"Where were you going?"

He turns, "Dad."

"I'm waiting," Dad says, his arms crossed and his face stoic.

It's too late to hide the bulking backpack, but Harry still tries whilst avoiding Severus' gaze. "Just for a walk," he says and clears his throat.

"For a walk, you say." Father drawls, his voice sardonic and his eyes cold, "Sit on the couch,"

"Dad,"

Severus rubs his forehead, his robes are disheveled, covered in floo soot, his hair is partially up in a harried ponytail, "Walk your butt back and sit on the couch," he seethes and Harry's heart skips a beat at the tone.

"I wasn't trying to hurt you, Dad I swear." He drops down on their maroon colored sofa, worn with affectionate use over the years. "I left you a note and everything. You know better than I do that this has to be done,"

Severus regards him in silence and Harry cannot help but fidget under the man's gaze. That always did the job, since childhood, all his father had to do was give him the look, and Harry would melt in shame on the spot.

"Give me your wand," Dad extends his hand, his voice dangerously low, Harry really rather the man shout and scream at him than hear these softly spoken words.

He's really really mad.

Harry doesn't even think about arguing, he reaches into his coat pocket and plops the wand on the man's waiting hand.

"You're not going to take it away, are you?" He asks but Dad doesn't look back at him, he's glaring down at Harry's wand with a ferocity rarely regarded for inanimate objects.

"You won't leave your son all defenseless and--" he cuts himself off. Dad isn't even listening to him.

"I'm sorry," Harry mutters and shrinks back into the couch, and just hopes that it'll magically swallow him. He really wasn't counting on getting caught. This was supposed to be a clean break, he was all packed and ready to leave for weeks now. He and the others had it all planned.

Wait until Severus was away in an Order meeting, leave him THE note, then sneak out and meet up with Draco at the dungeon's entrance before running off to find Ron and Hermione.

Then escape through the gates, to the statue and through the hidden Hogsmeade entrance.

Then apparate away before they're caught, to start the real mission.

He's already cancelled the plan twice. This time Draco is going to kill him.

"Where are your other partners in crime?" His father asks, his eyes still narrowed and trained on Harry's wand, "I would assume Granger and Weasley are in on this ridiculous plot," his eyes trail up to meet Harry's widened gaze. "Who else?"

"Father--"

"Who. Else."

"You taught me not to snitch," it's a really low blow, and right as the words are out of his mouth, Harry knows that Dad isn't gonna let him walk away from them.

"I also didn't teach you to pack up and run away from home, but here we are," Dad's own wand is peeking out of his sleeve, and Harry huffs.

"I'm not a child anymore--."

"You will always be--"

"I'm seventeen!" Harry yells, almost instinctively, and then the words that had been pent up in his chest for so long start flowing out of his mouth, "I have a job to do, a Prophesy to fulfill, just because you don't like it doesn't mean--"

"You're an infant," his dad grits out, "Do you hear me? You just proved me right. Sneaking out, after I specifically asked you not to. Endangering others in a death mission, endangering yourself. You cannot be left to your own devices."

It takes Harry five seconds to discern why his father's anger is so foreign. "You're scared," he breaths.

His father is scared, not mad.

Something churns in his guts. Harry has never seen the man pale with fright. But he is now, he clearly is. His father's eyes are wild, his mouth twisted, his brows drawn together. He's scared for Harry.

"No," Dad says, "I'm not scared, Harry. I'm terrified." He grabs Harry's shoulders, with the boy's wand still clenched in his left hand, "Do you have any idea what it feels like to come home and see your son about to sneak away, when there's a price on his head?" He shakes Harry, "Do you?"

"No."

"Draco was involved as well, wasn't he?"

Harry shrugs and looks away, "Maybe,"

Dad's hands tighten on his shoulders, his wand digs into his flesh forcefully enough to leave a bruise, "You need to thank your lucky stars that I caught you," dad mutters, "They will be dealt with as well, but you." He sighs, "You're just so dead set on giving me a heart attack,"

He feels like a small child. He was five again, and he'd wandered away from Hagrid's hut and into the forest, lost and hungry and afraid.

It took hours until they found him, wandering through the woods and sobbing, rubbing his eyes with mud covered hands. Dad was holding him then as well, his young face pale as chalk, and his hands shaking as Harry cried into his chest.

"I wasn't trying to hurt you," Harry says now. He feels awful. His dad doesn't deserve this. He doesn't deserve Harry and his burdens. All the gray hairs that he had given the man.

Dad stands back, his face stoic and expressionless again, "This is going to stop." He says, "I know you won't, but I will put a stop to this right now. Ruptura!"

"Argh! Ow! Ow! Dad, oh my...dad! What the hell?!"

"A broken leg will keep you less mobile, and more easily out of trouble." The man pockets his wand again and Harry curses. It hurts!

The pain is sharp and jagged, like a sudden pinch that lingers. Harry's leg had never been broken before. "Are you being serious?!"

Dad's face shows no remorse. "Stay still while I fetch you a pain reliever."

Then he just turns and strides to his own room, while Harry rolls back on the couch in pain.

"You just broke my leg!" Harry clutches it with white knuckled hands. "Ouch! Dammit, Dad!"

Dad resurfaces with a lilac vial in his hand, "Stop fussing."

"You broke a bone!" Harry screams, his face is red and his teeth pressed together, "You want me to stop fussing? Dad, for the love of Merlin, stop this. This isn't you!"

"Better a broken leg than your neck." Dad uncorks the vial and pushes it into Harry's mouth, despite the boy's loud protests, "You have no idea what they will do to you if you're captured."

The pain abates to a full throb immediately, but the anger remains, "So I'm just gonna hide in this house all my life?!" He knocks the vial out of the man's hand, "You cannot keep me safe forever. I have a job to do!"

Dad stands with his arms crossed, "Yes, your job is growing up. The war isn't going to end in one day." His eyes narrow, "You need resources, people, war strategy, things too large for that measly backpack of yours. I raised you better than this,"

"You raised me to be brave,"

"Brave," Father snaps, "Not suicidal. I'm not letting him take you away from me." It's unclear whether he means Dumbledore or Voldemort, "I didn't raise you to be slaughtered like a lamb,"

"Neither can live while the other survives."

Those words sour the man's expression, as if Harry had uttered sacrilegious insults and thrown in a few cuss words for good measure.

"This discussion is over," his father snaps, the frown line on his forehead prominent once more. Harry remembers days where his father's face wasn't as lined and wearied with age. The thought prompts a lump in his throat.

"I'll prepare a cot for you here in a moment," dad says, more softly, "First I need to give Draco a piece of my mind,"

From the corner of his eye, Harry sees a shimmering blob. It takes him a moment before he figures that it's one of his friends, under the invisibility cloak, coming to the rescue.

"It wasn't his fault," Harry says but it's half-hearted. It feels as if all energy has been completely sucked out of him by a dementor. His leg isn't helping.

"It is your fault," Severus points out, not crossly, but swiftly, "I'm not undermining that. He's smarter than to let you do things like this. Him and Granger both. They should have known better." There's a pause, "You should have,"

Harry drops his gaze, stares at his hands. "What do you expect me to do?" He whispers.

"Be brave," Dad tells him without hesitation, "Always be brave," he hugs Harry but it feels as if he's clinging onto Harry like an anchor. A physical obstacle in case there's any thoughts of escape. "But don't be a fool about it. The line separating those two is almost transparent, it's not easy to tell whether something is foolish or brave. Learn the difference," he pulls away and grabs Harry's chin, "Because I raised you better,"

The shimmering blob gets closer to them, Hermione's face pops in the air, her eyes are misty, and filled with regret.

"I love you, Dad,"

"I love you more." His dad mutters, and Harry can see the underlying pain in his eyes. He knows. Of course he does. He's Severus Snape.

Harry hugs him again, his chin propped on the man's shoulder, it might be the last time, his eyes meet Hermione's briefly before he clenches them shut. "You're the bravest man I know." He doesn't know how the urge to sob like a small child stays stifled.

He's done it countless times as a child, afraid and small, with his face pressed into his father's shirt, where it was warm and safe and nothing could ever hurt him.

Harry's arms tightens around his dad's neck, his breath catches when he sees the wand in Hermione's hand. She's going to take care of this.

"Somnium!"

Dad's body drops on him like dead weight.

"It took you too long again," she says as Harry lowers his father's body on the couch next to him, his face is lax but Harry feels the tension in his arms.

"He broke my leg," he tells Hermione without looking away, "He wanted me to stay,"

Hermione hesitates, "Do you want to stay?" She asks and Harry wants to be a coward and say yes, he wants to stay with his father, or run away from this war until somebody else takes charge.

But the world isn't run like that, and Harry has to make his father proud. He has to be brave.

"This needs to be done." He says, "I cannot...I cannot live with myself otherwise. Are the others outside already?"

"Waiting." She says as she pushes a stand of hair behind her ear, "Let me heal your leg,"

Once she's done, Harry stays on the couch. Hermione takes the cue, bends down to pick up Harry's luggage and then goes to wait outside, while Harry stares at his father's face.

Gently, he reaches out and toys his wand out of his father's hand, "I'm so sorry, Dad." He says, pressing his lips against the side of Dad's head, in a haphazard goodbye, "I promise I'll make you proud."

He drapes the couch's throw over his father's body. They will be long gone once he wakes.

"I'm sorry it has to be like this, Harry," Hermione says as he walks out of the door.

"Me too, Hermione."

He doesn't look back.