The next morning, Harry felt a little empty as he stared at the ceiling. It was very early, barely five. Thoughts of yesterday’s test made his shoulder twitch in embarrassment. The soft warm bed was a nice contrast from the floor of the testing room, so he closed his eyes and drifted there for another hour before finally getting up.

Tea was already set out in the library along with more chocolates. A half hour later, Snape came in and poured himself a cup before settling down with some correspondence at the writing desk. The morning passed in near silence. Harry wrote back to his friends about his hopes now that his application was completed.

At lunch the post arrived with a formal looking envelope that must contain N.E.W.T. results. Harry, with a little trepidation, tore it open. It felt like too much reckoning in too short a time. He flipped past the official documents and request forms for sealed copies to the results themselves, and was relieved to see that there was nothing below an E, which meant his Auror’s application was still alive.

“Five Os and three Es,” Harry said to Snape, who held out his hand to see it. Harry gave it over, heart beating fast.

“An ‘O’ on Potions. Nicely done,” Snape commented. “I saw how hard you worked last year. It is good to see the results were equitable to it.”

“Thank you.”

After a pause Snape said, “It is good to see you doing well.”

“Everyone keeps saying that.” Harry complained, then a little flushed, added, “You’ve made things much easier. And I don’t expect to not need you for a while.”

“If it is the least I can accomplish…” Snape said with a hint of his old snideness.

Harry grinned at it. “I’m sure you’ve done more, but at the moment I’m not in the right mind for making a list.”

“And by no means do you need to make one.”

After lunch Harry reread Penelope’s last letter. The tone sounded a little pleading, making him anxious. She wanted to come for a visit, which he would like, but he had held her off until after his testing was over, which she had not seemed to understand the need for. Harry had wanted to talk to Ron about his situation with Penelope, about her living so far away.

Ron was going to encounter a similar situation with Hermione, unless he could talk his parents into letting him live in London, which seemed unlikely. Trouble was, last time he was at the Burrow, Ginny had been around and he didn’t feel he could broach either topic. He should have Ron over, even though every time he suggested it, Ron suggested somewhere else. Harry was thinking he should insist.

Harry owled both his friends and invited them over for the next evening. Only after the owls had left, did he think to mention the invitation to Snape, who shrugged that he did not care. The parchment piles seemed smaller now, so perhaps Snape would be caught up soon. Harry hoped so. He wanted to ask him for an Apparition lesson.

Harry read the only chapter in the house he could find on Apparition. He even practiced a little in his room, but didn’t manage much, at least, he didn’t seem to have moved when he gave it a go. Worried he might get Splinched and have to be rescued—with all the mortal embarrassment that would entail—he put it aside until he could get some of Snape’s time.

Ron and Hermione came the next evening for dinner. Snape ate early without saying he was going to do this and disappeared into the drawing room. Harry was just following him inside the makeshift office to ask if there was a problem, when the hearth flared from the dining room.

“Your guests are here,” Snape said, his large nose buried in one of those large decorative policy documents.

Harry left it at that and went to greet them. Rather than waste the nice day, they sat outside in the garden while the sun set. “How are things with Penelope?” Hermione asked, leaning back into the ivy growing up the house. She and Ron sat on the stone bench, while Harry sat on a chair pulled out from the library.

“I don’t know,” Harry admitted. He missed her, but perhaps less than he expected after seeing her every day. On the other hand, a lot had been going on the last few weeks. “She doesn’t want me to become an Auror,” he said, pulling that out for something to say.

“I wouldn’t either if it were me,” Hermione pointed out. Ron bumped her arm. “Well, I wouldn’t,” Hermione insisted.

“And she lives too far away. No matter how good I get at Apparition I couldn’t get all the way to Switzerland. She wants to come for a visit now that my testing is over. How are your lessons, Ron, got any farther?”

“Dad hasn’t had time. Said tomorrow, maybe, if you want to come over again.”

“I’d like that. Severus is still really busy.” Harry tried not to wish Snape hadn’t been promoted to deputy headmaster, but he kind of wished he hadn’t.

Hermione sipped her mead and teased, “Harry, discovering parents aren’t all they’re promised to be…”

A tad defensive, Harry said, “He put everything aside to take me to Switzerland.”

Stars were starting to twinkle in the east. Ron rubbed his stomach. “Are we eating here? Not that I’m complaining or anything.”

Harry stood and picked up his chair. “Yeah. Come on inside.”

When they reached the table and sat down, dishes appeared. “Wow,” Ron murmured. “What I wouldn’t give to have an elf.”

Hermione gave him such a disgusted look, Harry wondered why she never criticized him. She looked over and seeing his face said. “Winky is different. She really needed a home.”

“Oh, of course,” Ron said in a patronizing manner, then smiled artificially, apparently to buffer it.

They talked until almost midnight. Yawning, Hermione suggested they should call it a night. Harry watched them depart in the hearth, before heading for the main hall. The lights were all out in the doorways on the ground floor. Upstairs he found Snape awake in his room.

“Your friends are gone?” Snape asked.

Harry nodded. “Yes. Good night, sir.”

“Good night, Harry.”

Harry came home from the Burrow after dinner the next day. The Apparition lessons had gone chaotically with the twins there teasing constantly, and eventually it had broken down into an impromptu Quidditch match with just one side attacking Ron at Keeper and Hermione, who played Beater magically from a comfortable seat on the ground, using her wand to hover and throw the Bludgers around.

Harry picked up the letter for him from Penelope and carried it to his room with a stop at the drawing room to say hello to his guardian. He almost asked when Snape might have time for lessons, but held back seeing the wild-haired look Snape had as he carefully filled out some strange form in red ink. Arrayed before him were jars of yellow and orange ink as well and apparently the lamp had run out of fuel because two large gutted candles were lined up beside the inkwells.

Harry swallowed a sigh and went up to his room. He took off his shoes and opened the letter. Each letter reinforced his sense that Penelope was feeling anxious and this one made it clearer. The letter was written in two parts, he could tell because of the angle of the writing. In the last, shorter, part she said she would visit that week and looked forward to seeing him.

Harry folded up the letter and put it in the beside table drawer with her other ones. He feared she would find Shrewsthorpe a bit quiet in comparison to Bern. They would have to tour London, perhaps, for a day. He had a bad sense that he was missing something with Penelope. With a sigh he collected his pyjamas from the wardrobe and changed for the night, even though it was early. The skin on his arms was red, he noticed, having got too much sun at the Burrow. As he pulled the covers up he felt anxious about her coming. Maybe that was the real reason he had tried to postpone.

Penelope arrived Tuesday afternoon and Harry went into London to meet her at Waterloo. In the crowded station he did not see her right away, not until she tugged on his sleeve from behind. She greeted him with a forceful hug and he took over steering her small trunk off the platform.

“We’ll take the underground to the Leaky Cauldron and take the Floo Network from there—much faster,” Harry informed her.

On the way, after talking about Harry’s tests in more detail, they fell silent until reaching the wizard pub. Everyone greeted Harry warmly with a wave and a few handshakes. Tom came around the bar and introduced himself to Penelope who returned his handshake politely, but stiffly. Harry, not wishing to encounter the likes of Rita Skeeter with Penelope in tow, headed straight for the hearth.

Dinner was quiet. Harry at the beginning thought he caught Snape considering his guest a little more closely than Harry was comfortable with. But after the dinner dishes vanished, Snape sat back with a glass of sherry and appeared relaxed. Harry found himself short of topics, which he had not expected. He considered topics one at a time and discarded them during long silences.

Snape finished his little glass and set it down loudly. “It is a warm evening, perhaps you should go for a nice walk,” he suggested.

Harry jumped at that suggestion. Outside, the air was sultry, and once their eyes adjusted, it was quite pleasant to be out. They turned at the first corner and walked through pools of light cast by the overhead street lights. A dog barked and ran up to the side fence to look at them through the slats, startling them both.

At one corner Penelope announced into the quiet, “I am thinking of looking for a position in London.”

Harry stopped. “You are?” He considered that. “You don’t want to work at the archives in Montreux?” he asked, confused.

“Vell, yes, but…” she began.

Harry felt his anxiety returning from the other night. He started walking again and pieced a question together. “Are you finding anything?”

She reluctantly answered, “Not yet. My training is not so appropriate here.”

“Uh,” Harry began, then said, “I don’t want you to move for my sake.”

She stopped this time. “Why not?” she asked, voice whip-like.

Harry swallowed. Instinct had made him say that, he decided. “Because…” Harry started to say, then decided this required some careful wording.

“I thought you loved me,” Penelope queried flatly.

Harry stiffened at that word, and studied her distressed gaze. Something, a bat or a swift, dodged through the light above them, chasing insects. He took her shoulders in his hands. “I like you a lot—more than I’ve ever liked anyone before, but…I don’t want you to change your whole life around for me.” Harry felt good about that. It was exactly what he wanted to say.

Penelope frowned. “I thought you vould vant me around, no matter vat.”

“I like having you around. I like being with you,” Harry tried to explain. He rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache teasing at him. In the odd light she looked exceptionally saddened. “Let’s talk this over tomorrow, all right? You’ve had a long journey,” he added, remembering his own condition when he had arrived in Bern.

In a brooding silence she followed him back to the house. She was friendly to Snape when they crossed in the hall on the way upstairs to see her settled into the guest room, but she fell silent again when they were alone. She unpacked a bit sloppily as though uncaring of things.

Quietly, Harry said, “I don’t know what to tell you but how I feel.”

“Tomorrow, like you said,” she said bluntly.

Harry backed out and left her alone. In his own room, he dug out a book on dragon lore that Hagrid had given him last term, apparently having no idea that Harry would have no time to read leading up to his N.E.W.T.s, and tried to distract himself with it. It was fortunately an amusing book full of unwise Muggles and wizards and their bad encounters with dragons, like Marvin Murgatroid who believed so faithfully in the dragon repellent he had purchased from a vendor at the harvest fair that he walked straight into the karst caves of Slovenia and got by three stunned dragons before stumbling off an underground cliff when his torch ran out of pitch, just a hundred feet from the horde of gems he was seeking. Fortunately for Marvin he fell into the underground river and was swept out to safety, only singed on the top of his head.

Harry read halfway into the night, then lay awake for the rest. Achy and tired, he rose the next morning and found Penelope, talking pleasantly with Snape over toast. “Shall we go into London today?” Harry asked, assuming she would answer.

“Sure,” she replied.

Snape departed for Hogwarts ahead of them, giving Harry an odd look on his way out. But Harry wasn’t in a position to ask what it meant with Penelope reading the newspaper right across from him.

The day went well enough, albeit quietly. Penelope didn’t speak much, but would answer questions. On the underground on the way to the riverfront and London Bridge, Harry asked, “Are those boys from your school bothering you still?”

“I don’t zee them normally. I rarely visit Geneva and they are actually from Strasbourg.”

That made Harry feel a bit better. They visited the theatre and an old gaol and walked on the bridge which made Harry wish he had worn his cloak as the wind was brisk along the river. Penelope didn’t seem to notice the chill in her nice woolen coat.

It was getting late when they reached the Tower of London. Harry suggested they find someplace for dinner before heading back. Her reply was a shrug, which almost made him say something in anger, but he held back. They had to walk a distance to find a place that looked casual enough, but they found a pub finally and had pies, which Penelope looked a bit dubious about. Harry kept waiting for some kind of comment, but none was forthcoming, nor was much conversation.

When they arrived back at the house in Shrewsthorpe, Harry felt a bit strung thin. Fortunately or unfortunately, Snape was not back from Hogwarts, even though it was rather late for him to be gone still. In the main hall, Harry said, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Maybe dere isn’t anything to say,” she stated flatly, looking over the Celtic-framed mirror mounted under the balcony between the entryway and the door to the dining room. The silvering was giving out along the edges where she drew her finger as she looked it over rather than face him.

“I don’t want you to rearrange your life for me,” Harry repeated. He thought that was pretty straightforward, really.

She spun on him. “Vell, thank you very much,” she said sarcastically. “I just thought I meant more to you than that.”

Harry had no answer to that since he was pretty certain he had not said anything in that regard, or even implied it. “I do like you,” he insisted, then fell silent since he didn’t want to get too argumentative. She stepped by him with an exasperated huff and went upstairs. Harry followed slowly, feeling his pride complaining along the way. At the door to the guest room he was surprised to find her packing. “You aren’t leaving now, are you?” Harry asked.

“Might as vell,” she said through clenched teeth.

“That’s silly. Leave in the morning at least.”

“Silly vas thinking you cared.”

“Aye,” Harry said and hit himself on the forehead. The urge to shout at her almost overtook him, but he forced it down. Calmly, he said, “Leave in the morning, Penelope, please.”

“Dere is an overnight train. I vill take that.”

“All right, but you have to find your way from the Leaky Cauldron to Waterloo,” Harry said. “And it’s getting late.”

“I’ll take a taxi. I am not a clueless witch who cannot manage dis.”

Harry listened to the hardened anger under the words. “I’m sorry,” he said on automatic, then said, “I don’t know why I’m apologizing, since I haven’t done anything that requires it.”

She had her trunk in her hand as she stepped over to him in the doorway. “No,” she said with more than a hint of sarcasm. “Of course not.”

He followed her down to the entryway where she collected her cloak, then to the dining room where she shoved her trunk into the hearth rather forcefully. Harry held out the Floo powder and took a handful himself.

“Vhat are you doing?” she asked.

“I’ll take you to the station,” he said.

“I can manage,” she replied coldly.

He almost said, don’t be silly, again, but stopped himself in time to say, “I want to see you off.”

She pulled out her wand, wielded it with a wave, and stashed it away again. “I can manage on my own.”

“Look…” Harry began.

“You look,” she said, cutting him off. “You hurt me. If you do not vant me here, den there is no point in anything.” Her voice broke at the end but she covered with a dark look. “Certainly, I do not need your chivalrous help to merely catch a train home.”

Harry poured the Floo powder out of his hand back into the canister. It was damp and sticky from his holding it so tightly. He set the canister on the table, held up his empty hand for her to see, again resisting expressing deeper anger by just a hair.

“Goodbye, Harry,” she said and tossed her handful of powder down. With a whoosh she was gone. Harry dropped his hands to his sides and replayed the last few minutes in his mind. He couldn’t figure out what else he should have said or done. He stalked out of the room, kicking the chair out of his path on the way. He dreaded having to explain what had happened when Snape came home.

He couldn’t have told her to find a prospect in London. That sounded monumentally unfair to her since she had something in Switzerland that she wanted to be doing. Harry certainly wouldn’t have dropped his Auror application to move to Switzerland. With a groan he paced the hall once, looking for something to vent his frustration on. There was little here but a rug and a floor lamp that looked antique, although ugly. He turned from it before being tempted to smash it.

The Floo flared in the dining room. Harry stood in the middle of the hall, resisting hoping that Penelope had returned. He stood transfixed until Snape stepped out, looking over a stack of post. He glanced up at Harry, then down, then back up again.

“Something the matter?” Snape asked.

Harry frowned. “Penelope left,” he said simply.

“Ah.”

“Ah? What do you mean, ah?” Harry demanded, finding an outlet for his annoyance and anger.

“Only that. McGonagall and I just had a very, very difficult meeting with two members of the board and so I am going to stop at that.”

Harry watched Snape walk into the drawing room, annoyed that he had not given Harry a better excuse to vent at him. Anger washed over him but he resisted the lamp and growled instead. He wished he knew what he should have done, while at the same time he had no desire to change his mind about what he had said. He stalked to the wall and slapped the unyielding stones with his palm. Snape came back out and stood in the doorway to the drawing room.

“You are going to say you saw this coming,” Harry accused him sharply.

“No. I was not going to say anything,” Snape replied in studious calm.

Snape’s calm aggravated Harry more. “What was I supposed to do?” he demanded loudly. “Argh,” he growled and again slapped his hand on the wall, this time producing a burst of pain. Snape’s steady gaze didn’t waver when Harry turned to him.

Harry desperately sought someplace to channel his frustration. The world twisted and untwisted as though he were transforming Animagically without will. Needing to escape the suddenly cramped hall and breathe, he charged through the entryway and out into the garden.

The road beyond the garden wall was quiet except for a few crickets. Harry stood looking over it, breathing heavily, trying to dampen his burning emotions. The world twisted again and suddenly he was completely free. Anger beat out of him, lifting him from the earth. He gave it free rein then and, without thought to direction, leaned forward into the wind and flew harder.

The dark earth rolled beneath Harry as he soared over it. He flew high, then dipped low. Hills were joyous when he flew low: he couldn’t see beyond them until he pulled up over their crests at the very last moment, making his heart leap. He veered away from pockets of light that marked towns, strings of sliding paired diamonds and rubies that marked roads. He flew toward the blackness of wild countryside, where starlight and the slivered moon provided the only glow. Harry forgot everything except steering away from light and beating his wings in long strokes and coasting on the buffeting air.

Harry flew over countless hills, rose exhilaratingly in the updrafts rising from the edge of as many valleys, flapped until his wings felt leaden and he couldn’t draw enough breath to fill his monstrous lungs. He could no longer hold the Animagus spell reliably and the world kept twisting, the ground rearing up as though to strike him. In a square of lighter pasture, just angled to catch the moonlight, Harry made a desperate bid to land. The steeply-shadowed moonlight made it impossible to properly judge the distance to the ground, nor did he have enough strength left to brake his descent. Dark clover swallowed him up as he struck earth and rolled.

Harry came to himself after a time and moved slowly to check that each of his limbs worked. His side ached horribly when he lifted his shoulder off the damp ground to see above the thick plants surrounding him. A low, collapsing stone wall marked the boundary of the field he lay in. Over the top of a grey rise in the distance he could see the darker angled roof of a structure. Around him, all was dark. He forced a deeper breath into his lungs and staggered to his feet. Things did not look much better once he was upright. He made his way gingerly to the wall and sat down on a large, flat stone that shifted precariously.

Harry looked ’round as a night bird resumed chirping. He felt a little better in one way, having given himself something more pressing to worry about than Penelope, she seemed far less important. He forced in another half breath and considered the hazy landscape. The stars glowed thickly overhead, as dense as he had ever seen them. The constellations nearly unidentifiable in the mélange of the sky and the Milky Way, a river of light, wound across with its own strange hue. Cranking his head around, he found Arcturus, then Polaris. He was pretty sure he’d departed toward the north, so at least he knew which way south lay.

Harry felt for his wand and with relief, found it in his pocket where it belonged. He wondered what he should do. He pondered his predicament for a while in an almost pleasant, semiconscious stupor, until he grew chilled with dewy cold. There wasn’t a chance, given his state, of regaining his Animagus form and flying home, even if he did have a vague direction. If he could Apparate, he’d likely be back home now, he thought with annoyed regret.

Far down the undulating hillside there was a light. Harry could not see from here if it was a street light or a house light. The thought of making his painful way there just to face the disappointment were it to be a street light held him in place. Although if it were a road he could try to flag the Knight Bus. But he had no idea if it traveled such remote routes regularly enough. Wrapping his arms around himself for warmth, Harry imagined that he may have no choice but to try that. Or to walk until he found a house and could use a telephone. This brought up the question of whom he would call. Hermione’s disapproving face loomed up in his mind and he considered that maybe Dean would be a better choice, if Harry had his number memorized. He could probably manage Hermione’s number with some guessing.

Time passed. Harry knew this because the moon was now resting upon the treetops of a small copse, which meant it was only going to get darker. Feeling lightheaded, he shifted down to lean back against the stone pile, rather than upon it. Relaxing, however, required giving in to the spikes of pain in his side, so he sat tense, though warmer out of the wind. He rested his eyes and memories crowded in.

One memory in particular stung hard: the night Remus interrupted their returning Pettigrew to the school by transforming into a werewolf. The memory seemed starker in this near darkness so far from everything. They had come so close to saving Sirius in that moment. Acid regret rose at that, joining with his regret over Penelope, rendering Harry rather miserable.

Yet more lightheaded, despite resting, Harry opened his eyes in the hopes his dizzyness might stabilize. He should have tried sooner for the one close light, he realized with some alarm. He tried to stand, and his knees, which he had not considered injured, felt wholly bruised and complained about taking his weight as though suddenly full of thorns.

Sitting higher on the stone wall again, he gathered his will to make his way across the field, plotting in his mind the exact path through the clover that he would take to get there. Like a countdown before a Quidditch match he willed himself to stand up and go on one, two, three.

Harry stumbled across the field which turned out to be much larger than it looked in the poor light. At the far wall he stopped and leaned on his hand to catch his breath. Something felt to be actively stuck into his side, something large and pointed, a spear or a monstrous tooth. Holding his ribs stable, Harry gingerly lowered himself to the lee side of the wall and fought panic at his predicament.

The tantalizing light didn’t look any closer. Harry closed his eyes and tried to will his body to continue on anyway. Despairing now from the constant hammering cold and pain, Harry opened his eyes and rubbed his knees one at a time just to do something vaguely productive. He rubbed his eyes as his vision became disturbed. A strange red glow had formed around him, around his fingers and face, making it hard to see. Harry reached for his wand and the red disappeared.

Alert now, Harry held his wand at ready and looked around himself, at the amorphous dark stands of trees beyond the field, at the hill tops staggering away to the hazy edge of the sky.

The glow returned, for a shorter time and Harry still couldn’t detect anything nearby, friendly or not.

The next time the glow came and went, a figure landed in the field at a bit of a run. Harry held his wand out and tried to stand. His next thought was that the cold must have penetrated his brain and he was seeing things.

“Severus?” Harry asked in surprise, recognizing Snape approaching in the red glow from his wand.

Snape stepped over to him, carrying two brooms. “You made it much farther than I imagined,” he stated almost apologetically, transferring Harry’s balance from the wall to himself. Harry leaned on him gratefully. “Hurt badly?” Snape asked evenly.

“Not really badly,” Harry said, enjoying the quick warmth of Snape’s support and leaning into it more.

Snape raised his red-tipped wand and looked Harry in the face. “Crash landing?” he asked matter-of-factly.

“A bit of one,” Harry admitted. “How did you find me?”

Snape huffed and said, “Rather complicated spell that I did not have much faith in. McGonagall owled it when I asked her for ideas.”

Harry flushed at the thought that McGonagall knew he had run off.

With a shake Snape changed the spell on his wand to white instead with a Lumos charm. “You look as though you could use a visit to St. Mungo’s.”

“Please. No,” Harry pleaded. “I just want to go home.”

Snape hovered Harry’s broom and spelled it with a Sticking Charm before helping him onto it. “You should not have left it at all in that case,” Snape stated with just a touch of snideness. “We will fly until we are within Apparition distance then Apparate from there. You came a very long way, Harry,” Snape repeated, sounding astounded.

In the main hall of the house where they reappeared, Snape held Harry upright. “I should not have listened to you,” Snape said. “You are significantly injured. That is extremely dangerous in Animagus form—even minor injuries do not necessarily translate safely to human form.”

“I think I crash landed as myself, if that helps. I really don’t want to go to St. Mungo’s,” Harry said, imagining the miserable stay in the crowded waiting room with everyone looking at him and wondering, the rumors after…Rita Skeeter hearing about it all.

Snape held him there in the quiet hall, considering him. “To your room then. I’ll contact a Healer.” He took more of Harry’s weight and eased him toward the stairs.

“Thank you for coming for me,” Harry said as he sat crookedly on his bed, favoring his side which had become knotted around whatever invisible spears were sticking into it. When he rubbed his hair back, he found drooping clover caught there, tangled thoroughly.

Snape bent close and touched his shoulder. “You will be all right while I use the Floo?”

“Yeah,” Harry assured him a little sharply, checking his hair for more debris. “I think I’ll be fine if you don’t call a Healer.”

“You look as though you have cracked a few ribs, at the very least,” Snape said. When Harry just shrugged, Snape stood straight and said, “Feeling better?”

“A bit,” Harry replied quietly. “Lots of other worse worries all of a sudden sort of helps.”

“Hm,” Snape murmured before he turned to leave.

“She wanted to move here. With no prospects,” Harry complained. “I couldn’t let her do that.” Snape turned back before the door and considered him. Harry went on, “I…It wouldn’t be fair to her…I’m not sure I like her that well. I can’t just suddenly start liking her enough to want her around enough to have her do that.” He frowned, everything coming back again except muted by his more immediate pains.

They looked at each other. Harry finally asked, pleading, “What was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t have an answer to that. Perhaps there isn’t one.”

“It wasn’t good either way,” Harry said. “Was I supposed to want her here no matter what?”

“You may have.” When Harry opened his mouth then closed it without speaking, Snape added, “If you didn’t, then I believe you did the right thing. It is much worse to lead someone on. I’ll be right back.”

Harry listened to him go down the stairs. The ticking of the downstairs clock seemed louder after the footsteps faded. The pain was a dull throb now and he cared less at this moment about the world than he ever had. The footsteps returned. Snape stepped in and at Harry’s request, brought over his pyjamas. Harry tossed aside his dewy clothes and put on his bottoms before pulling the duvet around himself against his chilled skin. Snape stood by the door, arms crossed as he considered him.

“I thought you’d be angry,” Harry said.

“I was. Briefly,” Snape replied, eyes narrowing. “Then enough time passed that I asked Winky to fetch you and she informed me you were out of reach.” Speaking slowly, he went on, “It is not magic she is especially gifted with so it was difficult to ascertain just how far that was or if it was just your Animagus magic blocking her own. In any event, failing her assistance, it was not exactly clear how to find you and the longer you were gone, the more likely it seemed that you were unable to return.”

Harry frowned and shifted with a grunt to take the strain off his side. The door knocker sounded downstairs, drawing Snape down to answer it. He reappeared with the Healer in tow.

“Ah, Mr. Potter, we meet again,” the wizard said, removing his pointed hat and folding it into his pocket.

“We do?” Harry asked, squinting in the lamplight at the unfamiliar wizard with his thinning hair emerging from around a broad bald scalp.

“Healer Redletting,” the wizard said pleasantly as he set his worn case down before the bedside stand. “I was here last summer. You had a wizard influenza, bad case, so you may not remember.”

“I remember not feeling well,” Harry admitted.

“Well, at any rate, looks as though you’ve had a bit of an accident, young man.” He bent over his case and pulled out a long wand of cherry wood. “So, what happened?”

Harry explained, “I fell. I was flying and I got too tired and I fell.” The Healer was spelling Harry on the top of the head as he spoke. Then spelled him in the center of his chest, setting off all kinds of colors.

“On a broomstick, then?”

Harry’s wrist was lifted, pulse taken, a spell put on it that made it tingle, then the same with the other. “No.” The Healer ceased and looked at him. “I’m an Animagus,” Harry explained, wishing he could just lie down, that the man would finish already.

Harry lifted his arm over his head on command, which required a great deal of will against the pain, but his ribs were healed with a series of complicated spells. The release from the pain was enough to make his eyes water. The Healer stepped back and appraised him before leaning in and prodding a spot on Harry’s forehead where he hadn’t realized he had been injured.

“Drink these,” the healer commanded after rummaging in his bag for a handful of chipped old bottles. Harry obeyed, taking each sour or bitter potion in turn. He glanced at Snape then, who stood at the end of the bed, gaze inscrutable.

The wizard packed up his things, saying, “If he is lightheaded at all tomorrow or complains of a headache, bring him in right away.” He handed Snape a bill, which he paid in silence. And after an admonishment to not fly for a week or even transform, he said, “Good to see you again, Mr. Potter. Do be more careful.” Then he put his hat back on, tipped it, and left.

Harry shifted back on the bed, relieved to be breathing easily. “I really thought you’d be angry,” Harry said tiredly.

Snape’s lips twitched but it was hard to tell if it was into a smile or a scowl. He stepped a little closer and said, “At the moment I am merely grateful to have retrieved you.”

Harry, reminded all over again that it was good to have someone mature yet clever to rely on, said, “Thanks for that,”

Another twitch of the lips that this time resembled a wry smile. “It is nearly morning and you should rest.”

Harry settled back and adjusted the covers. Trying to piece things together, he asked, “What was the spell you used to find me?”

Snape, who had turned to depart, turned back slowly. “It was a blood spell,” he admitted. “One I did not expect to work. It made you a beacon I could follow at any distance.”

“Aren’t blood spells all dark magic?” Harry asked.

“Almost exclusively.”

“I’m surprised you did that,” Harry said, feeling uneasy.

Snape explained, “I was not going to try it, despite Minerva’s suggesting it, until I found Kali panting and acting wounded and had to assume you had met with something unpleasant. Fortunately, it was merely the ground.”

Harry glanced at the Chimrian, or what he could see of her bundled asleep in the rags at the bottom of her cage. He then stared at the lamplight flickering on the ceiling. He still felt rather uncaring in general, but curious about this. “You didn’t have any of my blood to work with,” he pointed out.

“True. Nor was it convenient to obtain some from a living relative, a requirement of the spell,” Snape said, sounding dry and teacherish.

The sky beyond the window was turning grey, making Harry’s eyes heavy with the prospect of the long, exhaustive day ahead. “So what did you do?”

Snape stepped to the door, prepared to pull it closed behind him. “The only thing I could. Good night, Harry.”

Harry’s brow furrowed at the ceiling, now lit by the dawn. “You couldn’t have used yours, we’re not related,” Harry said.

“No we are not,” he agreed. “Good night.” He closed the door.

Harry’s brow failed to unfurrow as he fell asleep.

At a late breakfast Harry, feeling the clarity of a new day, said, “I’m really sorry about last night.” Snape tilted his head without comment. Harry regretfully went on, “You had to call a Healer, even.”

“Feeling better this morning about the girl?”

“No, just embarrassed.” Harry buttered his toast and crunched it down quickly to satisfy his famished stomach. “Do you think you could find the time to teach me to Apparate?”

“I thought you were under Arthur’s tutelage.”

Harry sighed and buttered another slice. “He isn’t…he doesn’t know how to teach, really. And Ron gets most of his time…not that he shouldn’t,” Harry added quickly. “Should have done it last summer.”

“It did not come up, did it?” Snape said in an odd tone. When Harry looked up questioningly, his parent said, “It was much easier to keep track of you that way.”

“Oh.”

“Easter break, I considered it, but you seemed to need a holiday from learning. I will make time this afternoon. I expect you will catch on quickly, so it should not take long. You would have lost form for lack of practice, in any event. It is not unheard of for young people licensed the summer holiday before seventh year to become woefully out of form and suffer misfortune.”

Snape refilled his quickly consumed coffee, and Harry noticed the bandage wound around his left hand. “You did you use your blood,” Harry said a little accusingly.

“Not precisely. But there was no choice but to make an attempt. Or there was, but it was to leave you to your own devices.” Snape put his left hand back in his lap and sipped his coffee thirstily. “I tried using Kali’s, as you and she must be bound by blood as that is the only way to create a Chimrian with that much empathy. That is actually how I received this wound.” He held up his hand again momentarily, showing the bandage stained at the base of his thumb. “It did alter the spell, quite a bit, but since it worked, I did not take the time to investigate the intricacies rather than fetch you immediately.”

Harry grinned painfully then fell serious. “Dark magic always takes its toll, though. That’s what everyone at Hogwarts always says.”

“I do not plan to make a habit of it,” Snape commented with forced ease. “Nor do I plan to care for your pets any time in the near future.”

That afternoon, Harry stood in the main hall facing Snape, who looked about to launch into a lecture when he stopped and said, “Doesn’t that hurt?” indicating the large purple bruise above Harry’s left eye.

“A bit.”

“Certain you are up for this? It requires rather a lot of concentration, especially in the beginning.”

“Yes,” Harry stated firmly, then wished he didn’t sound so exasperated.

Snape put his hands behind his back casually and began. “Apparition is a form of relocation magic. But since it involves the caster him or herself as target object, it is quite different from other kinds. More hazardous, obviously because one is not working with an object or an animal that can be recovered easily or disposed of if necessary.” He paced a few steps and continued with Harry’s full attention. “Given that the caster is also the castee, some interesting magical capabilities become available, such as self awareness of the transformation at hand. When one is, say, hovering a book, one can only see what the impact of the magic is when the book moves or fails to move, or falls. In this case one senses what is happening instantly, making it possible to adjust instantly. With practice, Apparition truly becomes second nature as a result, unlike most magic.”

He stepped away a few strides. The silence made Harry realize that he had gone for weeks without a regular lecture, which made it very easy to follow every word closely. Snape said, “One could Teleport without Collapsing, the two stages of the spell, but it would require enormous power. Collapsing is modeled many ways by Apparators as everything from crunching down a sheet of parchment into a ball to letting the air out of a balloon.”

“Fred and George imagine being folded into a paper airplane,” Harry commented.

Still lecturing, Snape said, “It does not, in the end, matter what model one uses, just that it involve shrinkage of some kind. Is there a model you prefer?”

Harry wished he knew what his mum and dad had used. The paper airplane sounded odd to Harry although it had worked for Ron. “I’ll try the ball of paper.”

“Close your eyes then. Realize that you are not trying to go anywhere, just remain where you are. That is important at this stage in order to remain in one piece.”

Harry did as he was told and stared at the insides of his eyelids. He imagined balls of paper, then paper airplanes, again tried hard to imagine himself as the ball of paper. He felt like he was missing something. He shifted his feet on the hard floor from standing too long and tried again, more determined this time. A crack! sounded and Harry jumped, only to realize he didn’t have any feet. He fell on his backside as they reappeared.

“Do try not to panic,” Snape said.

Harry wished he had not laughed at Ron and his arms as he stood back up and rubbed his sore bum, re-aggravated badly from injury the previous night.

“Again,” Snape commanded.

Harry tried again. It took less time for the crack! to sound this time and when he opened his eyes he was whole. “How do I not make so much noise?” Harry asked.

“One thing at a time. But one always makes some sound due to air displacement from re-expanding upon arrival.”

After three hours Harry could, for the most part, reliably get from one end of the room to the other and was feeling pretty happy about that. Snape rubbed his brow yet again. “I do not mean to put you off, but after the late night, I am inclined to stop for now.”

Harry, feeling tired as well but still eager, agreed anyway because Snape looked rather worn down and that was Harry’s fault.

Late the next day after a follow up lesson where Harry practiced Apparating in from the back garden, successfully avoiding all walls though with one close call near the lamp, Penelope’s owl arrived with a letter. The owl was so tired that Harry carried it up to his room and gave it Hedwig’s cage. It gratefully ate the cold meat he fed her and put her head under her wing. Hedwig, sitting on Kali’s cage, fluffed herself in annoyance. She had to peck at Kali to stop the Chimrian sniffing at her feet.

“Behave yourselves,” Harry chastised them all, taking Kali out while holding the letter. He sat down on the bed with her climbing around his shoulders as he read.

Penelope started her letter by apologizing for getting so upset but by the end, essentially said she felt it was warranted. Harry took out a quill and parchment and wrote out a reply. Remembering Snape’s words of the night before, Harry explained that he could only be honest about how he felt. He tried to explain that her moving specifically to be near him would not be fair to either of them. Also that his training was reputed to be very difficult and time-consuming and he would not have much time for anyone else for a long while and that this was very important to him even though he liked her very much.

He reread the letter with a kind of sadness at the cruelty of making choices, but didn’t alter it. He folded it up, added a note to the back about sending her owl along when it had recovered, and gave it to Hedwig, who seemed happy to go.

For practice, he Apparated down to the hall and found himself without Kali who, squawking, flew down to meet him. “Sorry,” he said to her as she regained his shoulder.

Harry strode to the doorway of the drawing room where Snape had returned to his parchments. He stood, lost in thought until Snape asked, “Everything all right?” Harry shrugged. “Recovering?” Snape then asked.

“In what way?”

“In any way, but I can truly only assist with the physical. The other you must work out for yourself,” he said, dipping his quill and pulling his sleeve aside as he returned to writing.

Harry watched Snape’s precise writing, lit by the sunlight from the window behind. The nib making a low hollow noise as it moved. Kali chewing on his collar broke him out of circling thoughts this time. He sighed as he turned to go out to work on the garden, just for something to do.