Harry stood slowly with his new sense of purpose sitting like a cloak upon his shoulders and purposely ignored all else.  Ignored the fear.  The pain.  The dizziness and sickness and his own bone-deep sense that something was so wrong.  Ignored the fact that not ten minutes ago he had been in a room with a man who was probably even now in the presence of a dark wizard and any number of people who wanted him dead.  Through the sheer strength of his will Harry ignored it all and pushed himself up flights of stairs, through corridors, past windows showing only curtains of swirling snow and, before he knew it, he was at Umbridge’s door.  Without any visible hesitation despite the roiling inside his gut and the persistent feeling that this isn’t what I want, Harry knocked.

“Come in dear.”

Harry shivered even as he pushed the door open.

Severus shivered in the cold despite the hateful robes he wore, noticing with a blank face the way the rain of the last few days had become what looked to be a snowstorm of epic proportions, the ground already blanketed with layers that crunched satisfyingly underfoot and left a lonely trail from the castle to where he stood.  With the picturesque image of Hogwarts in the snow in mind he took a moment at the very edge of the wards to compose himself and bolster his mental shields; it wouldn’t do to be thinking of Harry Potter as anything other than something to be destroyed.  Certainly not from the perspective of a teacher who had failed – again – to make the boy seek medical help and was actually worried for his wellbeing; certainly not.  Then Severus apparated.  As he was soon to discover, it was a wasted effort. 

 “Good evening Harry,” Umbridge cooed, looking up from her work as soon as he entered the room.

“Good evening Professor.”  Harry spoke quietly, mindlessly, as he kept a wary distance and fought through the block in his mind to remember the previous night.  He could feel the uncomfortable sensation of not knowing enough – not remembering enough – now that he was faced with the room it had to have happened in.  The words on his back shone in his mind once more and he took a step back, wondering what on earth must have possessed him to have him coming back here willingly.  As if she hadn’t noticed the movement, Umbridge waved him to a chair on the opposite side of the desk to where she sat.  Without any conscious thought Harry was moving to take the seat.

“Now Harry, as I said, you will be using this once more,” and she pulled out a very large, very familiar, red feathered quill.  Harry hated the fact that it was probably barely dry from the night before.

“I explained last night I believe?”  At Harry’s blank look Umbridge sighed, her great pink tweed chest rising and for a startling moment Harry thought he’d inflated her like Aunt Marge.  His euphoria left him like the gusty breath left the toad... –like woman.  “I do believe we have already discussed the issue of focus, but if we must do so again...” she left the sentence hanging and Harry was too used to such devices not to respond with the mandatory, “No ma’am.”

Umbridge nodded imperiously as she passed the quill over the desk and Harry tried to hide a full body shudder as his fingertips brushed the plume of the feather before he grasped it properly.  Unlike the night before, Harry found he was suddenly hyperaware of everything for a brief moment and felt filled with dread and fear and a childlike anxiety that gripped his stomach in a tight fist before leaving him feeling completely empty.  He felt more numb than ever and he didn’t think he was really thinking straight as he watched with a vague kind of attentiveness as Umbridge slid a piece of parchment across the desk to him, the rasp of paper on wood loud in the otherwise silent room.  Her voice slithered past any defences he may have had and transcended his thoughts and feelings like a thick, pernicious smog, trying to find and suffocate the life and freedom from him.  And for every second it invaded him and tore him down, Harry found he couldn’t quite keep up; as though he had only a few seconds of memory before a thought or feeling was lost.

“You may begin Potter.  I believe you know what you are to write.  Do you remember, brat?”  Her words were level and almost but not quite calming.  Lulling him like something dangerous.  The kind of voice a hunter might use to coax an animal closer before they cut its throat.  He was vaguely aware that the things she said didn’t match her tone but he couldn’t be sure and then the thought, a mere wisp, was gone like all the rest.  Everything was insubstantial and the only thing he could grasp fully...

The only thing that was true in all of this...

“Useless freak!  If you don’t stop mutilating Dudders’ clothes you won’t get any at all, now get in there and shut it or I’ll tell your Uncle.”  Darkness.

“What the hell is this, boy?  You think this is ‘mown’?  You think that is ‘painted’?  You’re staying out here ‘til you get it right and don’t think you’re stepping foot in my house until then.”  Cold.  So cold.

And why were these things true?  Why did this always happen?  Why him, every single time? 

Why wasn’t ‘Harry’ good enough?

Because you weren’t born to be good enough.  You weren’t born to be anything.  You shouldn’t have been born and you know it, don’t you Potter.

“Freak!”

“Boy!”

“No good, waste of space; should have died with your worthless parents...”

“Disgusting dirty thing!”

“Filth; out of my house now!”

“Foolish brat.”

“Idiot.”

“Less like your father than I thought.”

“Selfish prat.”

“Golden Boy”

“He’s too weak, he won’t be able to save any of us, you’ll see.”

“Did you see what he did to Cedric...?”

“Sinner.”

“Murderer.”   

“He’s the Boy Who Lived.”

Harry didn’t know the quiet sobbing was coming from him, tearing out of his chest with jagged edges.  He couldn’t feel it, too lost in the maelstrom in his mind.  He couldn’t feel the blood he was now completely covered in.  He couldn’t feel the pain that was piercing most of his skin.  It was only skin.  Skin deep.  It wasn’t supposed to hurt him.  Can’t hurt me.  Sticks and stones...

He couldn’t feel the smiling eyes on him, the hungry, smiling, satisfied eyes intent on his torn flesh, and he couldn’t feel the prickling in his scar or the anger leaking into him through it, reacting horribly with his stomach as thought the two halves of him were at war.  All Harry could feel was a guilt so deep, so pervasive, that it struck holes like punches through his chest and stomach and neck and head until they all hurt so badly, bled so fiercely, releasing everything he was in torrents; yet still it wasn’t enough because he deserved so much more pain and so much less of anything else.  He held the quill to the parchment with numb, quivering fingers, the feather fluttering in the air from the vibrations. 

He couldn’t breathe and was happy with the justice in that.  Content with the unbearable restriction in his chest and the tears it forced from his eyes.  Cedric couldn’t breathe either.  His parents hadn’t breathed for years.  How could he continue to?  The world tilted, just a bit, and then the quill was slipping in a flash of feathered crimson and though he missed the pain he felt the blood because it was gushing now, coating his arm in sickening, familiar warmth and running over the page and the desk and his clothes and he could feel it smearing and sliding as he moved and lifted his heavy arm to look at what had happened before misty eyes.  His arm looked so strange.  Almost inside out.  All red and white and the white struck some deeply disgusted chord in him that made him want to vomit even though he couldn’t quite make sense of what it was.  That wasn’t right was it?

A sigh caught his attention and he looked up to see a disappointed looking Umbridge and on instinct he ducked his head before someone swatted him for making eye contact.  He wasn’t allowed eye contact. 

“It seems that even this is beyond you.  Dear me, what are we to do with you boy?  So very difficult.”  She shook her head, ashamed.  Of him.  Difficult.  He reached for the quill without thinking but it was plucked from useless fingers before he could put it to soggy parchment.  “No, just go.  We’ll sort this out tomorrow.  Make sure you clean that up,” she added, nodding at his bloody self as an afterthought.  “I doubt you want anyone knowing how utterly useless you are do you?  Go on, out.”

Ducking his head, ashamed of himself as well, Harry stood and teetered before staggering his wobbly way to the door.  S’pose I need a bathroom ‘gain, he thought blearily as he tottered down the corridor towards one of the rooms he’d been hiding in so much lately.  He didn’t realise he’d gone one floor too many until he caught a glimpse of Myrtle floating lazily around the sinks on the second floor and backed away, abruptly deciding he didn’t want company – even undead company. 

Moments went by like dimming flashes from Colin’s camera and Harry couldn’t keep up.  Myrtle was replaced by corridors and frozen windows with frosted glass and the endless white beyond before it changed to a portrait of fruit and the thought of Dobby.  The sight of the portrait beginning to open had Harry spinning and stumbling in the opposite direction.  No.  No people.  No people or elves or teachers or uncles or aunts or cousins or evil wizards making his head threaten to split.  No parents. 

No parents. 

No mum.  No dad.  No Sirius.  Not anymore.

Cold. 

He hadn’t meant to push the doors so hard that they banged into the walls but in the next moment the thought was gone and white was all he could see.  There was only white and Harry took a mindless step forward, wanting to be part of that white.  He wanted nothing so much as to disappear into the endless nothing in front of him.  He thought he’d never wanted anything so much as he wanted that.  If he could just vanish, just be gone...   Safe.  Away.  Away from everything.  He took a step.  And another.  And another.  A part of that endless white.  And he smiled.

“You can’t honestly believe his word over mine Master; I’ve been yours and only yours for-”

“But that’s just it, you haven’t been!”

Up until that moment it had seemed like a civil conversation, could even have been mistaken as a calm and friendly debate, but the moment Voldemort raised his voice and hissed his refusal to listen to anymore of Severus’ excuses the Potions Master knew his life was forfeit and likely to end at any moment.  Voldemort didn’t like anyone to make a fool of him and to find out that Severus had been doing so for fourteen years, well, there wasn’t a bigger kick in the teeth than that.  Voldemort had suspected – as anyone of intelligence would – that Severus, his ‘loyal’ spy in the other camp, was playing the field to his own advantage, having formidable connections on either side as he did.  It would be ridiculous to assume otherwise and Voldemort had always known not to confide too much in the compromised man.  However, the dark wizard had never dreamt that Severus would so blatantly have betrayed him; had wanted so wholly for his enemies to win the war, had been so wholly Dumbledore’s man.  It should have been obvious in hindsight but that only served to infuriate the dark wizard more and Severus could see his time rapidly drawing to a close in that sallow, purpling face.

It was only the two of them in an unused, slightly ruined building on the outskirts of a small country town, miles from anywhere.  As soon as Severus had arrived and seen it was only himself and Voldemort present he had known he was in trouble.  Even when he was being given the most confidential instructions Voldemort would bring Wormtail, even if only to make clear his superiority.  But for this Voldemort would suffer no witnesses; no one would see the result of the dark wizard’s stupidity.  And later, much later when it could be used only to his advantage, the Dark Lord would tell his followers that the traitor had been dealt with and would let their imaginations do the rest; scaring them all that much further into submission.  For this, only Severus would know Voldemort’s rage. 

Even as the first curse flew from the thin lips, cursed words forming on the stale breath of one not truly alive, Severus was shaping his body to fall on his front.  On his top button.  Where his writhing hand might reach it inconspicuously.  Where he might cover the whisper of a spell on a shaky exhale between one unforgivable and the next.  It took longer than he would have liked but no spell was sent to immobilise him, his foe to confident – as always – in his own abilities.

And when Severus Snape vanished into thin air without so much as a whisper to give him away, no one was there to hear the Dark Lord scream.

Severus found it very undignified for his spying career to end with him hobbling like a weak old man through the gates of Hogwarts and struggling up the hills and across the grounds, out of breath and clutching at ribs that had been thoroughly bruised and battered.  He felt winded but not broken.  No, certainly not broken.  Not the way he knew he would have felt if left to Voldemort’s tender mercies for too much longer.  Not the way he had been expecting his career as a spy to end.  And he had Voldemort’s overestimation of himself and Dumbledore’s forethought to thank.   Snape smiled, then laughed at the hilarity of it all.  Despite his less than perfect state, Severus was in a rather good mood.  A rather great mood.  He was free.  Completely and wholly his own man once more, free to do what he wanted – to an extent – and free to stay away from a man who frequently took out his frustrations on him in the form of rather painful magic.  He was free.

Had any students been around at three o’clock that Thursday morning their friends would have thought them pitiful liars, because who would have believed Severus Snape, feared potions master and the man with no life outside the school could possibly be grinning.

Needless to say, as it was Severus Snape and not someone more fortunate who was in his first good mood for years, it wasn’t going to last long.  And it probably should have been obvious too who it would be who abruptly jerked him back down to earth but at that point the Potions Master was unaware that he wasn’t the only one facing demons that night.  Surprisingly when Severus saw the elf running down the slope from the double doors of the castle towards him, the man’s eyes didn’t harden again and the laugh lines didn’t disappear.  He only straightened as much as he was able with a long suffering sigh and a suspiciously good natured “what now?” and waded his way through snow drifts towards the panicky elf.  At least all this running around kept him busy.

As Dobby ran as fast as his little legs could carry him – actually significantly faster, and he fell face first into the snow many times because of it – he tried to stop himself from punishing himself because he knew it would only slow him down and Harry Potter needed him.  He had seen Harry at the door to the kitchens, had seen him look as he never had before and had seen the stumbling trip in his limbs and the shaking and the blood, so much blood.  He hadn’t known what to do – had dithered for an interminable time – before following.

It was only at the castle doors that he realised he had no idea where Harry might have gone and the flurrying snow had covered any tracks he might have made in seconds.  Stumbling down the sloping grounds and frantically trying to sense the warmth of a body anywhere close by, he whirled and spotted a patch of black against the snow only to realise he’d found one of the professors looking back at him.  He started, his pointed ears quivering with cold and surprise and anxiety and he just about fell down the slope in his attempt to get to Professor Snape as fast as possible.

“Professor Snape sir!” Dobby screeched when he was barely close enough and saw the man wince at the volume of his voice but there was no time to be wasted.  “Professor Snape sir,” he repeated when he was close enough to twist his knobby fingers in the folds of Snape’s sleeve, holding on when the man tried to shake him off and tugging him even though he didn’t know which direction he was supposed to be going in.

“What?”  The man growled out the word and Dobby could tell he wasn’t in a very good mood.  Oh.  Oh well.  It couldn’t be helped.

“It’s Mr Harry Potter sir-”

“Of course it is,” Snape muttered.

“But it is!  He’s hurt and lost and Dobby looked but Dobby can’t find him!”

“Then how can you possibly know he’s hurt?” Snape growled, a little urgency creeping into his tone.

“Dobby saw him!”

“And yet you claim not to know where he is.”

“Dobby lost him!”  The house elf was openly sobbing now, having released Snape’s sleeve and resorted to twisting his fingers together in the front of his pillow case until they made popping sounds.  “Dobby was going to follow but wasn’t sure if he should and when Dobby decided to, Harry Potter was gone!”

The Professor rolled his eyes and Dobby barely refrained from screeching that there wasn’t time for the rolling of eyes!  Harry Potter was gone!

“Can you sense him?” Even as he asked, the Potions Master was pulling his wand from his sleeve, his movement jerkier than the house elf remembered the Potions Master’s movements ever being in the past. 

“Dobby is trying but the ice is covering any warmth Harry Potter might have.”  Dobby watched as the Professor balanced the wand flat on the palm of his hand.

“Point me Harry Potter.”

The wand spun as though unsure before settling tentatively to somewhere left of the castle and Snape swept forward with long strides, cutting a path in the snow with Dobby following, popping his fingers the whole time. 

Harry was drifting in a sea of white, lost and away and safe.  Nothing could touch him here.  He swore he could feel the ground shifting beneath him, tilting and swaying and he felt as though he was being cradled and rocked and he wanted to stay here forever.  He felt a heaviness slowly descend on him, covering him completely in layer after barely-there layer until he was swaddled in warmth and encompassing comfort and he was safe. 

But something wouldn’t let him sleep.  Despite the feeling that he could fall asleep and happily never wake again, Harry was restless and, not knowing how to fix it he wriggled, pressing the palms of his hands against the ground – not trying to push himself up but as though he wanted to push the ground further down, to fall further down, deeper and deeper and safer and safer.  Despite the ground, so solid beneath his palms, rough against his skin and somehow even more comforting for it, the world continued to steadily sway and tilt and Harry revelled in the feeling.  The cold didn’t exist; he was warm and so comforted.  Nothing existed outside of this, this complete belonging and the feel that he was so completely lost to everything and everyone but himself, that nothing could intrude on this and nothing could touch him and that he was gone from the world and life; just here.  No one could make him leave.

No one except for that one person whose hand was curling ever so slowly and carefully around his own against the ground like it was something priceless and fragile, lifting it away from the dirt, causing him to roll ever so slightly, lying entirely on his front with his other arm trapped under him so he could turn his face up and meet the eyes hovering close over his.  Eyes so like his own, glittering and sad and happy and there was a hint of fury there that stopped his heart for a brief moment but then it was gone and Harry breathed once more.  He didn’t say anything.  She didn’t either, gazing down at him with her expression so mixed, so full that it was difficult to look at – blinding and overwhelming, like staring at the sun; irresistible – but Harry couldn’t have looked away if he’d tried.  Despite the emotion joining them, linking them like a shining strand, tangible to the two of them; their faces were relaxed, only their eyes speaking.  It was all they needed; they knew each other so intrinsically, on such a deep level, that they needed no more than that.

And only one thought spiralled and swirled and danced in the empty space in Harry’s mind as he let out a little sigh and the hand left his.

Not yet.

Scrabbling fingers ignored the biting cold to dig and break through the sheets of ice and brush away snowflakes and he tried not to despair prematurely; just because Harry was buried beneath half a foot of snow didn’t mean the boy was dead and when did the brat become the boy and Potter become Harry?  Why was the boy here?  Hadn’t he sent him to the infirmary?  Ordered him in words not even the most imbecilic child could misunderstand straight to the infirmary and Madam Pomfrey?  A questing hand finally found a handful of ice-crusted cloth and Severus pulled as hard as he could with what little leverage he had on his knees in the snow and found himself with one Harry Potter sprawled over his knees.  Heart in his throat, Severus tipped and turned the prone body until Harry was nestled in the crook of one arm in his lap and he froze completely as he saw how deathly pale the boy was.  How very closed his eyes were, how very still he was.  How still his chest was.  How no misty breaths rose into the air before his face like they did Severus and how Harry had one arm folded over his chest, covered in blood.  So much blood.  No wonder he’s so white...

Stuttering back into action with jerky movements, Severus lifted the heavy arm away from Harry’s chest, expecting the worst – a deep bottomless hole of blood and darkness where the boy’s heart should be; something unfixable, something to explain the deathly stillness that he could feel even through all the layers of clothing – and staring disbelievingly at the skin he could see through the boy’s drenched, bloodstained shirt.  It wasn’t whole or unmarred, in fact it looked terribly bloody and torn somehow in odd, stabbing strokes, the sight of which Severus filed away in his mind for later.  Harry’s ribs were more than visible where they clung to his shirt in wet peaks, his face bloodless, his clothes saturated in the stuff; but it was fixable.  Harry was fixable.  Severus couldn’t think otherwise.

Breathing.  He had to get Harry breathing.  Leaning down Severus placed his head carefully over the boy’s chest and stilled until he and the body he held could have been two parts of the same statue.  He unfroze a little inside when he detected very faint movement – Harry was breathing – but it was shallow and slow and, placing an icy hand over Harry’s forehead Severus failed to understand how it could possibly feel colder than the snow around them.  His eyelids and lips were blue and... even as Severus watched, turning bluer.

Ignoring the blood as something that could be dealt with afterwards, Severus willed his bent legs to move despite having fallen asleep in the short time he was on the ground and icy from the snow; willed them to take his weight as well as Harry’s.    He just had to get Harry indoors, just had to make him safe and warm and breathing properly again.

If anyone had been awake at three o’clock that Thursday morning and had thought to look out a window their friends would certainly have thought them lying, because who would believe that Severus Snape would hold Harry Potter; cradling him close to his chest with concern written in every line on his face even as impassivity fought to take back control, moving with strides that would put his usual speed to shame as he headed up the snowy slope for the doors to the castle, a house elf hurrying in his wake.