To my friends,

Well, here I am, lost and confused age seventeen. Having entered Hogwarts lost and confused age eleven, it's also looking increasingly likely that I'll be leaving Hogwarts lost and confused in a couple of months to continue my lost and confused life. Lost and confusedness aside, I can safely say that Hogwarts has had a load of happy memories for me.

While I'll never forget this school, the things I will recall are of Gryffindor: having to live my life under the command of an insane house-mistress (she does love me, Moony), having to develop resistance to firewhiskey, the ability to consume ten pieces of Honeydukes chocolate as a main meal each day and late nights on end without sleep. I'll never forget the brilliant pranks we played
(Snivelly's pink hair), or the friends I made here, and I know none of you will ever forget me or any of the other Marauders, for that matter.

It's the people in a school and not so much the way it works that makes it
special. I will miss you all a lot. No doubt we'll all meet again, probably
down the Hog's Head the way things are going.

Before I get all deep and sentimental and receive a kicking in the arse from Prongs or Moony for crying on the parchment, I'll finish this short piece and wish you all good-bye.

Your mate always,

Sirius Black (a.k.a. the unbelievably handsome Padfoot)

With trembling hands, Harry set down the letter. There was no doubt in his mind that this letter had been written by a seventeen year - old Sirius Black, preparing to enter the world. At seventeen, Sirius did not know he was going to become a Godfather. He did not know he would lose his best friends in a few years. That he would be sent to Azkaban for twelve. That he was going to die.

In his letter, he was cocky and sincere. He had no way of knowing that one of the boys that would later read this would be mourning his untimely death. He looked down again, taking in the texture of the thick parchment, the red ink, the splotches where mistakes had been made. He drank every word, his eyes glued to the untidy scrawl.

Harry's eyes clouded over momentarily. He took a deep breath, tearing the parchment in half. What was Remus thinking giving this to him? The parchment was in fourths. Didn't he think it was just enough for Sirius to have died? A particularly vicious tear brought it into eighths. Did he have to make it even more difficult with painful memories and stupid (sixteenths), useless (he tore a small bit and tossed it on the floor), letters from a boy who thought he had his whole life ahead of him?

Furious, Harry watched as the small bits of parchment fluttered to the wooden floor. Like little snowflakes, he thought vaguely. Horrible snowflakes that burned more than one thousand Cruciatus Curses. More than Snape's biting insults and Ron's loathing and having only a bloody first year as an ally. He dropped heavily to the floor and sat, staring at a blank stretch of space for ages, his mind blank. Why had this been so difficult before, with Snape? It felt lovely, having a clear mind. No thoughts, no memories, no bloody parchment. Harry smiled
softly, running his fingers along the mess at his feet.

It was wrong to have torn Sirius's letter. That Harry knew. It would not help him feel any better. Only time could do that. Time and Bellatrix Lestrange's screams of pain when he finally caught up with her, when he gave her what she deserved.

'Reparo.'

The parchment lay at his feet again, staring back innocently. Harry made no move to pick it up. He was not planning on moving until the fireplace chucked Sirius and James and Lily and Cedric out onto his hearth. He would not move until they were all sitting comfortably, toasting marshmallows and laughing over silly little things like Voldemort and mass destruction and prophesies. Nothing but marshmallows and Quidditch talk. Nothing, until morning came.

The sunlight burned his eyes. It seared through the tender eyeball and into his brain. Without thought, Harry rolled over, moaning. The sunlight found his eyes again, and he groaned out something unintelligible, swatting at the source of annoyingly bright light.

'Mr. Harry Potter must wake up, sir!'

Bloody hell, he knew that voice. Harry's eyes snapped open; Dobby was standing with a torch, his green eyes as wide as saucers. When he was sure Harry was indeed not asleep, the torch was switched off and stowed away in the pocket of his football shorts.

'Dobby?' Harry slurred, wiping his eyes. He found his glasses, ignoring the brush of parchment under his fingertips as he reached for them. 'Wassamatter?'

Dobby shook his head, beckoning Harry to the door with a long, spindly finger. 'Mr. Harry Potter must come now, sir. Dobby is coming to warn him, sir --- Professor Snape is looking for him!'

'Snape?'

At that precise moment in time, two things occurred to Harry. The first was that he would have to pick himself up off the floor, play the dutiful apprentice, and scurry into what was promising to be an unpleasant situation. The second was that he wished very much to have switched places with Sirius. Anything beyond the veil had to be more pleasant than an angry Snape.

'Mr. Harry Potter sir is to come at once!' Dobby exclaimed, grasping a thick chunk of black hair with his tiny hand. 'Come, Harry Potter, sir!'

Reluctantly, Harry rose to his feet, stuffing the letter Remus had given him deep into his pocket. The last thing he wanted to do early in the morning was march into Snape's dungeon after having deliberately disobeyed him by not returning to the Slytherin common room the night before, but he let Dobby lead him through a secret stairway behind the tapestry of Barnaby the Blasphemous on the fourth floor, which brought them into a narrow dungeon corridor that Harry recognised instantly, dread filling his stomach like a ton of molten lead. He looked back at Dobby for a moment, his brain beginning to pick up speed as it whirred with a jumble of confused thoughts.

'Hang on, how did you know it was me, Dobby?'

The House Elf beamed proudly, puffing out his little chest. 'Dobby is knowing Mr. Harry Potter, sir. Harry Potter freed Dobby, and Dobby will keep Harry Potter's secret, sir.' Smiling wryly, the elf rapped twice on Snape's door, disappearing with a loud crack that sent shivers up Harry's spine. It did not take long for Snape to open the door, his pale face illuminated by the flickering candle he held in his claw - like fist.

'In.'

Harry obeyed immediately, not wanting to try his already thin luck by angering the man even more. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, hands balled into fists at his sides, not daring to utter a single word. Surprisingly, Snape simply strode toward a door across the room, yanked it open, and stepped inside. It took a moment for Harry's brain to connect the pieces; Snape wanted him to follow.

The floor under his feet felt like mud, clinging to his shoes and crying out with each step toward what was looking to be some form of punishment. He could hardly focus on the room, his eyes travelling instead to the potions master at the other end. Snape glared, Harry stared back.

'I trust you slept well,' said the man dryly, his eyebrow rising sardonically. Harry could only nod in return, so curious was he to know just what they were doing in what looked to be a small, cramped library. Snape continued, spitting each word at his apprentice contemptuously, his face unnervingly calm. 'This room is my private study. You are never to enter it without my permission.'

Without another word, Harry found himself being pushed out forcibly into the main room, where he was led once again to a slightly worn - looking wooden door.

'The lavatory,' Snape announced, then pulled him on before he had a chance to have a proper look. 'The spare bedroom, my bedroom. The main room. The fireplace connects to the Floo, and you are under no circumstances allowed to so much as look at it, unless you are being attacked. If you swallow something poisonous, do not attempt to bother me, because you will wish I did not have the happy power of force - feeding you an antidote. There is a supply of bezoars in the
lavatory for that very purpose. If you are bleeding, there are potions in the lavatory. If you have any other problems, you may come and find me or, preferably, someone else. Any questions? Good. You may prepare yourself for breakfast. I'll not have you showing up in the Great Hall looking so disgraceful.'

Wondering vaguely if this was some mind game and Snape was planning on revealing his punishment later, Harry stumbled off to the toilet. The mirror was just as rude as before, but gone was his shock at seeing the face of Padriac Domingart. It would take some time, of course, before he began to accept that foreign face as his. Throwing the mirror a filthy look, he scrubbed his skin until it burned.

Days passed and Harry found himself less popular by the minute. With the combination of Snape being a git and him having to pretend to be a git (although he wasn't really having to pretend anymore), he predicted he'd be even less popular than Severus Snape had been in school. The thought ceased to worry him, though. While the others were making things difficult, Harry was spending his friendless nights buried in books. It was not nearly as enjoyable as Hermione made it out to be, this practising business, but it kept him occupied. He worked on his potions each night, and even Snape could do little more than sniff indigently at Harry's Dreamless Sleep, which he had accidentally dropped a sprig of cinnamon into, adding a lovely Christmas aroma to it that reminded him of the pudding Aunt Petunia always made for the holidays back in Privet Drive.

Did Snape make pudding for Christmas dinner? Somehow, Harry doubted it.

'Quidditch match today,' piped a small voice at his side. Zachary had returned. The boy was nice enough, but he was forever trailing after his new hero, asking questions about Snape and the Dark Lord that made Harry's head spin.

'My real father was a Death Eater once,' the boy would often remark, his eyes clouded over. 'I want to be just like him.'

The subject was usually changed abruptly by Harry, who would much rather steer away from the topic of fathers.

'Bully,' he grunted, peeling his cheek off a colourful page depicting a man having his head ripped off by a vicious - looking chimaera.

Unperturbed, Zachary continued, 'Slytherin versus Gryffindor, and I know Slytherin will win this time. Potter's been looking peaky, and Draco says he probably won't last the entire game.'

'Huh.'

'I wish he would last it out, though. Be cool to see him play. My cousin Alfred in Ravenclaw says he's ace at Quidditch. Good enough for the English National Team, anyway, but they're all a bunch of batty boys. I think anyone that good ought to be on the Tornadoes. They're brill.'

It was this sort of mindless chatter that made Harry appreciate Zachary more than anything on some days, and want to stuff a snitch down his throat on others. Today he did not mind it so much. It took his mind off the fact that the final main stage of the plan was being carried out today, and Remus was right in the middle of it.

Zachary gave a sort of spasmodic bounce, rising to the tips of his toes. 'See you later,' he whispered, then said in a clear voice, 'I'm going to get ready for the game. Big game, you know, and I really want to see what Potter can do.'With that, the boy was gone. In a way, Harry almost felt bad for him. At the rate things were going, he never would get to see the famed Harry Potter's skills at Quidditch.