The meetings with McGonagall began the second week of Harry's sixth year. The meetings with Dumbledore began the third.

He excelled in Potions that year, finding the Half Blood Prince to be an excellent teacher, despite Hermione's only grudging acceptance of his unconventional tutor. He did well in Defense also, though barely able to tolerate Snape's treatment of him. He took out his frustration in his almost daily letters to Snape in his homework assignments and Snape, to his credit, almost never commented on his biting tone.

With McGonagall, he explored his Animagus form, knowing from his meditative state when they met to practice that, if he succeeded, he wouldn't be ferocious or fearsome or winged or magical. He'd be gentle and watchful. He'd be an ordinary animal, unrecognizable as Harry Potter.

With Dumbledore, he explored the twisted mind of Tom Riddle, and he learned about Horcruxes, and he knew, he knew without a doubt, that he himself was a Horcrux, or had one buried inside his scar. He scratched at his scar in his sleep, while he dreamed, making it red and raw, and Snape's next note to him said "We'll get him out some way, but it will take more than your fingernails." He began to think about how he could survive, how he would survive, if it was possible to destroy a Horcrux without destroying his own soul in the process. He never told Dumbledore he knew. But when he left the Burrow over Christmas holiday for a long weekend at Shell Cottage with Snape, they talked about it for hours and hours. Harry still thought he'd have to die so that Voldemort would die as well. "The Prophecy doesn't state that the one who lives has to go on living," he said.

He watched Ron make the colossal mistake of dating Lavender Brown while Hermione pretended not to be hurt. He pined after Ginny while comforting Hermione.

He had two very long detentions with Snape. He'd deserved both of them, acting out in class aggressively until Snape had no choice but to dock points and assign detention. In the first, he tried to get Snape to tell him what was going on with Draco Malfoy. In the second, he cried because Dumbledore was dying and dueled with Snape to get it out of his system.

He followed Draco Malfoy around the castle, obsessed with whatever it was Malfoy was doing, convinced it would come to no good, no matter what Snape told him to the contrary.

He hadn't enrolled in Care of Magical Creatures himself, but he often went down to Hagrid's hut after classes, marveled at the owlets' growth and drank lukewarm tea out of gallon-sized teacups.

He wrote notes to Snape with every Defense assignment. Snape wrote back on his corrected homework. He knew he should pay more attention to his assignments and less to the letters, but he couldn't quite make himself.

He didn't particularly enjoy being Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team, but it looked like they'd have a good year—that is until Katie Bell was cursed and they had to get yet another new player to fill her spot.

When Ron almost died, poisoned on Mead meant for Dumbledore but given to Slughorn, Harry understood what best friends were worth. When Ginny kissed him in front of everyone in the Gryffindor common room after the Quidditch match he'd missed while in detention with Snape, he understood why best friends has sisters. His letters to Snape took on a new tone. If he'd been able to see Snape read those letters, the highlight of every night when he had to mark assignments, he'd have realized that Snape wanted him to have an ordinary life, a smart and fun girl like Ginny to date, no problem bigger than what to wear to the Yule Ball.

Harry learned about altered memories. He drank Liquid Luck to convince Slughorn to him the real memory Dumbledore wanted. On the short half-term break in early Spring, when most of the students went home for the week, he took Snape and Dumbledore down to the Chamber of Secrets where Snape walked around the basilisk skeleton at least three times before grabbing Harry in a tight hug, muttering something like "you were only twelve" into the astonished teen's neck. Harry cried into Snape's robes, but he had no idea why.

The frequent meetings with Dumbledore where they tried to get inside Tom Riddle's psyche, tried to determine which objects contained fragments of his splintered soul, tried to pick a path through the tangled wreckage of a damaged, poisoned mind, wore Harry down. It didn't help, either, that Dumbledore was growing progressively weaker, though his eyes never lost their sparkle. Harry tortured himself over how similar he and Riddle were, how he could have turned out just like Voldemort, orphaned and alone, bitter and vengeful. But you didn't, Snape told him in one of his letters. "You are Harry Potter. You will never be Lord anybody."

In January, four months after starting Animagus studies with Professor McGonagall, Harry Potter transformed into Prongs' counterpart, a lithe young doe, while sitting on Professor McGonagall's loveseat. He rolled off the sofa in surprise, all gangly legs, hitting the floor and trying to scramble onto four hooved feet on the smooth wooden floors. Professor McGonagall looked immensely pleased. "I thought as much," she said, transfiguring a chair into a full-length mirror so Harry could see what he had become. He stared into the mirror for a long time, transfixed by the large gentle eyes. His doe still had the light spots of an almost-mature fawn. Her ears were long, her tail was white underneath as he flicked it. His face had normal markings—no glasses, round or rectangular, were imprinted on his face.

When he transformed back, with the usual difficulty a first-timer always had in letting go of that animal instinct and the battle between human and animal consciousness, Minerva floo-called Severus. He joined them in her small office and she asked Harry to transform again. Severus stood there, staring at Harry the doe with a look of such joy and such pain that Harry immediately transformed back and Minerva explained, while Snape sat down and wept, that Lily's patronus was a doe, and Snape's was as well. Snape's grief washed over him, and Harry felt it through their connection, felt the waves of guilt, and regret and loss. He took two steps closer to Snape, almost overcome, then once again became the doe, walking closer to Snape, pushing against him with a wam nose until Snape wrapped his arms around his furred neck and hugging him, cried some more.

It all went to pieces at the end of the year. Snape's letters to Harry were becoming more direct. "Do not use that spell," he said, responding to Harry's queries about a spell in the Half Blood Prince's potions book "for enemies." "It will flail the skin…I should have erased that from the book before I gave it to you." Other spells had been more useful, like the Muffliato, which even Hermione now used for privacy. But the night came when Dumbledore took Harry from the castle to a dank, remote cave to find a Horcrux, and Harry forced him to drink a terrible potion and, on their return to Hogwarts, the Dark Mark had hovered over the castle. Harry had spent hours in doe-form the last few months, hiding from his painful connection to Snape as Snape was summoned more and more frequently. But tonight, unbelievably, there was no pain. Harry flew with a weakened Dumbledore back to the Astronomy Tower and from there, his world almost fell apart. He found out that Draco had, indeed, been up to something. Draco disarmed the Headmaster while Harry remained frozen, petrified by Dumbledore's spell, still covered by his invisibility cloak. He heard Draco's plot, watched the other Death Easters come—here, inside Hogwarts, invading his very home—and then watched in grief-stricken horror as Snape himself appeared on the Tower, lifted his wand, pointed it at a pleading Dumbledore, and said the words that would end his life.

Harry heard Dumbledore's plea. It is time, Severus. End it now. Save the boys' life. End it now, Severus. I am dying… Legilimancy had come so easily to him after Occlumency was mastered. As the Headmaster's body flew over the turret walls, they all fled. Snape had not seen Harry, but had he known he was there? The spell holding Harry in place failed as life left Dumbledore and Harry screamed his rage, chasing after Snape. You can't leave! He shouldn't have made you do it! I need you! He tripped over bodies on his way down the stairs after Snape and Draco and the other Death Eaters. He chased them over the lawn and he knew, he knew Snape wanted him to go inside, to get out of the line of fire, to go on without him but he couldn't do it. He couldn't let him go. Not now. Not with what had happened. A line had been drawn and Harry was utterly, irrevocably alone. Dumbledore was dead. Snape had killed him. Snape was gone now. But no one had seen him kill Dumbledore. No one except the Death Eaters…and Harry.

The next days were numb. There was a funeral for Dumbledore, but Snape wasn't there. His "defection" put him solidly in Voldemort's camp in everyone's eyes. Even some of the Order began to doubt him. Harry told Ron and Hermione about the Horcruxes and what he had to do to find and destroy them. They both vowed to stand by him, to go with him, no matter what happened. He silently vowed to go alone and leave them with their lives and families.

/

Summer passed oh-so-slowly for Harry.

He went to Shell Cottage with Bill after it became obvious that Hogwarts was under increasing Ministry control and he was no longer safe there. Arthur became the new Secret Keeper and the Fidelius charm was renewed. He told Bill what had happened on the tower—Bill had been at Hogwarts that night and had been attacked by the werewolf Fenrir Greyback, His face was now horribly scarred. Bill told him that things were tense at the Ministry, that Voldemort would soon have it under his control. Everyone was nervous, scared. He and Harry practiced dueling on the beach, and Harry found himself spending more and more time in his Animagus form as Snape suffered the cruel attention of his master.

Harry never told Bill about the Horcruxes, or that he had a piece of Voldemort's soul trapped inside him.

They left Shell Cottage, Harry in disguise, on Harry's 17th birthday. An owl had arrived that morning with a letter and a package. The fact that it made its way to the Fidelius-protected Shell Cottage puzzled Harry and worried Bill, but Harry opened the parcel at the kitchen table after Bill checked it for curses.

It was a watch.

"Traditional gift for a Wizard's 17th," said Bill, picking it up and admiring it. "This is an old one, Harry. A rather nice one, I'd say."

Harry was staring at the note in his hand. There was no greeting, and no signature.

"I've come to depend quite heavily on my mantle clock these past weeks, though I've had to disguise it and put it in a secure location. As the hand seems to be always point to "Somewhere Safe," I took a chance on where to find you and used the Headmaster's owl, which I seem to have inherited. Lemon Drop (yes, I detest the name but he will not respond to any other) knows the place well. I thought it would be appropriate for you to have a timepiece of your own, although this one does nothing but tell time—though it is waterproof. It was my grandfather Prince's."

Harry put the watch on and didn't take it off for a very long time.

The Minister of Magic himself showed up at the Burrow on the morning of Bill's wedding to Fleur and gathered Ron, Hermione and Harry in the sitting room where he read parts of Dumbledore's will and gave them strange bequeaths. Harry put his snitch in the small leather pouch—the one from Hagrid that stretched invisibly and held quite a lot—that he wore around his neck. Hermione looked curiously at the wizard children's storybook and Ron played with the small silver device that sucked the light out from candles and lamps.

The wedding was ruined when Kingley's patronus arrived, telling them that the Ministry had been taken over, that the Minister was dead and that Death Eaters were on their way. Hermione grabbed both Harry and Ron and apparated them away. And so it began. He didn't get to say goodbye to Ginny.

At Grimmauld Place, during one of the interminable nights spent pacing, thinking, plotting how to infiltrate the Ministry of Magic and get the Horcrux locket from Umbridge (who, apparently, had been reinstated at the Ministry following the takeover by Voldemort), the portrait of Phineas Nigellus taunted him from the wall of his old bedroom. Copies of The Daily Prophet were flung all over the room, proclaiming Snape Headmaster, declaring Harry Potter Undesirable #1, touting the importance of blood purity, issuing more dos and don'ts and rules for education and allowing snatchers—bounty hunters—to victimize innocents. He hated Wizarding Britain, he hated what he had to do. He knew, though, that if he got to the end, he may not be so sad to die as once he thought he'd be.

The visions began at Grimmauld Place, of Voldemort wanting something, looking for something, but if he occluded he wouldn't ever find out what it was so instead he suffered through the visions, trying to stay a step ahead of Voldemort but feeling like he was always half a step behind.

On top of the Prophets, on a small bedside table, he'd placed his Marauder's Map. He'd been taking it out of late, looking for his friends' names on it. So many were missing. His dorm in Gryffindor tower held only Neville and Seamus now. He watched Ginny's dot move between classes, eat in the Great Hall. She spent a lot of time with Neville and Luna. Sometimes, he couldn't find any of their dots and he worried but after a while, he realized that the Room of Requirement didn't appear on the map, and they must be there, plotting, planning, at least surviving.

Though he watched his friends move about the castle on the maps, he spent far more time watching Snape's dot pace back and forth in Dumbledore's office. The dot would stop occasionally, always in the same spot and Harry, with an epiphany, realized that Snape would be standing in front of Dumbledore's portrait. On rare occasions, he'd see McGonagall's dot in there with him, but more often it was a Death Eater—Malfoy, the Carrows.

Staring at the empty frame that held Phineas Nigellus' portrait, Harry had another of those epiphany moments. Nigellus had been a Headmaster at Hogwarts. His portrait…his portrait was in Snape's office! He told Hermione and Ron, and they pried the frame off the wall and set it up on a table in the kitchen. But Phineas didn't appear.

When they finally infiltrated the Ministry of Magic, getting a horrid taste of what the Ministry was up to these days but miraculously getting the locket as well, they never made it back to Grimmauld Place. While they scrambled in the forest, healing Ron's splinched arm, setting up charms and wards to protect their location, Harry mourned the loss of that portrait. The map was rolled up in his leather pouch but the portrait was on the kitchen table.

So, when Hermione pulled the portrait out of her expandable bag that night, in the tent, Harry could have cried. He hugged her and Ron looked at him crossly then he hugged her again. Wonder of wonders, Phineas appeared within the frame, looking around the tent with curious eyes. Harry quickly dropped his jacket over the portrait and pulled out the Marauder's Map, dropping to the floor and spreading it out.

"Dinner time…he's in the Great Hall," he said. Hermione and Ron glanced at each other but left him alone, going outside to find some firewood while Harry waited…waited…waited for Snape to go back to his office, enticing Phineas to stay put if he wanted to learn more. As Snape's dot on the map started up the spiral stairs, Harry pulled the jacket off the frame.

"I need you to take a message to the Headmaster," said Harry, holding both sides of the frame and speaking directly at Nigellus. "Tell him that we got it—we got the thing we were looking for." The portrait figure nodded and moved to the edge of the frame. "Wait!" shouted Harry. "Only if he's alone…don't tell him anything unless he is alone."

He waited, checking the map for the moment Snape entered the office. The little dot stopped right after it entered the office but a moment later began to pace back and forth.

"He wants to know where you are. He says you are in mortal peril. You don't look like you're in mortal peril to me. He's quite anxious and very loud so please hurry with your answer."

Harry stared at the portrait. His throat was tight and he found it hard to speak.

"I'm fine…tell him I'm fine. We're…hiding…in a safe place."

Fifteen precious minutes of back and forth…fifteen minutes to try to convey everything he'd been feeling, doing, fearing, learning, all through a two-dimensional messenger. Fifteen minutes to listen to Phineas Nigellus delivering Snape's advice, warnings, cautions, instructions. Stay away from the Ministry, avoid Hogsmeade, do not come to Hogwarts, get out of the UK.

Weeks passed and they were getting nowhere. Moving from campsite to campsite, running out of food, stealing into Muggle villages. Struggling to stay warm, losing hope as the locket drained the light from their eyes and the future from their hearts. It was, in the end, too much for Ron. Cold, hungry, desperate, hopeless, he left them to their own hopelessness.

Christmas, so unlike the previous year he'd spent with Snape at Shell Cottage. Christmas in Godric's Hollow, the place of his birth, the place his parents were buried, the place Dumbledore's family had lived, where he'd met the young Gellert Grindelwald. Kneeling before his parents' graves in the snowy graveyard … the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

Escaping Nagini…barely…breaking his wand felt like breaking his bones, his heart, letting his magic bleed out of his pores until he was empty. The doe Patronus appearing, leading him to the sword, the sword so obviously gifted to them by Snape himself. The doe was hope reborn. Destroying the locket was triumph. Stumbling into camp soaking wet, arm around Ron's shoulder, holding the sword of Gryffindor was pure, unadulterated joy. Sending Phineas to Snape that night, telling him that it was done. Snape's reply. Imagine.

From that point, the tide had turned. Voldemort was focused…focused on it. But Harry's attention was split…Horcruxes or Deathly Hollows. Horcruxes to destroy, Deathly Hollows that could make him master of death, of death that had claimed so much of what he loved.

He soldiered on. They soldiered on. Through Malfoy Manor, where he won Draco's wand, where they found Luna, where Dobby saved them. Hearing Hermione's tortured screams, keeping Ron from tearing at the bars and the stone walls, falling on his knees in that so-familiar garden with Dobby falling, Dobby dying, Dobby, his friend, wearing mismatched socks and three knitted caps. Closing his eyes, digging until his fingers were blisters, burying Dobby, Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf. Feeling Voldemort the entire time he dug, letting it go, letting Voldemort get it…the wand…Dumbledore's wand…the elder wand…the Hallow. Walking into the cottage then, through the kitchen, past Bill and the others, out to his porch, to his hammock. Lying down, falling asleep, dreaming.

A whirlwind of plans, of schemes, of deals with Goblins. Using the Imperius curse and remembering months ago, years ago, reading the Grindelwald book and thinking it's never justified…unforgivables are wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Finding the cup, burning his barely healed hands, riding a dragon…its weakest point is its eyes…Hogsmeade.

He never doubted Dumbledore, no matter what he read about him in Rita Skeeter's skewed account of his life. He never doubted Snape, even when he saw him through his link with Voldemort, felt him when he suffered, felt him when he mourned. And when he met Aberforth Dumbledore at the Hog's Head, he thought he was a mix of the two great men and didn't doubt him either, despite his gruff exterior and his contention that Albus was not the saint Harry thought.

Back inside Hogwarts. He wanted to kiss the walls, the ground. He found a Neville who had come into his own, who owned the school, a Gryffindor to the core. A room full of refugees, Ginny's arms around him. He wished he had time to rest but there wasn't time for they had to find the diadem.

Luna took him to Ravenclaw and before the chaos began in earnest, he saw him.

His face was sallow, sleepless. Bags under his eyes, hair lank. He'd lost weight, he looked like death. He sparred verbally with McGonagall, asked her if he was there, but he couldn't move, couldn't voice a word, he had to live through this and get to Voldemort. Harry saw a different Snape, a defeated Snape, a Snape so embedded in a Voldemort-controlled Hogwarts that he didn't have a glimmer of light, a glimmer of hope. He didn't look like a man who was capable of imagining.

Snape disappeared like a bat on the wing and the battle began. It was horrible and dark and tense. Saving Draco…he would puzzle over that for much of his life…losing Fred…raging, giants, centaurs, boulders, werewolves, spells, explosions, the stuff of nightmares. But nothing as nightmarishly devastating as that moment in the Shrieking Shack, bending down over Snape after Voldemort had gone, after Nagini had feasted on his neck. Snape's pain his own, hardly able to move through the pain. Hermione with the dittany, Ron with the bezoar, Harry giving up and saying goodbye and crying and Snape opening his eyes, grabbing him by the collar, pulling him down, and Harry knew what he wanted, used Draco's wand to extract the memories from Snape.

"I've got the bleeding controlled, Harry," said Hermione through his stupor. "Go…to his office…the pensieve. Do what you need to do."

Ron was still holding his hands on Snape's neck, resolutely holding the flap of skin together, his hands slippery with blood. They needed something to wrap it and Hermione pulled a shirt out of her bag, wrapped it around Snape's neck without looking at it. It was Ron's Yellow Submarine shirt though and for the first time that long night, Harry smiled.

The memories were all of Snape and Dumbledore, most of Snape speaking with Dumbledore's portrait. Dumbledore's plan for Harry, his knowledge that a piece of Voldemort's soul was buried inside Harry, his deduction that Harry would have to go to his death to save the world. That it had to be Harry. It had to be the Boy Who Lived.

When he kissed the snitch, held the Resurrection Stone, walked to meet his fate, he walked with friends and family. James and Lily, his mum and dad, Sirius, his godfather, Remus, so new to death that he still walked heavily on his feet. As important to Harry in that moment was not who was there but who wasn't there. His mother leaned in before they reached the forest, whispering in his ear He's hanging on, Harry.

Standing up to face his death, dying for his friends, dying so that they could destroy the snake and have a chance of defeating Tom. Waking up in an empty, cavernous place, a place he'd been before. Not alone. Understanding. Believing. Returning. Tethered to Voldemort while Voldemort lived. Could Snape be tethered to him as well?

The snake dying. Voldemort falling. The wand sailing toward him. Catching it. Looking at it. Hermione and Ron on him, hugging him. Snape….where was Snape? He couldn't feel his pain and surely he must be in pain…if he was alive. If he had survived. Resting, enchanted sleep, semi-stasis, Draught of Peace. Sleeping on a transfigured mattress in the Shrieking Shack, hidden behind one of Hermione's protection spells.

He grabbed Hermione, the Elder Wand in his hand, left Ron to explain, ran back to the Shrieking Shack.

Snape was breathing shallowly when they reached him. Hermione could not bear the look on Harry's face and she took the wand he proffered, carefully unwrapped Snape's neck while Harry held his hand, traced the wound with the wand as she chanted the healing spell she had used too often this past year and the wound on Snape's neck closed…like magic.

He faced the aurors, the professors, the bits and pieces left of the Order of the Phoenix. He faced the Minister of Magic himself. He talked until he was hoarse with Minerva and Poppy shielding Severus, sleeping still. He slept on the floor of the infirmary that first night, not able to trust that Snape would not be carted away to Azkaban. Though there were hundreds of beds available, Ron joined him on the floor, because Harry was family, just as Fred had been. And Hermione and Ginny found them later and stayed there too. Hermione slept cuddled up with Ron, and Ginny with Harry. Poppy, exhausted, working with help from St. Mungo's, dropped warmed blankets over them and let them be.

/

Awareness came over his slowly, feeling in his fingertips, an ache in his neck that was more than a crick. One of his cheeks felt warm, as if the sunlight was striking it. He imagined he felt the ocean breeze and heard the pounding of the waves, but when he concentrated on listening, he heard the sounds of breathing, and soft feet padding across the floor. The smells were medicinal yet not unpleasant. He willed his brain to open his eyes, wondering if the connections still worked.

Poppy was standing at the foot of the bed, leaning against the iron footboard. She looked like she hadn't slept in days but she was smiling. He moved his head to see who was sitting beside him.

"Careful, Headmaster," said Minerva from her chair at his side. "Take it slowly. You've been a bit under the weather the last few days."

"Voldemort?" he rasped out, in barely more than a whisper.

"Dead," said Minerva. "Right in the middle of the Great Hall."

"Good," he said, very softly. The two words should not have exhausted him so much. He closed his eyes, but not before noticing a small clock on his bedside table. The hand pointed to "Great Hall."

"You've received an Order of Merlin, First Class," persisted Minerva. "They've decided not to have special ceremonies what with the state things are in. Kingsley delivered it yesterday. Harry accepted it for you. Harry insisted on a full pardon as well, which Kingsley granted on the spot. That boy can be persistent."

Snape opened his eyes and stared at her.

Minerva laughed. "Kingsley is the new Minister of Magic, Severus. And Harry went down, at our insistence, to get some lunch a little while ago. He'll be back before you know it—he's hardly left your side this past week."

There were things he wanted to know, information he should have before Harry arrived.

"How many…dead?" he asked.

"All told..far too many," sighed Minerva. "Almost 100 who fought on our side, and that's without the centaurs and house elves. It was not pretty, Severus. But it is over—truly, irrevocably and completely over."

"Harry's friends?" he asked, his eyes, more focused now, sliding from bed to bed in the infirmary.

"Fred Weasley," said Minerva. "Both Remus and Nymphadora. He's taken those very hard. They made him godfather to the baby, and Andromeda brought him here yesterday, to the funerals, you see…"

Her voice fell off.

"They buried the dead…here?" He would have liked to have been buried at Hogwarts, by the lake, or at the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

"Many of them, yes," answered Poppy, still standing at the foot of his bed. "And fortunately you were not among them, Headmaster. Ahh, there he is."

Minerva turned toward the doors of the Hospital Wing and waved.

The Harry Potter who approached was not the boy who had watched him kill Dumbledore a year before.

Minerva slid out of her chair and went to stand by Poppy at the foot of the bed. Harry kept his eyes on Snape's as he neared. His hair was long, approaching a proper wizarding length. The shadow on his face was no longer that of a boy just learning his first shaving charm. His arms and hands showed signs of recent burns, poorly healed. The boy sat on Minerva's chair, staring at Snape, not speaking. He reached out a hand toward Snape's face, brushing loose hair off his face.

"How…how did you do it? In the end?" said Snape.

"Expelliarmus," said Harry. "With the elder wand. Long story—not important now." Snape watched tears leak out the corner of Harry's eyes. He wiped them away with the back of his hand.

"Bill and Fleur have bought a cottage near the Burrow," Harry said. "So we're going back to Shell Cottage—as soon as Poppy says you can leave."

When had he started calling the teachers by their first names? When had he started making decisions for him? When had he grown up? Become a man?

"You've forgotten the shaving charm?" he asked, trying to lift a heavy arm off the bed, pointing toward Harry's face.

"Funny you should say that," said Harry, rubbing a hand against his extremely stubbly chin. "Because I've been using it on you every day for the last week. As for me, I'm growing a beard."

"For the summer," said Snape, his voice now no more than a whisper. "You'll have to shave it when you come back in August for the new school year."

Harry stared at Snape. "Back?"

"Last time I looked, someone hadn't showed up for his last year of school," said Snape. Harry had to lean in to hear him.

"I'll make you a deal," said Harry softly as Snape closed his eyes, exhausted. "I'll come back…if you will."

Many Years Later..

From his place behind the podium in the front of the Great Hall, Headmaster Severus Snape raised one hand and the chattering of students, recently reunited after a summer break, gradually stopped. Unlike Albus Dumbledore, his predecessor, he was not given to utter oddities or make grandiose speeches about unity and friendship. He'd long-ago abolished the tradition of singing the Hogwarts Alma Mater to different tunes. He'd have abolished the song altogether if singing it hadn't been a dictate in the School Constitution—specifically, singing it at least once per academic year in a venue which included all the teachers and students together.

He was nearly 60 years old now, and his hair had a few white strands amid the midnight black. It was nearly as long as Albus' had been, though he kept his beard in a neat goatee instead of growing it to his feet and throwing it over his shoulder as Albus had.

He looked out at the sea of faces before him, spotting a redhead sitting, inevitably, at the Gryffindor table with her brothers. Lily Luna had promised him she'd go to Slytherin yet the hat obviously could not look past her Potter and Weasley genes and see the truly conniving child she could be. Still, he had to admit, she was brave. Braver than her brothers, even.

Hugo sat amid the Ravenclaws. Both of Hermione and Ron's children had inherited their mother's sharp intelligence and their father's ability to think four steps ahead. He had to admit the combined genetics were a masterful mix in their progeny.

Just before the sorting, Ginny Potter had stepped inside the room, standing against the wall at the back of the hall. He appreciated that she had come today, come to give her husband support as he began his career—long, Snape hoped—of Defense Master at Hogwarts. Ginny had looked surprised herself when Lily went to Gryffindor.

A few introductory comments. The usual warnings. A new list of banned products. Introductions.

"This year, joining us after a long and distinguished career in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, our new Defense Master, Professor Harry Potter. Please do try not to fawn or drool over him too much-the drool makes slippery puddles that can be quite dangerous near stairs."

Impossibly, they'd managed to keep it totally quiet. His own children didn't even know. He'd been sitting near the end of the Head Table and had managed to keep his head down for most of the meal and the preliminaries.

Harry stood, then, and bowed to the students. James and Albus sat with mouths open while Lily jumped up and down and the rest of the students cheered and stood and tried to get a good look at him.

"Professor Potter is not a sculpture on display for your enjoyment," said the Headmaster. "I am sure you will soon grow tired of seeing him every day in class."

Snickers from some of the students but most greeted him warmly when they filed out past the lined up faculty, a tradition Snape had started the year after the final battle, and many thanked him for what he had done, 20 years ago, in this very room.

When all were gone, when James, Al an Lily had been told about the new cottage in Hogsmeade and Ginny had flooed back to settle in for the night, Snape took Harry by the elbow.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

Harry nodded and they walked together to the center of the hall where the Ministry, despite the objections of both Snape and Harry, had erected a monument. Fortunately, their objections had at least kept the monument to a modest size and style.

"On this spot, Harry James Potter defeated Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort." It was followed by the date of the battle.

The two men stared at the plaque another moment.

"Come on, Harry. A quick game of chess before you floo back to your lovely wife and empty home. Let's see, it's 8:30…you should be home by 9:00…"

Harry snorted. He could no longer feel the Headmaster's pain, or his passion—that connection had ended twenty years ago on this very spot. But Severus was family now, and that connection would never end.

Harry looked down at the plaque once more. A simple phrase, a phrase suggested by Snape while he'd recuperated at Shell Cottage, was inscribed at the bottom of the stone.

"And the world will live as one."

Fin