It had been the last time Mr. Duncan would take out the skiff for the year. Harry and Callum had wanted to go back to the cove, so his last trip had turned out very much like his first. He was getting better at helping manage the stays, but the wind was bitingly cold and his fingers sometimes went numb.

Snape was waiting for him on the shore, as always. He briefly brought a hand out of the front pocket of his hoodie to wave at him before stuffing it back inside.

"Bit chilled?" Snape asked sarcastically, raising an eyebrow. Harry ducked his head further between his shoulders, nodding once. "Come on, then."

They walked back to the cabin. Snape held the door open, and Harry hurried inside.

"While you were away, I was able to use magic without alerting the trace. I made an area for you to practice the pipes over there."

Harry was touched. He looked to the corner where Snape was pointing, near the bookshelf. A music stand and stool were set up, waiting for him. He grinned. "Thanks."

"My pleasure," Snape said, and Harry finally noticed the glint of triumph in his eyes. "It has silencing charms on it."

Harry snorted but went over to investigate anyway. "So you really put up silencing charms?" Harry asked.

"Did you say something?" Snape asked, raising a hand to his ear. "No? Ah, peace at last." Smirking, he sat down in his armchair and flicked open a journal.

Harry rolled his eyes and pulled out the practice chanter. He ran through his scales a few times, then set it aside for later. He wasn't really in the mood to practice.

Hopping off the stool and walking over to the sitting area, he wondered if Snape would be annoyed at an interruption to his reading.

"Spit it out," Snape said, turning the page.

Godric, he was like a mind reader. Actually, he technically was a mind reader. "I was just, erm, wondering. What's going on back at Hogwarts, and with the Order? Dumbledore hasn't written in a while."

Snape slowly lowered his book. "According to our last communication, they've been leading both the Ministry and the Dark Lord after false trails. They haven't stopped looking for you, and a rather large reward has been offered for any information leading to your capture."

"What if they send my picture to the muggle world?" Harry asked, a swell of horror filling him. "Like with Sirius. I know the village is isolated, but they still get the paper, and some people have a telly."

Snape looked perturbed. "If they haven't done so by now, let us hope that they will not think of it in the future."

Harry was not particularly reassured. "We won't be able to stay here anymore if they do, will we?"

"No." The word was slowly said, with an undertone of displeasure at the idea. "We won't." He looked at Harry closer, then smirked. "How about that haircut?"

Harry backed up a couple of paces. He liked having his hair longer. It was slightly less untidy with the extra weight pulling it down, although it seemed to have compensated by being extra wavy in a wild sort of way.

It didn't have anything to do with the fact that Snape also wore his hair long.

"Nah, I'm good."

"You look like a wild man from the mountains." Snape stood, advancing a pace.

"With long hair, I look a lot different from the pictures the Ministry might put out," he argued. Besides the hair, he had grown a bit and filled out some from a combination of sufficient eating and a more outdoors, active lifestyle. Even his skin had tanned more than usual. The trademark scar, green eyes, and James Potter face hadn't changed. At least this way he might not be instantly recognizable to a stranger. Anyone looking too closely would have no doubt it was him, but he couldn't help that without magic to change his appearance.

Snape stared at him with narrowed eyes before slowly sitting down. Harry wisely kept the smug look off of his face. Not about to test his own fortitude for long, however, he sat on the couch and pulled The Art of War to take notes.

The scratching of his pen served as counterpoint to the crackling in the fireplace and the occasional rustle of paper as Snape turned a page. His skin felt a bit crusty from the saltwater spray, but he was too plain tired to drag out their huge washtub and fill it with water bucket by bucket. He'd do it tomorrow while Snape was at work.

As he laid in bed that night, he struggled to clear his mind. A headache he'd had for several hours—likely a result of too much sun and too little water—was proving harder to ignore in the dark than during evening study.

"Hey, Professor?"

"What."

"If a tree falls in the for—"

"Shut up."

"Okay."

"Occlumency, Harry."

"Yes, sir."

With a smile, Harry turned over and closed his eyes again. He easily settled into meditation breathing, the act almost a reflex after doing so time and again. He immersed himself in his Occluded memories of sailing on the ocean, feeling a smile on his face as he remembered the ocean breeze on his face.

His headache was gone by the time he woke up, which was good, because a pounding head and the bagpipes do not go well together. At his lesson, he managed to play completely through Highland Laddie for the first time on the full pipes, although it definitely wasn’t up to McAullife’s skill level. Completely out of breath by the end of the song, he sat down on the grass to rest. He pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders—it seemed to be getting colder by the day—and listened as McAullife played it again. He paid extra attention to the changes in tone, and how the man’s fingers seemed to flit on and off the chanter for the grace notes. He smiled briefly, wondering if the rest of the village had come to appreciate McAullife’s obvious talent at the instrument after hearing Harry’s less-than-ideal playing.

“Go on with ye,” McAullife said, glancing at a pocketwatch. “Your da will be wondering where you’ve got to.”

“Alright. Thanks!” Harry said, slinging his bag with practice chanter and music books over his shoulder as he sprinted down the hill towards the cabin.

The run left him panting less than it might have a few weeks ago. McAullife’s comments about breath support came back to him. He did seem to get less easily winded these days.

“Set down your things,” Snape said when he came in, “and come over here.” He was holding the parchment in his hands, so Harry scrambled to dump his bag in the practice corner and hurtled over.

“Is it Dumbledore? What does he say? Are the Weasleys alright? What’s Vo—”

"If you would let me speak, you might find out,” Snape snapped.

Harry rolled his eyes and stepped closer, standing on his toes to see over the taller man’s shoulder. Snape sighed exasperatedly and handed it to him. Harry eagerly sat down at the table, ignoring Snape’s comment about self-control or some other such rot. He quickly scanned the page, looking for any alarming words like “dead” or “captured”. Not seeing any, he started more slowly at the top.

It was a long missive, and mostly detailed legal work Dumbledore was doing to get Harry off of the Ministry’s hit list. The appeal failed laughably, so the Order was doing its best to catch the person who sent the dementor after Harry in the first place and demand a retrial based on new evidence. Some of the aurors, like Tonks and Kingsley, were doing their best from the inside, but Fudge had a close eye on the DMLE and even Arthur Weasley.

Even more alarming, the DADA teacher that year was a ministry plant named Delores Umbridge. Dumbledore was very vague about what she was doing, but it was clear that he wasn't pleased with her presence.

"Do you know this Umbridge?" He asked Snape, handing the parchment back with a brief flash of gratitude that he had come to trust Harry enough to share Order information with him.

The sneer on Snape's face told him enough. "She was at your trial. She is undersecretary to the Minister."

Harry thought for a moment, then felt his lip curl (in a very good imitation of Snape's own sneer, if he only knew it) upon remembering the woman next to Fudge at the trial. "Oh. I think I might know who you mean."

Snape gave him a dry look. "Quite." He carried his parchment to set it on his bedside table, grabbing his apron from where it was slung over the privacy screen on his way back. "I might be late today. Don't wait for me to eat."

"Oh. Where are you going?" He asked, hoping his voice didn't betray any of his disappointment. Snape raised an eyebrow as if it hadn't worked, so he gave a half smile and added, "You'll want to have dinner while it's fresh. It's fish."

"Merlin knows I wouldn't want to miss that," Snape said, voice dry. "I won't be very late. Francis asked for my help on a project, but said it'd be quick."

He had a put-out expression on his face that Harry had a sneaking suspicion wasn't quite genuine. He hid a smile at the thought of Snape being dragged into friendships and not really minding it.

"Alright. I'll keep it hot."

"Many thanks," he said wryly, although Harry knew he probably was grateful. He left a moment later, and Harry decided to study first before hauling out the washtub.

With defense in mind after the missive from Dumbledore, he reached for the defense text Snape had brought. He squinted at the title. It wasn't the one Umbridge assigned that year, as that one was apparently "a useless compendium of the most inane, pedantic drivel that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on" that Snape refused to even touch. Before today, that had been the only thing Snape said about defense lessons that year. He found his bookmark and flipped it to the page. He'd gotten farther through this book than any of the ones for his other main classes, as Snape's self-created defense curriculum was made up of several shorter books specializing in different topics. This one was about detecting and breaking curses, and he'd already learned a lot of extra information from their talks about the work that he thought Hermione might be jealous.

Voldemort was back. How were the other students, the ones without a stern professor looking over their shoulders to make sure they learned enough to not immediately die when faced with an enemy, going to survive? Dozens of people were running through his mind. Friends, housemates, teammates. Kids. If Hogwarts didn't prepare them to survive, who would? Not everyone came from a magical household, and not all of those who did came from families with any sort of proficiency in DADA.

Seamus Finnagan. Luna Lovegood. Colin Creevy. Dean Thomas. The Parvati twins. What about them? Who would teach them how to defend themselves? He pushed the book away, feeling sick. He brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, resting his head against his knees and breathing deeply.

Just because they were students, didn't mean they were safe from the violence brewing in the corners of the wizarding world. Cedric Diggory was a prime example.

Harry's breath caught in the back of his throat, and he had to force his fingers to loosen from their white-knuckle grip on his forearms.

He didn't know if he could bear to see another Cedric Diggory. Another student, or ten, or who knows how many, dead before they even had the chance to become part of the world at large.

Snape was teaching him all about defense, but Harry knew it couldn't stop there. He couldn't stop at defending himself.

He and Snape were holding Voldemort below the surface of the black lake, grimly keeping the Dark Wizard from standing up and drawing breath as he trashed, desperate for air.

Would it come to that? Harry, forced to kill one to save everyone else? 

He drew in a rattling breath and forced his knees down, pulling the book toward himself again even as his mind spun in painful circles. This wasn't the first time he'd worried about that very thing, and it was time to focus.

Whatever the outcome of the war was, Harry wasn't going to let anyone else become another Cedric Diggory without putting up one hell of a fight.