend Burning Cauldron of Love! emblazoned on the front, slipped from Harry's fingers as he doubled over laughing. "I'm beginning to regret you didn't give me all your memories. You actually wore that, and more than once from the look of it. I can't even imagine a circumstance where it wouldn't be completely humiliating." Something tickled Harry's brain, and it wasn't Snape. He stopped laughing.

Don't be absurd! Of course it won't work! I am not simply a memory of Severus Snape, I am Severus Snape! You can't get me out of your head and into a Pensieve. Still...

For an instant there was a strange feeling of being whipped back and forth, almost as if Snape was...pacing. Weird, very weird. "Still what?"

Was there any method to your packing? Or did you simply hurl things into boxes at random?

"Well, I didn't just set the room swirling and let things land in boxes, but I never sorted through your stuff. This stuff," Harry pointed to the open boxes in front of him, "and that stack are from your bedroom. Those over there are from the sitting room. I didn't bother with Wormtail's room, nor the kitchen."

Harry laughed. "Just a guess. The other bedroom had a wire wheel on the desk." There was a wave of something that rippled through Harry's body. It felt suspiciously, and impossibly, like approval.

Don't be ridiculous. I was simply surprised that you managed to work that out on your own.

"To be honest, I don't think I did work it out on my own. I think you told me. Anyway, his name just popped into my head. Wasn't that you? Or can't you remember?" Taking care to Occlude first, Harry cocked his head in thought, then, still working it out, asked slowly, "Did you know from the beginning that you were in my head? I'm guessing you entered when you died, because I think the weird dreams started that night, and you didn't start insulting me until later. You know what? I think your presence was stronger at Spinner's End. Now why would that be?"

Well, it's worth a shot, certainly. Potter, I want you to unpack all my books and arrange them. I think alphabetically by author within subject matter. Yes, that's probably easiest.

I of course don't expect you to have any facility for this project, so you will do exactly as I say. Now, do you have empty shelves?

"I thought not," Harry said glumly as he pulled a box towards him and began emptying it of books.

The journal Harry had found in one of Snape's boxes was disappointing. Being made up of lists more than anything, it didn't reveal much about Snape at all, or at least not in any way that was useful to Harry. He apparently liked rock and roll and had spent an inordinate amount of time making lists titled things like Best Second Track, Best Concept Album, and Stupid Band Names; most of the titles and names on the lists were completely unfamiliar to Harry. The journal also revealed that Snape felt both anger and guilt about killing Dumbledore, but Harry could have guessed that from the Pensieve memories. The only other thing he'd found out was that Snape absolutely loathed Bellatrix Lestrange, but then who didn't?

Harry stuck his finger in the journal to mark his place and let his mind wander. He wondered if proximity, like absence, made the heart grow fonder. Because really, it didn‛t get more proximate than a Snape inside his head, and by all rights, Harry should have either been going mad for real, or he should hate Snape beyond endurance. And he didn't.

The whole thing was strange. It wasn‛t as if Snape was any nicer. The opposite was true, actually. With nothing else to occupy his mind or time, Snape‛s only form of intellectual stimulation, amusement, emotional release, seemed to be thinking up new and better ways to belittle Harry. He found each and every button and seemingly took great delight in pushing them all. Repeatedly. He‛d even discovered buttons Harry hadn‛t known existed.

Snape was cruel and petty and, unfortunately, since Albus Dumbledore did not share the space in Harry‛s head, he was not available to keep Snape‛s worst impulses even minimally in check. And yet, he was kind, too, in a bizarre sort of way. The man, spirit, poltergeist, whatever, kept finding projects to keep Harry occupied, which kept Harry's mind off his loneliness. Of course that may have just been self-preservation.

Some of it was Harry's own fault, he supposed. Not yet completely comfortable with Occluding, he kept forgetting to, and it was harder to throw up a mental shield when Snape was already talking. Of course when a button got pushed, Occluding became nearly impossible.

What was it with the man anyway? Like this thing about Harry being gay. He wasn't gay. He had a girlfriend and they had good sex. Regularly. Well, not so regularly as they had once done — that would be difficult with Ginny away at school, but if she were around they'd be having sex regularly. And he wasn't the one having dreams about Lucius Malfoy.

—who also happens to be bloody fucking gorgeous. And yes, I dream about him. Often. With great pleasure. Dreams are the only way I can ever get satisfaction where that man is concerned. I also regularly dream of killing him.

Somehow Harry knew that if he could, Snape would be smiling in that creepy, sardonic way he had.

A mind, even your mind — perhaps especially your mind — is a twisty thing with labyrinthian paths, some of which are seldom walked upon. So much of what we think on ordinary days goes by unnoticed by us. Hundreds, thousands of thoughts flit through are heads and only a few stay. I have had reason these last few months to realise how much I never paid attention to. I have also had the opportunity to rummage through the storage vaults of your mind. Very entertaining I found it, too.

I assumed since you were no longer Occluding you were anxious for company. Now, where was I? Pay attention. You'll learn something. You, Potter, for all your protestations of rampant heterosexuality, hold in your head more sexual images of men than you apparently realise — Bill Weasley, Oliver Wood, the late Cedric Diggory, Sirius Black, Lupin, even Draco Malfoy, not to mention the numerous men who are strangers to me.

"I do not think about Draco Malfoy!" Harry protested, but typically, Snape ignored him.

By contrast there are very few women whose sexual images you store, and no strangers, no celebrities, no models from the sorts of pornographic magazines endemic to boy's dormitories everywhere. Even when you think of Miss Weasley, you see her on a broom more often than not. Suggestive, don't you think? Perhaps even Freudian. I find it even more interesting that you do not number Fleur Delacour among your pashes. It's almost unheard of for a straight man to be unaffected by a Veela, or part-Veela. You may, in fact, be bisexual, but you think of the male form far more than you ever do the female. Because you believe yourself to be heterosexual — which, due to the scrutiny you have always been under, is the only viable way you can think about yourself — your mind has locked away the images of men so thoroughly that you don't even remember, in any concrete way, that you have these thoughts.

You have accused me of creating images in your mind at inopportune times. The truth is I rather enjoy excavating the attic of your mind and, at humourous moments, showing you examples of what you have stored there. Humourous to me, anyway.

"I found something you might want to see," Harry said, desperate to change the subject and willing to reveal he'd been going through Snape's private journal rather than endure any more of Snape's theories.

Yes, I'm quite aware you've been prying where you shouldn't have been. Consider yourself revenged for my attic explorations. I would like to prove my point. You can, of course, refuse, but if you really are as straight as you insist, you have nothing to lose.

Really, really wishing he'd never come back from his visit to the afterlife, Harry gave in.

Each time I think I've plumbed the depths of your idiocy, you prove me wrong. Potter, every time you've been in your room for the last three months, I've been with you. Now, take the chair and place it in front of the mirror.

"What? No! That's...that's just...I don't even know what it is...wrong, weird! I'm not going to do it in front of the mirror. I'm not even sure I'm going to do it at all."

Although Snape no longer even had lips, Harry could tell the word had been absolutely forced over them. And he was frankly intrigued; a sardonic, "Oh, you'll do it all right," would have been more in keeping with the Snape he'd come to know and...well, know.

"Why?" Harry asked. Which was silly, he supposed. He knew damn well why. Snape wanted to humiliate him in exchange for a bit of almost human company.

When you look at something intently, when you are thoroughly focussed on something, I can, after a fashion, see. It's intriguing. And, I want to see you, not simply your misguided sense of yourself.

You are bloody stupid, and then some. Humour me, Potter. We both know you are and always have been a blatant exhibitionist. You are never happier than when all eyes are upon you. Consider me one of your legion of adoring fans, if it helps.

Harry couldn't help but laugh. Snape had managed to imbue a desire to watch Harry pleasure himself with all the scathing disdain he'd ever evinced in the Potions classroom.

"Fine," Harry said, dragging the chair across the room and sitting rigidly upright on the edge of its seat, "but if I'm too embarrassed to get it up, you'll be to blame. And if you say...think anything rude or uncomplimentary, I'll cut you off forever."

While your ability to Occlude has — however reluctant I am to admit it — improved, you still can't guard your mind in your sleep. You're seventeen and as incapable of passing the night without a wet dream as you are of following simple brewing instructions. Believe me when I say I have reason to know. You couldn't cut me off if your life depended on it.

How one could think a throaty chuckle and make it seem to reverberate through a room, Harry hadn't a clue, but Snape obviously did. Smug bastard.

"Chair, check. Mirror, check. Boy hero, check. Now what?" Harry couldn't bring himself to even glance at his mirror image.

With a grimace Harry darted a glance into the mirror, then quickly averted his eyes, not needing a glass to recognise the slow flush creeping across his cheeks.

Look at yourself, or so help me God, Potter, the next time you're in Miss Weasley's presence, I'll flood your mind with images of such graphic filth you'll either sodomise her on the spot or die from an excess of shame.

"Way to set the mood, Snape. Leave Ginny out of this." Teeth clenched and jaw tight, Harry stared belligerently into the mirror. "I don't know why I agreed to this."

Harry nearly smiled with pleasure — Snape did find him attractive — but determinedly twitched it away.

You agreed because you're a horny teenager possessed of a completely inexplicable — not to mention completely inappropriate — infatuation with me.

"I'm not infatuated with you!" Harry was outraged. "This whole thing was your idea!"

You agreed because you want to have sex with me, and this is, alas, the only way to approximate the experience. Had I any longer a corporeal presence, I would heave you over the back of that chair and roger you until you were permanently bowlegged and had sworn off women forever; however, we will both have to settle for something less physical and more cerebral, taxing as I know that will be for you. Hopefully, you will not expire from a brain seizure before the act is complete and your seed anoints the silvered glass.

That was more like it. "You've got a bizarre line in bedroom patter," Harry said. "Who the hell says 'roger' instead of 'fuck'?" And who in hell gets hard at the use of the word 'roger'? Harry asked himself.

"Randy," Harry snorted. "Who are Randy and Roger and what are they doing in my wet dream anyway?"

"If you can't see me," Harry began, carefully avoiding his image in the mirror, "how do you know I'm even wearing a shirt?"

Do my non-existent eyes make a sound as I roll them, I wonder? If you are not Occluding, and if I listen, I can hear your every thought. Every. Thought. And believe me when I say I do listen, being, as I am, fascinated by how something so absolutely tedious as the slow grinding of your mental apparatus can still be so vastly entertaining. Look at yourself in the mirror and unbutton your shirt. Slowly. One button at a time.

Harry looked, really looked at himself. Immediately mortified to realise his gaze had strayed to where the seam of his trousers was tightening over his cock, and doubly so by the snort he was sure hadn't come from him, Harry raised his chin defiantly and stared into the mirror. He tensed, expecting a snide comment, but Snape was silent. Aware that he'd never before actually examined his own eyes, Harry leaned forward. He was surprised to realise the green wasn't uniform, that the emerald of each iris was outlined by a perfect band of darker green, that there were flecks of lighter colour, more gold than anything near the pupil.

A strange feeling rippled the hairs on the back of Harry's neck and trembled down his spine. He was looking directly into his own eyes, really seeing them for the first time, but an image flickered in his head almost as clearly and he knew Snape was focussed not on his eyes as he himself was, but on things peripheral: the tracery of blue veins beneath the pale skin of his neck, the pulse beating at his throat, the sheen of sweat in the hollow below. It was extremely arousing, and not a little creepy. He thought, more than half seriously, about the rumours he'd heard first year — that Snape was a vampire.

Snape sounded his usual impatient, irritable self, but underlying his tone, Harry caught the note of amusement.

I remind you again I can, effectively if not literally, hear you. How is it possible you are not aware of this after three months? I am not a vampire, you idiot.

But you do have a very, very nice neck. You're blushing. How charming. Buttons?

"It's a pity," Harry said, knowing that, especially in these circumstances, it was silly to keep speaking out loud, but speaking, actually speaking, made Snape seem a bit more real and himself just that much less crazy, "that you're not here in the flesh."

Once again Harry's mind was filled with the image of his own throat. He watched his Adam's apple bob up and down as he gulped.

"Are you sure you're not a vampire?" Harry asked. He let his fingers stray to the buttons of his shirt.

I would appreciate it if you would stop talking and, surprised as I am to find myself saying it, stop thinking. It's difficult to create the proper atmosphere when you keep babbling.

"I'm not sure gothic horror is the right sort of atmosphere for the circumstance." Harry snorted. "Why weren't you this polite in Potions class?"

It is lucky for you that in my current state I'm incapable of throttling you. In class I yelled so I might keep from doing just that. Pity I missed my chance. Would that I still had fingers.

I realise I asked you to go slowly, but I do think you could speed up just a little.

Harry looked down at his hand still fumbling with the first button, and grinned.

Grin a bit wider, Harry shifted his gaze back up, then deliberately slumped in his chair, pressing his head against the back of it. Although he let his eyelids droop — in as sultry a fashion as he could manage — he did not close them, but from under his lashes watched himself undo two more buttons.

Focussed on his buttons as he was, he could still see the rest of his body splayed in the chair. He half expected Snape to throw up an image focussed on his trousers' tightening seam and was startled to realise that Snape was looking exactly where he himself was looking, only somehow seeing even more vividly Harry's hand, dark against the white of his shirt and the pale flesh of his chest, shaking slightly as he fumbled over the third button.

When your shirt is unbuttoned, run your hands up and down your chest. Stroke yourself, feel the roughness of your palms against the smoothness of your chest. Do not neglect your nipples.

"OK, yeah. This just might work." Harry was beginning to find it difficult to breathe. He hurriedly undid the rest of the buttons on his shirt and tugged the tails from his trousers.

I am a bit shocked to discover you're not far enough past puberty to have acquired chest hair.

Harry's eyes narrowed and his hands fell away from his shirt as he mentally gave Snape a two-fingered salute.

Ignoring the insult of 'adequate' and warmed by the "more than", Harry placed his palm against his sternum, letting it rest there for a moment, straining to hear something from Snape, a change in breathing perhaps. He smiled wryly; Snape didn't have lungs to breathe, nor heart to pound, nor fingers to stroke and pinch. Although Harry himself certainly did; he was so aroused he thought his blood pressure was probably through the roof.

No, do not remove your shirt. Leave it open like that; it gives you quite a raffish air. Undo your flies. Do not take your trousers off, but if you need to tug them down a bit to gain free access, you may do so.

"Christ!" Harry propped an elbow on the arm of his chair and sunk his head into his hand. A sharp image of the sparse trail of hair leading from his navel to the waistband of his jeans lingered brightly for a second, then faded altogether and Snape's presence with it.

Harry could hear Ginny's footfalls on the stairs. In a panic he jumped from his seat, shoved the chair back across the room, buttoned up his flies with difficulty over his aching cock, and was just doing up the last button on his shirt when he heard her step on the landing. Scrubbing his face furiously with his hands, he glanced in the mirror and groaned.

"Hullo. Didn't you hear me call? Harry? What's wrong?" She crossed the room quickly and took one of his hands in hers. "Harry?"

"I think I'm going to ask Ginny to marry me," Harry said. There was complete silence from Snape. "Well? Say something."

There's something horrifically wrong with taking a redheaded woman as your wife. Could you be more obvious?

"What is that supposed to mean? Are you saying I'm trying to marry my mother, because that's just—"

I'm not the one who wants to marry my mother. Not the one who has been sleeping with my mother's doppelganger, for that matter.

"Stop!" Harry could feel a blush blazing across his face and was glad Snape couldn't see him. "It's not as if you haven't been enjoying the sex!"

Why wouldn't I? My mother wasn't a redhead. And I was always curious what it might have been like to have sex with—

I was going to say: to have sex with a woman. You're the one obsessed with sleeping with your mother.

"One more word out of you today and we're going to be listening to the Spice Girls twenty-four seven for the next two weeks."

"Don't try to change the fucking subject!" Harry yelled, waving Snape's journal in the air. "You were helping Voldemort with Horcruxes?" Harry knew he was screeching like a fishwife, but he couldn't help it. Almost a whole fucking year spent trying to track them down, not to mention discovering he himself was one, and Snape was helping Voldemort make more?

Always ready to believe the worst of me, even now. NO! I WAS NOT! I had a role to play and you bloody well already know that! If the Dark Lord told me to do something, I did it, but I did not meekly hand over information that was detrimental to our side. Our side, you arse. Yours and mine. You fucking little monster. How dare you doubt me? How dare you?

Snape's outrage was making the blood pound in Harry's head, making it hard to think or to speak. It came as some surprise that it apparently had the same effect on Snape.

Brilliant! I can't even get properly fucking angry. What a weak constitution you have, you pathetic brat.

"Keep it up, arsehole. Right now I'm so angry I'm cheerfully considering suicide, just for the sake of fucking you up."

Tit for tat, brat. Tell me what you said to Miss Weasley and I'll tell you what I remember about my research for the Dark Lord.

"You're such a fucking baby. Voldemort. Voldemort. Voldemort. Voldemort. He's dead. You can say his fucking name."

Security at Hogwarts must be shockingly lax these days. I know you didn't ask her to marry you, because even you are not that stupid. What did you say to her about me?

"God, I love it when I remember to Occlude and you're stuck with your own sour self for amusement. I told Ginny nothing. Or rather, I told her I was hearing voices, but I didn't tell her I knew whose voice I was hearing. And then we shagged like rabbits, and I didn't think of Bill, or you, once," Harry finished in a chipper voice.

Harry wished he had Snape's talent for not being baited. Couldn't the man show a little bit of pique? Or better yet, jealousy? "I didn't lie to her. I just didn't tell her the whole truth."

Occluding, because it was easier to think without Snape's running commentary, Harry considered why he hadn't told Ginny the truth. It took him a long time, and while Snape was either silent or Occluding himself, Harry was pleased to feel the man's irritability mounting. Finally, he spoke. "If you're really alive, like you think you are, then I... We don't know why you're inside me and if... Look, what if you really can be cast out, cast adrift? I'd rather Ginny think me mad than possessed, because if I'm mad I can be cured, but if I'm possessed the only way to fix me is to cast you out, and then what happens to you? She won't let it go, you know. She'll be on me and on Hermione, constantly, relentlessly, demanding we find a way to exorcise you. She'll bring her family in on it. Do you want that?"

Harry stopped Occluding. He wanted Snape to know what he was thinking, how much the idea of Snape being exorcised bothered him. For a while, they just stayed silent — a silence that was oddly companionable.

It was hard not to laugh. In some ways, Snape was very predictable. He was not a man to get mushy over finding out Harry actually cared.

Yes, thank you. I'm thrilled beyond words that you care. He wasn't content to rely on his Horcruxes. For several months, before I was made Headmaster, I spent most of my time at Spinner's End, researching other ways he might live forever. Once I returned to Hogwarts, I took advantage of the library there, when my duties allowed, to do further research.

"This says—" Harry waved the journal. "—'the mind can be temporarily hosted by another' and then there's the word 'prolegomena'." Harry ignored Snape's correction of his pronunciation. "And nothing else. There was a book in your bedroom that had that word in the title, but if it's here — and it should be — it hasn't been unpacked yet."

Yes, I remember. It's essentially an introduction to Dark Arts theory. There was something...what was it you said? The mind can temporarily be hosted by another? But there was no...

Waiting for Snape to finish thinking was always frustrating for Harry, especially knowing that when he had finished, he might still not let Harry in on his thought process. After awhile, unable to stand it any longer, Harry spoke. "No matter what you think, I'm not stupid. I know that you must've found something, else how did you end up in my mind?"

My apologies. The book mentioned a spell, an ancient one. It only gave a fragment of it and used it illustratively rather than instructively. I have no recollection of finding any other reference to it. But yes, it seems improbably coincidental that I refer to such a spell and then end up outside my own body and in yours. Why can't I remember? It's not part of the memories I fed you, is it?

"No," Harry replied. "Not unless you can see something in your memories that I can't. Is that possible?

"No more for me, thanks, Headmistress," Harry said politely, nudging the much diminished plate of cakes to the side.

I was beginning to wonder if there was a bottom to that pit. Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, you know.

"Shut it!" Harry whispered furiously in the direction of his chest. It didn't make any sense, he knew Snape was in his head, but as with speaking aloud, it helped him to have a place he could see to focus on.

"Harry?" Professor McGonagall pursed her lips in disapproval, but her eyes radiated concern.

Sighing, Harry looked up and smiled halfheartedly. "Sorry, Headmistress. I'm sure you've figured out by now that I didn't just drop by to chat."

Being that she's not one of the three stupidest people in Britain — all three of them being you — of course she's realised it. Get to the point, you idiot. I'd like this resolved before—

"Sorry! That wasn't directed at you! I know it looks weird, but I'm not insane! Really I'm not! And if you say one more word I'm going to Occlude! See how you like being cut out completely. This..." Harry made a vague swirling gesture around his head. "...is why I'm here."

"I feel a little out of my depth here, Harry. Perhaps I should ask Poppy to join us."

It took Harry a moment to figure out who Poppy was. "No! I don't need Madam Pomfrey." He smiled wryly. "She'd probably hex me into next summer, considering the things I said to her last time we met. I know what it looks like, Professor. I do! But I swear to you, I'm not mad. Please just hear me out. If you want to call Madam Pomfrey or send me to St Mungo's when I'm finished, then I won't argue, but please, please just hear me out!"

I suspect you're going to get very tired having this same conversation over and over again.

Harry nodded in agreement; eventually he was going to have to tell Ron and Ginny and who knew who else?

Professor McGonagall heaved a great sigh. "I have a suspicion I'm going to need something more fortifying than tea. Would you like a whisky, Mr Potter?"

"Uh, no. No, thanks. I think I'm going to need a clear head for this." He ignored Snape's derisive snort with difficulty.

Professor McGonagall drained her glass in one go and refilled it. "You were saying, Harry?"

"Right. Wow. I'm not sure how to explain this without convincing you of the exact opposite thing I'm trying to convince you of." He gave McGonagall an apologetic smile.

"I'm not sure what the beginning is and honestly, I think I'd better just go with the end result and get it out of the way." Taking a deep breath, Harry plunged. "Severus Snape is in my head. He's alive and he talks to me. And I know what you're thinking, but I really haven't gone round the twist, no matter what it looks like."

Stop nattering! You could try the patience of a stone. Tell her about the spell.

"You're not helping. No, don't say anything just yet, Headmistress. Let me get it out and then you can say whatever you like." Standing, Harry began to pace the room. "I'm not sure when it started. Not exactly. Sometime around...no, that's not right, it was before that."

Just repeat what I say, verbatim. Minerva, as improbable as it seems, and easy as it is to believe Mr Potter is mad as a March hare, he's telling the truth.

"Snape says? Oh dear. I believe I'll have another little nip." She held up the bottle. "Are you sure you won't join me?"

Do as I say, Potter! Repeat my words exactly. Minerva, as improbable as it seems, and as easy as it is—

"All right! I've got it. Bastard! I'm just going to let Snape tell it." Harry took another deep breath. "Minerva, as improbable as it seems, and easy as it is to believe Mr Potter is mad as a March hare, he's telling the truth."

Professor McGonagall's eyes widened. It suddenly seemed possible to Harry that Snape's idea just might work. He cocked his head as he listened to Snape's next bit.

"Your History of the British Empire in Five Volumes is a fake. Between its covers resides not the dry, dusty voice of an historian, but, last I saw anyway, two bottles of crème de menthe, a bottle of 1650 vintage Imperial Tokay — which will hardly be drinkable any longer, although I'm sure your palate will not know the difference — and a no doubt three-quarters-empty bottle of Lagavulin, plus whatever else you've squirrelled away since last you offered me a drink. You own an abominable tartan peignoir which should shame Clan McGonagall. You infuriated your father when you went into teaching rather than marry the rich cretin of his choice, and you have a birthmark in the shape of Finland on the inside of your right thigh."

"Oh good lord!" Professor McGonagall's face turned the colour of curdled milk. She collapsed into her chair and buried her head in her hands.

Casting a surreptitious glance at the Headmistress, Harry saw she was now staring vacantly in his direction, her hand clutching her glass so hard it was sure to shatter any second. He returned his gaze to his chest. "Do I want to know how you know about the birthmark?"

"Whew!" Harry exclaimed, forgetting to whisper. "Professor? Headmistress? Are you all right?"

"Severus Snape!" McGonagall snapped, rising to her feet and striding from behind her desk to tower over Harry in his chair. "How dare you!"

Instinctively, Harry raised his hands protectively over his head. "Don't hit me! He's the one who said it!"

He winced as Snape did that little trick of thumping him inside his skull. "You'd better hope you never get your body back, you malevolent bastard!"

Oh, big words from such a small, small boy, and you don't have to whisper any longer, you addlepated ninnyhammer, she knows I'm in here.

Professor McGonagall seemed to loom even larger. "Mister Potter! Believe you me, young man, I know precisely how irritating Severus Snape can be, but there's absolutely no excuse for that kind of language! Now, if you two children are done acting out, I would like an explanation."

"Harry, I do hope you will forgive me, but as Severus probably has the most information, it would perhaps be best if you let him speak."

"Fine," retorted Harry, irritated at being relegated to nothing more than Snape's mouthpiece. "You'll be sorry, Headmistress. He just called you a priggish old cow."

With all the considerable venom the two of them could manage, and with Harry faithfully reporting every rude thing Snape said, they filled the Headmistress in on as much of the details as they knew. When at last Harry said, "I think that's everything," Minerva collapsed back in her chair and closed her eyes, looking far older than she should have done.

"Let me see if I have this straight," McGonagall said finally. "And forgive me for repeating it all back, but I do want to make sure my understanding isn't faulty.

"During your tenure as Headmaster, Severus, you used Hogwarts resources, as well as Albus' private library, to do research on behalf of the Dark Lord." She radiated disapproval.

Remind the old bat that I could hardly have disobeyed a direct order and still have maintained my cover.

"He says I'm to remind the old bat — sorry, Headmistress, but they're his words — that he couldn't disobey a direct order. You shit on me, Snape, and I'll shit right back. I did warn you!"

"Isn't it possible, Harry, for you to speak to Severus without actually speaking? If you can hear his thoughts, can he not hear yours?" The Headmistress looked as if she would soon be taking points.

"Sorry. Yes, it's possible, but it's really difficult. When I do that it's like arguing with myself instead of with him and I lose track of what's his voice and what's my own, if you know what I mean. For the longest time I thought he was just an internal voice, a really judgmental one."

"I see. That is most unfortunate. I'm deeply distressed to discover your Hogwarts education apparently encompassed a course on obscene language. Albus always did have curious ideas about what constituted an appropriate curriculum." Her mouth twitched in a way Harry was sure meant she was trying not to smile.

"Yes, I do remember. Please try to keep the oaths to a minimum, whatever the provocation — and I know it can be extreme."

"Never mind, Harry. You don't need to... Perhaps this would be a good opportunity for a smidgen of revenge?" McGonagall was no longer trying to hide her amusement. "You needn't repeat anything he says unless you think it's pertinent."

"Yes, I thought that would please you, and it gives me no small pleasure of my own to have him silenced. You have no idea what I put up with over the years.

"So, in the course of his research, Severus happened upon an old legend about warrior kings in the mist of the past. He also discovered a fragment of a spell that released the consciousness of a possibly fatally wounded leader and placed it into the mind of one of his barons."

"That's about the size of it," Harry said. He laughed again. "And with all the foresight of a Muggle-born first year, Snape cast it without knowing if it worked, how it worked, how to reverse it, or even that he cast it. And he calls me an idiot."

"Sorry, he was whinging like a big baby." Harry laughed and scaled his voice up. "I was dying. I did the best I could," he said in the taunting sing-song voice known to children everywhere.

Professor McGonagall coughed into her hand before giving up all pretense and laughing heartily. Silence poured off Snape in furious waves, which did not bode well for Harry having a pleasant evening, but Harry thought it was worth it, just to be one up for a change.

Her laughter at last subsiding, Minerva dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, and said, "It is truly wonderful to hear him getting some of his own back after all these years. I think the two of you are remarkably well matched, Harry. No doubt Severus would disagree with me at the moment, but if the spell works as I suspect it must, his consciousness could only be placed in someone with whom he was emotionally, if not intellectually, compatible."

Harry wasn't sure if he should be pleased or insulted. Snape had no such doubts. Yes, she just called you stupid.

Minerva, apparently noticing Harry's wounded expression, said, "And by that I do not mean you are his intellectual inferior. Possibly I should have said, 'emotionally and/or intellectually compatible'. Indeed, the more I think on it, the more it seems there must be a similarity of mind or you would not be able to communicate at all." She waved her hand vaguely. "It's all conjecture at this point. Oh dear!" Minerva looked suddenly stricken.

"Well, if the idea was that the king's consciousness be made available while his body healed...oh dear."

"Oh god. I think I'm going to be sick." Harry bent over and thrust his head between his knees.

OCTOBER

"I think we should visit your crypt," said Harry for what had to be the thousandth time.

"Dumbledore wanted me to go, you know. He asked me to check on Fawkes, but maybe there was another reason. Maybe—"

Albus Dumbledore is dead. I murdered him, or had you forgotten? You spoke with his portrait, not him.

There is no painting in Albus' tomb to slip into, therefore his portraits doesn't know a damn thing.

Can heal wounds. My body is not wounded. Poppy would have seen to that, although unfortunately she's done nothing since I was entombed. Had Fawkes been in the Shack he might have done something, but he wasn't. It's not like the damn bird would cry over me regardless.

"Why are you being so damned stubborn about this? You don't know that Fawkes can't, or won't, help. What harm would it do to just go see?"

"You…" But there was no point in continuing, Harry recognized the feeling of absence.

"I haven't been able to find anything useful," Hermione said in a low voice as she followed Harry into the kitchen. "On the whole it looks like the idea of spirit possession is unfounded — at least spirit possession the way one normally thinks of it — but then there are cases similar to—" she dropped her voice even lower. "—Ginny and young Tom Riddle. I suppose that wasn't technically spirit possession, but I don't know what else you'd call it. Now in Ginny's case, you stopped it by stabbing the diary, but unless you're Snape's Horcrux—"

"For god's sake, Hermione!" Harry was not bothering to keep his voice down; he didn't care if Ginny and Ron heard. "I hope you realise you just suggested I stab myself. I'm not Snape's Horcrux! Don't you think I'd know?"

"I didn't know what being a Horcrux felt like. Now I do. I am not Snape's Horcrux. And I'm not possessed. Snape isn't dead, so spirit possession doesn't apply. I told you that before."

It's pointless arguing with her when she has a bee in her bonnet. You know that.

"You stay out of this, Snape! Hermione...oh hell, I'm not going to say this more than once. Go back to the sitting room. As soon as I've got lunch together, I'm going to talk to all of you at the same time."

If you think I'm going to assist you in this mad endeavour, you've got another think coming. Minerva McGonagall is one thing. Your stupid friends are another.

"You know, Snape, considering the friends you had when you were my age, I don't think you've got a leg to stand on calling mine stupid."

"Oh Harry! You never made an appointment to see a Healer, did you? There are things that can be done to help you! I'm sure of it!"

"The only thing that will help me is you getting it through your thick skull that I am neither possessed nor mad! Now go, get out of here. I'll join you in just a minute."

As he'd promised, Snape was Occluding when Harry carried a tray piled with sandwiches into the sitting room. It worried Harry a little, but he wasn't sure the man's participation would help anyway. It wasn't as if Snape knew things about Ron, Hermione and Ginny that no one else knew.

The silence in the room was aggravating — as were the covert glances between his three friends — but Harry was damned if he was going to speak before he was good and ready. Let them stew for a bit longer. God knows he'd had to stew long enough.

When Ron had swallowed the last bite of the last sandwich from the tray, Harry decided it was time. At least by waiting he'd assured himself that no one would die choking. Feeling conspicuous, Harry stood and moved in front of the fireplace, facing his friends.

Rubbing his sweaty palms on his jeans, Harry began. "I'm going to tell you something and I want you not to interrupt—"

"They have a right to know too. Please don't say anything until I'm finished. I've had this conversation twice already — three times if you count Snape — and I'm not having it again."

Scrubbing his palms again, Harry began to pace the small area between the fireplace and where his friends were seated. "You've all witnessed my strange behaviour since the war. You got the worst of it, Ron. I'm sorry you were injured because of me, happier than you'll ever know that you've forgiven me and are still speaking to me. I hope you're still willing to be my friends when I'm done.

"There's no easy way to say this." Harry took a shaky breath. "Snape didn't die that night in the Shrieking Shack. Through the unintentional use of an ancient spell, he...damn it! Will you just hear me out? Please!" Harry exclaimed as Ron whispered something to Hermione."

Grateful that Snape remained silent throughout, Harry finished his story and braced himself for their response. When it came it wasn't at all what he expected: Hermione burst into tears, Ginny looked furious, and Ron laughed.

Although he would have preferred to find out what Ron found so funny, Harry turned to Ginny. "What? Why are you angry?"

"Why? Let's see, Harry. Either you're making this up, in which case you're a bastard, or you're cracking up and haven't thought that fact was worth mentioning to me—"

"—in which case you're a bastard, or it's true and you haven't thought that was worth mentioning before this, in which case, you're beyond a bastard."

"I'm not making it up! And I didn't tell you because..." Harry faltered. He had no idea at all how to explain.

"Don't Ginny me, Hermione! You knew, didn't you? You knew and you didn't bother to tell me either! I've nothing to say to you!" She turned back to Harry. "You can't even say why you didn't tell me. I don't know why I'm surprised. You've barely been present for months. You're always in that stupid room with that stupid Pensieve! No wonder you're going mad, spending all your time in someone else's memories! You're selfish, is what you are! Do you think you're the only one who went through the war, the only one who suffered? Did you never think for a moment if you maybe just talked to me, to Ron, to anyone at all, that we could help you and you could help us in return?"

"Ginny, I..." Harry felt terrible. She was right, of course. All of them had suffered. All of them were still hurting. Ginny bore visible scars. She and Ron had lost a brother. Hermione's parents might never recover their memories, which meant that she might never have her parents again, since they didn't even remember they had a daughter. And Harry, wrapped up in his own problems, had barely spared them a thought.

"You think you're in this alone, Harry? Then be alone. See what it's really like!" Glaring at him through eyes full of tears, Ginny Disapparated.

Once again an awkward silence filled the room. Then Ron said sadly, "She's right, Harry. Sometimes it's about more than just you," and he too Disapparated.

Turning to Hermione in desperation, knowing she too would have seen the truth in Ginny's words, that she too would leave, but desperate to have at least one of his friends understand, Harry said, "Talk to McGonagall, please. She knows I'm telling the truth."

"Oh Harry," Hermione responded. She touched his cheek briefly, such a look of sadness in her eyes, and followed Ron and Ginny.

Blue shadows of leaves flickered across Harry's face and hands as moonlight streamed through the high window of the garden shed. He didn't know why he was sitting out there in the near dark, but he definitely wasn't sulking. Not sulking, but sad, and more than a little freaked out.

Entirely too reminiscent of the Shrieking Shack for my comfort. Why are you out here wallowing?

"God damn it!" Harry screeched, whirling around, eyes wide as if he would be able to spot Snape in the dim room. "Would you please, please, please not do that!"

"Don't think I'll ever be used to it," Harry said quietly, turning his face back to the window. A cloud floated across the face of the moon, obscuring its face as well as Harry's.

"Why me?" he asked after a long pause during which Snape had been uncharacteristically silent. "Why the bloody fuck did you have to choose me?"

I didn't choose you. It was nothing more than circumstance. Their was a void and I filled it.

"Ha bloody fucking ha. Leave off, will you? I'm not having a hard enough time without you taking shot after shot after shot after fucking shot?"

Occluding only went so far. Harry could keep Snape from hearing his thoughts, but he didn't seem to be able to block Snape's thoughts completely. Only Snape could do that, and at that moment, the son of a bitch wasn't being accommodating. Big surprise.

This wasn't my choice. I didn't deliberately set out to make your life miserable.

Do you think this is pleasurable for me? Do you think I enjoy it? Do you not realise I would rather be dead?

There's no point in not speaking to me. You're not able to Occlude all the time. Sooner or later you'll have—

Leaping to his feet, Harry smashed his fist into the shed wall as hard as he could and ran, oblivious to the blood dripping from his split knuckles. Miraculously, Snape remained silent.

Dappled by sunlight, the stream carries a little paper boat with it. In the boat, just like in the story, a little tin soldier stands at attention, wobbling slightly as his bark swirls in an eddy. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the tin soldier bends and sits. Carefully leaning his rifle against the stern, he picks up an oar and begins to paddle, his movements accompanied by a squeal of delight and the sound of clapping hands.

"Did you see, Tunie? Did you see?" Lily excitedly hugs her sister as the paper boat finally drifts from sight.

Lily peers at Severus' bare arm, examining a long scratch oozing blood. "I told you so," she says with a smile. "You should have let me get him, you're no good with animals, but thanks for rescuing him."

Severus smiles shyly. "He seems happy enough now," he says, stretching his hand out to pet the ball of fluff in Lily's lap, snatching it back as the kitten hisses.

For a full week Harry didn't talk to Snape, and Snape himself seemed to be absent, except at night when Harry slept and couldn't maintain his mental shields. It wasn't until waking up after the third night's dream, Harry realised these were like no dreams he'd ever had; they were too straightforward. Two more nights passed before Harry understood that Snape was giving him more memories. It had to be Snape's way of apologising. Two days later, Harry stopped Occluding.

After a brief silence Harry said quietly, "Thank you for the memories. That was nice of you."

I didn't do it for you. I've discovered it no longer hurts to think about your mother and so I do. It's been a very long time since I allowed myself this small pleasure. Had I realised you too would get pleasure from them, I would have confined my reminiscences to the hours you were awake and Occluding.

"Twat," Harry said amiably. "You must have thought about her sometimes. You gave me memories of her when you were dying."

"If this is the result, this..." Harry waved his hand, "...forthcomingness, I think I'll shut you out for long periods of time more often."

Next time you do so, I will concentrate my attention at night to memories of Lucius Malfoy — no, perhaps not, I think you'd enjoy that — Lord Voldemort, then. You've seen almost none of those, and I have so many.

"Right," Harry said with a shudder. "No shut-outs. Tell me something about my mother, about you and her, if you like."

Later, maybe. You should work on the solarium. If you hadn't had your little temper tantrum, it would be done by now.

"Later, maybe," Harry replied, yawning. "I'm feeling dozy." He closed his eyes, knowing Snape would give way eventually.

Snape words came out of nowhere after an absence of hours. Although startled, Harry was finally growing used to it and managed to not slosh tea all over himself. Striking, he thought, the right note of irritated nonchalance, he replied, "You know, when I said I wanted to talk about my mother, this wasn't what I had in mind. I really don't want to think about you and my mother that way."

If you want to hear anything, you'll shut up and let me tell it my way. As I said, at ten I thought I would marry her. What do children know? Boys and girls who loved each other grew up and got married. At ten I didn't even know what that meant, beyond sharing a house and perhaps having children. In theory I knew where babies came from, but it never actually occurred to me that my parents, or anyone else's parents, actually did that. I also had no idea I preferred boys to girls. I had no male friends. I had no friends at all except your mother. Of course I knew I was different, but I attributed that to being a wizard among Muggles, not to being a poof.

Spare me your pathetic denials. Have I not explained this to you a hundred times? I'm in your brain, Potter. I know what you think even when you're not thinking at all, which is admittedly most of the time.

"Just because you can force me to think of men when I'm already aroused...it's Ginny that excites me. You can't claim I'm queer because you throw an image of Bill or Sirius into my head when I'm already hard."

Have you forgotten our little interlude in your bedroom? I repeat, I don't create the images, I simply show you things I think have been stored away too long. The minuscule number of women who engage your libido—

"Don't throw that at me again. I don't think of other girls because I love Ginny!"

Snape thought right over him as if he hadn't even spoken. Miss Weasley we know about. Then there's the Chang girl, of course. You know you have either a shockingly bad memory or a completely puerile imagination — most likely the latter. The Chang girl's breasts were nothing like that large. And Nymphadora Tonks? Are you mad?

You're eighteen, it's time to clean out the attic. And really, Potter, Sirius Black is marginally understandable, even I can admit to his obnoxious good looks, but his Animagus form?

"Shut up! Shut up! That's not true and you know it, you filthy-minded arsehole! You have no right to go rummaging around in my head!"

You're absolutely correct. I have no right, but I have no choice either. For good or ill I'm stuck here until we figure something out. I know you think I live to torment you, but I would much prefer knowing nothing of you whatever. My presence in what passes for your mind brings me much tedium and no pleasure. Unfortunately, we are stuck with each other for the foreseeable future. Now, about...what was he called? Padfoot? Yes, that was—

"You're not funny. I hope you know that." After a solid week's practice, Occluding came so much easier.

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw the fire flare green. It startled him; he hadn't had visitors in weeks. Rolling onto his side, he was even more startled to see Ron's face.

"Yeah! Sure, of course!" Harry was thrilled; Ron didn't even seem angry, which was completely unexpected.

Ron's head disappeared momentarily and then both he and Hermione stepped through the fireplace, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry, Harry. No," Hermione replied. "She's still doesn't want to see you."

Shrugging, Ron said, "We talked to Professor McGonagall." He looked around the room. "Is he here?"

A bubble of laughter welled in Harry's chest. "If I'm here, he's here, Ron. That's how it works."

"May we please speak with him?" Hermione's tone was strangely formal and that made Harry want to laugh again.

"I don't have any control over him, but he can hear you if he wants to listen." Pointing at his head, Harry gave his friends a significant look and nodded his head.

Subterfuge, were you even capable of it, is impossible under these circumstances.

"Yeah, well, she's by way of being a friend of his. Shocking, I know. Who'd have ever thought Snape had friends, right?"

"Harry!" Hermione looked appalled and a little frightened, but Ron just laughed.

"Sit." Harry pointed at the sofa and took a wingback chair for himself. "Do you have any idea how glad I am to see you? Not to mention relieved you finally believe me."

Face turning a bit red, Ron heatedly said, "You have to admit it was a bit far-fetched!"

"You might have trusted me!" Harry snapped in return. "After everything we've been through together, you really might have trusted me."

"Honestly, you two. Stop it, both of you! We didn't come here to fight. Professor McGonagall told us about the spell. I've done some preliminary research and haven't been able to find anything at all relating to it, but I have found some things about casting out unfriendly entities."

"Why not, Harry?" Ron interrupted. "You can't go on like this or you really will end up barking mad! It's Snape, for fuck's sake. Talk about unfriendly entities!"

"I remind you he can hear you, Ron. But it doesn't matter. We find a way to put him back in his body or he stays!"

"Grow up, Ron! He's not our nasty old professor anymore. He risked more than anyone during the war and you bloody well know it!"

Once again, Hermione intervened. "Yes, we do know it," she said, looking pointedly at Ron. "But Harry, that doesn't mean that you should harbour him if there's a way to get him out."

"Yes, it does," insisted Harry. "It means exactly that! If we can't get him reunited with himself—"

Very touching, I'm sure, but she does have a point. My continued presence is doing you no good.

Rolling his eyes, Harry snarled, "Give up this noble, self-sacrificing crap! You already died once. You'll die again over my dead body!"

There was a moment's shocked silence and then all four of them burst out laughing.

"About what you'd expect, considering his apparent long-standing death wish. He thinks Hermione has a point."

"Whatever research you're willing to do will be appreciated, Hermione. I've been through nearly every book in this house and haven't found anything new."

"I should have said I've been through nearly every book in this house under Snape's supervision," Harry said pointedly. "There's nothing here. But if you hold on for a minute, I'll go get Prolegomena to the Esoteric Arts." Once again Harry ignored Snape's correction of his pronunciation. "It's where Snape found the original fragment. I looked for something else by the same author, but there's nothing here. Maybe you'll find something somewhere else."

Creating a solarium had been an even better idea than the French windows. It had replaced Snape's room as Harry's destination of choice. Magically generated breezes kept the temperature constant and comfortable in spite of the glass walls and ceiling. Snape seemed to like it too, although Harry couldn't figure out why he would. Or maybe the man didn't care at all; maybe he just liked to keep Harry guessing. That was fine by Harry.

"Tell me some more about my mum," Harry demanded, sure that Snape would refuse as he had done repeatedly.

Shocked that Snape was apparently going to go along after all, Harry replied, "Anything you want."

I would say you are being typically reckless, did I not know I can't, unfortunately, do you any actual harm. Very well, Potter, you have a deal. In exchange for information about your mother, you will masturbate for me. We were interrupted previously, as I recall.

That has already been proved to my satisfaction. If you renege, no stories about your mother.

"You've got your deal," Harry said. It wasn't as if he hadn't been hoping for a repeat performance and of course Snape knew that already.

Gather your questions. I will give you exactly thirty minutes to discuss this, and then we will consider the topic closed for eternity.

"You're gay, but the memories you gave, it seemed like you loved her, like you were in love with her. It was more than just the remnants of a childhood crush."

There was a pause long enough for Harry to decide he wasn't going to hear any more, but Snape surprised him.

From the first moment I saw her, I knew what she was and I wanted to make her mine. I don't mean simply that I knew she was a witch, or that I wanted a friend of my own, although both were true. I wanted her to be part of me. Not those claptrap romantic images the popular media loves so. Your mother had qualities I wanted. No, that's not quite right. I'm finding it rather difficult to explain. It seemed...

She was...she immediately felt to me like my other half. A side of me already gone missing by the age of nine. She knew how to play. To laugh. Things I didn't seem to be able to learn. Later, at Hogwarts, she still seemed to retain the ability to just bloody let go occasionally. She was, like me, quick to anger, but unlike me she was usually quick to forgive. Until pushed too far. Like me she was bright and inquisitive; unlike me she wasn't a swot. All these things felt like things I should know. Things I'd once known but had lost or forgotten. I wanted them back. If I'd ever been joyful, I didn't remember it. Lily had joy in abundance. Ergo, some of what she had was mine and the only way for me to have it back was to possess her.

I can see how you'd think that, but that's not how it was. People liked your mother. I liked your mother. James Effing Potter liked your mother. Dumbledore, McGonagall. Cornelius Fudge, for god's sake, liked your mother. And I, I am as you see me. Or think me, as the case may be. There is no other way for me to say it. I felt she was part of me, the best part, the part that still allowed for possibilities. When I was with her, I was a better man, trite as that sounds.

I was better. I know I was. But on the outside everything was the same. My life had not been easy, and my nature was not such that I was capable of rising above. But the number of things I didn't say and didn't do because of your mother's presence...not that it endeared me to anyone. Your father and Black saw to that.

I was not 'in love' with her. I was not. I wanted to be her. I wanted her to be me. I wanted to be whole and I thought she was the way. But I was the same stupid boy I'd always been. I said something literally unforgivable.

"She's forgiven you." Somehow Harry was sure of this. His mother would not carry a grudge into the grave.

And the end result of my unforgivable sin, she died. Your father died. And you were scarred for life in more ways than the merely physical.

Cocking his head a little, Harry listened to the inflection of Snape's words. Thoughts. Damn it! There should be some special language for this situation.

Good grief. Would you please return to Occluding? I do enjoy my respites from your mental drivel.

"You're not sad. You're angry and guilt-ridden, but you're not really sorry, are you? But no, that's not quite right either. It doesn't matter, Snape. She forgave you a long time ago. For what it's worth, I forgive you too.

NOVEMBER

Feeling ridiculously downcast, Harry sighed. "I didn't think you would. I do realise you're sort of a captive audience."

Don't pout. It's unbecoming. I'd fuck you six ways from Sunday, given the opportunity.

But if I was in my own body, you wouldn't want me. I think you've forgotten whom you're dealing with.

Yes, I have noticed that your imagination leads you resolutely in the direction of the obvious and boring.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry was growing used to this sense of anger-tinged amusement. The anger was familiar enough; it was the amusement that was so disconcerting.

Your mental objects of lust are as physically perfect as they are perfectly inhuman. How any imagination, even one as perverse as yours, can put my head on that body.

If you're going to go through all those mental gyrations to make me a physical Adonis, I ask you, could you not do something about my face as well?

A sly smile insinuated itself onto Harry's face. In was hard to comprehend, but he had Snape at his mercy. As least a little bit. After weeks of trepidation he realised — now he knew Snape was real — he no longer blurted out things that hadn't originated in his own mind. The one threat Snape had in his arsenal was gone. Snape couldn't actually do anything to hurt or embarrass him. "I've never seen anything but your face, however that I saw nearly every day for six years. I'm not likely to forget it. It wouldn't be you without that pasty, yellow face, that great beak of a nose, and those eyes as sharp as flint and about as friendly."

It isn't me with that body. Close your eyes. I'd tell you to empty your mind, but we both know that's its normal state. Allow me to show you.

Harry closed his eyes. Usually the images Snape showed him were fleeting, perverse, and came at the most inopportune times. It would be interesting to actually have time to see one. Surprisingly, it took a few moments before the image stopped wavering and came into focus — usually they were razor sharp — and when it did, Harry gulped. In his mind's eye Snape stood in front of a mirror, completely nude. His naked back could be seen from head to heel, but it was only vaguely defined: not exactly blurry, but with a disturbing lack of detail that reminded Harry of a plastic doll. From what Harry could tell, Snape's bum wasn't bad — a little on the scrawny side, but still rounded. There was no muscle definition on his torso, only the vague impression of two bony shoulder-blades. Taking the time to puzzle it out, Harry finally realised Snape couldn't show his back with any clarity, as he'd probably never really seen it.

Oh bravo, Mr Potter. I have always been rather agile, but viewing more than glimpses of my back is beyond even my bent capabilities.

Other than a groan at Snape's pun, Harry ignored him and concentrated on the image being supplied. As opposed to his back Snape's front was rendered in perfect detail, although Harry found it quite irritating that the mirror only extended to the top of Snape's hips; nothing could be seen below. But even more annoying was that Snape had got his own face wrong; his skin was not merely sallow but damn near jaundiced, his nose an arcing hook that cast a deep shadow over thin lips, and for a moment there, it had looked like Snape had spots.

Your irritation on my behalf is gratifying, but I do know what I look like. I've never found it useful to lie to myself.

"No? Looks to me as if you've done a pretty good job of exactly that," Harry sneered. "When you were rummaging around my 'attic', did you never bother to look at my pictures of you?"

Harry didn't consider himself a particularly visual person; it was hard to call forth his own image of Snape. He wasn't absolutely sure why he made the effort, but decided it was worth it when he got the strange sense of Snape's presence jerking away as if in surprise. In Harry's memory Snape was very tall, a solid black mass that loomed. Scary and yes, ugly, with hair that practically oozed grease, but just ordinary human-ugly, not movie monster ugly. With a bit of a struggle, Harry got the image moving, showing Snape's billowing robes and a presence that was as regal as it was intimidating. That Snape's nose was hooked, there was no hiding, but it certainly didn't overshadow half his face, and his skin, though undoubtedly sallow, was smooth and clear. Now that Harry thought about it, Snape really wasn't all that bad-looking. Grinning a little, Harry adjusted his memory of Snape's hair until it was simply somewhat oily.

Even after all these months, I'm continuously surprised at just how mentally disturbed you are.

"I wish you had molested me when I was a student." Harry spent a pleasurable moment imagining Snape keeling over in apoplectic shock — whatever that was. When the moment stretched on and on and on he began to regret the impulse to shock. "Hello?" He rapped his knuckles on his head. "Are you still in there?"

Snape was clearly going to let him squirm for a few moments longer. Nonplussed, Harry did the only thing he could think of. Leaning his head back and closing his eyes, he dropped every last mental shield that he had.

That was completely unnecessary and quite cruel, even for you. Did you really don Miss Weasley's knickers, or was that just a fantasy? Don't answer. I'm not the least bit interested in your juvenile fantasies. Well, except for the one. Why do you wish I had—

Snape's mental shudder sent a sympathetic ripple down Harry's spine. "I don't. Not really. Or...not exactly. It's just that—" Harry made a hand gesture over his lap. "—is fine, more than fine with your help, but I wish that just once...you know."

What is it about sharing brain space you're unable to comprehend? Just because you don't say the words, doesn't mean you don't think them, and of course you also thought about using a hand gesture in lieu of speaking. I did not see the gesture but I heard the accompanying thought.

"I want to know what your backside really looks like. I mean, I get that you were no Adonis, but even you had to have more definition than a jiffy lemon. I want to know if you have dimples above your arse or behind your knees. I want to know if there's hair on your back — unless there is, in which case I don't want to know. I want to feel the little creases at the back of your ankles. I want—" Harry swallowed thickly. "I want to know what your cock tastes like and how you smell and whether you're ticklish and—"

"Oh my god! You are ticklish! Or were. Lucky for you we didn't know that when you were our teacher."

Wake up, Potter. Since you clearly have nothing on your agenda for the day, I think now would be an excellent time to indulge.

Groaning, Harry pulled his pillow over his head. "It's only nine o'clock in the morning, Snape. Just because you don't sleep doesn't mean I don't need to."

But your mind is so pliable when you're sleepy. I think now is an excellent time for a little experiment.

At some point, their second or third time, it had become a game. It annoyed Harry in a fairly mild way and Snape insisted on it, absolutely refusing to acknowledge that there was anything else going on besides mutual perversity. Sometimes Harry wondered what it said about him that he was willing to put up with it, then reminded himself that sex without overt affection was better than no sex and no affection. Once upon a time he had got both from Ginny, he realised, but he had to admit to himself the sex had rarely been as hot and the affection, much as he wanted it, had sometimes been stifling.

As always, thinking about Ginny and the way he'd treated her made Harry feel guilty. "I'm such a bastard."

Harry tilted his head up, as if to give Snape a quizzical look. "But you won't be able to see."

I don't need to see. Your mind is—well, not your mind — a normal, reasoning mind is an erogenous zone. One doesn't need to see to fuck. One doesn't need to hear— which in this case means through your ears—to fuck. And as you are about to find out, one doesn't even need to touch to fuck.

"Oh god!" Harry gasped. "If you say fuck one more time you'll have proved your point. I'm this close already." He shuddered. "Severus Snape does not say fuck, at least not as a verb. And especially not three times in as many sentences when he's talking about fucking Harry Potter. And certainly not in that tone of voice."

Potter, I would hope by now you had realised that you supply whatever 'voice' I have. Now sit.

"I never liked this chair," Harry said as he sat. "It was fucking made for Hagrid or someone. It always makes me feel like a dwarf."

Snorting, Harry retorted, "If you say you're going to resist the cheap shot, you're taking the cheap shot. It's the same thing."

I told you to use that chair for a reason. Tonight is going to be a little different than our previous forays. This will be a purely mental exercise, so in addition to not using the mirror, you will not be touching yourself.

"Hate to break it to you, but since you can't touch me, not touching myself isn't an option. There's no point to this otherwise."

You may, of course, refuse to imagine any particular thing, but as usual, to decline is to forfeit the game for the evening. Now, there are going to be two physical aspects, stimulants if you will. One you've already been introduced to, the oversized chair. The second requires your active participation.

"Oh good, you are going to let me touch myself after all." Harry's relief was almost as great as his disappointment. The idea of coming untouched had been exciting, and it was the whole point, wasn't it?

Yes, you are going to touch yourself, and no, you are not going to touch yourself once the actual sex portion of our evening commences. I want you to remove all body hair below your eyes.

Those three chin whiskers you're so proud of. Armpit hair, chest hair, pubic hair, leg hair. It shouldn't take more than a few strokes.

"Bastard," said Harry with some feeling, although he couldn't help but be amused. It really shouldn't have been that way, but Snape's insults were becoming arousing in their own right.

Consider yourself lucky I'm not requiring you to shave your forearms or the palms of your hands. You may conjure implements you need to complete the task, or if you are feeling particularly brave, you may cast a depilatory spell. If you choose to do it the Muggle way, you have ten minutes.

That would be my preference, yes. However, as I said, you may use a spell. I want you to remove your body hair and then I want you to sit, naked, in that chair. Do you begin to see where I'm going with this, Potter?

"I'm not doing this without a mirror. Don't care how perverse you are, blood is out. If I give you a show, can I have longer than ten minutes?"

Sometimes Harry had a strange feeling he couldn't describe, as if Snape were looking him up and down. He wasn't sure how a disembodied consciousness could do that, but then he'd never figured out Snape's little trick for thumping his skull, either.

The ten minute allotment includes the show. I'm going to fuck you and I don't intend to wait all night to do it.

Pleasure rippled down Harry's spine. He quickly stripped off his pyjamas and sat on the edge of the huge chair's seat. As Snape had implied he should, Harry lacked confidence in his ability to cast a depilatory spell. He wasn't aiming a wand at his tackle without knowing exactly what he was doing. The idea of a razor was hardly more reassuring, but at least Harry had some familiarity with one. He transfigured his shoes into a small table and a razor, a vase into a steaming bowl of water, and his shirt into a towel.

It was annoying and embarrassing to realise how right Snape had been when he said it wouldn't take more than a few strokes. Harry finished in well under the allotted time.

It's for your benefit. It feels different doesn't it? Your skin tingles and you're more aware of the air.

You're the one who suggested it, or have you forgotten? It took me some time to warm up to the idea.

Blushing, Harry remembered the relevant conversation and wanted to disappear from the face of the planet.

Buck up, Potter. It's just a fantasy. Now, if you've quite got over your maidenly modesty...close your eyes. Rest your head against the back of the chair and spread your legs.

You're in your bed at Hogwarts, having one of those horrible, humiliating dreams, a dream where you're in my office, naked under my mocking gaze.

As did I, and every other school boy in the world, I assure you. Insolent as ever, but naked and bent over my desk. Your penis banging into the edge. It hurts, but not as much as the cane I use on your arse, leaving stripe after stripe, raising welt after welt.

Eyes suddenly flashing open, Harry swallowed nervously as he realised he was squirming while still holding the razor. He hastily dropped it into the bowl of water and then sank back into his previous position. He was achingly hard already and desperately wished he could see Snape's face. It was always easy to imagine the man scowling, and sometimes if Harry made a real effort he could almost see Snape smiling, but he simply could not imagine the man's face heavy with lust. Not being able to see him at that moment was frustrating beyond belief.

Do not touch yourself! From this point on it's purely a mental exercise. It's not easy. Many people have difficulty mastering it, but for the first time in our acquaintance I think we've found your mental métier.

You are a Hogwarts student, naked in my office, bent over my desk, offering your delectable little arse up for a caning. Your penis is still banging into the edge of the desk, but you're erect now, and it hurts much worse. Still, it's nothing to the way your arsecheeks burn. They are bright red all over and crisscrossed with stripes. You have welts and bruises. I give you six of the best and then I stop. You continue humping the desk for a moment and then you are suddenly very, very still as you realise that I have pushed the tip of the cane a few millimetres into your anus.

It was agony not to touch his cock. Harry squirmed restlessly in his chair, clenching his muscles, sure he could feel the cane sliding in. His bumcheeks flamed and the fabric of the chair seemed to be rubbing them raw. This was going to take no time at all. Harry was close, his testicles were drawn up tight in their sac.

I slide the cane out, tossing it across the room. Because your back is to me you can't see it, but you hear it slam against the wall and you jump. I grab your hips, pull you in, seat us both in a chair. My cock is hard and weeping, but still decently covered by my robes. You can feel it pressing against your arse.

"Oh fuck, Snape, please!" Harry's fingernails were digging into his palms, in a frantic effort to keep his hands from jumping to his cock. He could feel the sweat beading on his naked chest, his face, under his thighs.

Wrapping my hand around your cock I'm startled to realise how very small you are. Your prick is hardly bigger than my thumb, not even as big. Too small to wrap my hand comfortably around, I take it between forefinger and thumb and begin to stroke.

With a shout, nearly bucking out of his chair, Harry came. His breath was ragged and his muscles had all seemed to turn to jelly. Snape was silent as the spatters of spunk cooled on Harry's chest, as his heart finally slowed and breathing returned to normal. Sated as he was, Harry almost wanted to weep with the desire for flesh on flesh.

Sometimes I imagine I can smell you, your skin, your hair, your breath. I can't. I never will.

"You will," Harry insisted. Deep down he was suddenly very frightened. He didn't want Snape to return to his body. It was horrible to admit, but there it was. If Snape had legs he would leave. He would not stay, bound to a man he didn't like, whom he only barely managed to be civil to and that only because they had to occupy the same small space.

I imagine hands. Not real hands, mental hands, ghost hands. Hands that cannot actually touch you but which can ghost over your flesh, whisper against your nerve endings. I can't do that, either.

"Don't be an ass, Snape. We'll figure it out. You'll figure it out, or Hermione will, or Professor McGonagall. We'll get your fucking body back!" And you'll leave, Harry thought, hating Snape, hating himself, hating the fact he wasn't some suburban Muggle named Bob who'd just completed his A-levels and was going out with other Muggles on a celebratory pub crawl.

"Why is it always fucking me? When do I get what I want? You know what? You're a fucking wanker and I hate you and I'm going to bed and I'd really, really appreciate it if you'd make yourself scarce — sleep or whatever it is you do."

"That," Harry practically yelled, walking to cupboard where he kept his single bottle of firewhisky — untouched since the day of Snape's funeral — and filling a glass, "is the first good idea you've ever had."

I wonder what your muscles look like when you're flying, and I curse myself for never taking the opportunity to find out when I had it. The mere thought is a horror unto itself, so of course, I promptly feel sick to my stomach and go back to imagining I can smell you.

Harry took three large gulps of the firewhisky. "I'll shut you up if it takes a good alcohol poisoning to do it." He shook his head almost expecting smoke to pour out his ears.

Sitting on his heels in front of the sitting room fireplace, Harry spoke with Hermione. "Anything at all?"

"Nothing. I'm sorry, Harry. There's nothing at Hogwarts. Professor McGonagalleven let me go through Professor Dumbledore's private library."

"Keep trying, Hermione. Something's happening. Sometimes he disappears for days at a time and he's never done that before. When I ask, he just says he's tired of my drivel, but I know there's more to it than that." A horrible sense of futility spread coldly through Harry's body.

Just once? Your tenacity in clinging to your supposed heterosexuality is...tenacious.

Wanting to cheer for having engaged Snape successfully for the first time in awhile, Harry settled for laughing. "You and me...I know, I know, you and I have a relationship of sorts. A strange one, admittedly, but even you have to admit it's a relationship and a little more than just mental masturbation. It's not like I want to go stepping out on you—"

Regardless of what happens, whether I stay in here forever, am cast out by your superstitious friends, am successfully returned to my body, or just die, you are not going to tie yourself to me. No! Absolutely not. I have a say in this too, you know, and I say no, no, no, a thousand times no! You're a soppy teenaged boy in remarkable circumstances. What you're feeling is neither normal nor permanent!

"Whatever," Harry said, laughing again although feeling more than a little insulted. "What say we go out and cruise everything in trousers?"

My point is, everyone will be bundled up against the cold and you won't be able to see anything anyway. Not to mention which, 'everything in trousers' is horribly vague. Women wear them, you realise.

After much arguing, they settled on a location, but only after Harry had pointed out that Snape's cruising days were in the distant past and London had changed somewhat.

Fine, Snape had agreed eventually, but we're not going to some place full of upscale twats. I prefer my men to look like men, not mannequins.

"How about that one?" Harry asked after he'd found a table in a dimly lit corner and ordered a pint. He stared intently as he pointed, wanting to give Snape the opportunity to 'see'.

"I think he's...cute. How about that one, then?" Harry pointed at another guy with stringy black hair.

Not with those slumped shoulders and hangdog expression. He obviously has as much in the way of length and girth as he does in personality.

Rolling his eyes, Harry told Snape to pick someone. The mechanics of affording Snape a good view in a crowded space were difficult, but eventually he drew Harry's attention to a nicely muscled lad with curly, chestnut-coloured hair and grey eyes.

Harry licked his lips before realising that the impulse to do so wasn't his own. He took a good look at Snape's choice. Outraged, he sputtered, "He looks nothing like me!"

Please don't tell me you have sex...excuse me...make love with your eyes closed. What am I saying? Of course you do. Romantic tripe a speciality, eh?

"Damn it! It's you I want, you fucking wanker! If I can't have you then I at least want someone who looks like you."

How touching. It won't be me. And it won't matter what he looks like when he's fucking you face down into the mattress.

Harry stopped listening, momentarily distracted by the pleasant fantasy of a flesh-and-blood Snape lying beside him in the sun. Wearing shorts. Shirtless. The sun painting his long, sallow limbs with the faintest tinge of pink.

I've never worn shorts in my life, not even as a child. Even were I to regain my body, I wouldn't be caught dead like that. Now, pay attention, I'm waxing philosophical.

Snorting, Harry rolled onto his stomach, pillowing his head on his arms. "Sorry, Socrates. You were saying the worst of it is..."

You stopped listening as far back as that? I've a mind not to tell you the rest, after all.

"Don't be like that. It's your own fault. I told you lying in the sun makes me lazy. You're the one who wanted me to build a solarium, which I've never understood since you can't get any pleasure from it." Smiling, Harry used his wand to set breezes dancing about the exotic flora Snape had suggested he import.

Au contraire, my little dwarf. The sun makes you lazy, laziness makes you stupid, stupidity makes you malleable and open to suggestion. It works out quite well for me. Endless hours of amusement to occupy an otherwise torpid life. Stop playing with your wand and focus your attention where it belongs, to whit, on me.

The worst of it is...damn! I've forgotten what I was saying. Apparently your idiocy is contagious and prolonged contact with you has dulled my wits.

There was a prolonged, pleasant silence as neither Harry nor Snape thought about anything at all. Harry idly cast another charm, creating just enough current to make the spinny thing spin and set the wind chimes giggling softly.

"No, you didn't. Not wasted. We couldn't have defeated old whatshisname without you." His words were flippant, but Harry knew Snape would recognize his sincerity.

I could have done it differently. I needn't have hated your mother as much as I loved her. I needn't have hated you at all. I could have...well, it's too late now and mattered not at all in the end. You did what was expected of you, what was needed.

"Good lord. Have you been drinking without me? I've never known you to be so soppy."

It will be over soon, you do realise? I hope you realise. It's distasteful to worry about what will become of you, but there you have it. Soppy is right. I'm fading, Potter. My mind is foggy. I can go hours without thinking anything at all. How odd that I longed for my own death for years and now that it approaches, I find myself strangely reluctant to experience that next great adventure. Fucking Albus.

"Stop it!" Harry said, sitting upright as panic squeezed his chest. "It's not over! You're not dying! Hermione will find something, she has to! She said—"

Hush. I'm tired. It becomes difficult to stay present. I think, with or without your kind permission, I'll rest for a while. Do try to refrain from dressing me inappropriately while I'm gone.

Harry felt a whisper of something unexplainable, like a hand stroking his hair. His heart pounded painfully beneath his ribs. "Snape! Damn it! Talk to me! SNAPE!"

The rusty creak of the gate's hinges sent a shiver of fear rippling down Harry's spine. He almost laughed, mocking himself for his superstitious dread. For a moment he stood, hand wrapped tight around a wrought iron bar, listening. If anything would bring Snape forward, it would be the chance to disparage Harry's courage. There was nothing; no voice in his head, no thump against the interior of his skull, no sense at all of the presence that had haunted him for months. Shoulders slumping, Harry passed through the gate and pulled it to behind him.

"Lumos!" he whispered, his voice breaking. His wand flared with a steady light, sending the moon shadows skittering away as he stepped into the small crypt.

He wasn't prepared at all for what he saw. He had expected Snape's body to be enclosed within a coffin, but it was laid out atop a stone slab, still wrapped in the winding sheet that exposed nothing but his face. Wild hope flared in Harry's chest. Snape look no different than he had at his funeral! There was still colour on his cheeks, his eyes were still rounded under the closed lids. It wasn't too late!

Legs suddenly wobbly, Harry sank to his knees, tears of relief streaking down his cheeks. He raised a hand and rested it on Snape's chest, half-expecting to feel it rise with breath, but of course there was no movement.

"Right!" Harry said out loud, months past the habit of keeping his thoughts in his head. "Of course, he's not breathing. You knew that. Oh god, Snape. It's going to work. It's got to work!"

He waited, hoping against hope that Snape would answer at last, but there was still nothing.

"You fucker! You're doing this on purpose, I know you are. Fine. You've got something to prove or you want me to prove something. Well I will! I'll prove it! You're not dead, damn you!"

Fumbling in his pocket, Harry pulled out the crumpled scroll Hermione had thrust into his hands earlier in the day. "Hermione found this. Some archives, somewhere. Catacombs in Rome, I think she said. I don't remember. I really wasn't listening, you know? Bet that surprises you. What was the name? Caratacus? Something like that. Anyway, she said he was a prisoner of um, Claudius? One of the emperors anyway. And you don't care, do you? I can almost hear you saying, 'read the fucking thing or get the fuck out!' OK, I will. This is going to work."

Strengthening his Lumos, Harry let his wand hover in the air as he unrolled the scroll. "Hermione put a translation spell on it, because I couldn't even begin to sound out the words. I don't even know what language it's in. I hope it works in English. It has to work, right? Just because it's translated, it's still a spell. Intent is what matters, that's what you said. Right?" Harry rubbed his hand nervously over Snape's chest. "Are you ready?"

Standing with difficulty because his legs still felt rubbery, Harry adjusted the angle of his wand so its light was cast squarely on the scroll. Haltingly, he began to read: "O King, return thy spirit regal from the realms of shadow and light. Fill again this cup, thy vessel. Once our king, our lord of battle, again our king, our battle lord, pick up thy sword anew. Your kingdom trembles. Do not fail us in our hour of most grievous need."

Nothing at all happened, no change in his mind, no change in Snape's body. Harry stared intently at Snape's face, at his cloth covered chest, hoping for some tiny sign of movement, hoping for something, anything at all. "Breathe," he whispered. "Breathe. Just one little breath. C'mon, Snape!"

Suddenly, before he even realised he was moving, Harry was charging through the gate to the crypt. His feet slipped on dew-wet grass as he sprinted towards Dumbledore's white tomb. "Fawkes! Fawkes, please! Please!"

Fire leapt in his breast in answer to a brilliant shimmer of light in the darkness. Flame seemed to streak through the night as the achingly sweet notes of phoenix song filled the air. "Yes!" Harry followed the burning vein of light back to Snape's crypt, bursting through the gate just as the fiery brand resolved into Fawkes, hovering over Snape's chest, still singing. The phoenix stretched its head and a single shining tear slipped from its eye and splashed Snape's cheek. Then with a flash, Fawkes was gone.

"I'm not leaving this fucking crypt until you leave with me, you bastard. Snape! Come on! Wake up. Please."

Harry sank to his knees beside the stone slab. Reaching up, he separated Snape's clasped hands, shuddering at the coldness, the lifelessness of the flesh. Alternately clutching the hand in both of his, or chafing it briskly, trying to impart some warmth, Harry waited.

A single shaft of sunlight penetrated the crypt's iron gate, shining down on Harry's face, waking him. He sat up and blinked. It wasn't until his shoulder brushed the arm hanging limply over the edge of the slab that he remembered where he was. Except for the dangling arm, Snape hadn't moved at all, hadn't changed, hadn't breathed.

Not weeping, Harry stood and looked down on Snape's pale, still face. The shaft of sunlight was gone, and the crypt was nearly dark. Harry's bones ached with the cold. He knew that outside the moon had already risen, knew it'd had been nearly twenty hours since he'd arrived, knew that Snape would not breathe, would not get up, would not return to Grimmauld Place. With infinite care and tenderness, he crossed Snape's arms back over the still chest and pressed a kiss to the icy fingertips. Finally, feeling utterly lost and alone, he took the vial of Snape's memories from his pocket and tucked it between the cold, folded hands.

Harry touched his fingers to the entwined snakes that formed a double S at the centre of the gate. "Good-bye," he said softly. "Say hello to my mum for me."

Closing the door behind him, Harry stood in the entryway of Grimmauld Place, unsure of whether to go forwards, into the sitting room where he knew his friends were waiting, or backwards, out the door into the night. He scrubbed his eyes with his hands, wanting to cry, wanting to scream, unable to do either. He wavered, his other hand on the doorknob, still undecided.

"Harry?" It was Hermione's voice, calling from the sitting room, but it was Ron's arm Harry felt wrap around his shoulder. "Come on, mate. We're all in here. Unless...would you rather be alone? It's OK, you know. I can see it didn't work. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

It was obvious Ron wanted to say more, but he didn't and Harry was grateful. "Ron, I—"

"I know. It's OK. Go on up to your room. I'll tell the others then come up and sit with you for a bit, yeah? Just until you fall asleep."

The tears might have come then, but didn't. Still, Harry let himself go limp in the circle of his friend's arms, and pressed his head against Ron's shoulder, his whole body trembling with exhaustion. Ron stayed silent, simply holding Harry, occasionally rubbing his back soothingly, until the trembling subsided.

Harry wanted to apologise for his weakness but didn't, only smiled forlornly as Ron gave him a gentle shove towards the stairs. He was halfway to the first landing when he heard Ron call his name. He paused mid-step, but didn't turn.

If Ron came to sit with him, Harry didn't know it. He barely had time to toe off his trainers and collapse onto his bed before he was asleep. Once, but maybe he was dreaming, he thought he heard voices outside his door, but they faded and Harry slept again, or slept on.

Through a gap in the curtains, a shaft of sunlight stole across the room and touched hotly on Harry's face, waking him. He lay there for a moment without opening his eyes, feeling the sun's warmth, imagining himself in the solarium with Snape. A minute or two of forgetfulness before memory came crashing back. Grief and guilt nearly crushed him. He had failed.

Pressure from unshed tears built up behind his eyebrows, making his scar throb. Wishing he never had to move again, Harry rolled over and looked at the clock on his bedside table. Past noon, past time to get up, past time to start living his life. He could do this. The time Snape had occupied his mind was a time of suspended animation. There was no point in wallowing; he'd done enough of that already. Six months had passed since Voldemort's death. Three months since he'd failed to become an Auror. A day and a half since the desperate journey to Snape's crypt. Eight hours since he'd accepted that Snape was gone.

Snape was gone. With a grunt, Harry pushed himself upright, swinging his legs over the bed. Snape was gone. He'd get up, shower, have some breakfast. Snape would still be gone. He'd see his friends, maybe owl Ginny, put one foot in front of the other and get on with things. Snape was gone, but Harry wasn't and that was just the way things were. Harry would survive. Surviving was what he did.

"Good. I'm good. I'll be right down. Going to shower first. It's hotter than fuck."

In the shower Harry almost cried, but he didn't. He avoided his face in the mirror as he towelled off and dressed, thinking about Snape seeing from his eyes. But Snape was gone.

"Breakfast. Good. I'm starved," Harry said as he walked into the kitchen. He smiled at his friends. "Thanks."

"I'm fine. Really. Sad, you know, but...I'm OK. I mean what the hell. He got a few extra months he wouldn't have had, and you know, we managed to lay all that shit between us to rest."

"Hey," Harry said. "Hey, it's OK. Don't cry, Herm. I'm not going to crack up or anything. Already did that, right?"

"I'm not crying," Hermione said, wiping her nose with her napkin. "And don't call me Herm."

"Women," Ron said. He put his arm around Hermione and hugged her. "Always crying at happy endings. Oh fuck me. I'm sorry, Harry. I just meant—"

"Well, no guarantees of that, surely. You've always been a bit off. Listen, if you're sure you're all right, we should go. Rumplety'll use an Unforgivable if I don't show up to tonight's exercise."

"Not necessary, Hermione. I really, truly am fine, except I'm tired. Stressful night, you know." Harry winked at her. "I think I want to go back to sleep, and then after, I need to talk to Ginny. See if I can't patch things up again."

"Don't think so. Too late for that. She's moved on and I'm...I'd just like us to be friends again, that's all. I'd rather not have a chaperone when I talk to her though. Hermione, don't look at me like that. I'm OK. I've made my peace with it."

"When Harry? You haven't had time to make your peace with it." It was obvious Hermione was gearing up for an argument. Harry had no idea how to convince her.

Once again, Ron stepped into the breach. "Don't fuss, sweetheart. Maybe it's a guy thing, wanting to be alone. Coddling just makes it harder, right, Harry?"

"Yeah. That's right. I'll see you tomorrow, I promise. Bright and early. You can make me breakfast again, how's that?"

Once, while he slept the day away, Harry had awakened with Snape's name on his lips. His heart had thumped an excited tattoo in his chest, then almost stopped completely as he realised he'd only been dreaming. Sinking back into his pillows, Harry wept.

It was early evening before Harry dragged himself back out of bed. He'd been awake for an hour or two, but achy, cold, and unable to think of a reason to rise. And then he'd been unable to think of a reason to stay in bed. Shivering, he left his room, paused only briefly at the door to Snape's room, and then made his way down the stairs.

There wasn't enough hot water in the world to thaw his bones. Snape was gone and with him, it seemed, all colour, all interest in anything. In the kitchen he found a plate of food, left by his friends, he assumed — come and gone, mercifully without waking him — or Kreacher. It made no difference, he wasn't hungry anyway. Pushing the plate away, Harry folded his arms on the table top and rested his head, knowing he shouldn't, knowing he should get up and do something, go out, find his friends, take comfort where he could, but he really didn't care enough to try.

Snape had died and come back and now died again. Harry had died and come back and...No, he couldn't let himself think like that. With a huge effort, he pushed back from the table and stood, swaying a little. The walk to the sitting room seemed endless, and cold as he was, he just didn't have the energy to set a fire blazing in the hearth. He collapsed on the sofa and slept again.

He woke again at two in the morning, shivering, and knew he needed to make the long climb upstairs to bed. At the front door he hesitated. He could open it, step outside, walk off into the London night and never return. It would be a relief, in a way. To leave the world he knew. It was tempting. Killing himself was not really an option, but self banishment was. He could go back to being a Muggle. Why not?

With no more thought than that, Harry opened the door, stepped over the threshold, stumbled over something, and took an ungainly dive into the bushes.

"For fuck's sake, Harry. If you don't want me here there are easier ways to get rid of me than kicking me in the ribs." The voice was hoarse, familiar and not.

It was Snape. Of course it was Snape. Stupid, sodding, melodramatic wanker! He was on the landing, back leaning against the door jamb, long, bare legs stretched out in front of him.

"Are you going to invite me in, or are you going to leave me out here, naked, cold, half-dead, for the postman to find?"

Still in shock, Harry hadn't moved. He watched, unbelieving as Snape — naked as the day he'd been born — struggled to stand. The second Snape managed his feet, still shaking with the effort of standing, Harry struggled out of the bushes and lunged. Hips thrusting forwards, Harry took Snape's head in his hands and tried to pull it down to a kiss, but Snape jerked away.

"Trying to fuck a corpse," Snape said, his voice raw from lack of use, "is a new low, even for you."

"You're not a corpse! That's the whole point. You're alive! Alive!" Once again, Harry tried to pull Snape into a kiss, with no better luck.

"Regardless of your opinion on my general hygiene, Potter, even you cannot think so poorly of me as to imagine I'd want to inhabit this body for a second longer than I have to before having a bath. Or two. I've been dead for months. I'm desperate to wash off the stench."

"I don't care! Do you have any idea how long I waited? Do you know what it felt like to give up?"

"Bath," Snape said, "and then we'll see if I'm still alive. I believe you once expressed interest in seeing my back." He gave Harry's hand a tug as they stepped through the door. "That's good, because I don't think I'm up to washing it myself."

Harry lay gasping under Snape's touch, but part of him was curiously detached, as it seemed was Snape, who looked at Harry as intently as he ever had a potion, as if judging from colour and heat whether it was time to add the next ingredient or stir three times anti-clockwise. Being the object of such fierce focus was arousing, but Snape's gaze also contained something of experiment-gone-awry and that was a bit...deflating.

"You're limp," Snape said, giving Harry's cock a determined but gentle squeeze. "Have I done something to displease you?"

"You keep looking at me as if I were Neville's cauldron and you're expecting me to explode any minute. And not explode in a good way, either."

Snape rolled onto his back, folding his arms under his head. "You know I'm leaving."

Harry nodded. He'd been expecting this, bracing for it. The idea made his chest ache, but it hurt less than he'd expected.

"What? What do you expect me to say? We know each other better than any two people have a right to, and we don't know each other at all. Who, if not you? I never spent any time thinking about what would happen after. Never took it any further than getting you back in your body." He grinned. "I'm sure that surprises you."

"No. I wouldn't say it surprises me." Snape's hand entwined with Harry's but he still didn't look at him. "Don't wait. It's time for you to actually have a life. It's time for me to do the same."

"Ah, unlike you, I did think about what would happen after. I had months in which I had nothing to do but think. In spite of that, I don't have plans. I just know I can't stay." At last Snape rolled to his side and looked at Harry. "Barring your admittedly tempting flesh, there's little for me here. Wizarding Britain is too small and people have long memories. I've been a pariah long enough."

"It's good to see your ugly mug again, Severus Snape. I just meant...you'll always be the man who killed Albus Dumbledore and I'll always be the man who killed Voldemort. No one will ever see either one of us for what we really are."

Laughing, Snape took Harry's hand again and rested it on his chest. "You could—" He stopped. His eyes closed and he was silent for so long, Harry thought he'd fallen asleep. "You could come with me."

"I have hated you since you were fifteen months old, since your mother died to save you."

"Good," said Snape, pulling Harry closer. "I need someone to finance the journey. I haven't a Knut to my name."

Disclaimer: Harry Potter, Severus Snape and other Harry Potter characters belong to J.K. Rowling, her lawyers, handlers, editors, personal umbrella carrier, pedicurist, and those guys in the suits from the WB. The Snarry Games and its participants want nothing to do with that lot or their money. Okay, we'd take their money, but they aren't offering. Web space doesn't come for free, ya know?