"Tigers die and leave their skins; people die and leave their names."

-Japanese Proverb

"Once you label me you negate me."

-Soren Kierkegaard

"The desolation and terror of, for the first time, realizing that the mother can lose you, or you her, and your own abysmal loneliness and helplessness without her."

-Francis Thompson

Part One: Moving

            He would take the passage under the Whomping Willow and into the Shrieking Shack. He would pay the Knight Bus for their silence. And he would vanish. He didn't know where he would go, or what he would do, he just knew what it was that he needed and he needed to leave.

            The steps from the castle were wet and with every tap of his shoes, bits of water splashed, alive and noticeable for just an instant before landing with the others just like they were, molding back into the shape of the cracks of the stone, waiting, always waiting, for someone else to move them. But he wouldn't be like that. He refused to be like that. No one else would move him again; he moved himself.

            And with this he moved himself away from the negativity, the glares, the hushed whispers, and the rumors; he wasn't real to them again and what wasn't real could not be affected. He moved himself like he never had done so before, like a pawn should not. But the world was unkind and he would rather die on his own then die under someone else's careless fingers.

            In a far away time he had what he wanted and needed. A woman with bright hair and eyes who let him move himself, who only held her hands out to catch him should he move the wrong way. But those days were as dead as she was and he had no one to play net for him any longer. He only had himself.         

            Above him, the night wandered on. It was overcast with the spotted showers but in certain areas, the stars winked at him, his co-conspirators, pushing their way through the sky, fighting to stay visible under someone else's wrath. "Go," they whispered, "leave this place behind you. You don't belong here. They can't keep you. Nobody can unless you let them. And you haven't, have you?"

            He hadn't felt normal in a long time. He didn't think he ever did, really. But ever since the summer, even the glistening strand of normalcy he clung to had snapped, too weak to burden the weight of his abstractions.

Once, not so long ago, the strand was different, it was gaining strength, slowly, like how a toddler learned to walk. Just a little at a time. But something happened. He stumbled, fell, and the extra weight crashed down and gravity snapped his hold. For weeks now he had been tumbling through the air, twisting and crying out, but nobody had heard him.

            No one ever did.

            There was no one to catch him when he fell. Dead as she was.

            The last of the steps were behind him now, Hogwarts, once his home, fell away from the bottoms on his feet as he traveled, the massive willow growing closer.

            "Immobulus!"

            And when he entered the willow, he didn't dare look back. That life was behind him. Looking back would only stall time, and he needed every tick of the clock now, he refused to fail, he refused to be caught.

            He would make his own way, he would figure it out; he always did.

            As he crept down the tunnel, he listened as the sound of the rain and wind faded away. The willow's branches swayed slowly for a few more moments, but no one was awake to see it snap back into motion, or to watch the greatest sacrifice they had disappear down a hole in the ground, a mere child who was older than any of them.

            And he moved.

~*~*~

            With the morning came the sun and the wet grass and leaves of late autumn dried up. The Whomping Willow shuddered with the memory it couldn't share, its bark damp still from the rain. In a tower decorated in red and gold, students were waking. To most it was like any other day but for two of its students it would hurt like a bad fall, with bruises that would last for days, weeks, and months. With scars that would stay always, a silvery reminder to who they were and could never be again.

            Ronald Weasley groaned and stretched, the early light slipping into the fifth year boys' dormitory and dragging him from sleep. He rolled over and grunted when he felt something hard underneath him.

            "The bloody hell...?"

            Sitting up, Ron lifted the well cared for Firebolt into his hands. Attached to the end of the broomstick was a note, folded once, and labeled with his name. The teen's head snapped over to where his best friend's bed was.

            "Harry?"

            There was no answer; the bed was empty.

            Ron swallowed and opened the note. Ron, it started, I'm leaving. I just can't stay here anymore, I'm sorry. I know you've tried, just as I've known that Hermione tried, but it's no use. I'm alone in this and I need to go. I want to go. I have to go. There's nothing left for me here.

            There was no signature, but Ron didn't need one. He knew the handwriting, the way the ‘R' curved on his name, the way the commas were leaned on heavily, their ink darker, as if the grammatical pause they insinuated had made its way up the quill and into the body of the writer, stilling him for just a moment while he measured his words .

            He knew the Firebolt. And he knew what be given it had meant.

            "Hermione..." He croaked, stumbling out of bed, "Hermione!"

            He ignored the calls of his other year mates, snapping to "Shut it, Weasley! It's bloody early!" and almost fell down the stairs into the common room. "Hermione! HERMIONE!" She was already awake and dressed, ready for a normal day and not expecting the package on the table in the corner that she, Ron, and Harry always commandeered for themselves. Her eyes were wide and wet when Ron toppled into the room. She held her own note and Hedwig's empty cage.

            "He's gone, hasn't he?" She whispered. "He asked me to look after Hedwig, he said he...he said he needed to go, he said," her breath caught, "Oh, Ron!" she cried, falling into his arms and bursting into tears, "he's such an idiot!" The cage clattered to the floor, the door opening and a single loose feather floating to the ground, free of what had kept it.

            Ron ignored the stares from the rest of the Gryffindors as they flittered into the room. He just wrapped his arms around Hermione and murmured to her, "An idiot. Such an idiot."

            It had spread through the castle and by dinner everyone knew. Harry Potter had run away.

            He became real to them once more.

~*~*~

            Severus had read both of the notes over and over until they were unconsciously memorized and even when he sipped his tea and tried to think of anything else, a little voice spoke the lines, anchoring him to the nightmare they had all found themselves in.

            A missing student. Driven out by the ridicule of the ministry, of his public, of his classmates, and of his potions professor. The only hope they had was gone.

            He tried to be angry, he really did. But Severus could not muster up the energy needed to fuel his rage. He just felt drained. He hated the boy, loathed to look upon his face, but they needed him. And regardless of Severus' feelings on him, Harry, though he was James Potter's son, was also the last link to Lily Evans.

            He felt as if denying that one little fact could no longer be held off.

            There was a knock on the door. He recognized the pattern, though it was far from the confident ‘rap-rap, rap-rap!'  it usually was. So he stood, instead of just beckoning her in, and opened the door for a very upset Minerva McGonagall.

            "Where could he be, Severus?" She said without preamble, stepping into the private quarters of the head of Slytherin without an invitation. For once, Severus could not care less.

            "He's a blasted fool," Severus snapped. "An idiot!" But he deflated. Potter may have been a nuisance, but he was the only one who could win this war.

            "I spoke to both of them," Minerva said, wringing her hands and speaking of Hermione and Ron, "They broke down, told me everything about him, everything he's going through."

            "And...?"

            "Troubled doesn't even begin to describe him. I spoke to Albus and...Severus, there's a definite link between him and You-Know-Who. And everything, what everyone is saying, this is far beyond teenage angst. And now he's gone and run away!"

            "We'll find the bloody idiot," Severus said, but it lacked his usual vehemence. The two shared a look and in between them, a thousand thoughts crossed. Severus broke eye contact first, looking down. "I get it, really, I do. It can't be easy for him."

            "Then you concede?"

            "No. He's still an arrogant fool, but he doesn't deserve this. No one does."

            And just like that, Harry Potter finally became real to Severus Snape.

~*~*~

            He had tried for three days, but the bustle of Diagon Alley was too much; he'd be spotted too easily and the glimpse of the most recent Prophet told him that his running away was making headlines.  There was no way that he could take out any money from Gringotts. So that was it then.  He was to go about this with no resources save the bag on his back. With one final glance at the Leaky Cauldron, he turned away and vanished into the muggle crowds of London.

            Hours later, he would find himself in a church courtyard. Around him, the graves of those he would never even hope to know sprung up from the ground like spring flowers and outside the gates, the line between the city and the surreal drew heavily across the gravel. They marked the difference between slate and cement, out there and in here. This was a special place and he knew it.

            The further he walked, the more misplaced he felt. And it was good. He knew exactly where he was yet he was lost at the same time.

            The path curved, meandering through the mismatched headstones. It was old, decrepit, cracked, and worn. And it was good. The breaks in the slate allowed flowers to bloom in the summers and in the winters filling with the purity of snow. He followed it dutifully. It was quieter here; he liked it.

            His empty pockets made him lighter and the path guided him to a stone statue, the edges of her robes painted gold. A woman, her arms open as if welcoming him into them, and her platform large enough to allow someone to climb right on up and into the waiting arms. Her plaque read: The Virgin Mary, Mother to the Motherless.

            He climbed right on up.

            And it was good.

~*~*~

            They couldn't let Umbridge know. She had forbidden any professor to leave the school-another Educational Decree. This one was under the guise of keeping the students under control by always having adequate coverage of every adult. Severus and Minerva and all the other professors knew the truth: She could not care less that a despondent teen had run away. Harry was a thorn in her pink-hued side and now that he was gone, she had the order she so greatly wanted. There was no Boy-Who-Lived to defy her and his friends had clamped shut like a concrete grave.

            Even those who had thought him a liar were afraid for the boy. Seamus Finnegan had apologized profusely to Ron and Hermione as stand-ins for Harry; he had known him too long now to not care. Other students were overtly kind to the pair as well, their actions built from the repentance of how they treated the runaway teen.

            ‘The only thing,' Severus thought, ‘that this school is missing is the stench of death.' It was a prolonged funeral for a boy that many had stopped seeing as the Boy-Who-Lived prior to this year. He was just Harry, another student. He had become real to them, a friendly face in the hallways, someone to cheat off of in Defense, another kid to laugh with when a Slytherin tripped on the way to class. But then the third task had happened.

            And everything changed.

             And then he ran away.

            And reality bit down on their fingers and quite suddenly, Harry Potter: Boy-Who-Lived became Harry, just Harry, once again.

            The harsh winds of autumn beat against Severus' winter coat; he was huddled down behind his green and silver scarf, Minerva treading next to him as they tugged their way through the streets of London, golden leaves surrendering to their boots, crushing under the weight they carried. Severus thought of the students over the course of the past week, how subdued they had become with the realization of how they had treated another human being. It mirrored his own conscious. It was funny how it took someone's desperate fleeing to bring out the compassion in people.

            "We'll spilt up here," Minerva said over the wind, "We have an hour now, before she's sure to notice our absence."

            Severus nodded and pulled the photo from his pocket, "Right here in an hour, I'll see you then."

            She nodded brusquely and he knew her emotions were just under the surface. "Lily would be furious," she said and without waiting for a reply, turned and walked off, leaving Severus standing on the corner, a photograph of a smiling student flapping against his hand, trying to escape his grip.

            He swallowed and turned to begin his search in the opposite direction. They had dared to cast only one point me spell when they had jerked it out of Stan Shunpike that he had dropped Harry off in London. Severus and Minerva were no fools, they knew the ministry would be watching them; both were far too deeply in Dumbledore's favor. They also knew that though the other professors wanted to, they could be the only ones who searched for the boy. Too many out and Umbridge would not only get suspicious but if Harry saw them, he might panic and flee.

            They knew Harry was in London. Of that they were sure. They also knew, by way of a stealthy inquiry at Gringotts, that the boy had no money on him except for what he may have had on his person when he ran. Time, as the clichéd phrase went, was of the essence.

            So Severus began what was becoming his and Minerva's daily routine. A different section of the city every day, going from person to person, clasping the photo, and asking, in tense and worried voices, "Have you seen this boy?"

~*~*~

            The smell of the bread was almost too much for him. It curved around his body and slithered into his nose and to his grumbling stomach. The two apples he had nicked from the grocer hours beforehand just didn't cut it and he found himself out front of the bakery, inhaling the sweet scent of freshly baked bread. It was tantalizing. He rubbed his hands together, the dirty gloves almost brown from nearly two weeks on his own.

            For the first few days he had marinated on going back, on giving up and giving in. The hunger hurt, the cold bit, and the loneliness clawed at him. He had nowhere to go, not without any money and the galleons in his pocket were useless here. After the first week, however, a thought settled in his stomach like a balled up fist: he couldn't go back now. It had been too long. And anyway, wasn't he better off here, in the dirty streets of London fending for himself instead of being ridiculed and verbally molested at Hogwarts? Here he was anonymous. He was just another runaway teen, one of many that the world forgot about.

            The door jangled open, the golden bell on top of it tickling the air and allowing another heavy waft of the bread soaked air to hit his nostrils. He licked his lips and moved forward, hiding his grimy face in his scarf and entering the shop. Seven loafs were placed on the counter, waiting to be wrapped and sold. He only needed one.

            The clerk, just like everyone else, ignored the wayward teen as he approached the counter; his back was turned, pulling wrappings from a shelf. The teen took his chance, snatched the bread, and bolted.

            Behind him, he heard the screams, "HEY! HEY! You gotta pay for that!" But he was already around the corner when the clerk burst outside, looking for the thief.

            "Leave it," said the owner, coming to stand next to his clerk, "anyone who steals food doesn't steal for the thrill of it, they steal because they need it."

            The teen never heard this exchange, however. He was too busy running at full speed to his hideout under the bridge. He skidded down the cement, almost landing in the water, and climbed up and onto the ledge underneath the structure, already greedily ripping the bread apart and biting into it; he was ravenous!

            Only when he had eaten his fill and tucked the rest of the loaf into his bag for later, did he wonder what exactly he had turned into.

~*~*~

            Outside the draped windows of the Gryffindor common room, the bright, golden colors of the fall season slowly blanched. The world melded into a flurry of winter light and still, no one had found Harry Potter and the hope of his friends fell like the slick water of an icicle, dripping from the tip and splattering onto the ground, becoming mixed with the snow and barely even discernable from all the white that surrounded it.

            It was deep in winter now and Harry had been on his own, wherever he was, for two months. Of course, that was if he was even still alive. Ron and Hermione knew, from their Christmas break at St. Mungos with Mr. Weasley barely alive, that Death Eaters had been spotted in various areas of London, mostly in shelters that catered to runaway teens, searching for the boy. But, it seemed, even they had given him up for dead.

            Second term felt even more dreadful, the absence of one of their own stinging the students immobile; it wasn't like they could forget, Harry was still making headlines. Umbridge continued to rule the school ruthlessly and it was her malice that drowned the students further. Hogwarts, once a place of laughter and learning, had crumbled.

            In the swollen belly of her walls, the last bit of warmth pulsed inside the chest of Ronald Weasley. He knew Harry was yet alive; he could feel it, sense it, almost reach out and touch it. And Albus Dumbledore knew, by that quantum of hope, that there was no giving in just yet. If Ron still believed, then it was true.

            For Hermione Granger, though, the hope had swelled up and exploded like a dying star. She was grounded in realism and when she had attempted to send Hedwig to him with a letter and the owl returned with it unopened and untouched, she faded. It was only then that her hope began to wilt and by mid-January, she had given up that he was even still alive.

            It hurt. Hermione had never felt a loss of this magnitude and for once it was Ron comforting her, it was Ron reassuring her, it was Ron who was calm and collected. She spent long hours in the owlery, stroking the last gift from Harry unto her, trying with all her might to remember his voice and his laugh. But it seemed, after two months, those memories were fading. She knew his face though. She could close her eyes and see his eyes, large and shining behind his glasses, his smile, his wild hair. The loss affected her more than anyone could even guess. She was convinced that her best friend was dead and to save herself the grief, she pushed the only other best friend she had ever had away from her.

            And though Ron wouldn't give in, wouldn't stop trying to reach her, and he figured he never would stop, he continuously failed.