Harry's field of vision was limited to the stone ceiling above, the hex so absolute that he couldn't even shift his eyes to either side. Severus is going to kill me. That was his first thought after he heard the door slam shut. All that practice out in Devon, and the first time I really needed my magic, I let myself get caught off guard. But I wasn't expecting Draco to hex me for real, was I? Let alone hit me like a Muggle would--

He wasn't quite sure how long he'd been laying there; his thoughts seemed to be oozing like treacle, as though time itself had slowed down. By the time he'd got to wondering about Draco hitting him, though, a harsh, discordant noise began exploding inside his mind. Long, loud, and shrill, it just went on and on, a high pitched whine that demanded attention.

The magic doorbell, he was slow to realise. Somebody's at the door. Maybe it's Draco trying to come back in! But no, that doesn't make sense; he knows how to open the door from the outside . . . unless Severus never showed him? Maybe he didn't. Maybe Severus made sure that Draco couldn't get in again if he left, a ploy to keep him from leaving in the first place . . . very Slytherin. Well, at least now I know why he never snuck out before. He probably thought I wouldn't let him back in . . . and I actually might not have, at least in those first few weeks . . .

All of a sudden, it was like Harry's mind snapped to full attention inside his head, his sluggish thoughts only slowly catching up to implications he should have realised the instant he first began to hear the doorbell ring. That could be Draco out there, running from Lucius or maybe a bunch of Slytherins out for his blood . . . That could be Draco, pounding and begging to get back in, and you're laying here doing nothing!

But there's nothing I can do against Petrificus . . .

On the cusp of that denial, though, came another one. Maybe there is something . . .

Remembrance assailed Harry then, the images still moving in slow-motion, every thought taking an age to form. A cell where he'd turned stones translucent until he could see the heart of them. The hospital wing, noise ricocheting all around, light so bright he could feel the heat, windows shattering under the force of his anger, the force of his need. A robe and mask, the anger that time wrapped around a need to kill, to destroy, to rip asunder--

And now, he had another need.

Drawing deeply into his core, Harry braced himself and thought, I can do it, I can do this. Wild magic, that's what I need. Or not so wild, because now I'm in control of my dark powers, aren't I? I channelled wild magic that one time in Devon, made it do what I wanted it to do, and I didn't need a snake to make it happen. Or my wand . . . All I needed was enough anger, enough rage . . .

Too bad he wasn't angry at Draco. Well, he was, but it wasn't anything like the fury he'd directed at that robe and mask. His anger now was woven through with something else, something far more potent.

A need to help.

He didn't want to blast Draco with his dark powers, he really didn't. All he wanted was for the other boy to come home safe. Draco had been wrong to hit him, wrong to throw that hex, wrong to leave, but he shouldn't have to die for it.

How to save him, though?

It was emotion that had set him free on Samhain. Emotion, fierce emotion . . .

Memories rained inside his head. Draco, giving his wand back. Challenging him day after day to work his way back toward his magic. Insisting that Hermione had to come to Devon because she could be with Harry when Draco and Snape couldn't.

But those were memories, not feelings, and Harry's every instinct was screaming at him that emotion alone could spark his wild magic. So what did he feel for the Slytherin boy? He didn't hate him; Harry knew that much, but he'd never given much thought to what he did feel. They were brothers, sure, but as comfortable as that usually was these days, it said nothing about emotion. Snape had made them brothers by unequivocally accepting them both as his sons.

But what had they done as brothers?

Memories filled him again, this time not so much ones of what Draco had done to earn his trust, but what Harry and Draco had done together. Memories of the good times they'd shared.

Studying together, day after day, Draco laughing at the bats Harry liked to doodle as he read . . . Comparing notes on the girls in their year . . . Watching Quidditch on the enchanted picture frame . . . Joking around about Snape's peculiar habits . . . Wizards' Scrabble late at night, rematch after rematch with Draco making up slang . . . Trying to sneak Galliano from their father's tall bottle of it, only to find that Snape had warded his liquor cabinet to turn intruders' hands a glowing green . . . Brewing the counter potion in the lab that same night, the both of them saying "hush, shhh, quieter!" every few moments . . .

What was it that Draco had said? That he could sort of stand Harry's company now, every now and then? That was a bit like Snape's I don't hate you at all declaration, wasn't it? They weren't brothers just because Snape had set things up that way and told them so. They were brothers where it counted.

Even if the Slytherin prat had just punched him in the face, hexed him, and made off with his wand.

I care about Draco, really care, Harry thought. That's the key. I can do this, I can, but this time it'll be love, not hate or fear or anger unlocking the wild magic that still lives inside me. I've always wanted a brother and I'm not about to lose the one I've finally got. I can do this, I can. I can break out, I can break the hex---

From somewhere in the middle of his soul he felt a stirring like a snake coiling, preparing to attack.

Break the hex, break the hex, he mentally chanted, the words flowing faster through his mind. The coil inside him grew tighter, stronger, gathering energy as his thoughts became a mental blur streaming through him like a gale force wind.

Breakthehexbreakthehexbreakitbreakitbreakbreakbreakbreakkkk---

The serpent inside him struck, lashing out, energy and power blasting through him in one fell swoop. It didn't flow out through his fingers this time, though; didn't break windows or melt walls. It cleansed him, or so it felt. Draco's hex fell away from him under the force of it, the change so sudden it was almost cataclysmic, like Harry had been scrubbed raw from the inside out. It hurt, actually, waves of pain resounding all through him, but Harry scarcely noticed that. A surge of adrenaline masking the pain, Harry blinked to moisten his eyes. Or eye, because it seemed like the other one was swollen closed, puffy and weepy. With just one eye to see with, his vision was skewed, things not looking quite the way they should, everything strangely flat.

No depth, that was it, but Harry didn't give it much thought as he pushed to his feet and stumbled towards the front door. His body didn't seem to be moving correctly, or obeying his commands; he lurched more than walked, but somehow he made it, splaying one hand against the wall so he could lean, panting, his fingers out to perform Abrire.

No thought in him of holding his wand to cover the wandless magic, not now. No time to waste, not with that doorbell still pealing away inside his head. Draco needed him now. Besides, he didn't even know where his wand was. Had Draco taken it with him when he'd left?

If he loses my wand to a bunch of Slytherins, Snape will kill us both, Harry thought. What will it be this time, ten million lines?

It came to Harry then that his thoughts were terribly jumbled and disconnected, like he hadn't eaten or slept in days, like he was walking around in a daze, actually. What did it matter what their father would do? Getting Draco inside; that was what mattered, and he wasn't going to accomplish much with Abrire, was he? He needed Parseltongue, needed Sals . . . but when his glance skittered across the door parchment, it didn't say Draco Malfoy in any case.

Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, it simply read.

His anxiety growing tenfold in one instant, Harry scooped his cloak off its peg --thankfully nearby-- and focussed his eyes on the crest, then held out a shaking hand and whispered in a hoarse, raw voice, "Open up, now."

The door swung open, and there were Ron and Hermione as predicted, wands at the ready. Ron craned his neck a bit to look around at the interior of the room. "Everything all right in here?"

Before Harry could get a word in, Hermione was exclaiming, "We've been waiting forever, seems like! We sent Ginny running to tell the Professor that neither you nor Malfoy appeared to be at home--" She tried to cross the threshold then, but as Harry hadn't actually invited her in, a nasty green light flashed across the entrance. Yelping in pain, Hermione jumped back slightly and rubbed both her arms.

"I'm on my way out," Harry quickly said before either one of them asked to enter the rooms.

"The hell you are," Ron interrupted.

Ignoring him, Harry crossed into the hall, intending to go after Draco. Fat lot of good that did him. Ron and Hermione were in his way; Harry tried to push through them. With a muttered oath, Ron grabbed hold of Harry's arm and peering closely at his face, abruptly questioned, "What's all this, then? You didn't take a hex in the eye last night!"

"Still going to claim that Draco Malfoy's as harmless as baby wombat?" Hermione railed, her keen intelligence working overtime as usual. "Because I know full well you didn't get that practicing magic! We were there!"

"Draco!" Harry gasped, struggling against Ron's grip. His muscles were still so uncoordinated that he couldn't quite shake the other boy off. Actually, it felt a bit as though this time, instead of melting the walls, the wild magic had melted him, from the inside out. "I have to go find him--"

"Do you want Wizard Family Services visiting again? They'll get a flurry of Howlers if you run 'round the halls with your face looking like that!"

"What?" Harry could hardly make sense of Ron's comments. Sure, his eye hurt more all the time, and he still couldn't seem to open it, but he couldn't have a bruise already from that awful punch Draco had landed, could he? Just how long had he been caught in that hex? It couldn't have been that long, or Snape would have finished in his classroom and come home.

Ron was shaking a solemn head, his grip on Harry still so tight that Harry had no hope of slipping it, not when he felt as weak as a half-drowned kitten. "You stay put. Listen, I know how much this thing with Snape means to you, and since it's not his fault Malfoy punched your lights out, you really don't want Family Services thinking they need to come investigate. Especially not after last time." Ron clenched his fists. "Hermione and I will go get Malfoy and give him what-for--"

"Let go!" Harry shouted. "It's not like that! I have to go help Draco, he's in horrible danger! He's going to somehow end up in the Owlery; let me go or I swear I'll have to make you--"

He reached back inside and snatched his cloak off its peg, only realizing just then that he'd been heading out without it. That punch and hex must have rattled him more than he'd thought . . . Well, no matter, he had the cloak now. Fixing his gaze on the crest, he was already raising his hand to Stupefy his friends, when a grim, dark voice broke his concentration.

"I shall go after Draco," said Snape as he emerged from the Floo. "Mr Weasley. Thank you for sending your sister to alert me to the situation. Now, if you'd be so kind, this matter is private family business." He waved an expressive hand, and when the students were slow to react, shouted, "Gryffindors, out!"

"We were never really in," Ron muttered, letting go of Harry. Actually, he gave him a little push toward Snape. In other circumstances, Harry would have found that amusing.

"We'll check back lat--," Hermione tried to assure Harry as Snape literally shut the door in her face.

Before his father even had a chance to turn around, Harry began blurting, "Draco got a letter from Pansy and left to talk to her in some supply closet near here!" He had to stop and take a breath then. Or several, really. It was ridiculous. All he could think was that breaking out of the hex had exhausted all his reserves, since a little tussle like he'd just had with Ron really shouldn't have left him gasping for air. "I tried to stop him but he caught me off guard--"

"I should say so," Snape interrupted, looking him up and down. "Harry. Sit down before you fall over."

"Sit down?" Harry echoed in stark disbelief, sucking in more air even though it singed his throat. "Draco could be in the Owlery, fighting for his life right this very second! He said he wouldn't go anywhere near there but they probably won't give him a choice. Come on--"

But Snape knew what he was talking about, evidently, because just as Harry grabbed for his father's hand, a wave of absolute dizziness crashed into him, buckling his legs, and he found himself abruptly falling straight onto the hard dungeon floor, the room spinning around him as he sat there by the door.

Snape scooped him up and deposited him on the sofa, the motion so economical it took but a second. Then he was conjuring ice from thin air and wrapping it in a handkerchief he fetched from a cloak pocket. He thrust it out in one quick motion that said he was restraining his anger only with great difficulty. As Harry took hold of the makeshift ice-pack, the Potions Master brusquely instructed, "Put this on your eye but take it off every few moments to let the tissue rest. You will stay here, is that clear? I will go look for Draco--"

The room all around him lurched as Harry tried to stand up, the ice-pack in his hand already forgotten. What on earth was the matter with him? His head was pounding, and it seemed like the light in the room was intensely painful for the one eye still in working order, and only now was he realizing that all his muscles hurt, every one, the pain soaking through his flesh to make the bones hurt too.

He wasn't going to leave Draco to his fate though. What was a little pain? Well, a lot of pain. Not to mention weakness and a whirling disorientation unlike anything he'd ever felt . . . still, Harry pushed up off the couch and clutched his father for support, both his hands on Snape's forearms. "We won't be able to see Draco, he's got my cloak!"

"Your cloak," the Potions Master quietly snarled. "Is that why he hit you, in the eye, no less, because you were trying to keep him from leaving with your father's precious cloak?"

"He hit me because I wouldn't let him leave, full stop!"

Snape shook his head, his eyes still black with fury as they passed over Harry's injury.

"And you're my father," Harry added, wishing it hadn't come out like such an afterthought. Well, his thoughts were jumbled, to say the least, otherwise he would have realised sooner that cloak or no, they did have a way to find Draco. "I've got a map that shows people under invisibility cloaks! We can take it with us to see where Draco's got to--"

"We will be going nowhere--" Snape began to stress, but Harry wasn't waiting for his answer. Stumbling, he made it to his room, dropped to the stone floor, and fished in his trunk for the folded sheaf of parchment, dropping the ice-pack carelessly to one side. Another wave of dizziness assailed him, but that was all right since he was already sitting down, this time. Snape followed him in, the sudden silence from his quarter ominous.

Touching the map with his finger instead of a wand, Harry looked up at his father's Head-of-Slytherin crest, and groaned out the Parseltongue sentence that came closest to the English one he needed. Good thing he'd practiced the charm in advance, but he'd thought, what with going back to the Tower and all, that it might come in handy. Usually his Parseltongue version of that map charm made him chuckle a little, but there was no humour in him now.

None at all.

The Marauder's Map began to fill with familiar writing, an introduction scrolling across parchment. Flipping past that, Harry quickly scanned the rooms, searching for a tiny lot labelled Draco Malfoy.

He saw himself in the dungeons, his father close alongside, but the corridors criss-crossing the dungeons showed no trace of his brother. With a sinking feeling, Harry traced his finger across the parchment, seeking out the Great Hall, and from there, the route he knew to--

"Oh, my God!" Harry thrust the map out, his finger jabbing at it. "He's in the Owlery already!"

Snape knelt down beside him and leaned over, his hawk nose casting a shadow on the parchment as he took it with both hands to study the two dots there. Pansy Parkinson, Draco Malfoy. Pansy's dot was hovering just beside the thin inked line representing an outside wall of Hogwarts; Draco's dot was alongside, so close their names overlapped, so close it seemed to Harry that they must be kissing.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe his dream had been just a dream. He loved Draco, he knew that now, but it had taken awful, awful worries to make him realise as much. Maybe his subconscious had just been trying to tell him how much he'd come to value his brother. Because there was nothing to worry about now, was there? Pansy and Draco were completely alone; nobody else was anywhere near them; there wasn't even anybody on the long staircase that led to the Owlery.

And if anything was certain, it was that Pansy Parkinson wasn't about to get the best of Draco Malfoy. Not physically --she was a tiny thing-- and not magically, as Draco had proven months and months ago in Potions class when he'd hexed her so badly that she'd ended up in St. Mungo's. No, Draco was the dangerous one, the one with an impulse control problem, the one who'd been kept out of class for ages because he couldn't be trusted, when challenged, not to do his fellow Slytherins serious harm.

He and Pansy had made up though. They must have; they were kissing; their dots were right up against one another now, not a speck of blank parchment between them. Or maybe they weren't actually kissing . . . their dots were touching, but hadn't overlapped; maybe they were just standing before the great open windows that faced the west, Draco behind Pansy, watching the sun begin to set.

Snape made a noise that could be interpreted as disgust, then drew his legs in toward his body as he sat cross-legged on the floor, his dark gaze rapidly assessing the entirety of Hogwarts. "Well. Draco should know better than to trust Miss Parkinson, but at least it appears as though no ambush is contemplated. None of my Slytherins have placed themselves in strategic locations and there are no strangers present in the castle or--" Another quick sweep of eyes over parchment. "Or on the grounds."

Harry nodded. "Yeah, but with my dream? Let's go get him anyway."

Snape glowered. "I will 'get' him. You will leave Draco and his Gryffindor recklessness to me." Gesturing toward the ice pack Harry had yet to use, he added, "Use that while I am gone. The magic binding your vision is not designed to withstand such mistreatment, and I would prefer your eye not revert to it's condition after Samhain!"

Uh-oh. This was bad. Really bad. Harry picked up the ice pack and lightly rested it against his eye, wincing, and not just at the jolt of pain that resulted. He was thinking of his brother as he watched the map with his good eye. Draco was really in trouble . . .

In the next moment, though, Draco got into worse trouble still. Much worse. It was all there on the map, something beginning to happen, something so horrible that it curled Harry's toes.

Draco's dot shoved Pansy's, shoved her right through the inked line that represented the western wall of the Owlery.

Pansy's dot ended up on the outside the lines denoting the castle wall. Outside, hundreds of feet up in the air.

Beside Harry, Snape sucked in a breath through his teeth, his hands shaking slightly as they held the map.

Draco's dot remained pressed right up against the windows. Maybe he was reaching out, trying to help Pansy, trying to drag her back in? Maybe she hadn't been pushed after all . . . maybe that kiss had grown so intense that she had lost her balance and fallen? And maybe the wards were keeping her out there, hovering--

Hovering? Harry's eye went wide as he stared at that fateful speck of ink. Because she wasn't hovering, that much was clear. There were horrid little marks all around her dot now, as though it was rushing at great speed. The Marauder's Map wasn't designed to show pure vertical motion, but the charms laid on the parchment were so powerful that it was trying its best, marking Pansy's dot with tiny wavering specks.

Pansy was moving, even if her dot wasn't. She was falling. Plummeting.

Plummeting straight down to earth, plummeting to her death . . .

Harry's mouth dropped open, his gaze seeking out his father's rigid features. "He . . . he . . . no, this can't be happening! My dream, it was Draco who was going to be thrown--"

Snape didn't reply though his eyes, narrowed as he watched the map, glittered like polished coal.

One more glance down at the parchment and it was all over. As Pansy hit the grassy earth outside the castle, her dot grotesquely swelled on impact. Thinking of what her body must look like, Harry shuddered.

Her name faded away, and then her dot, as Harry thought with dawning horror, the map shows the living, not the dead. Pansy's dead now. Draco had . . . Oh God, what had Draco done? And what was he doing now, standing there alone in the Owlery, his dot up against the windows as though he'd leaned out to watch Pansy's long fall?

"He . . ." Harry gasped, his tongue feeling thick in his mouth. So strange to feel the shock convulsing first one muscle and then another. He'd known for five years that Draco Malfoy was going to kill somebody someday; the other boy had a vicious streak, Harry had told himself, more times to count. It was just a matter of time.

But the Draco who had become his brother . . . well, he was still Draco, complete with all the faults and flaws his last name implied, but for all that, he was different, too. The map, after all, didn't tell the whole story, did it? Harry moved the ice to a new position on his eye as he tried to reason out the truth.

"Oh . . . God . . . it . . . do you think it could possibly have been, er, self-defence?" he choked out, looking to his father for reassurance.

Snape just stared back, his eyes black and hard, challenging Harry to answer that for himself.

Which the boy did. "But . . . why would Draco need to push her out? Even if she was . . . attacking him, he could handle it without it coming to that. And . . . I can't think he was startled or something by an attack from behind . . ." Harry's gaze frantically scanned the map, this time hoping to see someone else . . . someone else for the Aurors to arrest. "Oh, no. There's nobody else there . . ."

Feeling like he was grasping at straws, Harry murmured, "Maybe it was some kind of accident?"

A derisive glance, that time. "Did your fool of a brother also dismantle my wards by accident?"

Harry frowned at that. "But Dad . . . how could he dismantle your wards at all?"

"Draco intuits magic. Quite skilfully, at times."

"I know, but still . . . your wards?"

The Potions Master scowled down at the map. "Invincibility is a myth. Whatever can be warded can be unwarded."

"Imperius," Harry said, that time his tone more definite as he moved the ice pack to let his eye rest, as Snape had said. "That's it, right? Somebody cursed him while he was in the closet, or something, and they're making him do this--"

"Draco could not dismantle my wards while under Imperius," Snape scowled. "Forging a gap through them would require highly complex magic and a fair dose of intuition. You'll note that Darswaithe was given a Portkey for that very reason, not that he had any intuition to begin with."

"Pansy, then--"

"Miss Parkinson unwarded the windows herself so that she might be thrown outside?" A harsh noise resounded through the Potions Master's teeth. "Or did she do it under Imperius? Stop grasping at straws and look at what is right before your face!"

Harry did.

Draco's dot was moving now, backing slowly away from the windows. Had the Slytherin boy lingered so long because he was restoring the wards he'd somehow managed to take down? Erasing the evidence that might point to him, obscuring his magical signature? Harry's heart dropped somewhere into the region of his toes, and throbbed there painfully. It was clear enough what had happened up in the Owlery, but that didn't mean Harry understood it.

"He . . . but why would he kill Pansy? He was excited to get the letter, thought she might be . . . uh, falling for him again."

"Perhaps he discovered that her renewed interest in him was nothing but a ruse to get him from the rooms."

Impulse control, thought Harry, remembering the way Draco had kicked Dubby. No doubt about it; Draco had a violent side. The last time he'd been angry with Pansy he'd almost killed her, and this time . . . Harry looked at the place where Pansy's dot had been, and felt positively nauseous. Pansy had never been his favourite person, of course, but to think that she was dead, just like that?

Draco had apparently finished whatever needed doing in the Owlery. His dot began moving, heading across the expanse of the room and then creeping down the stairs. He moved slowly, as though aware that he could be heard if not seen. Some other students were climbing the stairs now; Draco stopped moving completely and flattened himself against the wall to let them pass.

Harry leaned over closer, peering with one eye at the map Snape was holding. A Ravenclaw, a couple of Hufflepuffs, and then the names Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger trailing up the Owlery stairs. To Harry's horror, the two Gryffindors actually stopped right alongside Draco, as though they could smell him . . . but then they moved on, upwards toward the Owlery, where Harry had said Draco would be. How could a dot look so angry? But Ron's did; it was moving in a jerky manner, as though Ron were pounding up the stairs, and Hermione's wasn't much better. Draco's dot, in contrast, seemed calm and collected, moving slowly but surely.

What if Ron and Hermione had sensed him strongly enough to pull off the invisibility cloak, exposing his presence there for all to see? Harry suddenly felt ill. "Shouldn't we go bring him back, now?"

Snape's mouth was a straight line, his angry gaze not leaving the map for an instant as it tracked Draco's progress. "I thought you understood. Why do you think I'm merely watching? I'm loath to startle him when he's trying to hide beneath that cloak. It might publicise the fact that he's not where he ought to be."

So they were going to let Draco come to them . . . That made sense in the circumstances. Draco would be all right; he did have the cloak, after all. Still, Harry felt sicker than ever as he nodded, because by then, his father's plan was perfectly clear.

They were setting up an alibi.

They were going to claim that Draco had never left the dungeons, that he'd been with Harry the entire afternoon . . .

That story had one problem though. Well, besides Veritaserum. "Ron and Hermione know the truth," Harry groaned out loud, his stomach filling with acid at the mere thought. Ron, who would like few things better than to send one Draco Malfoy to Azkaban. "I told them I thought Draco had gone up to the Owlery, even. They'll think they've just missed him, or something, but they know for certain that he wasn't here where he belongs when the . . . um, accident happened."

Snape's eyes were still following Draco's route. "Call it murder, Harry."

"Oh, God," Harry moaned again, feeling like he'd been saying that far too much. On the other hand, it wasn't every day that he saw someone he cared about commit . . . even in his own mind, he couldn't quite say the word.

Snape was merely watching the map, his features taut.

"Um, you're taking this awfully calmly," Harry cautiously observed, wondering if that meant his father was completely over his withdrawal from purple loosestrife. He wasn't sure it was the right time to ask a thing like that, though.

"Giving vent to anger would hardly be the best strategy," Snape returned, but Harry wasn't blind. Or not yet, at any rate. There was a muscle ticking in his father's jaw. Snape wasn't calm at all, not inside. But he was controlled, because right now they had to keep their wits about them so that they could help Draco.

Harry wasn't the only one who loved the Slytherin; he knew that.

He laid a soft hand on his father's arm as they sat there together and watched Draco's progress on the map. He was still making his way down the long, long staircase that led from the Owlery. Harry almost wished they could go out there and get him; it was torture to wait like this, but Snape was right. They had to go about this like Slytherins would. With stealth. Making it clear to the castle that Draco had snuck out was practically a death sentence, considering his history with Pansy.

"It'll be all right," he assured his father, a little bit encouraged that the man hadn't moved away from his hand. Severus wasn't often demonstrative, and Harry thought that was all right, but sometimes a little touch could really help. Strange to think that it was Severus himself who had taught him that.

Snape's shoulders shook slightly with repressed emotion. Harry really couldn't tell if that was from grief or fury. Most likely both. But then the man firmed all his muscles to sit rigid once more, his black eyes derisive as he shook Harry's hand off to make a vague wave toward the boy's face. "So. I assume Miss Weasley had to fetch me because that blow to the eye had rendered you unconscious?"

For a second, Harry thought about answering yes. After all, Snape already knew about the punch, so why mention the hex as well? Considering what Snape had said about blindness, however, it was probably a bad, bad idea to imply that Draco had hit Harry's eye hard enough to knock him out.

"Actually, he punched me first and then cast Petrificus," Harry started to explain.

Snape's hands tightened on the map, creasing it that time, though he didn't look up. "Your friends managed to enter my rooms and Finite the curse? Perhaps all my wards need looking over."

"No, they never even got inside." Harry frowned. "You didn't notice?"

"Considering the way you were pushing and shoving at them in your efforts to leave, I surmised they had come in and you were ejecting them. If not, though, then why are you not still under Petrificus?"

"Uh . . ." Harry didn't actually want to say it. One more thing that made him different, when all he'd ever wanted was to be normal. But there was no escaping who he was; his dark powers had taught him that much. "Nobody broke in; I broke out . . . of the hex, I mean," he admitted.

That caused Snape's gaze to snap up, all right. "You broke out--" In the next moment he was back to watching after Draco, whose dot was by then approaching the corridor at the base of the Owlery, the movement still careful and slow.

Sly, Harry thought it.

"Well." His father appeared to have recovered from his shock. "You can resist Imperio so I suppose that makes some kind of sense."

"It wasn't anything like that," Harry whispered, spinning around to lean against his trunk. He felt so very awful, like all his bones were laced through with pain. "It was . . . I called up wild magic, I think. And it took an awful lot out of me. You know, before the wild magic was always lashing out of me. This time it was directed inside, and it didn't hurt at first, but now it really does."

Moving the map so that he could keep it in view even while he studied Harry, Snape laid a hand against his son's temple, his touch the sort of one he used with the most delicate of his potions vials. Harry couldn't help it; he leaned into a it a little. It just felt so . . . right, that now he had somebody he could depend on, somebody he could trust, in good times and bad.

"Perhaps the wild magic explains your black eye," Snape mused, his long fingers probing the margin of the injury with such care that Harry only felt a feather touch; nothing that could make him flinch.

He flinched anyway, at the phrase he'd heard. "My black eye?"

"Swollen shut, black and purple both. Not to mention oozing," Snape elaborated, dropping his fingers away from Harry's face. "As though Draco struck you the day before yesterday instead of just a few minutes past."

Well, that explained Ron and Hermione's reaction to his appearance, Harry supposed, though he still didn't know quite why his wild magic would have made the bruise flare up so much earlier than was normal.

"I wonder . . ." Snape mused, drawing his wand and waving it in an arc all around the boy. "Hydratus . . ."

All at once, Harry's headache receded, as did the pain in his joints. He blinked, his vision clearing, though his injured eye still refused to open.

"How long since you had a drink of any kind?"

Harry's voice came much easier than before; the hoarse rasp was completely gone. "Afternoon tea . . . not long."

Frowning, Snape glanced at the map to check Draco's progress, then returned his attention to Harry. "I suspect you broke the hex by accelerating personal time. That's why your eye looks quite so dreadful, why you were weak from thirst. You aged about two, possibly three days in the space of a few minutes."

"Uh . . . that's weird," was all Harry could think to say. "Though . . . I was thirsty on Samhain too, you know. Really thirsty. And it wasn't the same at all . . ."

The Potions Master shrugged. "Wild magic imposed upon oneself is something that's never been studied. I'd avoid it in future if possible. Too much of it might damage you in . . . unpredictable ways."

He meant his vision, Harry sensed. Or maybe his dark powers . . . all the magic he had left. If he lost it, would he be a squib?

Snape abruptly rose to his feet, the map still in his hand. "Draco is veering away from the dungeons," he bit out, annoyance in every syllable. "He is headed toward the grounds. The idiot child looks to be fleeing Hogwarts."

Harry pushed up off the floor, grabbing hold of his father's arm to steady himself. He felt better after the Hydratus, but still, nothing like his usual self. "Well, Ron and Hermione went up the stairs. Draco's probably worried they looked down and saw the body, that Aurors will be here any minute now--"

"Be that as it may, he is safer here than outside the Apparition boundary where any passing Death Eater can serve him up as a tasty morsel for Voldemort's next revel," the Potions Master spat. "Harry. I must go fetch him in. Have something light to eat while I bring him back. Sleep if you can."

"Eat, sleep?" Harry gasped. "You're joking! I'm going with you--"

"No, you are not," the Potions Master insisted, both hands descending to grasp Harry's shoulders. "I've no wish for anyone to see the state you're in."

"Heal it! Or cast a glamour--"

Snape glared. "I'm not ladling more magic atop the injury, not until I've had sufficient time to consider the matter. You'd still be blind if I'd proceeded as recklessly as that after Samhain, I hope you know!"

Oh. Harry actually hadn't thought of that. He was so used to his vision being perfect--no need even for glasses, any longer--that he didn't often consider how much his father had done for him . . . or what life would be like if he'd not had someone to help him after Malfoy had finished with his needles.

Malfoy, who even now might be waiting outside the Apparition boundary. Waiting for Draco . . .

Snape was thinking the same thing, Harry sensed, for the hands on his shoulders gave him a sharp shake to underline the command. "Do not follow me, Harry! I will not lose both my sons to Draco's fit of idiocy!"

Harry barked a laugh. "I can take Malfoy. One wanded spell and I can blast him straight to Mars!" He thought better than to mention that his wand was currently missing. Snape wouldn't like that at all.

Sneering by then, Snape harshly questioned, "And when Amaelia Thistlethorne drops by next? Will you 'blast' her as well? I should think you'd realise by now that I was mistaken and your latest series of dreams is coming true! If we are not careful, unadoption may well be next!"

"I'll risk it to save Draco!"

Snape's voice dropped to a low, intense murmur as he moved to speak against his son's ear. "No, you will not."

"For Draco!"

The Potions Master moved away a tad. "Apply your mind to the problem," he rebuked the boy. "Why do you think I am not rushing out? Look at the map! Draco is alone on the grounds; I am hardly going off to face an attacking mob. I am perfectly capable of stealthily retrieving your brother on my own. I will not be able to do that if you follow me and attract attention!"

Harry slowly nodded. Surprising how hard it was to stand on the sidelines when he wanted to be out there in the thick of it . . . but maybe that was part of growing up. His resolve to be mature, to comprehend that he and he alone didn't have the solution to every problem . . . it was a sobering realisation.

A paradigm shift.

Too bad it had come almost a year too late.

If I'd stopped to think instead of being so insistent on helping Sirius . . .

That thought was enough to bring Harry to his senses. He wasn't about to let his "saving-people thing" get in the way this time, of actually doing something good and real and lasting, like keeping Draco well away from Azkaban. Like getting him home, so they could get that alibi set up and then figure out the next step . . .

"Yes, sir," Harry added to his nod. "I'll stay right here, I promise. Uh, I mean yes, Dad."

The Potions Master obviously had his doubts. "If you follow me out looking like that, you will lend credence to any speculation about Draco being dangerously violent--"

"I know!" Harry said, raising his voice. "I trust you, all right! Go get him," Harry shouted, pushing lightly at his father to urge him towards the door. "Go find him before the Aurors do, before Voldemort realises he's on his own!"

Snape looked back just once, his black eyes intense, his knuckles white as he clutched the map. "Do not leave here for an instant," he reiterated. And then, "As for your trust . . ."

Harry braced himself.

"I thank you," his father finished.

Harry nodded in reply, but Snape didn't see it. One quick Abrire, and the Potions Master was gone.

Sighing, Harry closed the door and leaned against it. He wanted more than anything to rush out after his father. He wanted to catch up to him so they could find Draco together, and together, bring him home.

But his instincts, those instincts Snape had praised, were screaming inside him that this time, he'd already done his part in saving Draco, that to leave the dungeons now would only complicate matters and make it harder to help his brother.

And what was more, his instincts were telling him to do more than just say he trusted his father. They were telling him to actually do it. They were telling him that he wasn't all alone in the world any longer, that he had someone he could depend on, in good times and bad.

That he had someone who truly did love him, now. Someone who cared.

Pushing off from the door, Harry went back to his bedroom, sat down on his bed, and put the ice-pack back on his eye. It turned out to be wizard's ice, never melting, reminding Harry what a competent, capable wizard his father was.

It would be all right, he told himself. It would. It would.

Too bad he couldn't quite believe that. Oh sure, Snape would get Draco home safe and sound; Harry didn't have any doubt of that. But what about afterwards?

Harry closed his eyes in despair, but it didn't help. Behind his eyelids, he saw nothing but nightmare visions of Azkaban.