Harry and Draco proceeded under the invisibility cloak, in careful silence. The counter on the Snape Finder dropped steadily, into the twenties, then the teens, then below, with an added decimal place. Harry was wondering if it actually worked by the time they reached "2.3". Suddenly, the scrubby grass in front of them wavered and was replaced by the hunting lodge, a tall granite building, mere yards ahead of them. Whatever glamour had obscured the sight had blocked sounds as well -- the air was full of harsh screaming, starting in mid-breath as if someone had just turned on a television at full volume. Harry stopped short and grabbed on to Draco's arm as if it was an anchor. The scream died away with a choked sob.

I will not charge in there. I've got to do this right. I need it to work.

Harry looked back and saw the hill they had climbed, silver and grey in the moonlight. He scanned the line of the lodge. The grim weight of the building was alleviated by the many tall windows, set low into the wall, which looked as though they had been added in the last few centuries. At the corner, a heavy-set man in a black cloak stood like a dense shadow. Harry felt Draco stiffen in alarm. "Shh," he soothed softly. "He can't see us." His companion nodded soundlessly.

He began to pull Draco towards the western side of the building, which would still be in deep shadow. He hoped there was no sentry there. A movement at the door made him freeze like a mouse below a hunting owl, but the newcomer took only a step outside, to beckon to the man already there. As the lookout turned to go inside, Harry saw a bone-white mask in the place of his face. A Death Eater.

They had just made it to the corner when a new scream split the air. Draco tried to lunge forward and Harry had to hold him back. It kept him from giving in to the same impulse. It must be fear, or simple imagination, that told him that was his father's voice. Surely he couldn't tell one scream from another?

With deliberate caution, he brought them into the black shadow of the lodge, and led Draco to one of those great low windows, reaching it just as the screams faded again into the excited jabbering of the crowd inside.

The single, huge, firelit hall rose up into blackness and smoke. Glassy-eyed heads of stags, and above the great fireplace, one of a Common Welsh Green dragon, stared down from red-washed walls onto a sea of black cloaks. Harry thought the red walls should look comforting and homey, but instead they glistened like fresh blood behind the flickering torches.

Harry could see a few bare-faced people standing to the side, but the ones who stood before him, competing for places in a large circle, wore masks of white. Harry scanned along the arc for a place where he could see through. A sudden shift as one figure stepped back, and another, flourishing his wand, forward, gave him a brief glimpse of something in the center of the gathering -- something that moved in sudden twitches -- but his view was cut off by overlapping capes as the Death Eaters pressed close, like an eager pack of hounds, jostling each other and barking with laughter.

He tugged Draco on to a second window, and then a third. At the fourth and last, they could see the figure writhing on the floor. The cloak was askew and twisted around desperately thrashing limbs, and the mask had slipped off an aquiline nose and caught in the screaming mouth. Stained fingers tore at the worn floorboards.

Harry fought the impulse to charge forward, but Draco, beside him, had started to make a faint keening sound, deep in his throat. Harry stepped back against the wall and pulled Draco to face him.

"Quiet."

"Sorry." Draco looked terrified, but he was almost struggling, first pulling against Harry's grip, then submitting, wide-eyed to the restraint, then pulling again at the next shift in the screams. "Sorry, please! I have to! To get him out, to-- Please let me get him out!" He seemed to have lost all sense of subtlety under the warring pulls to help Harry and to rescue his mentor.

Harry cursed himself for not trusting Draco in the first place. He'd had some vague idea that Draco could help with a distraction, then portkey safely to the room near Gryffindor, but it was clear now that it just wouldn't work. Draco was too caught up in serving him to know when to cut his losses and run.

This would actually be easier without the Fealty spell, Harry realized. He could do all sorts of things as Draco Malfoy -- claimed to be volunteering, or to be following a friend, maybe even get close enough to make the rescue, in the guise of being eager to prove his loyalty.

Now he's just a random body that I can trust to do anything except stay out of trouble if he thinks I'm in danger. Stupid! And I can't let him get hurt. I'd never forgive myself if he died because I couldn't bring myself to trust him. Losing Sirius was horrible enough, and that wasn't my fault alone. This would be entirely mine.

Draco, Harry decided, had to be kept out of the action. "It's my game in there," he whispered, trying to sound confident. "I need you to do something for me."

"Cause a distraction?"

Draco sounded eager, but Harry shook his head. "No. Go back to Hogwarts...." He hesitated. He still had the portkey to the locked room -- that would be safest. "I'm going to give you a portkey." He pressed the Snape Finder into Draco's hands, before reaching for the chain around his neck. "The inside cover of this locket will take you to a room in Hogwarts, near Gryffindor tower. Go and find Dumbledore, or McGonagall, or Lupin; or, if you can't, Hermione; or if you can't find her either, Ron or Ginny Weasley. Make sure you're not overheard, then tell them where you left me, and that I'm bringing Seve- Professor Snape back, to his room or to the hospital. It's important -- if I can't save him, or if he's taken away again, they'll need the Snape Finder to follow us. Do you understand?"

Draco nodded. "Dumbledore, McGonagall, your lot, or the Weasley girl, in private. And if you're not back, I'll lead them back to help you ... and him, right?" He looked anxious.

"Right." The screams had subsided while Harry was speaking, but now started up again. The terrible sound, hoarser than before, pushed aside his concern for Draco. He pulled his temporary servant back to the window. His father was thrashing again.

"I'm going to take the cloak. You portkey out now, before someone sees you. You can't help me here."

"But--"

"I order you to live, understood? That's an absolute order. This isn't the first time I've been at one of these gatherings." Harry didn't mention that the other one had been small and taken the Death Eaters by surprise. After all, he had been small and taken by surprise himself.

Grey eyes turned to the shadowed ground. "Yes, Harry."

"Good." Harry stepped away from Draco, pulling the invisibility cloak up and off the black-clad form. He didn't dare look back and tempt them both with the false safety of assistance. He slipped further around the building, to an open window. His trousers creaked as he moved, reminding him he would need to be careful about that, too.

He looked in the open window. Well. The gathered crowd was making enough noise to cover the soft noises of the leather, and Nagini couldn't smell him if he jumped on her tongue, and no one else would over the tang of smoke and damp stone. He was also invisible. Looking into the room, he wished he could be intangible, as well. Any hope he had of just walking in under the cloak, reaching his father, and spiriting them both away to his own room faded away before his hands reached the sill. Getting to the heart of this crowd without touching anyone would be harder than getting to the drinks table at the Ball had been.

He shuddered as he watched the latest casting of the Cruciatus Curse work itself out. The pauses between spasms grew longer, until his father finally lay limp. His audience waited, breathless, for that stillness, like concert-goers hanging on a last fading note, before a new tormenter stepped forward.

Harry blinked a persistent film from his eyes. He would not look away. Even if there was nothing he could do but stand and watch his father die, he would do that. Perhaps Draco would make it down all the stairs and .... No. There wouldn't be time.

Damn it, a mere hour ago this had been funny! He'd been tormenting his father with leather trousers and going along with Draco's meaningless (well, probably) flirtation, and he had the twins' ventriloquism drops to trick him in the garden--

Ventriloquism drops. Harry froze. I can provide my own diversion, can't I? Let's see if I can clear a little path.

He raised himself up to the windowsill. He pulled off his boots, rubbed his stocking feet over them to pick up the stealth potion, and lowered them silently to the ground. Next he took a sweet from his pocket, unwrapped it, and set it in his mouth, and then carefully surveyed the crowded hall.

He doubted he had even needed the cloak, so far. Everyone in the room was utterly engrossed -- whether fascinated or alarmed -- by his father's torture. Even Nagini had raised her head to see his writhing form, and her long tongue flickered out seeking the taste of his fear. Harry could feel her predatory satisfaction. He took another look at the room and chose a badly lit corner with fewer people, about a third of the way around the room from where he sat.

He stopped on the verge of speaking, momentarily distracted. In the corner was a woman in a long, black gown -- of practical cut, but a gown nonetheless. For a dizzying second, he thought that it was Bellatrix Lestrange, then a greater shock overtook him. It was Parkinson -- gossipy, petty Pansy Parkinson. He could not stop himself from assessing the rest of the bare-faced group. He saw another face he knew, and then another, and then one bulky figure, face turned away from him, that he was sure was Crabbe.

Another scream jerked his attention back to his father. He struggled to concentrate on the place he had chosen -- the place, not the people there -- felt Nagini's presence, and prepared himself to speak the tongue of snakes.

"Serpent!"

He hissed out the word as loudly as Parseltongue allowed, while using the ventriloquism drop to cast his voice to the spot he had chosen. The result was instantaneous. Heads throughout the room turned -- some towards the source of the sound, but more, in confusion, to Voldemort. The serpent and her master both fixed their eyes on the spot Harry had chosen. Severus lay forgotten beneath them. People muttered questions to each other, providing a constant cover of noise, and Harry slipped softly to the floor. He sent his voice again.

"Your master and I fight. Stand aside and you will not be harmed."

Voldemort began to laugh, a high, chilling sound. "So kind of you to attend my little gathering, Potter. Did you miss your teacher? Did you wish to bring another body home for burial?"

On hearing Harry's name, the Death Eater's surged toward Harry's chosen corner, but Voldemort waved them back. "Stay clear! Nagini and I will take the rash little fool." A harsh smile was widening Voldemort's strange lipless mouth as he turned back to the source of Harry's voice. His own stretched out into a thin hiss. "Won't we, pet?"

"Yesss, my masster."

Harry took a step forward, then another. "I have no quarrel with you, serpent."

"But you offer me nothing." Nagini sounded as cruel as her master as she slithered towards his voice. "You are weak, little prey. I can feel your human mercy like a hot noose on your blood."

She raised her blunt head and flicked her tongue out, but stopped, uncertain, when no scent of her prey came to her.

"But you do not taste my blood, do you?" Harry began to creep cautiously through gaps in the crowd, edging to a spot where the circle had broken, as Death Eaters shifted to try to glimpse Voldemort's target. The slight creaking of his trousers seemed agonizingly loud to his ears, but no one else noticed, preoccupied as they were with not noticing their lord's frustration as his hisses grew louder and more angry.

"Nagini! Where is he? Find him!"

Harry smiled grimly. Perfect! Let him lose control. The angrier he gets, the longer it will take them to work out that I'm not where they think I am. He shifted his projected voice into the midst of a group of onlookers closer to the fire. "I am shielded from the sight of man and the scent of serpents."

The Death Eaters looked askance at each other, unable to see past the blank masks of their neighbors to identify the intruder apparently in their midst. Harry did not have time to be amused. He knew he needed to keep talking, anything to keep their attention from his painfully slow advance towards Severus's limp body. He had never used Parseltongue like this before, to command and taunt, and he allowed his mind to flood with the cruel elegance of snakes. "And my mercy is a myth, great serpent, a ploy. Assist him and I will rend your beautiful skin from your flesh, and your flesh from your bones, and use your spine as a chain to bind my enemies." There! That should confuse them. He held back a nervous laugh. A pity, he thought, that none of the Death Eaters could understand him.

His father lay motionless on the dark floor. Blood trickled from his mouth where he had bitten deep into his lip in his agony. He was only steps away, but still surrounded by a ring of Death Eaters, no longer shoulder to shoulder, but clustered in confused and awkward knots.

Harry eyed a gap between a group of Death Eaters glancing discreetly at the hunt, and two others who had pulled away to whisper. It was expanding as they shifted, but if just one of them felt him pass he would be detected and undone. Severus twitched and shuddered, and Harry had to clench his teeth together to suppress the impulse to call out to him.

Nagini had stopped her forward motion, halfway between Harry's real location and his apparent one, and her head wove back and forth, seeking him. Harry could feel rage pouring from her. Voldemort, as Harry had hoped he would, stopped to laugh again. Triumph rung in his voice. "What a charming little speech! Your Muggle upbringing has corrupted your sight, fool, if you do not understand that the serpent is mine! No threat, no temptation can draw her from me to another."

Harry eased forward through the gap , then flinched back as a waving hand almost grazed his face. When the gesticulating Death Eater turned to whisper to his companion, Harry quickly darted past him and into the center of the circle. He just needed the portkey, now. Nagini, however, was starting to zigzag back and forth across the space Harry's voice had come from, and he was certain she would soon detect his deception and turn back. He paused in squirming his fingers into the too-tight pocket and sent his voice again, further to the side, behind a new cluster of onlookers.

"Too close, worm. I am not that eager to be caught."

The great snake shot forward, and people scattered before her.

The encompassing agony of the Cruciatus Curse ebbed, leaving him gasping on a rocky shore of pain. Muscles twitched and cramped from the after-effects, and it was some time -- he did not know how long -- before Severus could understand anything past the bundle of raw nerves that now defined his body.

The first thing he recognized was Parseltongue. He puzzled over the shifting sounds of it for a time. Had his mind been so damaged that he was hearing echoes? Suddenly, he recognized the low and mocking voice provoking the more familiar hisses of the Dark Lord, and his laboring heart threatened to stop. Harry! His son was here, and from the frantic scrape of scales on the rough floor, driving Nagini into a frenzy.

"No!" he tried to cry, "Run!" but his words came out in faint croaks, barely audible to his own ears and certainly to no one else's. His throat was raw from screaming, and he could feel it starting to swell shut.

He will die. The fool! I have failed him. Selfishly, Severus hoped he died first. He did not want to witness his son's death, and he would certainly have nothing to return to, after it. He struggled to move, hoping to raise himself to his feet and recapture his former comrades' attention. Perhaps he could give Harry the chance to damage Voldemort -- or even escape -- before the Death Eaters retaliated.

It was no use. His tortured body would not support him, even to his knees.

So close! We were so close. It's not fair!

Something from outside closed on his shoulder -- a hand. He tried to pull free, but could do no more than twitch.

"Easy, now," said Harry's voice -- soft in his ear, and loud on the other side of the room.

"He is not here! He is casting his voice!" Voldemort exclaimed. "Everywhere! Look everywhere!"

"Shit!" Harry grabbed his hand and twisted their fingers together in a fierce, crushing grip.

"There!" shouted a nearby voice. "By the prisoner!"

"You idiot Gryf--" The familiar sensation of a portkey yanked at Severus's third chakra, just as a new wave of the Cruciatus Curse pummeled him. The hand entwined with his clenched as he convulsed beneath the pain. He surrendered gratefully to the void.

Harry ran through the doors of the hospital wing, his father floating unconscious behind him.

"Mr. Potter! Whatev-- Oh dear. Do you know what happened?"

As she spoke, Madam Pomfrey helped him guide Severus to a bed.

"The Cruciatus Curse, at least. Several times. There may have been some physical blows, as well -- I was only there at the end."

The mediwitch gave him a sharp look. "I'll deal with you and where you've been later, Mr. Potter. Honestly! You're more trouble than the all the seventh years put together."

She bent over Severus, pointed her wand at his head, and cast a muttered spell. Severus thrashed once, then started to shiver. He rolled onto his side and curled up into a tight knot of limbs, reminding Harry of the spider in Moody's -- Crouch's -- class.

"Will he be all right? He was speaking just before we portkeyed--"

The door flew open. Dumbledore, moving with an energy he seldom betrayed, strode in, Draco Malfoy trotting at his heels.

"Harry Potter." The name came out in low, but ominous cracks like distant thunder. Draco darted past the old wizard and threw himself at Harry's feet.

"I'm sorry, Harry! I did what you said, but he's angry. He sent Granger for--"

"Quiet, all of you!" Pomfrey snapped. "I have a very sick patient here--"

"What is the removal trigger?"

"I didn't use a remov--"

Dumbledore glared. It was all Harry could do not to flinch back.

"Harry, you have used Dark Arts on another student, possibly causing permanent damage--"

"Stop yelling at him!" Draco screamed, scrambling up between Harry and Dumbledore. "I agreed--"

Dumbledore's face tightened. "You have no idea--"

"Go away!" In a hysterical lunge, Draco seized Dumbledore's staff, and tried to shove him back with it.

"Draco!" At Harry's rebuke, Draco hesitated, and Dumbledore flicked his hand forward.

"Stupefy."

There was a flash of red light, and Draco froze and teetered for a terrible second in his imbalanced stance. Harry moved forward, but a squishy fuchsia cushion bloomed beneath his fall, changing the expected thud to a soft 'fwoop'.

Harry found himself beset with fury, nonetheless. "How dare you! He is mine!"

"Yours? People, Harry, cannot be owned. I am extremely--"

"I'm not the one hexing--!"

Severus shrieked, a shrill, rising wail which drowned out everything else. Harry spun to find his father thrashing. As one, he and Dumbledore moved to help hold down the flailing limbs and arching body until Madam Pomfrey could cast a restraining spell to keep Severus from throwing himself off the bed. He continued to twitch and scream like a man possessed, but now his eyes were open and white-edged with panic. He clawed at his arm above the Dark Mark. The sleeve gave, tearing back one of his fingernails, as well. The finger splattered blood as he raked the fabric clear. Harry leaped on the good arm and pinned it before his father could repeat the carnage on his flesh.

Harry had seen the Dark Mark both a sullen, old red and the deep swollen black of summoning. This was worse. He did not know whether Voldemort's anger was greater than it had been before, or whether some ritual with his new supplicants had lent him greater power, but the whole force of the Dark Lord's malice seemed bent against his faithless servant in these few inches of skin. The black of the Mark had the sheen of hard coal and bubbled up like boiling lead. Around the design, the skin was a dead white, marbled with cracks that seeped blood.

"This is worse than I thought poss--"

"Take it OFF, damn you. Take it off, take the skin, the arm, make it STOP!"

"No!" Harry's pushed the arm down, hearing the hysteria in his own voice as a mirror of his father's shrill plea. "No! That was to be a last resort--"

"Harry, Harry, let them, let them--"

"You'll be miserable!"

"You can't save me! I gave HIM THIS!"

Dumbledore's hand gripped Harry's shoulder. He spoke quickly and urgently. "We don't have time. We -- you -- need him sane and presentable in a matter of hours."

"And the rest of his life?"

That horrible sympathy was trained on him, now. "Could still be better than what has come before."

Severus, his screams now wordless, arched off the bed.

"No!" Pomfrey scrambled to keep Severus on the bed. "He's broken the restraining charm! Help me!"

Harry grabbed at Severus's arms and threw himself forward, trying to bear the thrashing man back down. He was vaguely aware of more people coming to help. It wasn't until wild brown hair caught between his hand and his father's far wrist that he realized one of his helpers was Hermione.

"A calming spell!"

"I have!" Pomfrey's voice was sharp. "Headmaster, if we remove the just the skin--"

Severus twisted under Harry's grasp, gasping a desperate plea for release. Harry tightened his grasp, but Severus shoved his arm forward to burst his encircling hold. Twisting free brought his forearm hard against Harry's bare one, slamming the Dark Mark into Harry's skin. It burned like heated metal. Harry shrieked in surprise and pain. His father winced back from the cry, and Harry pinned the arm again.

The tattoo -- no, the serpent within it -- was moving. It lashed back and forth in anger, mouth wide and teeth dripping green. Harry was certain it had bitten him as well as burned him, and that it, somehow, was killing the flesh around it, deadening an ever-widening area of his father's body.

Rage flooded his mind. He lunged down to look the snake in the eye.

"Stop it! Leave! Leave him alone!"

Harry was barely aware that he was speaking Parseltongue -- the harsh, sibilant sounds simply poured out of his anger like lava, at a volume the language could barely support. Some distant part of his mind observed that he was making a scene, but at the moment, he didn't care -- he wanted the world to see and fear his rage. "Go away, you bastard get of adder's corpse! Squiggle pain-tongue, go away!"

The snakes heard him. Throughout the castle grounds, they raised cold-sleepy heads, intrigued, amused, wondering who had been foolish enough to anger a Speaking Man.

Worm! Go. Leave him!"

Harry heard the hissing laughter of a thousand sleepy snakes. The tattoo serpent closed its mouth with a snap. It writhed uncertainly.

"LEAVE HIM! I COMMAND it! Your maker is GONE. I am HERE. LEAVE!"

Harry's awareness of the many snakes fled, leaving him precipitously attuned to his physical surroundings -- the room, the bed, his father's wrist gripped tight and hot in his hand. The cessation of his words left the room as still as death. His throat was raw from screaming.

Harry looked down at his father. Severus was lying unnaturally still, his pale face glossy with sweat, pinned to the bed by many hands - Hermione, across the bed from him, her hair coming down in wild strands from its elegant arrangement; Pomfrey, wand in hand, restraining his father's head and shoulders; Dumbledore, behind him and slightly to the left; possibly another, at the other foot. All of them were staring at Harry, and at the arm in his grasp. The snake was indeed gone, leaving just a line of blisters showing the former path of the snake and a grinning black skull on livid red skin.

Harry panicked. "Severus?" He shook him. "Father? Father!"

Severus twitched. His eyes flickered open. "Don't," he mumbled, "scream, Potter." He took a few slow, ragged breaths. Harry sank back, queasy with panic and relief. He felt a hand grip his shoulder, but did not move to see who it belonged to.

"Harry," Hermione whispered. Harry nodded in acknowledgment, but didn't lift his eyes.

Severus shifted as much as he could. The hands pinning him to the bed loosened their holds, then were slowly lifted from him. He took a few slow, ragged breaths. His eyes remained closed. "Harry. Did they cut it off?"

"Does it feel like it?"

"I've never lost a sodding limb before! How would I know? People say it still-- It--"

"They didn't cut it off." Harry slipped his hold down and squeezed his father's hand for emphasis. "Here. I'm here. Feel me?"

"He's just playing with me, then." Severus sounded frustrated. "Just do it. Let them do it. It will come to that, whatever we do."

"No."

"Don't be foolish, boy." Snape's voice was still a whisper, but a steadier one, now. "There's no other way I'll get through the hearing."

"I made the snake go away," Harry said. He thought he sounded rather like a six-year-old. Made the bad thing go 'way, Daddy. He laughed. He sounded mad, even to himself.

Severus's eyes blinked open. He peered at Harry in confusion.

"Snake?"

"Look." Harry lifted his father's arm up by the wrist. The skull of the Dark Mark was already fading, but it was still dark enough that the missing serpent was immediately obvious. Snape stared at it in amazement.

"I ... I screamed at it in Parseltongue. A real tantrum-- you know how I can get. I ordered it to leave, and cursed it, and ordered it again and again....

"It turned around, slid into the skull, and vanished, Severus," Dumbledore said. "And then you stopped screaming."

Severus collapsed back onto the pillows. "Well, I suppose I'll let it go, this once, then, Harry," he rasped out. Harry grinned.

"Professor Snape needs sleep, now," Madam Pomfrey said, raising her hands to shoo them all away. Dumbledore shook his head.

"Not yet." He laid a hand on Severus's shoulder. "Severus. One matter more."

One of Severus's eyes opened, then shut again. Dumbledore was not dissuaded. "He cast the Fealty Curse on Draco Malfoy, Severus."

Snape's eyes opened blearily. "The Dark Lord?"

"Harry. With no removal trigger."

The hand on Harry shoulder clenched. "You did what?" Remus Lupin's words were low with shock.

'What sort of classes are you teaching, Lupin?" Pomfrey asked tartly.

"We have never--"

"Harry!" Hermione rebuked.

His father's eyes opened. "Harry -- what?"

"Harry cast the Fealty Curse on--"

"If you'd let me finish--!" Harry said angrily.

"I don't care why--"

"Albus!" Severus intervened. Giving the word urgency left him drained. His eyes closed again. "Let him finish."

"It has a time limit," Harry said. "He'll be over it at dawn."

Severus smiled faintly. "To the extent one is ever over these things." The smile left his lips. "Neither of you will be unchanged, Harry."

"I understand." Harry looked up and met Dumbledore's gaze. "But it was the only way I dared take him with me to a gathering of Voldemort and his Death Eaters, and he wouldn't agree to be left. I made it a time limit rather than a trigger so that he would be freed even if I died."

Severus shook his head once. "You don't ... understand. Soon...." He sank back against the pillows. Pomfrey took charge.

"Out! You can wait in the next room. Remus Lupin, make yourself useful and carry young Malfoy to a bed before you revive him -- one in the next room. And you!" She stabbed a finger at Dumbledore with a displeased look. "You and I are going to have a little talk. Right now."

Dumbledore nodded with uncharacteristic meekness.

"I do believe I owe that to you, Poppy."

Reluctantly, Harry backed away. When he turned and caught sight of Draco, hanging limp in Remus's arms, he hurried to follow. Remus was just settling Draco in a bed in the front room when Harry caught up.

"What was it, Harry? Do you know?"

"Just a Stupefaction Hex. He was trying to drive Dumbledore--"

"Ennervate."

Draco, after a second of confusion, shoved Remus to the side to get to Harry, seizing one of Harry's hands between his own. "I'm so sorry! I did just what you said, but he got all angry, and I couldn't--"

"Shhh." Harry laid his free hand on Draco's head. "You did fine. You're not responsible for how Dumbledore reacts."

Remus reached in to separate their hands. Harry pushed back a base urge to fight, and instead soothed Draco. "Let go, pet. It's all right."

"Pet!" Hermione exclaimed.

"Now Mr. Malfoy," Remus said gently, "I think you had better return to Slytherin and go straight to your bed--"

"No!" Harry countered.

"Harry...."

"He can't go back like this! Someone will say something rude about me, and he'll get in a fight, and they'll be trouble afterwards. He needs to stay with me for the night -- until dawn."

Remus put a hand to his forehead. He looked exhausted.

"You have a point," he said, "about Slytherin. We'll settle him down here. You may sit beside him, if you like, until Pomfrey calls you, but there is to be no physical contact between you. Is that clear?"

Harry clenched his jaw and reminded himself that Remus was right -- contact would only make it worse.

"Yes sir."

Hermione wanted to upbraid Harry about the Fealty Spell, but Remus, to Harry's relief, told her to wait until morning.

"He will be much more capable of discussing it after the fact, Hermione. For now, let's just keep things calm."

Harry ignored the implication that he was currently incompetent. He suspected it was true. Even when Remus had led Hermione away, to the far side of the room, he found he didn't want to talk to Draco, not when Draco could not but agree with -- admire -- everything he said. Instead, he had Draco take his mail shirt off, then told him to lie down.

"What happened?" Draco asked. Harry found the slight whine in his voice reassuring. "Is Professor Snape all right?"

"He's fine."

"How did we end up here?"

Harry shook his head. "I'll tell you about it in the morning. You need to sleep, now."

Draco frowned. "I'm not tired. We can talk about it."

Harry shook his head and got up from the chair. "Not now. Now you sleep -- I need you rested, Draco."

With a meek nod, Draco lay down and closed his eyes. Harry stepped away and crossed the awkward silence of the room to stand by the window. He moved close enough to the darkness to see the faint glimmer of moonlight on the lake. Suddenly, he was trembling uncontrollably. He listened to the sounds of someone approaching.

"Harry?" Hermione's voice was a bare whisper. There was no censure in it, but it made Harry shake harder.

"I can't believe I was such an idiot."

Her hand rested on his arm a moment, then gripped it supportively.

"I expect it was a difficult situation."

"Yes, but.... Once he'd agreed, I didn't need to do it, did I? And he would have been more useful if I hadn't had to take care of him." He leaned his forehead into the cool stone wall. "What is he going to do when it's over?"

Hermione took a deep breath, but before she could comment, Remus intervened.

"I think you two had better leave it for later. Harry, we will be discussing this, whatever Severus thinks, but not now." He took Hermione's elbow politely, but firmly, in hand. "For now, Miss Granger is going back to her dormitory. Harry, I will be back in a little while to check on you."

"Yes sir." Harry forced himself to look up. "Thanks."

Remus's disapproval faded to something softer and sadder. "You're welcome, Harry." He kissed the top of Harry's head, though he no longer had to bend down to do so. "I'd rather you didn't need such attention."

After they left, Harry extinguished several torches, and sat in the window to watch the slow progress of the moon-cast shadows on the lawn. It was at least a half-hour, by his estimate, before Pomfrey called him back.

"Now, Mr. Potter -- or should I say Snape? I do wish someone had deigned to explain to me what was going on, when I could have helped, but the headmaster assures me that's none of your fault." She tossed her arms up in a gesture of frustration. "Muscle aches! Well, I'd expect so!" She looked at him and sighed. "Your father is recovering. I had to remove some of the skin near the Mark, but it appears to be growing back normally -- by morning, he should only have a mild itchiness where it is new. " She hesitated. "And no sign of the ... snake -- not that I see how it matters, but if it does...."

Harry grew uneasy with her silence. "Then?"

"He refuses to remain in my care. That's typical of him -- he's a worse patient than a dinner companion, really! But if the snake -- if he relapses...." She sighed, then nodded decisively. "I'd like you to stay within earshot of him, for tonight, and call me immediately if he starts screaming or convulsing. Would you do that?"

"Yes, of course."

"Are you sure? He can be very difficult."

Harry grinned. "I know."

"Good." Madam Pomfrey's cheeks dimpled. "Let's talk to him, then."

So that was how Harry found himself back in his old room in the dungeon. He had offered to take the couch, but Severus had insisted on their own beds for both of them, putting them three rooms apart. Dumbledore, without comment, had spelled the intervening doors ajar, and forbidden any spells that would muffle noise. Harry settled into his bed with guilty comfort, fervently hoping he would not wake to screams.