"It's not a matter of listening my dear boy, it's a matter of safety."

"Who's? Yours? Because you're obviously not concerned about mine!"

He could hear the shouting at a distance as he stepped onto the moving staircase leading up to the Headmaster's office. Just like the brat to shout at his superiors, Severus thought. Hadn't he just shouted at him earlier that morning when he had been scolded for not doing his work?

"Your safety is always on my mind Harry. I understand how you feel about staying with-"

"No you don't!" Harry spat angrily. "If you did you'd never send me back there!"

"Harry-"

There was a knock on the door and the voices within the room paused.

"Come in."

Severus opened the door to find Albus sitting in his chair and Harry standing, arms crossed and back to him as he entered.

"Hello Severus. I daresay I forgot all about our meeting. Harry and I were just having a little talk."

Harry was sure he could feel the eye roll and glare his back got from Snape.

"I will come back another time." He turned to leave but Dumbledore held up a hand.

"No need dear boy, no need. Harry and I are finished here. However, I must take a few minutes to visit the little gentleman's room. If you'll excuse me." Dumbledore stood up and swept past Harry and Severus, and down the moving staircase. Snape rolled his eyes again and Harry made to move past him as well as soon as the Headmaster was gone.

Unfortunately for Harry, a hand reached out and snatched his arm, preventing him from going. "I don't think so Potter. It has become abundantly clear to me that you need a lesson in manners. It is not appropriate to shout at your superiors."

Harry tore his arm free of the grasp. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

"No? You don't think so?" He gave Harry an icy glare. "No matter what it is you think you're going through, it is still not appropriate to yell at a professor or other staff of the school, and should I catch you doing it again you will be serving detention for a week."

Narrowing his eyes at the man who knew nothing about him, Harry finally returned the glare. Why couldn't anybody understand? He just couldn't keep going back to Privet drive anymore. He couldn't take another two summers of beatings and another two summers of eating whatever scraps were left from Vernon and Dudley's plates, which usually wasn't much at all.

Wondering at the sudden thought that he seemed to have sparked in the whelp, Severus lifted his head and narrowed his eyes once again.

"Unless you have something else to add Potter, then leave. The Headmaster and I have important business to discuss when he returns."

Harry made for the door, but stopped after a couple of steps. He suddenly felt icy and gave a shudder. Severus gave a fast look around the room wondering if a window were open, because he felt chilled too.

Suddenly there was a tinkling sound and Harry and Snape both turned to see one of the little contraptions on the Headmaster's desk whirring as it spun around frantically.

"What have you done to it?" Snape asked, curious as to what the contraption did.

"Nothing," Harry said, a little upset that he was once again being accused of something he hadn't done. Just like this morning when Draco had tripped him and he had fallen into Goyle's cauldron, causing it to spill out onto the burly fifth year and making him shrink to the size of a cat.

"Somehow I find that hard to believe."

"Yeah, somehow you always do."

Severus spun on the fifth year, ready to deduct points for his cheek, but as he did, the entire room spun with him, and he and Harry were caught in a whirlwind of color and sound, smells and sights as the scenery changed from room to room. And as soon as it had started, it had stopped, and Harry and Severus found themselves on the wooden floor of a darkened room.

Harry lay in a heap on the floor, taking in shallow breaths as Severus pushed himself up and lit the tip of his wand to reveal a bed and a sleeping form under the covers. A closer look at the room had his own breathing becoming quick and uncertain. "This cannot be," he said quietly.

From the floor the fifth year Gryffindor stirred and gave a moan. Severus remembered he was there and knelt down next to him. "What have you done? I demand an answer immediately!"

Eyes flickering open, Harry gave another moan as his chest seared with pain. He had been so careful over the last week not to jar his body and agitate his freshly broken ribs, courtesy of Uncle Vernon, and now here he had gone and fallen off of what felt like a ten story building. He squinted at his professor, trying to focus his blurred vision, but couldn't concentrate through the pain, and passed out.

"Great," Severus muttered under his breath. He stood and took in the room again. This was definitely an all too familiar place. One in which he had sworn never to visit again, and now here he was. What the date was, he didn't know, but judging by the tattered Quidditch posters on his walls and the newish photo of Lily and himself on the wall over his desk, it must have been rather close to his third or fourth year.

Hoping desperately that he had not been thrown back in time with the Potter brat into his own past, Severus did a spell that showed him in smoky writing the date. That couldn't be right... it still read the present. And yet, they were clearly in the past. Had they looked into a pensieve together perhaps? No, that wasn't it either. They had just been standing there and that little contraption had gone off.

While Potter was passed out on the floor, Severus moved to the wall to more closely examine the photo of him and his best friend sitting next to each other in the Library, smiling up at the camera. He still had this photo, but now its edges were worn and the photo was creased. The one on the wall was shiny and new. He reached out to pluck it off the wall, but his hand went right through it, as if he were a ghost.

Experimentally he tried to pull out the desk chair to sit on it, and the same thing happened. He could touch and feel the chair, but he couldn't move it. How odd. He was able to lean on the desk, but he couldn't open any of the drawers. They were obviously not in reality. Hopefully their real bodies were still back in the Headmaster's office and he would come back and pull them out of the memory. Until then he leaned on the rickety old desk and watched Potter's chest rise and fall slowly as he lay on the floor, and hoped the memory would end before he woke up. The last thing he wanted was for Potter to see Spinner's End.