The summer after Sirius died, Harry felt that he was drowning in silence. Locked in the smallest bedroom, he was ignored by the Dursleys. Harry had his owl, his beautiful silent Hedwig for company. He learnt the silence of sleepy summer afternoons, the silence of sleepless nights, and the loud silence of a rainstorm. He discovered the difference between the silence of an empty house and the silence of a house filled with a family that hated and ignored him.

Every morning, Petunia Dursley opened the cat flap and shoved a meager meal into Harry’s room. “Be grateful we feed you at all, boy,” she said. Her words, like a bullet, shattered the silence and hit Harry in the heart. He felt like an ocean fish tossed into fresh water, drowning without salt – he had gone from a place where he was loved to a place that was loveless. He had gone from a world with Sirius to a world without Sirius and he felt that his heart would die from the shock.

There was no space in Harry’s life to bemoan his relative’s treatment or his lonely fate. He sat in his room, drowning in silence, and thought only of Sirius and his valiant death. He dreamed, night after night, of the instant that Sirius fell through the Veil, the meteor streak of the curse cast by Bellatrix, Sirius’s last laugh – he dreamed the entire scene backwards and forwards and it permeated every nightmare.

Harry sat and stared at the shards of broken mirror, the mirror that Sirius had given to him, when a knock like a bullet sounded on his door. “Potter,” he heard the voice of his Potions Master. “Potter, open this door.”

“It’s locked, sir,” Harry said. He made a valiant attempt to keep his voice steady, but it shattered like the mirror in his lap. After all these weeks, had someone come to take him away from the Dursleys?

“Then open it, Potter,” Snape said.

“It’s locked from the outside, sir,” Harry replied. He heard a muttered Alohamora and then the door swung open.

“Well,” Snape said. Harry looked up and saw a sneer on the Potions Master’s face, his hands clenched in his robe. “If the Boy Who Lived has nothing better to do than stare at a broken mirror, perhaps he can make time in his busy schedule to pack his trunk, hmm?”

“My trunk is packed, sir,” Harry said. He felt as though his heart had drowned in his stomach and was sinking to his shoes. Snape, the man who had taunted Sirius, the man responsible for Sirius’s death, was standing in front of Harry, dressed in his usual black – a mockery of mourning, Harry thought – and Harry had no strength left to confront him. Harry stared down at his shoes, unwilling to face Snape’s sneer or his Legilimency, and wished for the energy to hate the man.

Harry knew – inside his heart, which was now making the acquaintance of his toenails – that Snape had not been responsible for his godfather’s death. He knew where the responsibility rested. It was Harry, who had not practiced Occlumency, who had rushed to the Ministry without thinking, who had tried to save Sirius without appealing to any adults for aid, who was responsible. The misery of that thought pushed Harry’s heart down even further, squashed it into the soles of his feet. A bullet straight through the heart would be less painful, Harry thought.

“Well then, let us be off,” Snape said. Harry looked up and saw that there was no sneer on the man’s face. Snape was – not sympathetic or caring – neutral, and somehow that reassured Harry more than any overt pity or sympathy. Snape shrank Harry’s trunk and Hedwig’s cage, slipping them into a pocket, and beckoned for Harry to follow him.

Harry paused to stroke Hedwig’s feathers to thank his silent valiant owl for her support, and she flew out the open window. “Where are we going, sir?” Harry asked, staring at the floor.

“I’m taking you to Hogwarts – the Headmaster wishes for you to receive additional tutoring in Occlumency and Defense Against the Dark Arts,” Snape said.

“Yes, sir.”

“No arguments, Potter? No protests that it isn’t fair? No appeals to the Headmaster to allow you to stay with your adoring family?” Snape looked around the bare room as he emphasized the words “adoring family.”

“No, sir.”

“No accusations, Potter? Perhaps that you’ve forgotten that your most hated teacher, the Greasy Git of the Dungeons, the Slimy Slytherin that your father and godfather taunted, is a Death Eater and a murderer? Have you forgotten your beloved godfather and my role in his death so soon?”

Harry stared at his shoes and wondered if his heart would leak, slow and viscous like clotted blood, out of his soles. Perhaps the blood would ooze like a meteor across Aunt Petunia’s clean floors. Perhaps it was possible to die of heartbreak. “I’ve not forgotten my role in his death,” Harry said, looking the Potions Master in the eyes for the first time. “I haven’t forgotten that he would still be alive if it wasn’t for me.”

Snape opened his mouth – paused – closed it again. He reached out, grasped Harry’s shoulder, and Apparated them to Hogwarts. When they arrived and Harry had recovered from the disorientation, Snape’s hand was still on his shoulder. It rested there for several seconds longer than necessary.

Harry escaped the dungeons and Snape’s tutoring to sit by the lake at night. His Professor was confusing him, Harry admitted. Snape was still sarcastic and a hard taskmasker, but there was something changed – a softer edge to the man. He walked Harry through Occlumency with patience, explaining various techniques to defend his mind with more detail than he had used last year. He taught him Defense Against the Dark Arts with a confident, valiant flair and more competence than any of Harry’s past professors had displayed – Harry learned more from Snape than he had learned from Lupin, even.

The dungeons were a silent place, though, and Harry was still drowning in silence when he wasn’t in lessons with Snape. The lessons were a distraction from his pain, but not enough. He felt that his heart was still bleeding out from the soles of his feet, that there was a hole in his world that had been left by Sirius and would not be repaired. Harry carried the pieces of the mirror with him everywhere – his last connection to Sirius, the last thing that Sirius had given him.

Harry sat by the lake, kicking his toes in the water, holding the mirror. It was silent here, save for the tiny splashes made by the fish nibbling at Harry’s feet. The night sky was spangled with constellations and streaked with meteors. Falling stars on which Sirius will never make wishes, Harry thought. This is a night sky that Sirius will never see, a silence that Sirius will never hear – and he has lost these things because of me.

A twig cracked in the darkness like a bullet hitting a concrete wall. Snape moved in out of the shadows to sit by Harry. Harry watched his professor’s reflection in the lake and did not turn to face him.

Snape put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. His black robes seemed to echo the night, and his face reflected in the lake was pale. “You know that it wasn’t your fault,” Snape told him.

Harry shook his head, his heart bleeding, his toes aching. “He would have never died if it was not for me,” Harry insisted.

“Foolish boy,” Snape said. “He would never have escaped, never would have lived if it was not for you.”

There was a pause, a silence between them – but it was not the silence that the two of them would have once shared, marred with Snape’s sneer and Harry’s glare. This was a silence that a person could float in, not drowning or struggling, but calm and whole and close. Snape’s hand was warm on his shoulder in the cold night air. Harry almost felt the man’s heart blood beating through his veins down to his fingertips.

Snape broke the silence in the end. “Potter – Harry. There is an old story, a wizard legend – you have probably not heard it. The legend says that meteors – like the ones falling there – carry the souls of the dead back to earth when they are ready to be reborn. Black – your godfather – he’ll be waiting for you behind the Veil and, in the end, when you and he are reunited there – someday the two of you will ride a meteor back and be reborn here.”

Meteors streaked across the sky and fish nibbled at Harry’s feet and he felt his heart’s blood begin to clot and stop its slow ooze out of the soles of his feet.