"Oh for pity's sake Potter! Why must you torment me?"

Severus Snape sent an icy glare at the teenager who sat on his dresser, feet dangling down, one shoelace untied. True, the boy's shoes could not scuff up his fine cherry furniture, even banging on the wood as they were, but the brat was scuffing up his mind, especially at this unholy hour.

A cheeky grin was sent Snape's way, and he scowled at it. "Be gone. I demand you leave me at once."

"I'm not a demon Professor, just Harry." He crossed his arms and tilted his head with amusement as the Professor grumbled.

Severus tried to use his pillow to block out the voice that was grating on his nerves more and more each day, but to no avail. Like clockwork every morning at 5 am, the brat appeared just to pester him.

"You're worse," Severus said, rising from his warm, comfortable bed and magicking a curtain around him for some privacy so he could change.

"Well Ron's still asleep, I can't wake him at this hour can I? I don't need to sleep... it gets boring you know, being awake when everyone else is dreaming. I need some sort of company."

"I'm sure the Bloody Baron or Moaning Myrtle would be happy to occupy your time Potter. There is no reason to grace my quarters with your otherworldly presence, EVER."

"Well you can't do anything about it can you? Just like I could never do anything about you treating me poorly in Potions when I was still alive."

The red curtain quickly vanished and Snape stood in its place, hands on his hips and glaring menacingly at the ghost of Harry Potter, boy-who-lived for 16 years before dying at the hands of Voldemort seven weeks ago in an attack on the castle.

"If you were treated poorly in Potions it was because you were an abysmal student."

"Well maybe you're being haunted because you're an abysmal Professor. Maybe I'll just sit through your classes all day to remind students of that."

"You wouldn't dare."

Harry uncrossed his arms and glared back at the man. He didn't like being treated like this. Being a ghost was not his idea of a life. Not only could he not eat, sleep, or touch things, but he couldn't really interact with his friends. True, he could speak to them, but he couldn't play games, he couldn't ride his broom with Ron, and as more time passed, they seemed to get more and more irritated with him, like he was just an annoyance instead of their friend wanting a piece of their time. Just the other night Ron had asked Harry to leave him alone so he could do his homework, never mind the fact that Harry had died trying to defend the castle and all of his friends, and even Snape!

Harry gave him a final glare and then ran off, sneakers just touching the floor. He refused to float along like the other ghosts did, and did his best not to go through walls unless a door was closed. In Harry's mind, he was still a human being, not a corpse underground rotting somewhere. Well, he didn't know if he was underground really, he could be floating in the lake somewhere, or a stray animal could have eaten him. They hadn't found his body yet and had stopped looking. It was one of Harry's spare time activities now, especially in the middle of the night, to roam the grounds searching for... well, himself, although nobody knew that.

"Finally," Severus huffed, happy to be alone. The child had mentioned his unfair teaching practices before. Was that the only reason he insisted on haunting him at 5 am each and every morning? He sincerely hoped the brat would tire of his games soon, because he did not want to have to find another job.

* * *

Ron and Hermione had seemed to get over Harry's death fairly quickly, especially when he was often sitting right beside them in classes or at mealtimes, chatting Ron up about the Quidditch World Cup or asking Hermione if he could look at her notes for tests since he couldn't physically write any of his own. If he was still going to classes, then he wasn't technically dead, right? He had stopped going to Binn's class though, because now that he was a ghost too, the dead Professor insisted on talking to him and calling on him during lectures.

Ginny however.... Ginny. Harry sighed mentally whenever he saw her. It had been seven weeks and she still cried herself to sleep each night. They'd been dating for over a year now. Being a ghost was a good way to put a fast stop to that. She couldn't marry a ghost. She couldn't have children with a ghost. A ghost couldn't support her. Harry was still trying to wrap his mind around it... he didn't want to let her go. To him they were still dating, but he knew that for her, he had to let her go. There could be no life together for them. She was devastated on both fronts. Not only had she lost Harry to the land of the dead, she had also lost him from the relationship. He wanted to be there for her, but Ron and Hermione had cautioned him to stay away, to give her the space and time she needed to heal.

Harry didn't think anybody knew it, but he often followed Ginny around the castle, hiding from view, just watching her. Professors McGonagall, Dumbledore, and even Snape however, had seen him doing it, always with a lost, sad look on his face. Ginny wasn't the only one that had been devastated by Harry's death.

* * *

Some of the students had come to call Harry's game, ‘Harry Haunting.' The Gryffindors thought it was funny, especially when Harry would come up right behind Ron when he wasn't expecting it, and pass a hand through his ear, making his ear feel icy cold. Harry had also found that if he stood in the fire in the common room that a slight breeze would blow through the room and sometimes push people's homework off the tables. Harry did things like that to be funny around his friends, but Severus Snape considered him an annoyance. He had no idea that Harry did not visit him daily for fun, but rather for comfort. Even Harry wasn't sure why, or what he was looking for, just that he felt like he had to talk to Snape each and every day. Maybe the man would give him some piece of information about a potion, something that could bring him back to life. Maybe it was because Snape had been the one to see him die.

Severus had never bothered to ask what Harry wanted though. There was cursing, ranting, glaring, sneering, and once he threw a book through Harry's chest trying to get him to leave. He'd been receiving twice daily complaints from Draco as well. Potter had taken to sitting in the Slytherin common room right next to Draco whenever the blond was trying to do his homework. He'd make comments about Draco's girlish writing or his horrible note taking skills. Severus understood that the ghost of Potter was irritating to no end, but there was nothing he could do about it and Potter knew it.

There was no magic he could use to banish the brat from certain parts of the castle. There was nothing he could do to send him to the afterlife. Even the Bloody Baron had no effect on Harry, and had taken to ignoring the child with all his might, lest he be pestered right to the afterlife himself.

Presently it was around midnight, and Severus rubbed his eyes, knowing he'd better get to bed now or else he'd have no sleep at all before the brat came to wake him. Assuming the teen's friends were now in bed for the night, he should be out wandering the grounds. He didn't know that Severus knew, though it had taken Severus several late night trips out to the grounds to figure out what the boy was doing. He was searching for his body. For this, Severus did feel saddened. He didn't think Potter would be the kind to be afraid of the afterlife. He was certain when he'd watched the boy fall, that he was dead and gone. It was of no comfort to him or the other staff to know that something was keeping Harry here, pestering people or not. He continued to go to classes, he continued to pine for his still living girlfriend. He did not yet want to acknowledge that he was dead.

Severus went to lay in his bed, but could not fall asleep for a long while yet. In the morning, when Potter woke him with his customary ballad of "Harry Potter was dead... and the whole world mourned..." Severus stared at the dark ceiling and asked quietly, "Did you find your body?"

The ballad stopped immediately, and Severus looked across the dark room to see the faint outline of Harry sitting there, mouth firmly clamped shut.

"No, I don't suppose you have," Severus said, no snark to his voice at all. When he looked up again, Potter had gone. The boy's missing body had baffled them all, Severus especially, who had seen the boy fall from the curse, and disappear into the ground. It was as if he'd fallen through a crack and they couldn't find him again, even after digging twenty feet down into the earth in that spot. Harry Potter was gone, but he was still left behind, and the boy mourned.

* * *

Severus woke up to his alarm clock going off. Hm, that was strange. He glanced at it and saw that it read seven am. In seven weeks he hadn't been allowed to wake up to that clock, but had been woken by Potter reciting his ballad. He glanced warily around the room, and found that Potter was not there. Very strange indeed.

Dressing quickly, he went up to the Great Hall, where he spied Potter sitting by himself, head down, at the far end of Gryffindor table. Weasley and Granger were occupying their usual spots, but were giving worried glances down the table to Harry.

"Something is wrong Severus," Albus said to him as he sat down at the staff table. He nodded towards Harry but Severus' eyes were already there.

"He did not wake me at five am this morning."

"He did not wake me at four."

Severus raised an eyebrow. "He wakes you at four am every day?"

"He comes to my office and sits. The first night... the night he died, the portraits alerted me to the fact that he was there. Sometimes I rise to speak with him, other times I allow him time to think."

"He has become quite the creature of habit," Minerva said then quietly, a sad look in her eyes as she too watched Harry across the hall. "One only needs to know the time of day to know where to look for him. This is very strange. Does anyone know what happened?"

Severus gave a long sigh and Albus and Minerva looked at him. "I asked him yesterday morning if he had found his body yet. He searches for it each night."

"He told you this?" Minerva asked, shocked.

"No. I followed him for several nights. The only place he does not look is the spot where he died. Obviously I have upset him."

"I wonder why that is?" she said.

"Because, he knows it is not there," Albus said then with some finality in his tone.

Harry did not go to classes that day, nor did he show up for the rest of the meals, where he usually sat and spoke to his friends. He failed to make an appearance in Severus' quarters again.

The next morning, Harry was seen at his new spot at Gryffindor table at the very far end, this time with his head down and his hands up over his head, as if he were ducking for cover. He sat there for the remainder of the day, until dinner time when finally Ginny Weasley took her meal down the table to sit next to him, where they didn't speak, but simply existed together, two lost souls, one living, one dead.

On the third day of Harry's new routine of sitting in the Great Hall with his head down, Ron and Hermione sat next to him with Ginny at breakfast. By dinner the rest of the Gryffindor table had moved to sit at that end as well, Harry never moving. Severus was thoughtful for the next few days at how quiet Gryffindor table, and the school in general had gotten. Harry Potter mourned, and so did the school. His ballad was becoming more true each and every day.

That night, Severus followed Harry from the Great Hall out onto the grounds. The boy wandered more than looked. He went neither here nor there, feet taking him aimlessly along the edge of the lake, through a field, and around the back side of the castle where students generally were not allowed to go.

Severus kept his distance until such a time that his watch read five am, and he approached Harry where he stood on a hill looking towards the east where the sun would soon rise.

"It's not here," Harry said after long quiet moments. "I don't know where it is."

"I know." Severus didn't know what to say to the child he had often despised for the past six years, but he felt that at this moment in time, he did not despise him... could not. One could not despise a child in need, ghost or not. It was not possible.

"Isn't there a potion that can bring me back?" Severus could see the glimmer of a ghostly tear pooled in Harry's eyes.

"It seems Mr. Potter, that you believe that one can just wave their wand and everything will be fixed. That is unfortunately not how the world works. All actions have consequences. Now you, for once, will have to feel the full extent of those consequences, unfortunate though they are."

There was no hatred or malice in the man's voice Harry noted, but as he looked up and the breeze blew through his hair, Harry said to him, "It's not the first time I've had to deal with the consequences sir. I just wish I didn't have to deal with the things everybody put on me. It didn't matter where I was, something was always expected of me."

"This war was a burden you should not have had to bare."

"Not just the war," Harry said, the hint of a sunrise starting to come up over the hills. "At home I was expected to put up with whatever they threw at me... I thought it would be different here, but it wasn't." Harry looked straight into Severus' black eyes then. "It was beatings and lack of food there, but I got no less here. People lashing out against me with their words... believing everything they read in the papers... and still expecting me to fight their battles for them."

Severus searched the boy's face. He did not expect to be speechless, but the boy had just revealed that he'd been abused, and that was unexpected.

"It's not here," Harry said again with a sigh, looking back towards the sunrise.

"Your body?" He wasn't sure if the boy had moved on to another subject.

"It's somewhere else, and I think it's still alive."

Severus frowned. "In your heart yes... there is a boy that comes to my quarters every morning to pester me awake, although he has been absent for the last few days."

"No," Harry said, not failing to notice the lighthearted comment the man had unexpectedly thrown at him. "My real body. It's out there somewhere, and it's still alive."

Turning serious again, Severus moved to face the boy fully. "How can you tell?"

Harry looked him in the eyes again, something he wasn't prone to doing when he was alive.

"Because if it was here, I'd be with it sir. I wouldn't be... this." He held up his hands to indicate himself. "I'd want to be with my parents... with people that love me."

"I have never heard of a ghost whose body is yet living." He hated to disappoint the child that he was finally starting to see in whole.

There was silence between them for a few moments, and then Harry asked, "Sir? Magic can't do anything to a ghost, can it?"

"No."

"And a ghost can't interact with the world."

"No."

"I can make wind if I stand in a fire."

Severus stared at him. That was... unusual.

"What do you plan to do?"

Harry's eyes searched in his own, and Harry finally said, "I'm going to fight your war, because it's mine now. The next time you see me, well... either you'll see me alive, or you won't be seeing me, because I'll be dead."

Severus wanted to tell the boy not to go, to stay because he would disappoint his friends, but the child's admission that something was always expected of him continued to ring hollow in his ears.

"I look forward to seeing you, and your body Potter, when they return alive," and it was the truth.

Harry looked at him in awe for a moment, and then seemed bolstered by the man's confidence in him, a confidence that had never been there before.

"I'll see you around sir."

"See to it that you do."

And then Harry was gone, running fast into the sunset. Severus didn't know if he'd ever see the ghost child of his best friend again, but hoped the child would find his peace; a peace he well deserved.

* * *

Something was wrong... very very wrong. Severus could tell because the mark on his arm was searing, far worse than it had ever been before.

Dressing himself quickly with his wand in the darkness of his bedroom where he'd just been violently awoken, Severus flew out the door and up through the castle before running out on the grounds to the nearest boundary where he could apparate.

The pain in his arm did not subside, and in fact had grown worse. Just before apparating Severus sent a patronus to Albus and Minerva alerting them to the situation and potential of another attack on the castle, and then he was gone.

Chaos was what Severus had stumbled into the moment he reappeared, finding himself in a deep wood. It could have been a holiday if he didn't know any better, because explosions were going off above the canopy, and down below there were screams and shouts, curses and hexes being thrown in every direction. Above all the noise was the piteous sound of the dark lord, screaming in agony and anger.

As several death eaters tore past him, being chased by a ball of fire, Severus ran towards the center of the chaos, where trees were falling, rocks were flying through the air at several explosions, and cries of pain rent the night. He was in complete awe. He had no idea what was happening. It was as if the elements themselves were attacking the beast that had tormented the world for so long. It had been a week or more since he had seen Potter, and while the boy still weighed heavily on his mind, as he did so many others, the possibility that this could be caused by him had not yet crossed his mind.

"Severus, help me!" Voldemort cried out, one half of his body on fire but not burning him to a crisp, just torturing him.

"I don't understand what's going on," Severus said, feeling hardly able to speak as he ducked from another explosion that sent rocks in every direction.

"It's Potter! Kill him!"

Severus' brows knit together.

"You have already killed him!" he shouted over the noise. "He's a ghost now!" Not that Severus would kill the boy if he had the chance when he was still alive, and not that he would help the vile man before him now.

"I don't know how he has done it, but he is yet alive!" the man breathed out, falling to his knees with the effort of keeping the fire on him at bay. His eyes clenched shut in pain, and Severus continued to look on in awe.

Several more death eaters ran through the clearing screaming, this time being chased by an enormous boulder flying after them. This was surely hell, he thought.

Suddenly there was a whooshing sound beside him, and Severus turned to see the ghost of Harry standing next to him, looking determined but also in pain.

"You're doing this?" Severus asked in wonderment.

"He has my body. I'm going to get it back."

"I don't understand."

"Neither can live while the other survives," Harry quoted the prophecy, teeth bared in pain. "I survived." The ghost of Harry fell to his knees then too in a similar stance to Voldemort, and Severus looked back and forth between the two of them several times, before he ran towards the vile creature that Harry had fought for so long, wand out and ready, and cast a weakening curse. Voldemort screamed in pain then as the fire engulfed him momentarily before he could put his shield back up. Severus cast the curse again and again, never stopping between enchantments, and finally gave the beast a kick with his foot to push him over, finally distracting him long enough to cast one last weakening curse, and the flames engulfed him, too bright for Severus to look at.

The rest of the chaos around them stopped then. The explosions stopped, the boulders fell, the wild magic dissipated, and the only sound was the burning fire in the night that was Voldemort.

From the circle of charred and ripped up trees around the clearing, several death eaters appeared, most battered and bloody, and they stared at the burning fire that Severus was standing in front of.

Severus searched the clearing for the ghost of Harry, and he was not to be found. His heart sank. No ghost could cause this, no true ghost in any case. He'd had hope that the child was somehow right... would somehow find his way back to the world of the living.

"He's in there," one of the death eaters said then, and Severus looked up to see Lucius Malfoy standing beside him, a large gash in his head staining his blond hair.

"Voldemort?"

Lucius nodded, and Severus noticed he was also holding his badly broken wrist and the remains of his wand, nothing but a few splinters.

"You have killed him."

"Harry killed him," Severus said then, spitting it out at the man who had once, very long ago been his friend. "I only helped."

What came out of Lucius' lips next surprised him however. "Thank you regardless."

Severus stared at him. "You, of all people..."

"Am thankful that he is gone. What we had with him... was no semblance of a life."

As the darkness began to lift on the clearing, the fire began to die down, even as it burned brighter until it was near enough to white, and the remaining death eaters moved in closer to see what had become of the man who had controlled them for so long.

With one final flash of light, the fire was gone, leaving in the center of a large piece of scorched earth, a naked, unmoving boy on his side.

"It- it can't be!" a man proclaimed in shock, smacking himself in the face with his hand.

None of the death eaters moved, too confused to know what to do, because there where Voldemort had died, lay the body of Harry James Potter, the boy who had once lived.

After several long moments of shock, Severus knelt down to feel for a pulse, but the body stirred, startling him and the rest gathered there.

"It may be a trap," Lucius cautioned from somewhere behind him, but Severus wasn't paying attention.

He gently touched the boy's shoulder, and he stirred again, finally cracking his eyes open weakly, and staring up into Severus' black ones.

"Told you I'd find me sir," Harry said, lips chapped and voice cracking, as he tried to give a smile.

At a loss for words, Severus have a strange chuckle, one of disbelief and took several deep breaths. "Is it you?"

"What time is it?"

Severus lifted his watch, and gave a short laugh as he pinched the bridge of his nose and said, "Five am Potter, on the dot. You will be the death of me one day, I swear."

"Harry Potter died, and the whole world mourned... and when he turned out not to be dead, the whole world rejoiced."

"Especially Severus Snape," Severus supplied.

He waved his wand over Harry, and clothing appeared over his dirty, weak body, and then he scooped him up under his knees and arms, standing carefully to face the ring of death eaters. He wasn't sure if they'd allow him to pass or not, but they parted and he took tentative steps forward, one after the other.

"It's the boy who lived.... again," someone whispered as they passed. When they were well away from the others and the scorched area of earth and wild magic, Severus apparated them away, uncertain what would happen when they got back to the castle.

At the castle gates, Severus sent a patronus to the school saying only that he required assistance, and Minerva, Albus, and several other staff met him at the front doors, all quiet as he walked up the steps with the very alive body of Harry James Potter.

"Voldemort is dead," Severus said, for once not afraid to say the beast's name. "Harry killed him with raw magic, and when he died, Harry appeared."

"Severus, that's not possible," Poppy said as he passed by her slowly.

"It's the boy who lived again... neither can live while the other survives." He continued on his way up through the castle and to the Hospital Wing where the staff quickly followed and Poppy examined Harry, determining that while he was severely dehydrated and weak, he was otherwise fine.

"Someone fetch Ginny Weasley," Severus said, and Minerva ran out of the room, ignoring the fact that Severus was suddenly giving orders and Albus was letting him.

"I don't know how this is possible," Poppy kept saying as she examined Harry and cleaned the dirt and ash off his body.

Albus, who had been quiet throughout this, possibly in thought, cleared his throat then, and finally said, "It is odd, isn't it, that a phoenix gave two feathers, only two, and one ended up in each of the wands, one to Harry, one to Tom Riddle. A phoenix of all creatures, who dies in a burst of flame and then becomes new through the ashes."

Severus looked up at that. He had not yet told them that Harry had incinerated Voldemort only to reappear in his place.

"That is what happened, is it not Severus?" The old man was raising his brows.

"Yes."

"We can only venture to guess at what happened eight and a half weeks ago when Tom attacked Harry out on the grounds. I can only say that we know Tom deposited a piece of himself into Harry the night he attacked the Potters those many years ago. It is possible that he unknowingly took a piece of Harry with him as well, or that he took a piece of Harry that night at the graveyard when he took human form again. With Harry nothing more than just a ghost, that piece of Tom died. With a piece of Harry still living in Tom, and somehow still able to interact with his magic in the world, and Tom then dead, all that was left was Harry, remade from the ashes."

"Damn," Severus said, shaking his head. It was too much to wrap his mind around, especially with the chaos that he had witnessed early that morning at four am."

"Can we be sure He-who-must-not-be-named is really dead?" Filius asked then in awe.

Severus pulled up the sleeve on his arm to reveal where Voldemort's mark had once been, and there were gasps to see that it had gone without leaving so much as a blemish.

"He is dead," Albus declared then with finality. Just then the Hospital Wing doors burst open and Ginny Weasley ran past in a blur, throwing herself onto Harry with a large sob. Harry roused from sleep then and wrapped his arms around her weakly. Madam Pomfrey did not have the heart to separate them. Ron and Hermione were still standing in the doorway in shock, and Severus looked up and snorted when he saw that fifty or more students were slowly gathering behind them and peering inside, no one talking, not even a whisper.

"Is it really him Professor?" Hermione asked in a very quiet voice.

"It's me Hermione," Harry said weakly through Ginny's continuing sobs. He gave a small chuckle then and said, "Good thing I didn't miss many of my classes, right?"

Hermione broke into tears then and ran to Harry's side, followed by Ron and half the school, and the Professors let them. It was not everyday that Voldemort was killed for good, though the students didn't seem to care about such a thing at that moment, because they had suddenly and unexpectedly regained a friend, one that they had mourned for not only because he had died, but because he had also survived and had been mourning the loss of himself.

Through the noise and questions and laughs that filled the room, Severus was able to put his hand on Harry's shoulder then, and lean in to whisper, "No more burdens Harry. I promise you that," and if Severus didn't know any better considering how much he knew Harry being alive again meant to him, he would have said the look in the child's eyes spoke volumes as to how much this promise meant.

Harry Potter smiled then, a true smile, and closed his eyes, content. Harry Potter was not dead, and no one was mourning, especially not him. It was a big smile indeed.