He wishes they had never gone to the Death Day party.  He wishes he was in his bed, covers over his head, darkness pressing down on every side . . .

Except it already is.  Filch’s hands are around his throat, and his toes aren’t even skimming the ground, and black spots are dancing in his eyes and a far off angry roar is growing louder and louder.

And he is on the floor, coughing and spitting out bile, and the angry roar is still there and he squints upward to find that it is Snape.  A Snape so angry that there is colour in his cheeks, and in turn, Filch seems to have lost all his righteous fury as he stares down the angry head of Slytherin.  

“You will never again touch a child of Hogwarts in this manner if you wish to continue your existence,” Snape spits, shoving Filch into the wall with much the same force that the man had choked Harry with.

Snape’s words are so quiet, and Harry realises that they are the only ones who can hear him.  The rest of the throng of students around them look completely lost.

And then Snape is helping him up, gently touching his fingers to the bruises around Harry’s neck.  

He can’t help but flinch, but Snape’s glance of loathing at the crumpled man beside them is enough to assuage his guilt for doing so.

And the throng of students is breaking up, and Snape’s hand is gently--but firmly--around his arm, pulling him away when suddenly somebody shouts behind them.

“But my cat!  He killed her!”  Filch screams, suddenly brave without Snape staring him down.

“Really, Argus?”  Snape turns, but doesn’t let go of Harry.  “The Boy-Who-Lived killed your cat?” He scoffs and they continue walking.

“You weren’t at the feast,” Snape says to him once they are tucked safely away in his quarters.

He shakes his head, but doesn’t speak.  The night has drained him more than he thought possible, and there is a sick feeling in his gut that it isn’t over yet.

Not by a long shot.

“What made you decide that a Deathday party was more preferable than going?”

He sighs and looks at his hands.  The bruise paste that Snape applied when they first got back here is tingling across his neck and back.  It turns out that Filch had slammed him into the wall before choking him, but he doesn’t really remember that.  

“I told my friends that I wanted to go because I had promised Nick,” He whispers.

“But?”

He sighs again and absentmindedly reaches up with his shoulder to wipe at the tears trying to escape his eyes.  

“Halloween is when my parents died.  Halloween is when I got shoved into the Dursleys’ care.”  

His laugh is every bit as bitter as Snape’s current expression.

“Halloween is when I had to learn to forget what it was to be loved.  When I had to forget what hugs felt like, or a full belly, or--,” His throat closes off with phlegm and all that comes out is a sob.

Snape moves to sit next to him again but doesn’t say anything.  

He scoots closer, and Snape has a hand on his hands, and there’s nothing to stop the tears from coming out now.  

“You know what, sir?”  His voice is thick with tears.

“What, Mr Potter?”  Snape’s voice is very very calm.

“You’re the first adult to hug me when I needed it for a really really--,” He swallows convulsively.  “--Long time,” He finishes with a ragged gulp.

He is trembling again, and he knows Snape can feel it, but the admonishment he expects to hear never comes.  

“You told us that you three were coming back to the feast, but there were easier ways back than that corridor.  What were you really doing there?” Snape asks, still close to him.

He bites his lip and rubs his face with his shoulders again, even though they’re both wet already.  

“It wasn’t for mischief,” Snape says, thinking aloud.

He would never have thought of telling anyone that he was hearing voices, but then again, he would never have thought that Snape would be giving out hugs and comfort either.

“I--,” He licks his lips nervously.  “I heard a voice in the hallway.”

Snape frowns, but he doesn’t see it.  

“What was it saying?”  Snape asks after a lengthy pause broken only by his continued sniffling.

He shudders and Snape lets go his hands and reaches an arm around his shoulders to bring him in closer.

“Rip.  And tear.  Kill. It said it was hungry.  But the voice was moving, so we followed it.  Well, I followed it. They couldn’t hear it,” He whispers.

. . .

It was a quandry.  Either, the boy was telling the truth--or at least what he knew of the truth, or else he wasn’t.  It was as simple as that.

Severus doubts that the boy would lie to him now.  Harry’s face is buried in his side, small fingers wrapped around the edge of his robes, seemingly hanging on for dear life.

“And the voice stopped when you found Mrs Norris?”  He asks.

“It said, ‘I smell blood,’ and then it stopped.  And there she was. And Ron said we should go, but I wanted to help, and he started pulling me away just as the feast ended,” Harry says, voice muffled from where his face is pressed into him.

He strongly doubts that the Harry would have made up a story even worse than the lie they had already told him.  But hearing voices wasn’t particularly credible either.  

He was glad he had the truth, but he did wish he knew what to do with it.

He stands, sweating on the raised dueling platform, wand held tight, as the world narrows down to one thing.

Such burning jealousy rips through his core as he watches Snape put a hand on Malfoy’s shoulder as he leans in for a private word.  The jealousy aches so deeply that he almost misses the serpent being conjured in the space between them.

He tries to stop the snake, but receives only horror and shock for his efforts.  

He isn’t aware of leaving, walking aimlessly down into the depths of Hogwarts.  Walking until he can walk no farther, until his feet ache almost as much as his heart does, as his head, as his soul.

It is only then that he allows gravity to pull him down onto the stones of Hogwarts, down where no one goes, down where he can cry without being heard.

When the chill sets in, he doesn’t get up, doesn’t try to warm himself.  

It’s fitting, he thinks somewhat muzzily.   That my desperate hope can also be witness to my death.

He hopes that no one finds him.  

And for a while, no one does.

Unconsciousness drags him under into coldness, into hopelessness, into a yearning so deep that he can taste it.  Lips and fingers turn blue as his blood slows in his body.

It isn’t enough that he should have to fight for Snape’s attention.  But for that attention to be placed so easily on another’s shoulders--one who doesn’t even take the time to appreciate it--strikes him to the core.  

That Malfoy used a snake to attack him is less important.  

That the world has turned against him once more is just another nail in his coffin.

That Snape has helped the world turn against him is part of what makes his heart ache.  

That he is still a freak--an unwanted freak--makes his heart not want to beat anymore.

It is too much.  

Snape curses himself.  Curses himself for the role he must play, and curses himself for causing such abject misery to blossom forth in those green eyes opposite them.  

The panic that is created after Harry reveals himself to be a Parseltongue is almost more than he and the other professors standing by can manage.  It is little surprise to find that the boy--the current ward of Hogwarts--has disappeared into the crowd.

After sending his students back to their rooms, he makes the first sweep of the castle, followed shortly by his fellow heads-of-houses.  Minerva starts at the top, while Flitwick does the same to the other side of the castle. Sprout handles the middle and he is left with the dungeons.  

He wonders too many times what he will find when they finally discover the boy.  Will he be fine? Puzzled that they have searched all over for him?

He would like that to be the case, but he fears something far worse.

The longer it takes to find the child, the more that fear grows within him, until it is all he can feel.

Both Filius and Minerva report that the boy has not been seen on any of the towers open to the air.  That there will be no mangled little boy bodies to clean up at the base of those towers is a relief, but not a long-lived one.  

Pomona reports that the boy has not been seen in infirmary or the kitchen or the library.  

Hagrid is always traversing the grounds, and he knows that the large man will tell him should he come across anything out of the ordinary.  It is a trip he is glad not to make.

The dungeons get colder and colder as he checks every nook and cranny that he can think of to look in.  

As it happens, it is purely accidental that he finds the boy.  He literally trips over him in a dimly lit corridor that has not seen the light of day in some centuries.

Harry still has tear tracks on his cheeks.  This he notes as he gathers the far too quiet, far too cold, child into his arms and makes with great haste back upstairs.  He sends out a patronus to Pomfrey, telling her to alert the others and to meet him at his quarters.  He isn’t certain that the boy will last much longer, and his quarters have the same potions that one would find in infirmary.

I did this.

It hadn’t been intention to cause a riot, to cause the boy to look as though the world were ending in triplicate, but clearly that is the result.

He had thought that the snake--though frightening--would be safe to both his student and to the boy whom he was sworn to protect.

It didn’t escape his notice that he is doing a piss poor job of it, but he prays that it will not be too late to rectify matters.

. . .

“Please wake up, little one,” He prays, sitting next to the bed in his guest bedroom.

Harry’s cold hand is warmer than before, but still limp and lifeless.  The boy had yet to awake, even after being examined by Pomfrey and the other heads-of-houses.

Minerva’s face had been pinched with concern, and she looked about as ancient and careworn as he felt.

Each of his coworkers asked him to relay their messages before leaving his quarters one by one.

“You’ll need sleep too, Severus,” Pomfrey had said, being the last one out the floo.

“I will sleep when I know that he is alive.  I will sleep only after I know he has heard my apology,” He had told her.

Now, sitting stiffly in a chair beside the boy’s bed, he thinks about what he should say.

. . .

There is a strange man sitting opposite him when Harry finally manages to find some sort of consciousness.  It is not Snape. He is no longer in the corridor, and though still chilled, he is beginning to feel warmth pushing on him from every side.

“Who’re you?”  Harry grunts, staring at the man.

The man grins, cold and sharp.

“My name is Salazar Slytherin.  And I have a question to ask of you, young Ward of Hogwarts.”