Sectumsempra….

The word from the Prince’s potions text popped into Harry’s head just as he ducked into a small space beside a stall, barely shielding himself from one of Malfoy’s blasting hexes. The very instant the peculiar curse crossed his mind, along with the brief but presently alluring description—“for enemies,” it read—he was seized by a terrible curiosity to find out just what that meant and an equally overwhelming desire to test it out on Draco...

Intentions set, Harry carefully peaked beneath the stalls in search of his target’s location; he spotted the pair of top dollar dress shoes he was looking for on the other side of the washroom, gently sloshing past a sink where shards of porcelain and tiny bits of stone surrounded its spurting pipes.

Harry crouched low and peeked around the corner. Adrenaline rushed through his veins as he raised his wand and took aim with the curse on the tip of his tongue, but a beat shy of the word tumbling past his teeth, a thought occurred to him.

What if the Half-Blood Prince was indeed a dark wizard?

It was a suspicion that Harry had occasionally entertained but never fully explored as he thumbed through the text by wand light. After all, what aspiring dark wizard leaves behind a potions manual filled to the brim with tips on basic brewing? There was hardly any room for a nefarious scheme in that; yet, even as he reassured himself, his mind wandered back to that encounter with Tom Riddle during his second year. Who would have thought a diary full of empty pages could be so poisonous?

If the Prince’s spell did do more than immobilize Malfoy, more than knock the Slytherin on  his pompous ass...if it killed him...

Harry’s insides knotted at the thought, and suddenly the spell didn’t seem as appealing as it had just moments earlier. A grotesque image of Draco’s body, lying pale and limp on the rapidly flooding stone floor with ribbons of blood tinging the water pink, effectively ended that train of thought. Perhaps a body bind would do instead.

The Gryffindor, who up until that moment, had been poised to strike, had lost sight of his opponent during his brief distraction. A quick scan of the opposite side of the room gave away nothing about the would-be Death Eater’s new position, so Harry cautiously navigated around the debris towards what was left of the sinks.

Half way there, his attention was jerked away by the sharp, nasally voice of the Potions Master subtracting points indiscriminately on the other side of the double-doored entrance. It was in that fraction of a second, when Harry’s full attention was on his approaching doom, that a brilliant burst of energy sent him crumbling to the ground.

White hot pain, like a thousand burning knives, sliced through flesh and bone. If he opened his eyes, surely he’d see that his body had been flayed, that his skin had been stripped to expose the bloody tissue beneath, but...no, no this agony was familiar. There’d be no blood, because this was an Unforgivable. This was the Cruciatus.

Even as his body writhed under the effects of the curse, he could hardly believe it was true, but then his core twisted in on itself and fiery jolts sent his limbs flailing wildly, and his brain stamped out all thoughts on the matter, deciding that there was little time for clear thinking anyhow. More important was the fact that with his lungs unable to expand, there was no air to form a scream or call for help, and help was something he desperately needed just then.

Malfoy was approaching slowly, his face unnaturally serene except for the murderous glint in his eyes. He was lighter in step than Harry had seen him all year, as though he had just solved some vastly troubling dilemma.

And then the blond was leaning over him with a grin, saying...something, but since the curse was still streaming from his wand, Harry wasn’t able to focus on much else beyond the pain. Muscles all over continued to jerk and contract, splashing water and kicking debris in all directions.

And suddenly it stopped…at least the main source of the pain did. Harry’s body still shuddered with residual spasms, though it wasn’t nearly as excruciating.

When Harry had gained enough control of his body to roll his head toward his attacker, it was to see a cowering student, unarmed and terrified—much like he had looked before this whole disaster—and a shadowy figure advancing on the boy. It was definitely a teacher. From what he could make out of the generally pale form enrobed in black, it was most likely Snape; although for all he knew, it could have been McGonagall. His vision was starting to gray and blur around the edges.

While the release of the curse had been a welcomed relief for his whole body, his lungs especially, he could feel pressure slowly starting to build in his chest. He’d been subjected to the cruciatus curse before by Voldemort’s hand and the effects hadn’t been this catastrophic. Something wasn’t right, something besides the agonizingly sensitive nerves. Apparently Snape/McGonagall—no definitely Snape, Harry decided upon further inspection—who had ignored his presence until that moment, flung himself in front of Harry’s face as though he had noticed it, too. He was moving his mouth angrily, but no words were coming out…at least not ones that Harry could hear.

Harry saw Snape pull out the two vials and knew what was coming next, but he was prepared for neither the vinegary taste of the potion nor the horrendous texture. The results were well worth it, though. No pain. No twitching. No panic, but he still was having difficulty breathing.

Trying to focus on anything but the constriction in his chest, Harry paid close attention to his teacher’s face—something that his sense of self-preservation usually urged him to avoid on most occasions, but for some reason it was acceptable now. He looked livid; but from Harry’s current vantage point, it was not the dark eyes that terrorized Hogwarts students of all houses, not the steep slope of the hooked nose that forced itself in everyone else’s business, not even the tiny little bogie dangling delicately from his flared nostril, but their proximity to his own face which made the former Death Eater look both immensely disturbing and comical all at once. Harry would have laughed out loud, if air weren’t in such short supply.

Then Snape darted alarmed eyes to something to Harry’s left, and before the Gryffindor knew what was happening, the world began to tilt…or rather, he did. And Malfoy, who Harry suddenly realized had been huddled in the corner for some time time, was watching Harry just as intensely as Harry was watching him. He was idly aware that Snape was doing something to his side, but Draco, who was becoming greener by the second, was fast becoming the more interesting subject.

But he was feeling sleepy, now, and his lids drooped lazily despite the freezing cold water that drenched him. The last thing he saw before his eyes fluttered shut was Draco Malfoy emptying his stomach on the bathroom floor.

How odd, he thought, what a mess…

Then Aunt Petunia was slapping his cheek, trying to wake him up.

Five more minutes…just five and he’d fix the Dursleys their breakfast…just five…

As a spy for the Order, Severus Snape was asked to perform many unpleasant tasks. He spent his days in the company of those he felt no connection to and his nights in the company of murderers; he existed in a world of lies and half-truths, and as a result, could never truly be close to anyone; and occasionally, on evenings like these, he was forced to search out his own substitute for upcoming Defense Against the Dark Arts classes. He really hated war.

Filius Flitwick was the only available teacher to come to his mind, and so he went in search of the miniature old man with plans to discard a few of the more mundane tasks of his day job on someone with more time. It was for this purpose that he had been climbing the staircase between the sixth and seventh floors of the West Tower, when the boom and crash of what sounded like a rogue bludger drew his attention to the level below.

From his position on the staircase, he could see students flocking toward a bathroom at the far end of the sixth floor corridor. He gripped the railing and shut his eyes against a growing headache. There was too much on his mind already with Voldemort and Dumbledore pulling him in opposite directions, and then there was the issue of Draco. He had no time to deal with bored delinquents running amok about the school. The temptation to move on and leave the babysitting to Filch was tremendous, yet he turned on his heel and dutifully marched toward the source of the racket.

The closer he got, the more grateful he was that he had resisted the urge to overlook the matter. A duel was obviously being held in the male prefect bathroom, and if the whispers of the gathering crowd were to be believed, the Boy-Who-Lived was involved in some way. Weariness forgotten, he pushed his way through the sea of students, driven both by an uncomfortable gnawing in the pit of his stomach and the overshadowing giddiness of a fresh opportunity to humiliate the cocky Gryffindor.

Midway through his struggle, he momentarily made eye contact with a wide-eyed, awkward child in yellow and black. The runt stared back, unmoving, which only brought on the Potion Master's wrath with greater force.

"10 points from Hufflepuff." The child skittered off in terror, as did several others in the immediate vicinity, but many more remained in his path, too preoccupied to realize that a teacher was near.

"5 points from Slytherin!" He tried again, louder. More students took flight, but not enough.

"OUT OF MY WAY!" He yelled in frustration when nothing short of a blasting charm could break through the wall of bloodthirsty gawkers. That seemed to break the trance. Students began to scramble madly when they noticed the dark-robed figure ambling towards them.

"30 points from Gryffindor!" They moved faster. They dispersed so frantically, in fact, that rolls of parchment, a few quills, and a shoe lay forgotten in the hallway. He smiled inwardly, very pleased with himself, then glared at a curious, acne-ridden face peeking around a corner.

"10 points from Ravenclaw!" The nosy student yelped and promptly disappeared.

By the time he reached the door, most of the noise from within the washroom had died down, but water was leaking from underneath the doors. Pity the child wouldn't be caught red-handed, but the little vandal could still be charged with damage to school property!

Preparing himself for mayhem, he ripped open the doors with glee—there were so few things to get excited about, times as they were. Instantly, though, his blood froze and his mouth went dry. The sight that greeted him was mayhem, indeed, but not the kind he was expecting. He had expected the collapsed stalls, the busted sinks, the water flowing through the doors carrying pieces of broken glass and stone. What he hadn't expected was for Harry Potter to be writhing in the center of the waterlogged floor with Draco Malfoy standing transfixed above him, wand out, aiming a stream of sickeningly familiar light at the body twitching beneath him.

Though the scene was disquieting, he still had the presence of mind to disarm the attacker, slam the door on the faces of any spectators, and patronus Dumbledore for an emergency interception at the Ministry of Magic. He glanced toward the boy trembling on the floor; he wouldn't be lucid until the curse completely wore off. Severus carried potions for symptoms like these, but at the moment, he relished the idea of having an undisturbed mentor-to-student chat with the other boy. When he turned back to Draco, it was with his darkest glare.

"You imbecile," He spat harshly, quickly closing the distance between himself and the suddenly terrified teen, "Is there not even a small degree of reason in that tiny brain of yours?"

Sparing no thought for the boy still sprawled out on the floor—the tremors would cease soon enough—Snape stepped over him, latched onto Draco's shoulders, and attempted to shake some sense into him.

"Do you have any idea what you've just done? What you've risked?" he continued angrily in a voice no louder than a muted whisper but more cutting than the sharpest blade.

The blond moved his jaw several times; his attempts to form an adequate response proved to be quite ineffective.

"You almost cost yourself the mission, not to mention your life and those of your closest friends and relatives!" Including my own, the enraged Potions Master added silently.

Blossoms of pink formed on the younger wizard's pale cheeks, adding embarrassment and guilt to the array of emotions displayed on his face.

"And for what? A childish rivalry?"

Draco began to protest then. "No! That's not what happ-"

"Then by all means, enlighten me."

"He - Pot - Potter attacked me!" Snape watched the boy's face liven with some fresh lie, and Draco continued eagerly, "I was going to the loo and he came at me. It was all I could do to keep him from-"

"So you thought it necessary to cast an Unforgivable?"

"I was defending myself!" Draco shot back heatedly.

"Is that so?" Snape asked knowingly, his dark eyes boring into his Slytherin's grey ones. Draco, unnerved by the intensity of his Head of House's gaze, lost some of his bravado.

"Yes..." When the eye contact was broken an indeterminable amount of time later, the professor looked a little unsettled himself, having witnessed how the events had truly transpired.

"Liar," Snape replied oddly, at last noticing a missing perspective. He turned toward the wheezing teen still struggling for control in the middle of the bathroom.

"Potter..." when no response was forthcoming he stepped closer and kneeled to assess his condition, apparently the curse had been stronger than he initially thought. A lot of hate went into it. He glanced curiously in the direction of the lanky Slytherin now sliding down the wall looking rather ill. Fantastic...I don't need this.

His attention was jerked back to the form beneath him when pale, skinny fingers curled around his wrist. In an attempt to shake off the bony claw, he realized with some measure of sympathy that the painful tremors persisted still and he had withheld the potions to counter them.

"Take these," he said wearily, uncorking phials of nerve relaxant and pain reliever and tipping them into the boy's mouth. Potter's gaze, Snape noticed, was focused solely on his and the smirk that formed a few moments later was both irritating and oddly relieving. The teen seemed to relax marginally, and the knot in Severus' stomach loosened a bit, returning some order to the situation.

Moaning Myrtle chose that moment to climb out of the ruined plumbing, shrieking all the way.

It was time to leave.

"Get up, Mr. Potter." The boy's brow furrowed and suddenly the wheezing was back. "You won't receive any mollycoddling from me. The potions you just ingested made you perfectly capable of the trek to the hospital wing." He tugged at his shoulder, but Potter just dropped back down to the stone floor with a soggy thump and a grimace. This child was infuriating.

"Up! And don't disillusion yourself into believing you'll come out of this unpunished. It takes two wizards to duel, and I'll personally...see to it...that... " The words trailed off as Snape noticed a thin line of pink to the boy's left flowing out and mixing with the water, and when he shifted the young wizard's arm, to his horror, he could clearly see the source.

"MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM! MURDER!" The Ravenclaw specter screeched impossibly loud as she swooped from the ceiling. Snape quickly rolled the boy on his side to reveal a narrow piece of now bloody shard of porcelain resting benignly to the side and a growing crimson stain on Potter's clothes. He lifted the shirt just enough to assess the wound and gasped. No wonder the child was having difficulty breathing; there was a jagged hole in his chest!

"Draco! Come here!" Potter needed to be healed and fast, but he needed more than just one pair of hands. If he did it wrong he was going to end up sealing air inside the boy's thorax or trapping an air bubble in a vessel. Both were just as deadly and very likely considering how unpracticed he was. "Now, Mr. Malfoy!" He jerked around angrily to see Malfoy looking green and very near catatonia. "Of course," He uttered to himself snidely, then glared at the wailing ghost, "And would you SHUT UP!"

Myrtle looked affronted, but when she touched ground next to the Potions Master, her manner was completely different. "Oh my," she said sweetly, "Harry's very near death, isn't he now?" She stood over them, looking appallingly pleased.

Snape quickly looked down to find that Potter did indeed look near death. The boy's lids drooped lazily. Alarmed by yet another grim development, he patted the pale cheek, failing to rouse him.

Draco sat still where he left him, a puddle of sick nearby. "I've killed him. I've killed him." He muttered, over and over.

"Draco!" Snape called behind him, panic leaking into his voice. He tried again with a weak threat, "Fifty points from Slytherin if you don't stop your blubbering and come here this instant!"

Snape growled, placing his hands harder against the wound; blood seeped from between his fingers. Blood from the savior of the Wizarding world, from Lily's child, covered his hands, and he no longer cared how desperate his voice sounded when he called out, "Myrtle, go find help!" But the ghost remained hovering just over Harry's head.

"A boy my age, and Harry Potter no less! How lovely," the spirit twirled in place girlishly, "I felt the connection when I first laid eyes on him. I should have guessed he was destined to meet his end in a bathroom, as we-"

"He's not dying you little horror!" Just then, the doors burst open and in poured McGonagall, Flitwick, and Filch.

"Good Lord, Severus! What's happened here?" Minerva gasped as she took in the scene.

"Later! Come here, now! Filius, floo for Poppy. Filch...go do something useful!" The staff immediately set to work, unlike the ghost, who began her pouting again.

The healing spells took too long to cast for Snape's liking and were not as effective as the mediwitch's would have been, but eventually the skin began to knit itself together without sealing any air in. And when the boy's lungs regained some function, he sat back on his heels and surveyed the damage, waiting for more qualified help to arrive.

The bathroom was destroyed. Filch was standing above Malfoy, nudging him with his great toe, attempting to get a response. Myrtle was whining about her lot in life. Harry remained on the floor, as pearly white as the moaning specter, save for the bloody handprint on his cheek where Snape had tried to wake him earlier. And Minerva was needling him with questions.

"What happened?" The aging witch continued prodding incessantly, but too much depended on his ability to contain this incident. There was so much that he couldn't say that he wound up not saying anything at all. "Severus, tell me," the Transfiguration Professor pleaded, "I deserve to know why a student from my house was almost killed today!"

"Merlin! Not now, Minerva!" He snapped more harshly than intended. He understood the protectiveness that Heads of Houses felt for their students, but his patience was waning. The older woman closed her mouth and fell silent, looking hurt, and Severus looked away feeling drained and only slightly guilty for his behavior. He covered it up, though, by checking Potter's wound, which was when he made a most peculiar discovery.

Hidden beneath his shirt and dried blood were short, linear, mostly faded scars. They were scattered across the boy's back with no particular pattern. Severus took a damp corner of his already soiled robe and wiped away some of the caked blood to get a better look. Even at this proximity, it was difficult to see them. Furrowing his brows, he tried to imagine where they came from. The fiasco at the Ministry was too recent for these. Perhaps the third task two years ago?

"Oh for Heaven's sake!" The mediwitch burst through the doors juggling potions, drawing the Potions Master out of his thoughts, "It's always something between these two! Honestly, you need to keep them on opposite sides of the castle!" She went straight for Harry, shoving Severus out of the way.

"An admirable idea, Poppy," the Headmaster followed Madame Pomfrey into the bathroom, his face looking much graver as he took in the scene, "I shall have to look into it...Severus."

"Headmaster," Snape stood and made a show of dusting off his robes while he composed himself. He caught Dumbledore's eyes and held the gaze for a moment. The old man's expression grew increasingly grim as Severus silently filled him in. "I expect you'd like to discuss this mess."

"If you don't mind," the older wizard answered glibly, stepping aside to make way for both the mediwitch transporting Harry and McGonagall escorting Draco. Giving the younger man the onceover and taking note of his miserable state, the Headmaster amended with a more sincere tone, "Perhaps we should hold off until you've had a chance to freshen up?" Snape nodded brusquely, and Dumbledore retreated through the doorway, leaving him alone with Filch and the previously forgotten Flitwick.

"Filius," Snape called to the short old man, who was attempting to exit the bathroom. He might as well get something accomplished while he was here.

"Yes, Professor?"

"I wonder if you might be available to take over my classes this Thursday." He didn't need legilimency to know that the other man was groaning internally. He had already begun considering other arrangements when Flitwick answered, an odd look on his face.

"I imagine I could work it in, yes." The Charms Professor said with something akin to pity before he disappeared out the door. Spotting himself in a piece of shattered mirror, Snape understood why the man had been so generous. A shower might do him well, indeed! He turned to leave, only to be called back by Filch.

"Hold on there, Mr. Snape!" Severus turned back reluctantly as the man took a wheezing breath and shuffled over, "Let's talk punishments-"

The Potions Master rolled his eyes. "Let's not," he snapped and promptly exited the room, leaving the hunchbacked sadist grumbling behind him.