Harry scowled at the parchment before him. With his elbow he flattened the curling end of it and read his Potions essay over again.

Hermione leaned in close and said quietly, “I don’t think boar’s teeth is correct in the second part, nor honeydew correct in the last part.”

“Thanks,” Harry muttered and pulled out his textbooks. He really wanted to be done with it. The temptation to decide it did not matter enough warred with the notion of giving Snape the pleasure of marking him wrong. With the hundredth sigh that evening, he flipped to the relevant chapter. Sixth-year Potions was much more interesting than previous years, but much more tedious as well.

“More tea?” Ron asked him.

Without looking up Harry held out his cup. “Thanks.”

“You shoulda done like I did and not taken anything hard this year,” his friend pointed out, not for the first time.

“Second term exams will be over soon enough and it will get a little easier then, for a little while.” Hermione said this as she packed her books away. She stretched, sat back in her chair and stared at the fire while Ron and Harry bent farther over their assignments.

“Hand your essays forward,” Snape said as he strode into the dungeon classroom the next morning. He glared at the students as they obeyed in silence. “Today and the rest of the term we are going to cover lichen-based potions. These are unique because the lichen will assist us in synthesizing key ingredients of the potion. It is also time-consuming as lichen are sensitive to eutrophication. So the process is very difficult to speed up.”

He paced once in front of the classroom. “Who can tell me the three main species used in potion making?” Hermione raised her hand along with one of the Ravenclaws. “Mr. Potter?” the teacher asked airily even though Harry’s hands were firmly clenched together on the bench top.

Harry cleared his throat to stall, delved into his memories of the readings, and said, “Usnea, Lungwort, and Parmeliacia…aceae.”

“Tantalizingly close, Mr. Potter, but incorrect,” Snape sneered.

Harry rubbed his neck as Dean leaned over and whispered, “It would have been good enough for a Slytherin answer.”

“Five points from Gryffindor, Mr. Thomas, for speaking out of turn.” Snape waved his wand at the blackboard, making the day’s potion instructions appear. He glared at Harry and Dean, daring them to complain. Harry put his head down and copied the board into his notes with a frown.

“Hmf,” Snape murmured, as though he believed their giving in to be pathetic.

“Four more terms,” Harry chanted under his breath. “Or maybe Voldemort will discover he’s a spy before then.”

“Harry!” Hermione whispered sharply.

“You’re coming to our place for Easter holiday, right Harry?” Ron asked as they walked to the Gryffindor tower at the end of the day. He tilted his head back and walked with loose arms. “I’m so so so very much looking forward to getting a break.”

Hermione’s brow furrowed and she poked Ron. “A break from all those easy classes you said Harry should have taken too?”

Ron put an arm out to block Hermione out of their group and the two of them fake fought until Hermione laughed.

“I don’t think Dumbledore is going to let me,” Harry said. “I think my choices are here or the Dursleys. That isn’t a difficult choice, believe me.”

“If not, do you want me to stay here with you?” Ron asked as they reached the staircases.

“I’m sure your mum and dad want to see you,” Harry said.

“They want to see you too.” Ron made a face. “Maybe even more than me.”

“Tell them to convince Dumbledore it’s safe then,” Harry said with little hope.

Ron brightened. “Hey. What if I stayed for two extra days and then went home? There is another train on Sunday.”

“I’d really like that, Ron. We spend all day together everyday, but it is just working, it seems.” Harry said. “It’s not fun things.”

“I’ll owl my folks then and tell ’em,” Ron said.

“I’d love to stay too,” Hermione said, “but my parents really are expecting me for dinner on Sunday with my grandparents. I wouldn’t make it home in time.”

“I appreciate the thought, Hermione,” Harry said. “But we’ll be all right. We are just going to sit around and do nothing…and enjoy every minute of it.”

“Every minute, wizard chess,” Ron said deviously. “We haven’t played all term.”

“One game, maybe, Ron. My ego can’t take more than that.”

“Oh, your ego, Mr. Hero, would be just fine after losing ten in a row,” Ron said, giving Harry a punch on the arm.

Without their fellow students, the castle was quiet enough to hear its old stones shifting in the heat of the day. Harry and Ron grew restless in the strange stillness of the Gryffindor common room.

“Shall we go out on the pitch and toss a Quaffle around?” Ron asked.

Harry was sitting back with his feet up on one of the low tables. “I wouldn’t say that’s ‘doing nothing’.”

Ron tugged on his arm. “Come on, you. You need some sun—you’re almost as pale as I am.”

Brooms in hand, they stepped out onto the lawn. Cloud shadows moved over the grass which danced and raced in the cool breeze. Down at the pitch they took the Quidditch locker off the shelf and removed the Quaffle before stowing it again. As they kicked off, the cold wind bit Harry’s hands, and he wished he had worn gloves.

“Pass it!” Harry shouted, flying out ahead. Ron obliged and soon they were dodging in and out of each other’s flight path, passing the Quaffle back and forth.

“Bad pass!” Ron said as he was forced to scoop the Quaffle off the lawn and kick off again. He passed it behind his back more accurately than Harry had done.

“Show off!” Harry shouted. He did a sloth roll and tossed it back.

“Look who’s talking!” Ron laughed. He made an extra effort to catch that pass, then tossed the Quaffle up and hit it with the tail of his broom over to Harry.

“Not reg!” Harry ducked low and wide to fetch the Quaffle before it could plummet to the ground. “Let me try that.” With a look of deep concentration, Harry tossed the Quaffle straight up and turned the broom one way, then fast the other. His just grazed it on the back swing, sending it into the trees.

“Ugh, I’ll get it,” he said.

Ron laughed as Harry zipped away and landed just at the edge of the forest. He waved an Accio into the trees, then shook his head and tossed up his hands. He dropped his broom and stepped into the darkness. Ron flew a few loops and barrel rolls before heading over there.

“Need help finding it? It could be stuck up in the branches, it isn’t very heavy,” he shouted. He flew low over the tree tops and looked around at them.

“Harry?” he called out after getting no response.

Immediately, Ron dropped to the ground beside Harry’s broom. “Harry!” he shouted. He started to charge into the trees before he realized that because of the bright day, he couldn’t see in past the brush at all. “Harry!” Ron yelled again. “So help me, if you are funning me, I’m going to thrash you.”

A breeze rustling the leaves was all that answered him. Ron took up his broom, kicked off hard, and flew around the side of the castle to Hagrid’s cabin.

“Hagrid!” Ron pounded on the door.

“Whacha wan’?” Hagrid asked, stepping around from the pumpkin patch beside the cabin.

“Harry went into the forest after the Quaffle and he isn’t answering me,” Ron said worriedly and felt a little silly for it.

“Wha’ the hell’d he do tha’ fer?” Hagrid said and opened the door. “Fang!”

“It wasn’t far in, really, just a few trees in,” Ron insisted as he jogged to keep up with Hagrid. “I’m going to kill him myself and leave the rest for Mrs. Norris if he is joking around.”

As they approached the edge of the forest, Ron said, “There, where his broom is.” Ron felt expressly relieved that at least it was still there.

They stepped into the forest at that spot, Fang leading the way. As their eyes adapted they began circling. “Harry!” Hagrid called out with his deep bellow. The boar hound snuffled around a few trees then dug in one spot before he began mewling piteously.

“What is it?” Ron asked, stepping closer to Hagrid.

“Fang?” Hagrid asked. The hound dug more fiercely and sniffed again before releasing another howl. “Didjer see anyone, Ron?”

“No,” Ron answered despairingly. “Harry landed and went in. I flew around a couple of loops and came over to ask if he needed help in case it was stuck in the tree. He didn’t answer.”

“Fang?” Hagrid repeated. The hound stepped over with the quaffle in his great teeth. “This wha’ yeh looking fer?” he asked Ron as he took it from Fang.

“Yes,” Ron said, his voice breaking.

“Best ge’ up ter the castle. Come on.”

“Where is he?”

“Jus’ as well you took your time coming ov’r, I think.”

“Hagrid?” Ron insisted, pained.

“What happened?” Dumbledore asked sharply when Hagrid told him Harry had gone missing. Ron recounted the tale again as accurately as he could, even his stalling, which he badly regretted.

“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t think…” He frowned miserably.

“Hagrid, take Mr. Weasley up to the Gryffindor Tower and meet me back here.” More thoughtfully, he said, “I will need to send you to negotiate with the Centaurs, I think. With what good will come of that.”

“No! I want to help!” Ron cried.

“I am afraid not this time, Mr. Weasley,” Dumbledore said with finality.

Face scrunched up, Ron stomped after Hagrid.

Light footfalls crossed the carpet of moss and needles in the deepest part of the Forbidden Forest. The trees here had stood undisturbed that the weight of their fallen needles smothered the underbrush. Daylight filtered through in a welcoming green and brown light that dappled the soft ground playfully.

Severus Snape took in none of this beauty as he tread with care, wand out and ready. Dumbledore followed behind, their long strides almost perfectly matched. They had come quite a distance looking for the boy. Snape was beginning to believe that if they were looking in the right place, it would be dumb luck.

A tingle passed over him, familiar but very out of place. Instinctively he issued the spell cancellation. Dumbledore came aside and looked at him questioningly. “A Death Eater protective spell,” Snape informed him and shook his head once. “I did not know there was a safe-area spelled here.”

“There is a small abandoned manor ahead,” Dumbledore said. “It would make a fine safe house. And if it is, the Centaurs have indeed fully abandoned us to their own concerns.”

Quietly, Snape said, “It at least makes it more likely we are in the right place.”

“The wrens are precise in their own way,” Dumbledore said as they continued on. “It is just very hard to translate their directions into human terms.” He stopped. A breeze lifted his long hair and beard as he raised his head to listen. “They believe we are going the right way, although they think us little better than oversized lame fledglings about it.” He flicked his wand in impatience and began walking.

“No magic, Albus. At all. It will be detected immediately and we will soon have too much company. Company that will likely find the boy before we do given they will arrive from that direction.”

Dumbledore tucked his wand away and they stepped down along a game trail that led into a ravine.

“I do hope Mr. Potter is worth all this trouble,” Snape breathed in annoyance.

“He is, Severus,” Dumbledore insisted in his grimmest tone.

The going was slow on the muddy track. The early evening light didn’t penetrate into the deep, and the air grew damp and chilled. Unnamed things chittered from a hollow stump. Snape broke off a thick dead sapling to use as a staff for walking or as a weapon, if needed. They made the bottom of the ravine and skirted the gurgling creek to a narrow spot where stones formed a footpath across it. Something large with leathery wings passed through the upper branches of the tree above them.

By the time they reached the far ledge of the ravine, the sun had faded and a bitter wind pressed their cloaks against them.

“Wherever he is we must find him before dark,” Dumbledore said. “The oldest part of the forest harbors more than its share of night creatures, most of them quite hungry.”

Snape set his lips and didn’t comment. He had already shared his opinions regarding irresponsible students earlier in the search.

Another fifteen minutes on, Dumbledore stopped. “There,” he breathed and pointed at the edge of a black robe lying in the leaves, visible around the side of an old tree growing at a steep angle.

Harry rested his head against the rotting wood on the side of the porch of an empty half-collapsed house. The fragile skin of whitewash peeled off and stuck to his cheek. His muddy cloak chilled him, but he didn’t have the strength to adjust it to not press against him so tightly. He closed his eyes. A bird twittered loudly on a nearby branch, startling him.

Harry had felt worse, but not for quite so long. His whole body tingled and ached abominably and his right arm twitched ever so often of its own accord. His brain seemed to be trying to find a way to separate him from the pain, but it wasn’t successful for long, and the pain spiraled in and out, taxing him as if it were starting all over again.

Maybe if he got cold enough he would go numb, but right now the cold only brought more agony. He carefully settled lower to get farther out of the wind and tried to dwell on something other than the blur of desperation, screaming, and pain that constituted the last few hours.

“Dead,” Snape observed as he crouched beside the puffy, blue-faced Crabbe senior. The figure’s hands were frozen as though he had been reaching for something at the moment of death.

“Not a mark on Mr. Goyle,” Dumbledore said as he looked over the other figure that appeared to have simply collapsed limply in that spot.

When he saw Snape going through Crabbe’s pockets, Dumbledore did the same to Goyle.

“Hmf,” he grunted.

Snape turned to him and Dumbledore held up Harry’s wand. Snape gazed at it in dismay and then looked around them more acutely. “That is a good sign, I suppose,” he commented dryly.

“Unless there were more than two of them.”

“Unlikely. These two rarely spent time around anyone but Malfoy, who is no longer readily available for companionship. Which way to the manor house?”

Tucking Harry’s wand away with his own, Dumbledore strode off. “This way.”

Every time Harry started to drift off, a bird would fuss nearby. It was starting to make him feel persecuted. A tiny bird with black stripes on its wings landed on the wood rail near him and tilted its head this way and that. Harry heard it then, footfalls in the underbrush. Forgetting, he felt in his pockets for his wand and grimaced at their emptiness. One of his tormentors probably had it on them. He should have looked, but he couldn’t bear it at the time of his escape and now it was a very long crawl back.

The footfalls stopped. Harry held his breath. The bird chattered again and this time Harry realized with a jolt that it was giving him away.

“Harry?” a warm familiar voice queried over the wind.

Stunned and relieved beyond his numbness, Harry leaned around the wood post and replied, “Professor Dumbledore?”

They charged over to him. Dumbledore crouched beside him and said, “I am ever so pleased to see you, my boy.” He brushed the paint flecks from Harry’s cheek with his age-roughened hands. Many sets of leathery wings flapped overhead, crashing through the branches.

“Severus, see if you can get into this place. It is too late to head back tonight.”

“I could at worst case return for the Thestrals,” Snape suggested as he braved the rotted timbers of the porch.

Dumbledore considered that, glancing up to the treetops. “I do not think you have time for that. And we cannot signal, because at the moment, there is no one to signal to. Harry, do you think you can make it ’til morning? We can have plenty of assistance then.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said and moved to stand up despite not believing it possible moments before. Dumbledore walked him up the single wood step.

“I couldn’t get that open,” Harry commented dully as Snape pushed the door aside. It creaked loudly on its rusty hinges.

“That is because you do not know the password, Mr. Potter,” he stated snidely.

Harry shot him a look of confusion at that. They stepped around the collapsed staircase to the first floor and into a long parlor room where a half-rotted chaise had been pulled up before the hearth. Harry stumbled over his own feet and Dumbledore strained to catch him.

“Severus, give me a hand with him.”

Snape turned from investigating the grate to help lower Harry to the floor. Harry drew in a ragged, painful breath as he leaned back against the torn stuffing of the rotted furniture.

“Potter?” Snape asked.

“Hurts a bit,” Harry reluctantly explained with a wince.

Snape stood and after studying Harry for a time. “I will see if I can safely assess how far it is to the edge of the Apparition barrier. Barring other wards that may be laid in that direction to dissuade casual investigation.” He stalked past Dumbledore. “I will return shortly,” he said briskly.

Dumbledore crouched on the hearth stone and checked the flue before reaching for the scrap wood piled beside the hearth.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Harry said tiredly.

Dumbledore continued with his task, “It is all right, Harry. One would not have expected it to be unsafe a mere two hundred yards from the castle. Had I thought as much, I would not have allowed you outside. Those two must have had no other pressing business to lay in wait as long as they must have.” He stood and looked into the old mugs lining the mantle. “Here we are,” he said as he found flint and a metal plate. He plucked a tuft of the lining of the chaise and boxed it in with scrap wood on the hearth stone. With just a few tries, he had it lit. When the kindling was also burning, he turned to Harry. “Not often, but on occasion it pays to be old.”

Harry grinned lightly at his headmaster through his many aches.

Snape returned, blocking the little light leeching in from the outside. Harry looked up at him approaching and realized how dark it had become after staring into the flames.

“Most impressive, Albus,” Snape said.

“Are we going home?” Harry asked. The persistent throb in his body frightened him now. It felt like a dire warning.

“Harry,” Dumbledore chastised him.

Harry turned his head away, remembering with a twinge that he wasn’t supposed to think of the castle as home at the risk of breaking the protective spell on his aunt’s house.

Snape looked between them curiously before he said, “I will fetch more to burn. If you can find some fresh water to brew these in.” He placed some pieces of bark and a few leaves on the mantle and left again.

Harry’s eyes fell closed and this time no bird interrupted him. He drifted, vaguely aware of shadows moving before the fire, of the fire roaring higher and then banking down again as it consumed its ready fuel. Then the clanking of a pewter mug on the grate. Someone was leaning over him, touching him.

“No,” Harry muttered. In that instant he believed the figure was Goyle incanting yet another Crucio. His right arm twitched as he tried to escape.

“Potter?” Snape prompted sharply. He crouched beside the boy and shook his arm lightly, trying to rouse him. Harry pushed weakly against him and said, “No,” again. Snape grabbed his hand to fend him off and felt the iciness of it. He growled faintly.

“What is it?” Dumbledore asked as he knelt beside the hearthstone.

Snape felt Harry’s forehead and said, “He has slipped into shock, I think.” Moving rapidly now, Snape unhooked Harry’s cloak and pulled it free of him. “No wonder. It is damp through.” He shook his head and tossed the cloak over the chaise to dry. Harry’s torn shirt pulled open, revealing a mottled bruise on his chest. Snape fingered the formally white collar and pulled the shirt aside a little farther. “He needs a Healer, Albus,” Snape stated in an annoyed tone before tugging Harry’s shirt back into place. He turned to Dumbledore expectantly.

“How much time would we have from spell cast to having anyone arriving to investigate?” the old wizard asked.

“Depends. If they come in beyond the edge of the barrier and fly in, some handful of minutes, perhaps as little as a minute. If they have setup an illicit portkey, seconds,” Snape replied. “A safe house this close to Hogwarts would be closely monitored.” He tilted his head. “I expect a portkey to be more likely especially if Crabbe and Goyle’s absence has been noted. An alarm from here would be treated as an attack on the ranks.”

Snape turned and used the corner of his cloak to lift the handle of the pewter mug to put it higher on the flame.“Since no one has already arrived, I expect the pair failed to leave word of their intent. Which is further reliance on dumb luck, Albus.”

Dumbledore shook his bearded head. “I would much prefer to have a diversion in order to depart without further incident. Minerva could arrange one but she is due back at Hogwarts in three hours at the soonest. Until then, something will have to be done for Mr. Potter.”

“No warming spell. No warming potion,” Snape muttered to himself. Glancing back at the low fire burning behind him, he held up his hand to gauge the heat and frowned. After a moment of thought, he growled faintly again. “I know you do not like me, Potter…” he said as lowered himself against the bolster and spread out his rabbit lined cloak before pulling Harry over onto it. With an exasperated sigh, he pulled Harry close to his own body and covered him with the furred surface. Fortunately, Harry seemed beyond caring at this point.

Dumbledore crouched beside them, adjusting the cloak better over Harry. “I’ve always admired this cloak of yours, Severus,” he said vaguely, as he looked over Harry’s unconscious features.

“No magic,” Snape reminded him bluntly. “We are in no position for a fight. Even a short one should, say, your bird deign to rescue us.”

Dumbledore released the edge of the cloak and stood suddenly. “It is most difficult to resist,” he said in frustration. He strode over to the dark windows and looked out, hands clasped behind him.

Snape looked down at the unruly hair of the head resting on his chest. Harry’s right shoulder spasmed for what Snape counted as the fourth time. It indicated more injury, damage to the sympathetic system. He could think of three potions that might help, considered idly whether he had all of the ingredients in his office. He wondered what curse had caused it.

“Potter?” Snape said. He sat upright a little more, causing Harry to gasp. “Can you hear me?” he asked. Dumbledore stepped back over. “I am wondering what spells were used on him,” Snape explained.

Harry opened his eyes. His breathing sounded too loud to his own ears. Someone wanted something.

“Potter? What spells were used on you?”

Dazed and pained, Harry thought back and tried to remember the incantations Crabbe and Goyle had uttered.

“Crucio?” Snape asked.

Harry nodded. “Cryckenblat,” he said dully. “Flamenstraif.” Remembering made him cringe at the memory of his helplessness, so he stopped. The throbbing radiated across his back now. He shifted to try to escape it and found himself held fast, enveloped in Snape’s cloak. He made a noise of distress.

“Perhaps some of the potion?” Dumbledore suggested.

“Potion it is not. More so tea,” Snape stated harshly. “And it needs more time to steep the acid out of the bark.” As Harry’s arm jerked again, he said, “Potter, you are safe at the moment. Do try to remain calm.” Snape sounded as though he were trying for a sneer and failing to reach it.

Harry floated in and out of awareness over the next few minutes. Chills alternated with waves of feeling drastically overheated and suffocated. He imagined he was feverish and lying in his cupboard under the stairs with his Aunt Petunia complaining about the difficulty he was causing. He dreamed he was lying on the Quidditch pitch after falling from his broom, icy rain drenching him, his friends shouting from the stands to warn him of the dark figures hovering threateningly at the perimeter but no one moving to help.

Snape shifted Harry to one side, sending a stab of agony through him. His teacher’s voice cut through the disorientation momentarily. “Do you have the small cup?”

Harry cracked his eyes open and squinted in confusion as Dumbledore used the wide sleeve of his robe to wipe out a cracked piece of gold-laced porcelain. Orange flickered around the old wizard, a pool of light in the oppressive darkness. Reaching into the fire with his hand protected by his sleeve, he pulled out a blackened tankard and poured something from it into the cup half. Snape took this from him and brought it close to Harry.

“Here,” he murmured, pulling Harry upright with an arm around his back.

Snape paused to blow across the hot liquid he held gingerly by the broken edges.

Harry drew in a sharp breath as this scene resonated with a deep memory and drew forth an agonizing longing for a lost parent who had once done the same thing. Bone-cold despair twisted his heart as the cup was pressed against his lips and hot bitter liquid, tasting of the forest, trickled into his mouth.

“A little more,” Snape murmured, sounding very un-Snapelike.

Harry swallowed convulsively and more followed. The warmth of it spread through his chest and stomach. The chill gripping him dissipated in its wake, leaving a hollow behind like a warm Dementor attack.

Harry, too exhausted to hold his head up any longer let it fall against the figure beside him. His chest felt as though someone had put a binding curse around it. The twisting in his heart made his other aches recede to meaninglessness. He drew in a sharp breath against the constriction in his chest, releasing it reluctantly. Cautiously, he drew in another.

“Severus…” Dumbledore said in concern. “That tea…”

“It should not be affecting his breathing,” Snape muttered. He tilted Harry’s neck back and ran his thumb beside his windpipe. Harry fought his grip and twisted to bury his face in Snape’s robe as another sob wracked him. Snape’s arm went lax as realization struck.

“Albus,” Snape said unevenly, “perhaps you should…”

Dumbledore ran his hand over his beard. “I would have grave difficulty resisting using a spell on him.” He shifted to a crouch, just a little closer. “Harry, everything is all right,” he intoned soothingly.

Nothing seemed all right to Harry. He felt as though the room were full of Dementors, that he would feel alone and unhappy forever. The warmth in his stomach became an uncomfortable burn. He focused on that and swallowed hard against the next sob. The robe against his cheek was wet. He raised one oddly clumsy arm to dry his eyes with an arm that felt as though it weighed a hundred pounds. He let it fall.

A palm rested a moment on his forehead. The gesture eased some of the painful tangle inside. As grief released him, so did wakefulness. Harry’s head fell lax as sleep took him.

The persistent twitch of Harry’s arm woke him. His body was warm, his ankles cold and the bottoms of his feet much too hot. A fire burned low nearby. His head rested on something that rose and fell rhythmically with the relentless heartbeat resonating bizarre and dreamily within. Stiff, aching, and strangely half-numb, Harry shifted to free his hand, which was trapped beneath him. Arms tightened around him.

Waking up much faster now, Harry sorted frantically through jumbled memories. Goyle and Crabbe returned first, making his arm spasm in renewed panic. Then he remembered his teachers. He lifted his head and squinted into the red-hued dimness.

“He is awake, Albus,” Snape said from a spot much too close. Harry stiffened at that and tried to sit up, but couldn’t find even a fraction of the necessary strength. “How do you feel?” Snape asked him as he raised them both to a sitting position.

The sharp pain this caused brought the rest of the memories crashing back. Harry trembled at them.

“How much longer, Albus?” Snape asked.

Dumbledore knelt beside the hearthstone and stirred the fire with a forked tree branch. He shook his head. “Too many things are happening at once. It is not possible to organize something significant on such short notice. I myself should already be elsewhere.”

“Perhaps he will drink a little more tea,” Snape suggested.

Dumbledore reached for the tankard, now sitting out of the fire. Harry was very grateful to see that it had been allowed to cool, he didn’t want to repeat the earlier scene. The thought of it made him panicky and breathless.

Snape took the cup and, since Harry had his hands out, started to rest it in his palm. Harry’s hands shook too badly, however. “Let me hold it,” Snape ordered. After Harry finished the cool liquid, Snape set the cup down and took his hand. “Squeeze,” he said sternly. Harry obeyed, realizing how pathetic his grip must be. “Other one,” Snape said as he gripped Harry’s other hand. He sighed. “What spell did they use that caused so much damage to your nerves?”

Harry shook his head. His hours with Crabbe and Goyle had merged into a confused mass. “Pulsata? Repostuna?” Snape guessed. Harry shook his head again. “What happened to Crabbe?” Snape then asked, sounding intensely curious.

Harry frowned and dropped his gaze. Hoarsely, he replied, “I only know how to do two spells without a wand.” He hesitated at the memory.

“And a binding curse is one of them,” Snape stated. Harry nodded. “Around the neck?” Snape asked evenly.

“He was using a burning spell on me, on my legs,” Harry explained, pained by the memory. Crabbe had been working his way up, taunting him with the awful, permanent damage the spell was going to do. “I just wanted him to stop.”

“I was not asking you for justification, by any means,” Snape scolded. “What about Goyle?”

Harry’s glazed eyes stared beyond the hearth. “He saw what happened to Crabbe and he…he started to incant an Avada Kedavra,” Harry explained in an empty voice, then stopped.

“Are you completely immune, Mr. Potter?” Snape asked in disbelief.

Harry shook his head. “I don’t know,” he breathed. “I didn’t let him finish it.” He swallowed and drew out the reluctant memory. “I saw it forming,” he said slowly.

“The curse?” Snape asked in surprise.

“At his feet. It was a disk of green glowing on the forest floor. I didn’t know what to do.” Harry closed his eyes as the sheer desperation of that moment washed through him, as though it was happening this instant. “I slapped my hands down on the ground at his feet and shouted. He exploded in that awful green light. And fell.”

“What did you shout?” Snape asked carefully.

Harry shrugged. “‘No,’ I guess. That’s all I can remember shouting.”

Snape shook his head and turned to Dumbledore, who raised his eyebrow in surprise.

“It is the closest thing to a counter I have heard,” Dumbledore said.

“Leave it to Potter,” Snape said in annoyance.

“He does have an excessive amount of experience with it. Unfortunately.”

Harry looked between them and leaned back against the chaise. His cover had started to slip off, so he wrapped his arms around himself for warmth and shivered.

Snape unhooked his cloak and wrapped it around Harry alone.

“Thanks,” Harry murmured.

Snape leaned over and covered Harry’s legs completely before sitting back with his arms crossed.

“So we wait until morning?” Snape inquired. “That is five hours away.”

Dumbledore didn’t respond.

Harry, happy to be away from Snape, now found a downside to it—he had no place to rest his head. As it grew too heavy to hold up, he had to let his chin fall to his chest, which wasn’t very comfortable.

Rubbing his arms for warmth, Snape said, “I think you are underestimating the boy’s injuries. The longer the delay, the more likely they are to become permanent.”

Harry lifted his head when he heard that and looked from one teacher to the other. They didn’t notice him.

“What do you suggest, Severus?” Dumbledore asked.

“I suggest that I go for the Thestrals. They are native to the forest and would not set off the spell alarm like a broomstick would.”

“That is a very long walk back. I doubt you would make it by daybreak, or at all.”

Snape stood and lifted Harry’s cloak off the chaise. It had almost dried, though it was stiff with mud. Snape draped it over his shoulders anyway and sat back down and huddled toward the hearth. “I was considering the other direction despite not knowing how any wards may be laid. We must be near the edge of the Apparition barrier—that is undoubtedly why this safe house is so located, so as to take advantage of its protection while not being so inconvenient.”

“But you do not know where the edge of the barrier is? Or how far, exactly?” Dumbledore pointed out.

“Not precisely,” Snape admitted.

“Locating it without triggering an alarm would require traveling tangentially to the direction home until outside the safe house’s boundaries. Otherwise you cannot test for the edge of the barrier. It was a new moon yesterday. There is sparse light without magic.”

Frustration in his voice, Snape said, “If the boy is so important to you, we must do something.”

“He is important to all of us, Severus,” Dumbledore said levelly.

Snape ran his fingers through his hair angrily. “I am aware of that—that is why I am willing to go.”

Harry frowned at them and wondered if they talked about him like this often when he wasn’t around. He was used to this from the Dursleys, but that just made it sting more.

Dumbledore stood up and moved to crouch beside Harry, who had been forced to let his head lay back on the moldy stuffing of the chaise. “How critical is he?”

“I do not know,” Snape muttered darkly. “I am not a Healer.”

Dumbledore finally turned his attention to Harry. “How are you feeling?” Dumbledore asked him gently.

Harry shrugged. He couldn’t bear to let Dumbledore down again and say how truly awful he felt.

Snape answered for him. With sharp tones, he said, “So well, he cannot hold his head up, and he has the strength in his hands of an infant.”

Harry couldn’t bring himself to argue.

“Take him up then,” Dumbledore said decisively. He picked up the tankard and tossed the tea over the hot coals. Steam billowed out and the room darkened to pitch black.

“What are we doing, Albus?” Snape asked.

Harry felt a hand grab his arm. With hurried, clumsy movements he managed to hook the borrowed cloak at his neck.

“Take this,” Dumbledore said. Harry couldn’t see what it was, but from the sound, Snape apparently put it in his pocket.

“Albus?” Snape questioned dangerously. He’d been arguing for action but not this, it would seem, whatever this was.

“Get Harry to his feet and get your wand out,” Dumbledore instructed with a calm that seemed inappropriate to the circumstances.

Fearful now, Harry tried desperately to see either of their faces. Only colored explosions swam in his vision as Snape slipped an arm behind him and pulled him upright. “Try to stand,” he ordered, as he pulled Harry’s arm around his shoulder and held him up fast with his left. Harry grabbed a handful of his own cloak against Snape’s back and tried to stop shaking.

“Take hold of the mug,” Dumbledore said. “I will hold the portal open until you are completely through and then I will destroy it so you cannot be followed.”

Snape’s wand hand grasped Harry’s fingers and wrapped them around the handle of the mug. The wooden handle of his wand pressed into the back of Harry’s hand painfully. Dizzy, he leaned heavily against his teacher. The new fear had left him already, burned out from long exposure. He waited with numb patience for whatever was going to happen.

“I will join you when I can,” Dumbledore said, then tapped the pewter with his wand several times as he incanted something under his breath. It rang out loudly, like a bell and Harry’s nerves complained at the sharp noise breaking the stillness. The hook on his navel grabbed hold at the same moment his scar seared, as though he had fallen into the grate and rested it on the coals. Harry cried out and thrashed to free himself. Snape was far stronger and, in the next instant, their feet hit the pavement of an alleyway surrounded by red brick walls.

Harry put his hand to his scar, gasped and tried to double over. “Voldemort!” he breathed. Snape pocketed his wand and used both hands to keep Harry from collapsing.  “You have to go back and help him!” Harry insisted. He pounded on Snape’s chest once. The burning in his scar had eased but it still pulsed ominously. He rubbed it furiously and clenched his eyes shut against the tears forming in them.

“The headmaster can take care of himself,” Snape stated.

“No he can’t. He doesn’t try hard enough,” Harry insisted angrily.

Snape didn’t have an argument for that. Instead he pulled Harry against the grimy brick wall beside them and shushed him. Sounds came from down the alley.

“Thought I heard sumptin’,” a rough voice said. Another low voice grumbled but didn’t argue. A bottle skidded over the pavement and cracked against the brick as footsteps approached.

Snape pulled out his wand and transfigured the other bottles at their feet into long grey rats. The rats skittered down the pavement. Moments later, cries of disgust went up and the footsteps quickly receded. Snape let out a breath. Harry rubbed his scar one last time and let his hand fall.

“Does your scar always hurt so very much when you are near the Dark Lord?” Snape asked.

Harry scoffed. “He just has to think about me and it hurts that much.”

Snape’s brow furrowed at that. He leaned Harry against the wall and used his wand to tap the bricks in a pattern. An archway opened and Snape pushed Harry through it. It closed behind them, leaving them in a dark metal cage with only one small flickering globe lamp in the corner. “I have a casualty,” Snape stated.

The lift shuddered downward, unsettling Harry, who tangled his fingers in the metal mesh behind him to keep from falling. His legs quivered as he tried to get his feet back under himself. Snape bent and took his arm over his shoulder again and hoisted him up to hang limp at his side. After a moment’s deliberation, he simply bent and lifted Harry at the knees as well. The lift stopped. Snape carried him down a short dim corridor and out into the brighter, familiar waiting area. 

The welcomewitch saw them approach and urged the others queued up to move aside. “What happened?” she asked. Harry had his head turned against Snape’s arm, so his lightening scar wasn’t visible.

“He has suffered several hours of torture at the hands of two Death Eaters,” Snape stated.

The welcomewitch pointed to the lifts. “Fourth floor, Healer Shankwell,” she said. “I’ll inform him you’re coming up.” As she turned to the announcing tube behind her, Snape moved to the lifts. On the fourth floor, a middle-aged hospital wizard in lime robes, gestured from a doorway halfway down.

As Snape approached, the Healer took a quick look at the cloak-wrapped bundle in his arms. “Put him down in here.” Snape did as instructed, lowering Harry onto a hard, high bed in a small room down a side hallway. The globed candles floating at the ceiling gathered over them. The Healer and another witch closed in, stripped Harry and pulled a light coverlet over him, revealing for a few moments the bruising on his chest and a series of blistered narrow burns on his legs.

“I’ll get a burn plaster,” the witch said.

“What was used on him?” Shankwell asked.

Snape related the spells he knew then added, “And he was in the wash of a Killing Curse.”

The Healer shook his head and took out his wand. He held it over Harry’s chest and pulled his chin over toward him. “Great Merlin, it’s Harry Potter,” he said in surprise. Harry gave the man a vaguely disgusted look. At that, the wizard suppressed his surprise and tapped Harry’s chest. Tingles ran over Harry, racing to his fingertips and back to the wand. His arm twitched yet again, making him frown in frustration. The Healer put his hand behind Harry’s neck and touched each of his fingertips with his wand.

“Call Versa in,” the Shankwell said to the witch. She set down the cauldron of burn plaster she was stirring and stepped out. Snape eyed it before putting his hands behind his back and stepping farther out of the way.

A few minutes later, two witches returned. The new one was lithe with brown hair down to her knees. She pulled her hair behind her and bent over Harry a long minute. Their eyes met as she studied him closely, her hands skimming just above his skin. “What did you give him for the pain?” she asked.

“A tea of murdock, arrowroot, and new bark,” Snape replied.

“That needs to clear before I can work,” she said. “Get me a Grandine potion,” Versa said.

The wizard, who had been holding the cauldron while the other witch dabbed plaster on his burns, conjured a tray for it and departed. He returned a moment later with a clear liquid that fizzed. “You be needing to drink this,” he said as he stepped beside the bed. With a flick of his wand, the bed lifted Harry’s head and shoulders. Harry grimaced at the bubbles bursting in his face but he drank it all down, then swallowed hard as it bubbled up in his stomach.

Versa pushed him over onto his side. Harry didn’t fight her. Pain pulsed through his limbs so strongly now, he couldn’t consider doing anything beyond clenching his eyes shut and breathing. Fingers ran along his spine, making his arm jump yet again. Versa was talking to him in a low voice, meaningless words of encouragement and pleas for patience. A hand gripped Harry’s left just as the pain surged to the worst yet. He gripped it in return, trying to squeeze the pain out of himself.

A moment later waves of cold and warm rippled through him and what felt like numbness, but was really only normal sensation, settled into him. He sighed in relief. “It was almost too long,” Versa said. “It will be a few days before he recovers fully.” 

Harry thought he could manage if he felt like this. He opened his eyes and discovered with a start that he was clutching Snape’s hand. What he could see of Snape’s expression through his stringy hair looked dark and fierce. Harry pulled his hand free and rolled onto his back. The other witch was dabbing plaster on the last burn on his ankle. They felt much better as well, although the dried mixture tugged uncomfortably when he moved his feet. Another potion was pressed into his hands. As Harry, relieved to have full control of his hands, pulled it toward him, Snape leaned close and looked into the wooden cup.

“Draught of Palidyn,” Shankwell explained. Snape stood straight and didn’t comment. “He’s been very interested in the potions,” the wizard mentioned to Harry.

“He is the Potions Master at Hogwarts,” Harry said between sips of sharp lemony liquid.

“Ah,” Shankwell said. When Harry had finished, the Healer took the cup back and after eyeing Snape thoughtfully, left them alone.

Harry leaned back. He thought he had felt completely better before, but another tingle of relief passed over him from the second potion. Harry moved his feet under the coverlet, feeling the way the plaster gripped at the skin of his shins. “Heard from Dumbledore?” he asked suddenly. 

“No.” Snape’s tone dissuaded further questions.

Harry did not want to meet his gaze and wished he would go away, but not with the same loathing as before, more out of mortal embarrassment.

“Can I leave?” Harry then asked. 

Snape tossed his hair back and raised a brow of surprise at him. “I do not think they can keep you here if you are able to depart under your own power.”

“I’m leaving then,” Harry said and swung his legs to the side, out into the cold air. “Um, do you know where my clothes are?”

Minutes later, after Harry used a crude expulsion charm to get the worst soiling out of his clothes and put them on, they walked down the corridor. He felt like someone had used a feather-light charm on him, so accustomed he was to the draining pain from before. Snape steered him into the room behind the floorwitch, who was dealing with a screaming young child with real rabbit ears that she clutched in her fists.

“Patient of?” the man behind the desk asked. He was pasty-faced with a large mole on his check. He held parchments very close to his eyes to read them.

“Shankwell,” Harry replied.

“Do you have his release form?”

“I’m releasing myself,” Harry said evenly.

The man looked up with a doubtful, derisive expression that turned to shock as he recognized him. “I suppose,” he mumbled, pulled out a parchment and began writing quickly and neatly upon it.

They walked out to the lifts. Shankwell hurried down the corridor toward them as they waited. “You are leaving?” he asked in concern.

“I’m going ho— back to Hogwarts.”

Shankwell huffed. “You Order wizards are impossible.” He stomped off.

Harry slouched. “Yeah,” he muttered, “we Order wizards.”

Snape watched the dial above the lift turn slowly. “You want more of this, Potter?” he sneered.

The lift arrived. A pair of Healers stepped out, deep in conversation. Harry and Snape stepped in. “I want to know what’s going on,” Harry snapped in frustration.

“I fully expect you will be allowed to join when you are of age.”

“Should I live so long,” Harry said.  The doors to the lift had not closed. He looked over the controls in annoyance.

“Why did the headmaster stop you from referring to the school as ‘home?’” Snape asked.

Feeling trapped by the damning requirement of the protective spell Dumbledore put on his Aunt’s house, Harry tugged angrily on the lever for the door. He huffed in frustration and said, “Figure it out for yourself—I always have to.” The doors finally closed reluctantly. Harry gazed though the dual gates as one slid past the other and the lift began to move. Frowning deeply, he murmured to himself, “It means I have no home.”

They used the Floo Network to get to Hogsmeade. The Three Broomsticks where they landed was dark and empty although morning light spread through the windows. The path up to the castle had never seemed longer. As they walked in silence, Harry refused to show any weakness at all which was extra difficult as Snape seemed to be watching him very closely.

By the time they reached the Entrance Hall, Harry’s vision was trying to tunnel in. He rested against the post at the bottom of the stairs. Snape came back down the steps and started to ask something. “Just give me a moment,” Harry insisted. The walk should not have left him so drained, he thought. He took a deep breath and pushed away and put a foot up on the first riser mostly to keep from falling. Snape put a hand out to catch him, should he fall farther. Harry stalked by him, annoyed with himself and the world in general.

The hospital wing was empty when they opened the door. Madame Pomfrey must have been elsewhere as she didn’t step out of her office as she usually did. “Do you have a favorite bed?” Snape asked snidely.

“That one,” Harry answered seriously, pointing to the third one on the right. It had a thicker mattress, he was certain. Beside the bed, he slipped off his shoes and crawled under the covers fully clothed.

“I will locate Madame Pomfrey,” Snape said and turned to leave.

“No hurry,” Harry said, thinking only of a nice long sleep. “But find Dumbledore, maybe?”

“Mr. Potter?” Pomfrey’s voice roused him, seemingly in the next instant. She sounded very concerned. 

Annoyed at being woken, Harry just murmured a greeting and curled up farther. The covers came away—the cool air made his arm spasm. He lay half dozing as she stripped, spelled, and bathed him, muttering about dark wizards and his unfortunate luck as she did so. With growing impatience, Harry ignored her—he wanted nothing more than to return to undisturbed sleep.

Pomfrey touched her wand to Harry’s shoulder blade, causing another spasm. She said, “The central nerve renewal spell didn’t cure the sympathetic damage.”

“Apparently not,” Snape said.

Harry forced himself not to react. He didn’t realize his teacher was still there. “Sedition potion?” Pomfrey suggested. 

Harry pretended that he had fallen back to sleep.

“Frenwaer elixir. It will require about an hour to brew,” Snape said. Harry heard his footsteps recede across the floor.

He must have drifted off then because apparently moments later, Pomfrey was urging him to sit up and drink something from a stone cup. Harry groggily obeyed. Pomfrey was the only one there now, for which he was relieved. 

Harry finished the cup she held for him. “Not bad.” Not only was it not noxious, the potion tasted vaguely like strawberries. Still tired beyond belief, Harry fell back on the bed and curled up on his other side, instantly asleep. 

He woke up to his stomach complaining. Stiff from his muscles to his bones, he sat up and stretched with a groan. Pomfrey came out of her office. “How are you feeling?”

“Famished.” He glanced at the clock above the doors which showed six-ten. “May I go down to dinner?”

She smiled faintly at him as though relieved by his question. “If you feel up to it.”

Harry peered under the bed stand, the usual place for personal things to be stored. A clean set of robes were there.

“Mr. Weasley brought those down for you,” she said as she folded the duvet back neatly into thirds at the end of the bed.

“Where is Ron?”

“He was here for a little while this morning, dear, while you were asleep.”

“Oh,” Harry said, disappointed to have missed him.

“He did not leave willingly. His father had to come and fetch him.”

Dressed, Harry made a good show of walking normally out of the wing. Out in the corridor, he leaned against the wall for a minute until a bout of dizziness passed. He went slower the rest of the way. 

As he stepped inside the Great Hall, Dumbledore looked up and smiled at him from the end of the Hufflepuff table. Harry stopped, wondering what the chances were that anyone would tell him what had happened the night before.

“My dear boy. Good to see you about,” Dumbledore said, gesturing that Harry should join them.

Harry returned the smile grimly and took the last seat on the near end, hesitating just an instant as it meant sitting across from Snape. It was, however, beside Hagrid, which almost balanced out.

An empty plate and utensils appeared before him as he stepped over the bench. Fiercely hungry, he pulled the platter of roast mutton close and served himself a healthy pile of that and cabbage. As he ate, he noticed Snape studying him far too closely. Harry looked up sharply at him and stared back. Snape ignored this and continued watching him between bites. With a growl, Harry completely ignored his teacher instead.

Dumbledore called Harry over as they all stood up when the meal was over. The old wizard put a hand on Harry’s shoulder and leaned down to say, “Madame Pomfrey wants to be certain you return to the hospital wing for the night.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how are you doing?”

Harry shrugged and realized then that his arm spasm had completely disappeared. “Well enough, sir. And how are you?”

“Well enough.”

Harry peered at the old wizard’s bright blue eyes. “How did you manage, sir? I felt Voldemort arrive.” Harry rubbed his scar. “Did you have to fight him?”

“I have many ways to avoid fighting, Harry. Especially a battle I cannot win.”

Harry wanted to repeat what he’d said to Snape about Dumbledore not trying hard enough. But to Dumbledore himself, he couldn’t say it.

Dumbledore patted Harry on the back and said in a voice that was half admonishment and half tease, “I don’t think I need to tell you to stay inside? There is always the bailey if you wish to get some sun. Do try to stay out of trouble.”

The rest of the holiday break slogged by in debilitating quiet. Harry read ahead in all of his subjects, even doing as Hermione did, outlining the chapters on parchments to use for note-taking during class. He wrote back and forth to Ron twice before his friend returned. Ron seemed to think that because Goyle and Crabbe were dead, everything was okay again. Harry could not find the words to explain otherwise and kind of wished Ron just understood.

The first Monday of school term, Harry seriously dreaded Potions. Considering how prepared he was for class, having reread the chapter again the night before, the trepidation felt very strange.

As Snape strode into the classroom, Harry kept his head down over his notes. He stayed that way until the lecture was almost over, when Snape finally called on him to answer a question Dean had failed to. Fortunately, Harry had just been staring at his notes from the reading, the next day’s reading, and knew the answer. 

“Correct…Mr. Potter,” Snape drawled with a hint of surprise.

Malfoy caught Harry’s eye. His look was darker than Harry had ever seen it, utterly malevolent. Harry held the other boy’s gaze for a long time, steady in his own anger. Unexpectedly, Snape stepped down the aisle, blocking Harry’s view of the Slytherin table. Harry raised his gaze to the teacher and Snape gave him a warning look before returning to the front. Harry, insides squirming under that black gaze, returned to bending over his notes.

Students gathered early for D.A. in the Room of Requirement and exchanged rumors about He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Susan Bones stood in a cluster with Cho and a few Fifth Years. Harry wandered over to them while he waited for Hermione and Neville to arrive so that they could work out dividing up the demonstrations. Susan, in surreptitious tones, said, “The D.E. have been quiet lately, according to my aunt. The Ministry is taking credit for scaring them into hiding.” Susan noticed Harry had joined them. “What do you think?” she asked him.

“I usually assume the Ministry has it wrong, which would mean there is another reason for them lying low,” Harry replied.

The other students shuffled nervously. Susan’s news had been the first good news in a long time.

Cho cleared her throat. “Susan, you said you heard the end of a battle had to be cleaned up near Hogwarts over break. But no one’s really said what happened. Did you hear anything more?” When there was no reply she turned to Harry in question, who remembered liking her, but wished she didn’t assume he would know anything.

Ron and Dean came in at that moment, sparing Harry from making an excuse for not answering. He stepped over to them and said hello.

Someone else said, “The Order had a big scheme going over break, I do know that. I didn't think that had anything to do with the school though.”

Ron and Dean gravitated toward the other group, forcing Harry to do the same or walk off on his own. “But something went wrong, I heard,” Cho went on. “Not going to enlighten us, Harry? You were here all break.” When Harry shook his head, she added, “You’ve become as bad as the teachers for keeping things to yourself.”

“Leave him alone,” Ron said.

“I was only kidding him,” Cho said. 

“Don’t kid him about that.”

“It’s all right, Ron.” Harry touched his friend’s arm to calm him down.

“What are we doing today?” Susan asked, cleanly changing the subject.

“Defensive Transfiguration,” Harry said. “Which is hard stuff and we’ll probably spend the rest of the term on it, unless people really don’t like doing it.”

“Like what kinds of transfigurations?” Dean asked.

“Like turning a stone floor into a sheet of ice, for example.” The students made noises of approval at that. Harry went on from the list in his head, “Turning chairs into attack dogs. Ants into tarantulas.”

“Ugh, why would you do that?” Ron exclaimed, grimacing.

“Imagine, Ron,” Harry said, “If you were being chased by a dark wizard with the same phobia as you. Ant hills are everywhere. You could send thousands of tarantulas behind you to slow your pursuer.” Ron shuddered as Harry added, “I admit, that one is a bit of a stretch. We have to look up or work out some that are more useful.”

“Do we also have a charm to turn our shoes into ice boots? That would make the ice one much more useful,” Dean suggested.

“You can work on that,” Harry said. “Teach us that one and any other pairings.”

Neville and Hermione came in with a large group of students. Harry went over to them to discuss the session, grateful to get on with something that felt useful.

Malfoy stalked down the corridor, trailing behind Nott and Parkinson, who formed a kind of honor guard for him. At the top of the grand staircase, the blonde boy spun around on Harry and his friends, his jaw clenched in fury. 

“If you have something to say, Malfoy, get it over with,” Harry challenged, when Malfoy’s mouth worked silently.

Before Malfoy could respond, someone grabbed Harry from behind by the back of his robe. “If you are on your way to lunch, Potter, keep moving,” Snape ordered harshly, releasing Harry immediately with a shove away from Malfoy.

Harry couldn’t stop the wounded look from reaching his eyes as he glanced up at his teacher. Snape raised his chin and turned to his student. “What did I tell you, Mr. Malfoy?”

With hurt pride Malfoy retorted, “I didn’t say anything to him.”

“No invitation to a confrontation,” Snape said, as though repeating himself.

“What?” Malfoy asked him sarcastically. “Don’t want him killing anyone else?”

Every student in the crowded hallway stopped and turned to them. Ron and Hermione shifted in front of Harry. Dean, Ginny and Cho moved in closer as well from the other side of the corridor. Harry stepped sideways to stand behind Hermione so he could see. From Snape’s flat expression, Harry could tell that Malfoy had crossed the line. 

“They got what they deserved,” Ron muttered quietly. Harry poked him hard under his ribs to make him shut up. No one but Harry and Hermione seemed to have heard him.

“My office, Mr. Malfoy,” Snape stated in an eerily level voice. Harry never imagined such a normal tone could sound so menacing. Snape’s eyes narrowed at his student, then he spun on his heel and stalked off with a glance at Harry as he passed. Harry’s heart raced a little, wondering if he were in trouble as well. As soon as the Slytherins had followed Malfoy away, Harry chastised himself for his concern—he shouldn’t care if he were in trouble with the Head of Slytherin House.

The other students in the corridor still mingled as Dean and Ginny offered Harry a few words of support. 

“Who’d he kill?” Justin Finch-Fletchley asked suddenly, loud enough to carry up and down the corridor. The other general murmuring stopped. 

Ron stepped over to the other boy. They were almost the same taller-than-average height. “Two Death Eaters who had abducted him over holiday.”

“What’s the problem with that?” Justin asked.

“Crabbe’s and Goyle’s fathers,” Hermione explained softly.

“That’s why they’re gone, I suppose,” Justin said. “Good riddance to them, really.” He looked at Harry, who wished he felt more defiant—Harry felt raw only, exposed. “Be careful, Harry,” Justin said grimly and stepped away. The other students took this cue and moved along as well.

The new term rolled on. Harry studied quietly during most of his free time. With Quidditch cancelled for security reasons, there wasn’t much else to do. Ron and especially Hermione didn’t interrupt him with games or much conversation—they simply joined him when they found him in either the library or the house common room. Even a month into the new term, Harry found himself obsessing over Potions. He completed his assignments with nearly obsessive care. He found he could not bear the thought of being unable to answer any question that might be sent his way during class.

“Can you quiz me on Potions?” Harry asked Hermione as they sat studying in the common room on a Sunday night. Ron played Wizard chess with Dean as he and Hermione sat before the fire.

“Sure, Harry.” She took out her notes and flipped through them. Quietly, she said, “Harry, are you all right?”

Harry chewed his lip a moment. “Don’t I seem all right?” He really had been working hard to act normally.

She lifted a shoulder in lieu of a shrug. “You are much quieter, and you act differently around Professor Snape.”

Harry hadn’t told them precisely what had happened, just an overview—an almost misleading one, in fact. “He makes me uneasy.”

“He’s always done that. You’ve been downright obedient lately. You do all your assignments. All the readings. You haven’t had detention since Easter. Not once. It’s really odd.” Now that the topic was open, Hermione looked to be going for the truth.

Harry re-stacked his textbooks more neatly beside him. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he stated evenly. He didn’t want to think about how undone he felt. How vulnerable. How if Snape wanted to destroy him, as he had seemed to try to do before, how easy it would be now.

Hermione watched him as he fell silent. Very quietly, she asked, “Did he hurt you, Harry?”

“Who?” When she huffed like a laugh and rolled her eyes, Harry quickly answered, “No.” He felt his face heating up and that bothered him too. 

“You just seem frightened of him, is all. Cowed,” she added as she went back to her notes. “And you are working really hard in his class,” she added as though that were the strangest part of it.

Harry fidgeted with his empty hands before taking up a quill to make it stop. He didn’t reply. She waited a long time, as though to give him a chance to speak, before she started quizzing him on the next few Potions readings.

Sleep became more elusive for Harry. Some nights shadowy dreams where he was being chased woke him. Other nights his parents called to him as he searched the Forbidden Forest for them. Some nights he didn’t remember dreaming, just found himself awake and far too alert and wired to sleep, despite his exhaustion. Eventually, Harry would simply get up, collect his books, and head down to the common room.

One such evening after turning up the lamps, Harry settled into the chair in the corner and pulled out his Transfiguration essay, which was due the following afternoon. He read it over, then read over the chapters and his notes. Then read over the essay again, fixing a few minor things that he now noticed. He considered copying it out again, just to have something to do, even though it didn’t have that many cross-outs.

“Still working on something?” Ron’s voice came from the stairway to the boy’s dormitory.

“Not really,” Harry replied. “I can’t sleep.”

Ron pulled his dressing gown around himself tighter and tied it as he came down the steps. “Having nightmares?”

Harry put his essay and books away and sat back in the worn, overstuffed chair. “Sometimes. Sometimes, I just wake up in the middle of the night and there isn’t a chance of going back to sleep.”

With a groan Ron sat in the chair beside Harry’s. “You never told me what really happened over break,” Ron said. “That have anything to do with it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You looked a mess when they finally let me see you. Couldn’t believe that you’d been to St. Mungo’s already.”

“They tortured me for hours,” Harry said.

“I wanted to stay,” Ron said in an frustrated tone. “I didn’t talk to Dad all break I was so angry with him for making me leave.” Ron fidgeted with his fingers. “Is that why you’ve been so cowed since then.”

“You think so, too? Hermione said that the other day.”

“You killed them in the end, doesn’t that make it all right again?”

“No.”

Ron leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “Then nothing will.” Harry frowned at that and pulled out his Herbology textbook. “You’ve turned into Hermione, you know,” Ron said.

Harry scoffed at that.

“No, it’s true. She said yesterday you are getting almost the same marks as she is now. You haven’t done anything against the rules. Not one thing. You aren’t as much fun, anymore, you know,” Ron ended lightly, teasing but not.

Harry frowned. “I’m not here to have fun anymore. I’m here to survive.”

“Merlin, Harry,” Ron breathed.  He leaned forward in his chair.  “Come on, let’s go wander around the castle, see what we can stir up.” At Harry’s dubious look, he amended, “We’ll just go down to the library then. Anything, Harry. You aren’t going to sleep anyway.”

“Don’t you need to sleep?” Harry pointed out.

“I sleep every night. I’ll make up for it tomorrow.”

“I envy you, Ron. I really do,” Harry murmured.

“I didn’t say that to rub it in,” Ron said quickly. He stood up and put Harry’s book away in his bag and flipped it closed. “Come on.” He tugged at Harry’s arm. “Just a walk around the fourth floor. I’m a prefect, we’ll just say I felt like taking a look around and brought you along.”

“Then we won’t be breaking any rules,” Harry pointed out.

Ron sighed. “You’re worrying me, Harry. Come on. Late night snack then. Dobby will be thrilled to see you.”

That got Harry moving. In their pyjamas and robes, they stepped through the portrait hole and into the silent corridor. “I really love it when it is quiet like this,” Ron said, “like we have the whole, huge place to ourselves.”

They didn’t encounter anyone on the way down to the kitchens. Only a few portraits paid them any heed and none of them tried to talk to them. In the kitchen, the house-elf sitting before the fire went and fetched Dobby for them. 

“Harry Potter is visiting Dobby!” the elf said in greeting, eyes wide and blinking in the bright firelight.

“How are you doing, Dobby?” Harry asked.

“Dobby is very well, Master Harry. Would Master like a seat?” he asked, gesturing at the very low bench and table. Food began arriving as they settled in. Ron gave Harry a look of victory as a plate of cold chicken wings was set before them.

“Have some mashed potatoes,” Ron said, serving Harry a huge pile. “Mum swears they make you sleep better.”

Harry watched Ron eat, trying to suppress his tired jealousy at the notion of a caring mum and the luxury of ignoring one’s father for an entire week. Dobby distracted him as he slid onto the bench beside Harry and leaned close. Conspiratorially, the house-elf said, “Bad things is happening, Master Harry.”

“I know, Dobby,” Harry said as he pushed his potatoes around with his fork.

“Worse things,” Dobby insisted in his squeaky whisper. “There is talking that He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named means to kill Master Harry. Soon.” 

Harry frowned. Ron breathed out loudly. “Guess this wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had,” he said, glaring at Dobby.

Dobby tugged frantically on Harry’s sleeve. “They says He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named has found out a secret.”

Harry froze. “How?” he asked sharply. He turned to the house-elf and grabbed the front of his tea-towel, just around the Hogwarts seal. “How did he learn it?”

“He is capturing a wizard who knows.”

“Does Dumbledore know this?” Harry demanded.

“Yes, Master.”

Harry tossed down his fork with loud clang against his plate. The other elves who were hovering nearby, in case anything else was needed, backed up a few steps. “Wouldn’t bother telling me, would he?” Harry spat bitterly.

“What are you on about?” Ron asked, sounding wary of the answer.

Harry stared into the fire for a long time. He felt betrayed all over again. With a loud scrap of the bench on the floor, Harry stood up. “Let’s go.”

“You do keep as many secrets as they do, you know,” Ron said. “You never told them you were hearing the Basilisk. You never tell them when you are having visions or dreams. You haven’t told me what happened over break or about this thing Dobby is on about.”

“You want to hear all of it?” Harry shouted. “You want to be as sleepless as I am?”

Ron dejectedly dropped the wing he was gnawing on back onto his plate and stood up. “I want to help,” he said firmly. “So does Hermione, but neither of us have any idea what we can do.”

After a long moment Harry turned to the elf. “Dobby, can you leave us alone, please? Take the others with you?”

“Yes, Master. Dobby is sorry, Master.”

“Don’t be, Dobby. I needed to know what you told me, even if no one else thinks I do.”

When they were alone, Harry sat again and drank down his pumpkin juice. His stomach felt like it had filled with acid and the juice helped a lot. “The prophecy is the secret Dobby is referring to,” Harry said.

“It was lost. Neville broke it,” Ron said.

“No. The person who recorded it still remembered it. That was Dumbledore. Other wizards were there when it was first spoken, but Dumbledore didn’t tell me who they were.” 

Harry related the whole thing for him. 

“Blimey. The Dark Lord—”

“You sound like Snape when you use that name.”

“It just sounds better than—”

“His name is Voldemort,” Harry said harshly.

Ron breathed in deeply a few times. “Voldemort,” he whispered, then shuddered. “…is going to kill you the first chance he gets.”

“He’s tried several times already,” Harry pointed out tiredly.

“It is more critical now,” Ron said slowly. “The most important thing he has to do.”

“Thanks, Ron,” Harry retorted sarcastically.

“Sorry,” Ron said. “Let’s get out of here. I’m full.”

Harry, who hadn’t really eaten anything, stood up willingly. They walked out and down the corridor, then up the steps to the Entrance Hall. In continued silence, they climbed the seven staircases up. One moved after they had started up it, forcing them to walk around the fourth floor corridor to get back to the next one. They were both so deep in their own thoughts that, when a throat cleared loudly behind them, they both jumped.

Sharp footsteps and a billowing cloak caught up to them where they stood. Snape, arms crossed, said snidely, “Is it even worth asking what you are doing out of your dormitory at this hour?”

“Taking a walk,” Ron replied, annoyed. “I’m a prefect. If I feel like looking around, I can,” he added, sounding less certain now than when he had said it to Harry earlier.

“Potter, go up to your tower. I want a word with Mr. Weasley.” Snape said this slowly, making Harry hesitate. “Potter,” Snape said more sharply. Harry frowned and stalked off. He glanced back to see Ron and his teacher facing off.

After Harry had gone, Snape circled Ron once with a predatory gleam in his eyes. “Mr. Weasley, the prefects were issued very specific instructions regarding Mr. Potter.”

“We didn’t leave the castle,” Ron insisted. “We went down for a snack.”

“He is not to be out of the tower after ten. We were very clear on that point,” Snape said angrily.

Ron sighed. “I thought a walk and some food would help him sleep,” he said in a bit of a whine. “He hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in a week,” he added, half to himself. Ron waited to be berated more, finally raising his eyes when nothing was forthcoming. Snape’s expression surprised him—he almost looked…concerned. The look vanished as Snape’s eyes narrowed.

“Weasley, if you violate any of the rules surrounding Mr. Potter again, you will deeply regret it.”

“I won’t, sir,” Ron said honestly. “I’m sorry, sir,” he added in a pained voice. Harry’s explanation of the prophecy had already made him regret his suggesting this foray.

“Go,” Snape ordered him. 

Ron ran off to catch up to his friend.

Harry was learning to like Herbology for a very unlikely reason—there were no chairs, which made it very hard to fall asleep during class. On the other hand, the gloves made it hard to rub his aching eyes. 

With a gentle touch born of a need to focus on something outside himself, he finished repotting a weeping wrenfern. It looked good in its new pot, almost as good as Neville’s.  Even Hermione’s looked like it had suffered in its move. Ron’s looked half-dead.

“Good job, Harry,” Neville said. 

“Yes, Mr. Potter,” Professor Sprout said as she circled the table. “Five points for Gryffindor for each of you and Mr. Longbottom for the two happiest newly transplanted wrenferns.”

Neville looked joyous at this. Malfoy across the table glared at them and spat into his plant, which drooped farther.

Harry was dreaming. He was crossing a swamp, leaping from one tuft of tall reeds to another. This path died out as well as the others had, the next clump of vegetation too far to reach. He was tired of backtracking in a futile effort at finding a way over the inky, oily water. But he had been warned repeatedly not to wade in it, that he would surely sink and be drawn fatally into its murky depths. He measured the distance between his feet and the distant clump surrounding a leaning old dead tree. How deep could it be, anyway?

“Mr. Potter!” 

Harry jumped awake. Snape glared at him from across the Potions bench. “If you cannot stay awake, perhaps you should not be in class,” Snape suggested with a sneer. 

A week ago, that would have angered Harry. Now it sounded very reasonable. With clumsy motions he bent to pick up his book bag and put his things away.

“Harry?” Hermione asked in surprise. 

With a flick of his cloak, Snape spun back around and stalked off. 

From deep in the fog of his exhaustion, Harry whispered, “I do need to sleep.”

“Do you want me to take you up?” she asked in concern.

Snape stalked back over and set a corked bottle on the bench. “A sip of that before you try to sleep, Mr. Potter.”

Harry picked it up and looked at the dark red liquid a moment before putting it in his bag on top of his books. “You’ll tell me the assignment?” Harry confirmed with Hermione after Snape had stalked back to the front again.

“Of course.”

With the potion Harry slept soundly until dinner. Until Ron woke him, worried. 

“Pomfrey is about to come up and check on you,” his friend explained. “I thought I’d head her off.”

“Thanks,” Harry said. He swung his legs off the bed and pressed his hair down. 

“Hermione said Snape gave you a potion.”

Harry pointed at the bottle on the night stand. “It works, apparently. Next time I should take it at night, clearly.”

It took until three in the morning for Harry to copy Hermione’s notes and finish his assignments. Uncertain if it was all right to take the potion twice in one day, Harry dozed lightly without it until morning, the dream about the swamp dogging him still.

It was finally Saturday. Harry, relieved that he didn’t have to struggle through classes, dragged himself down to breakfast with his friends after a short night’s sleep. He had taken a small sip of potion the night before, alarmed at how much of it he had been using over the last week. The tiny dose had given him a few hours of slumber, which would have to do—he didn’t fancy asking Snape for more of it.

Most of the staff were missing at breakfast, which happened more often lately on the weekends. Snape, Sprout, Hagrid, and Trelawney were clumped in the middle of the long head table. Harry tried to gauge what was going on by reading their mannerisms. When he made it down the line that far, he got a very challenging look from Snape, so Harry ducked quickly back to his breakfast.

The school grounds, not to mention Hogsmeade, were off-limits, so the students clustered in the bailey off the ground floor in the warm spring weather. The sunlight felt wonderful as he and his friends sat on a stone bench beside the fountain, but the warmth made Harry sleepy. He scrubbed his face hard to rouse himself.

“Didn’t you take that potion last night?” Hermione asked.

“Not enough. I’m almost out,” Harry admitted.

“I’ll ask for more, if you don’t want to,” she offered.

Harry huffed in frustration. “I guess I should have you do that. I can’t get by without it.” With a yawn, he said, “Maybe I should take a nap, since I can do that today without missing class.” As he stood up, Ron and Hermione did as well. Had Harry not been too foggy-brained, he would have noticed the meaningful look that passed between his friends. He also would have noticed the other students that followed right behind them, all D.A. members. He would have noticed that non-Gryffindors like Cho were suddenly deciding to hang out in the Gryffindor common room on a sunny Saturday. 

Harry, blissfully unaware of anything other than the prospect of his pillow, bid goodbye at the bottom of the boy’s dormitory stairs and headed up. He eyed the remaining potion on the side table before deciding that he was tired enough to sleep without it. Fully clothed, minus his shoes, Harry fell back onto his bed and drifted off.

An hour later, with a horrified gasp, Harry jerked awake. He had starkly dreamed that Voldemort was standing beside his bed, waiting with patient malevolence for him to wake up. Breathing heavily, Harry sat up and grabbed his wand off the side table. He hadn’t bothered to close the bed drapes, and sunlight poured through the room and across his bed. Out the window he could see that the mountains around the school were verdant with new leaves. Rubbing his tingling scar, Harry stood up and went to the window.  The lawn was deserted, and the wind blew pleasing waves across the undisturbed expanse of green. 

Harry gasped as the tingle in his scar heated to a burn. The stark contrast between the beautiful day and the pain in his scar confused his tired brain. He stumbled backward to sit on the bed, his palm pressed hard against his forehead. With his eyes clenched shut, Harry tried to Occlude his mind, hoping that would cut off the agony. It gave him a vision instead, a vision of Voldemort standing in the castle Entrance Hall, beckoning him.

 

Harry gasped again and, shaking badly, worked his way, hand over hand, to the end of his bed. On rubbery legs, he made the door to the dormitory and negotiated the stairs, still clutching his wand. It occurred to him, as he reached the bottom, that far more students were in the common room than he would have expected. They all turned to him in concern.

“Harry?” Hermione and Ron queried together. They and Ginny came over to him quickly. “Are you all right? Should we get Madam Pomfrey?”

Harry shook his head mechanically. “Get your wands out. McGonagall is gone, isn’t she? And Dumbledore?”

“Yes,” Randel, the Seventh Year prefect confirmed.

“No surprise,” Harry muttered. “Get everyone together. The D.A. that is.” He tried to still the shaking of his wand hand with no luck.

“Harry, what is going on?” Hermione demanded. The other students were moving to obey. Some leapt out the portrait hole without waiting for Harry’s response.

“Voldemort is downstairs.”

“Shit!” Someone exclaimed as everyone gasped.

“Harry, you were dreaming,” Hermione insisted.

“Maybe, but it didn’t seem like it. I think he is standing in the frigging Entrance Hall. Get everyone together.” Harry stalked past her without really looking at her and pushed open the Fat Lady. He couldn’t remember being this frightened before. Even in the graveyard, he had only to worry about himself. Every last thing was on the line now—the entire wizarding world. 

Putting one foot before the other, Harry let his legs carry him to the staircases, his friends following close, whispers sharp then dying off. Students ran forward from the group as they went, bringing other D.A. back with them. At the first floor, Harry stopped. 

“Should someone scout ahead?” Dean asked, sounding like he wanted to believe but actually didn’t.

“No,” Harry replied, imagining that someone getting picked off. He looked around him. “You, you, and you,” he indicated the First and Second Years. “Stay to the back. Way to the back.” At their disappointed and angry faces, he said, “Act as spotters then, if you have to help, but stay the hell back.”

Harry started off again abruptly. Halfway down the corridor to the grand staircase, Ron organized himself and the other core members in front of Harry. “You aren’t leading the way, mate,” Ron explained. 

They stepped quietly, the shuffle of their robes the only sound until Ron breathed, “Great Merlin,” when they made the top of the grand staircase which led down to the Entrance Hall. All of the students raised their wands, some shaking more than others. Harry stepped forward enough to see down into the ground floor. A ring of hooded Death Eaters surrounded a tall central figure looking exactly as Harry had expected them. This confirmation of his vision made him feel strangely calm. Voldemort stood with his hooded head turned up to them, red eyes glowing even in the bright light from the open doors to the outside. 

With faint whispers Ron and the others packed themselves in tightly. Neville and Ginny changed positions. The students formed a ring around Harry and the leaders took a step down the staircase, almost in unison.

Harry, wand held at his side, followed them mechanically, his eyes locked on Voldemort’s. Hermione whispered something and Neville responded. Harry glanced down at their shoulders before him. They had packed in sideways, back to front, wands held out before them. They didn’t appear to be shaking anymore. Harry swallowed hard at the surge of emotion he felt at his friends doing this for him, stepping into a battle against the most evil wizards and witches alive. 

Harry looked up again, bolstering himself with a determination to not let them down. He blinked and hesitated on the next riser when he saw Voldemort take a very small step backward. The ring around Harry paused with him. Heart racing, Harry remembered the battle at the Ministry. He narrowed his eyes at Voldemort’s red ones and relived that ache of wanting to see Sirius again. This time it was unmistakable. Voldemort turned with a shift of his shoulders.

The fact that you can feel pain like this, is your greatest strength, Dumbledore’s voice came back to him along with the angry pain of that conversation. The students paused around Harry, since he had stopped advancing. Harry thought of the picture of his parents in the album Hagrid had given him. He thought of the ache of friendship he had for Hagrid. Voldemort twisted away, breaking his own ranks. Confused, the Death Eaters started casting spells at them.

Hermione and Neville put up a joined block, protecting nearly all of them. Ron and Ginny and the others incanted spells back at the ring of hooded figures. Harry gripped and began lifting his wand. Snake-like, Voldemort turned and stepped forward again, freezing Harry in place. Ignoring the shouted spells and the cries of pain, Harry thought of his parents. He brought the dark ache of loneliness up from the depths where he kept it secured and, with damp eyes, felt it all, dwelling especially on the memory of his mother’s protection of him when this very wizard had come for him the first time.

Voldemort ducked his head to break eye contact and shouted something at his followers. Harry, suddenly released, glanced around himself as well. A few of the students had fallen. One used the handrail to stand up again, wand still spelling. The circle of Death Eaters was breaking down with a few of them lying prone now. Look at me, damn you, Harry snarled in his mind at the dark, central figure. 

Movement across the hall caught Harry’s attention. Snape, wand at ready, stepped stealthily up the stairwell that led to the Ravenclaw dungeon, alarmed eyes evaluating the scene. Harry wavered in that instant, worried what side he was really on. Paranoia flared in Harry’s mind that maybe Snape had set this all up somehow, that he had tricked everyone. His old hatred of him flared, boosted by his ego which had withered under recent embarrassment.

Voldemort spun back, drawing Harry’s eyes without volition. He struck through Harry’s mind, riding on that hatred and distrust. Harry stepped back, almost falling. “No,” Harry murmured. His scar felt like a laser burning all the way through his skull. He couldn’t move, simply hung suspended on Voldemort’s will. So easy, he heard mockingly in his mind. Tendrils snaked around Harry’s hatred, feeding on it. 

Harry tried to close his eyes, but they snapped open again. Hermione called his name in concern. He didn’t have much room to think in his own mind. Memories of Snape’s cruel treatment seemed to be tangling up his own force of will. Voldemort took a confident step forward raising his wand at Harry and began to speak something most certainly fatal. With a whimper of utter reluctance, Harry remembered. He remembered that night in the abandoned manor house—the first and only time in his life he had woken up in someone’s arms.

Voldemort’s entire body jerked at that and Harry suddenly could breathe. He remembered the ache at hearing Snape’s concerned voice. That terrible moment when his teacher blew across the tea to cool it for him. Voldemort’s wand slipped from his stunned fingers and clattered to the floor. Harry barely heard it over the shouting. He raised his wand then. The emotion in him had reached some kind of breaking point, and he imagined himself as a shaken butterbeer bottle. Fleetingly, wondered if he could hate Voldemort enough to kill him. Forbidden curses required force of will. Bellatrix had told him that, and he expected she would know. But he couldn’t risk any hate or Voldemort would have him then for certain. The evil being before him was straightening his angular self, raising his bare, white, boney hand.

“Avada Kedavra!” Harry shouted, with no hate, just an overwhelming, aching desire to free himself and everyone else, even if it cost him everything.

The green flare was bright, even competing with the sunlight. Voldemort flickered with it, writhing as he fell. Roaring silence descended as everyone froze like a Muggle snapshot. Rolling chaos followed. The Death Eaters broke in every direction. Dean dashed from beside Harry and followed three of them down the stairs to the left. Other students followed him. Some followers ran for the main doors and some for the Great Hall. With whoops like war cries, students piled after them.

Hysterical screaming drew Harry’s attention back to the center of the floor. Bellatrix Lestrange, her mask off, shook Voldemort’s still form and shouted, “Master! Master!” Another hooded figure hesitate on their toes before running off. With a snarl Bellatrix lifted her wand and fired at Harry. Neville, the only remaining student in front of him, spelled a block. The force of the blasting curse threw him back into Harry, and they fell together up the steps. Screaming like a banshee, Bellatrix fired again. This time, another figure had jumped in and two blocks went up. Neville staggered to his feet and screamed a binding curse at her, which she shook off easily. Harry, desperate to help, tried to aim his wand, tried to stand up, only to find a hand on him, pressing him against the stairs. 

“Stay down, Mr. Potter,” Snape said.

Bellatrix threw another blasting curse, easily blocked this time. She seemed too despairing to think more strategically. With a sob she ran for the nearest door to the Great Hall. Neville leapt down the stairs after her.

Snape looked around them for any other danger before turning back to Harry, who found something in his gaze he had never seen before, a respectful amazement. Snape offered him a hand up. “All right, Mr. Potter?”

“Yes, sir.”

Snape shook his head, apparently in disbelief. After a glance over Harry, he stepped down to the floor, where he placed double bindings on the fallen Death Eaters On unsteady legs Harry followed. Voldemort lay apart from the others, half on his side, his hood obscuring his face. Harry stepped over to the fallen wizard and considered pushing him over onto his back to see his face. The thought of touching him made Harry queasy, so he leaned down instead to look inside his hood. Voldemort’s eyes were slitted open, the glow gone from them. His lipless mouth hung open and slack. Harry straightened and considered that the boney form under the robe didn’t look like much, really.

Shouts came from outside, followed by the sizzle of spells. Professor Snape rushed to the open doorway, his wand drawn. He lowered it to his side as he looked out into the light. Professor McGonagall stepped up into view and into the hall. She stopped dead at the top and stared wide-eyed at Harry and the scene. Harry blinked at her, silhouetted in the bright sunlight and green lawn behind her. Part of him calculated what this must look like, him standing, wand at his side, over Voldemort’s dead body. Most of him was too numb to care.

Dumbledore followed. Out of breath, he said to Snape, “Thank goodness, Severus,” as he touched Snape on the arm in relief. “You were correct it was—” Dumbledore dropped his arm and gaped in surprise. “Harry!” he breathed in shock.

Harry couldn’t remember surprising the old wizard quite that way before. He supposed that was some kind of compliment. “It’s over,” Harry tried to say, although it came out raspy and quiet.

Dumbledore stepped up to him. He had no compunction about pushing Voldemort over to look at him. Harry took an unconscious half step back as the limp form flopped over. “My dear boy. When I realized how badly we had been tricked…” He took a deep breath and looked Harry over. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Harry quipped, recovering himself.

Clattering footsteps sounded on the stairs from the dungeon. Dean Thomas, leaning heavily on the wall, his shoes transfigured to ice boots, blood running from a long streak on his scalp, said, “That bastard dead?”

“Yes,” Harry replied.

“Thank Merlin,” he whispered and collapsed onto the floor. 

Harry moved toward him but was restrained by Dumbledore. “You relax, Harry. You have done your part for certain.” He stepped across to the teachers, standing in the doorway to the Great Hall. “Minerva, get the hearths in here put on the Floo Network so we can get the injured to hospital faster.”

McGonagall moved to comply. Snape said, “There are other Death Eaters about.”

“The Ministry is right behind us. In fact, they are here now.” Dumbledore gestured at the door as Tonks and four other Aurors rushed into the hall along with other Ministry wizards. Tonks hesitated as she took in the scene and came over to Harry. The other Aurors spread out to sweep the castle at Dumbledore’s request. 

“Did you do this?” Tonks asked Harry.

Harry hesitated. Her tone made it sound as though he could be in trouble for it. “Yes.”

Tonks hugged him hard. “Harry,” she murmured. “Will you marry me?”

“What?” Harry blurted, stunned.

She pushed him to arm’s length. “I don’t think I could love anyone more than I do you right now. You are amazing, Harry.” Harry, still alarmed, didn’t manage a reply. “I’m only joking,” she said and hit him lightly on the arm with her fist. As she stepped past him to help in the Great Hall, she said quietly, “Unless you change your mind.”

Harry turned to Dumbledore for help with that one and found only an amused smile. Expressions of surprise from the top of the grand staircase made Harry realize that many, many students had gathered there. “No closer,” Dumbledore said to them, holding up his hand. Harry wondered if he had cast a spell as well to block the staircase.

“Harry did that?” one small voice asked. “Yeah,” another replied in an awed tone. Murmuring followed. “Way to go, Harry!” the first shouted. Harry gave them all a wan smile. As good as he felt, he also felt completely unseated.

McGonagall stepped over. “The Minister is on his way,” she said with a touch of distaste.

“Try to prepare yourself, Harry,” Dumbledore said. “There will be many questions.”

“I’m ready, sir,” Harry said, even though he didn’t believe he was, but had a feeling his dislike of Fudge could carry him though.

 

When Fudge and his entourage, including Percy, blustered into the Entrance Hall, the teachers moved closer to Harry as though to form ranks. 

“Well, I wouldn’t have believed it without seeing it. Thank Merlin we have a body this time,” Fudge breathed as he crouched beside Voldemort’s dead figure. “Potter, I’m told we have you to thank for this.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry acknowledged quietly.

Brusquely, Fudge stood up. “Well, we’ll have to have the full story.” He put his hands on his hips and looked Harry over appraisingly, in a way Harry didn’t like. With effort Harry held his expression flat until the man turned to Dumbledore. 

“Perhaps the lounge off the Great Hall,” Dumbledore said graciously. He raised his arm to urge the Minister along.

In the Great Hall injured students and bound Death Eaters were waiting to be transported out. Dean lay on the Gryffindor table, still bleeding. Harry veered over to him. It looked like Dean had been wiping the blood from his eyes repeatedly, as his face was darkened with red of various shades. His eyes were intense. “Ice transfiguration worked like a charm,” he said, as though discussing a Quidditch maneuver. “Sir,” he said as Dumbledore came up beside Harry. 

“Not as bad as he looks,” Professor Grubbly-Plank said as she walked up to them. “Too much adrenaline to feel anything anyway,” she said darkly before turning to help another student into the Floo. Harry noticed this student was bound even though he could barely stand. Nott turned angry eyes their way before leaping inside.

Harry looked around the Hall frantically and then at Dumbledore. “How many…uh, hurt…dead?” he asked.

McGonagall, close behind him, said, “There are at least two dead Death Eaters and twelve injured students. We didn’t lose any students, and don’t expect to,” Dumbledore put his hand upon Harry’s head and stroked his hair once. 

“I didn’t kill him,” Dean interrupted, trying valiantly to sit up. “He killed himself when we cornered him. Nott senior, that is. Would have had to go through Theodore to get to him anyway, tried to defend his dad.”

Fudge stepped over. “Reems, White, take statements here and at Mungo’s while we interview Mr. Potter and the staff,” he said to two of his people. “Wilson, with me,” he said to Percy.

Harry had to cover his mouth to keep from cracking up. All of his emotions were stark and sudden. He hoped that wore off soon.

“So, were any of your teachers present?” Fudge asked when the door to the lounge closed. 

Dumbledore lit the lamps and invited everyone to sit. “Only Professor Snape was present, I believe, during the battle. He was the only one present when we arrived, in any event.”

Harry sat down on the couch across from Percy. The Minister chose to stand. “Tell us what happened, Potter,” Fudge said in a tone as though they were old school chums.

“From what point?” 

“From wherever seems relevant, Harry,” Dumbledore said gently.

Harry looked around the room. McGonagall stood beside the couch to the right. Dumbledore took the seat beside him. Snape hung in the corner where Krum had stood brooding the last time Harry had been in this room. Percy sat with his quill poised over a long, long blank parchment. Fudge still looked Harry over as though considering his market value.

Harry sighed. “I went up for a nap after breakfast—”

“A nap?” Percy blurted in disbelief.

“I haven’t been sleeping well the last two weeks,” Harry said defensively. “I went up for a nap, as I was saying. I woke up all of a sudden thinking Voldemort was standing by my bed. Which he wasn’t,” Harry pointed out at Percy’s blanched expression. “But my scar started burning and I had a vision of him waiting in the Entrance Hall for me.” Harry stopped to rub his neck.  “I went down to the common room, where a lot of students were hanging out.” Harry trailed off as he paused to reconsider that.

“What?” Fudge said, impatient apparently with Harry’s pace. 

“I was just thinking now that they weren’t all Gryffindors, which is odd.” He shook his head. He had a clear memory of Cho sitting in the best chair by the fire, looking up at him in concern. “I told Ron and Hermione to get the D.A. together.”

“Ah, yes,” Fudge said grimly. “Dumbledore’s Army as I recall.”

“Defense Association,” Harry corrected him with a sharp look. Fudge was really grating on him, and the Minister’s confusion at this revelation didn’t endear him more. “We pulled the group together—”

“Wait, everyone just believed you?” Percy asked with derision.

“Not everyone. But everyone went along anyway. Only Hermione voiced any doubt.” Harry paused to see whether Percy would say anything else. “Voldemort and some twenty odd Death Eaters were in the Entrance Hall, standing in a circle around Voldemort. Hermione, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and Dean packed themselves tight together in front of me. Hermione and Neville arranged to concentrate on blocking. None of the Death Eaters moved as we started down the stairs. We had a huge advantage with the height and those two blocking everything coming up at us.”

Harry stopped to try to figure out how to explain what he had done. The teachers sat patiently while Fudge fidgeted. “What spell did you use to fell He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?” Fudge demanded with a huff.

“In the end, a Killing Curse,” Harry said.

“He just stood there and let you do that?” Fudge asked in disbelief.

“He’d dropped his wand,” Harry said levelly. “I had to get him to put his wand down—mine and his cancel out.” The teachers around him sat in a kind of deeper stillness as Harry spoke. He tread back from that line of topic, thinking maybe it was too mired.

“And he dropped his wand because—?” Fudge prompted, waving his hand to pull Harry along.

“Because I’d attacked his mind,” Harry supplied.

“Good grief, boy! What made you think that would work?” Fudge said.

“Someone told me once it was my only weapon.” Beside him, Dumbledore shifted, pulling his robes straight. Harry went on, thinking only to get through this. “I made him feel everything he was unable to. It was too much for him. He doesn’t have any capacity for that. For feeling like a normal person.” And me as well, Harry thought with a spike of pain. He wanted to scream at Fudge that it wouldn’t have come down to this if he hadn’t been so slow. But that wasn’t true, really. The prophecy didn’t include Fudge.

Harry sat back, exhausted. Dumbledore pulled out his wand and a steaming teapot and cups appeared. He poured a cup for Harry and one for the Minister, in that order. “Severus, would you like tea?” the headmaster asked amiably.

Snape turned away from the mantelpiece and stepped over. He gave Harry a strange, intense look before he leaned over and accepted a cup. 

Harry went on. “After Voldemort fell, Bellatrix was the only one to stay put. She went crazy, started sending blasting curses at me, but Neville and Professor Snape stepped in the way. The other students chased after the escaping Death Eaters so those two were the only ones left. After that, Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore came in the front door.” Harry shrugged to indicate he was finished. He sipped his tea and waited, hoping there weren’t any questions.

“Professor,” Fudge cranked his head around to look at Snape. “Tell us what you saw.”

Percy put down the cup he was about to pour tea into and returned to his transcription. Harry closed his eyes and listened as Snape described investigating an alarm spell that was triggered in the corridor near the delivery entrance to the kitchens. When he came back up to the Entrance Hall, it was clear from the noise that a fight was going on. “The students were on the grand staircase, as stated. Potter didn’t have his wand out. That I could see. He just stared down at the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord kept stepping back, flinching back. He eventually backed into his own ranks and they began casting at the students in their confusion over what was happening.”

Snape set his empty teacup down. “I doubt that was the plan. The Dark Lord intended to take out Potter himself.” Harry opened his eyes at that and looked up at his teacher. In his tired state, this all could be a dream. Snape eyed him with that piercing look again. 

His professor continued, “The battle of wills, if you’ll allow, went back and forth until Mr. Potter got the upper hand and Voldemort dropped his wand. That was when Potter raised his wand for the first time and used a Killing Curse.” As he finished, Snape stepped back away from the group and crossed his arms. Harry wondered what was up with him. He seemed unsettled in a different way than normal.

Fudge glanced over Percy’s shoulder before clapping his hands together and rubbing them. “I guess that covers it for now. You will make yourself available, Mr. Potter, correct, if we have more questions?”

Harry nodded, hiding his relief with great effort.

Out in the Great Hall, only Ministry wizards mingled now. “Harry!” Mr. Weasley shouted and ran over to him. “My boy,” he said when he reached him. He clasped Harry’s arms fiercely. “So good to see you unharmed. Look at you, not a nick on you!”

Harry smiled at him and dropped his gaze. Dumbledore came beside and put a hand under his arm. “Harry, just one more thing I need from you and then you can rest. The press are outside…”

Harry made a pained noise in the back of his throat. “I’d really rather not, sir.”

“The rumors are flying fast and furious, Harry,” Mr. Weasley pointed out helpfully. “Best nip them all now.”

“Arthur is correct, Harry,” Dumbledore said. “It will be short, I promise, and I’ll be right beside you.”

“Suddenly unwilling to bask in your fame, Potter?” Snape asked from behind them.

Harry shot him a look of disbelief. “What do you mean, ‘suddenly unwilling?’”

“Come, Harry,” Dumbledore said easily as he pulled Harry away. When they were halfway across the Hall, the old wizard leaned close. “No infighting in front of the Ministry, my boy.”

“Tell that to Professor Snape,” Harry said.

“Believe me, I will,” Dumbledore assured him pleasantly.

Mollified, Harry followed him out, thinking ahead to dealing with the likes of Rita Skeeter. Dumbledore led him past Voldemort’s body, being guarded by two Aurors, to the front doors, which were now closed. Dumbledore opened one just wide enough and stepped out, pulling Harry behind him. The first thing Harry thought was, goodness, the press moves fast. There were no fewer than thirty people standing at the base of the castle steps, from all different nationalities. They all jerked and jumped to their feet when he and the headmaster appeared.

Dumbledore immediately held up his hand, as they all had started talking at once. Silence fell. “One at a time, now,” he said kindly. “And this is going to be short, as Harry is very tired.”

“Were you injured?” a redheaded man in the front asked with a heavy brogue.

“No,” Harry replied.

“Not at all? Not a scratch?”

Harry shook his head. 

“Well, that is very different from dead,” the man said, taking notes.

“Very different,” Harry acknowledged amiably. If the questions continued like this, he could handle it.

A dark, Hungarian-sounding man in the back asked, “Wat spells did you use on thee Dark Lord?”

“An Avada Kedavra,” Harry said. All of them wrote that down. A camera flashed.

“Haf you used it before?”

“No.”

“Wat was it like, using such a curse on thee Dark Lord? Easy to come up vit so much hatred?”

Harry shook his head. “It wasn’t hatred.” All of them paused, quills poised, as he thought about his answer. “It was love of everything else.” He took a deep breath, suddenly short on air. Dumbledore’s hand touched his back fleetingly and he forced himself past it.

Rita Skeeter raised her hand and said, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

Harry lowered his brow at her. “Does anyone care about that?” he asked. Several heads nodded. “No,” he said, annoyed.

“Not the pretty, although decidedly too clever for her own good, girl with the long curly—”

“NO.” Harry considered pointing out that she was with someone else, but decided that discretion really was the better part.

“Are you going to accept the Scots invitation to play Seeker?”

“What?” Harry blurted, certain he had misheard. “I hadn’t heard that,” he said, startled not just at that notion but at the other bizarre offers that were undoubtedly going to follow.

“One more question,” Dumbledore said, putting an arm around Harry’s shoulder. Flash pans went off. Harry really was tired, far more than physically.

“Your little club, the D.A.?” This was from Rita. “Were they helpful?”

“Very. They protected me, rounded up the Death Eaters when they ran away after Voldemort fell.”

Dumbledore bowed to them. Some of them raised their hands. “I’ll come back in a few minutes after I’ve seen Harry inside. The Minister will also undoubtedly answer a few questions.”

Harry suddenly realized how important it was to be out here before Fudge. The Entrance Hall seemed dark in contrast to the sunny steps. Voldemort’s body was gone. Tonks stepped over when she saw them come in.

“Bad news,” she said. “We didn’t get all the D.E.” She sighed and pocketed her wand. “Seems Pettigrew was sent to Azkaban to release the servants we had already. He succeeded but not in time for them to get here, or they decided not to come.”

“That means Mr. Malfoy is loose too?” Harry asked, resisting looking behind him even here in the hall of the castle filled with Ministry wizards.

“Everyone we caught at the Ministry is loose now. It’s a fair trade, really. We’ll take it in an eye-blink, but it is unfortunate.” She and Dumbledore shared a look that Harry was too tired to study closely.

“I’m going up to my dormitory,” Harry said, as he stepped away from Dumbledore’s supporting arm toward the stairs. He hesitated—he was out of potion. Maybe he didn’t need it now. His tired brain couldn’t decide. The top of the staircase was packed with wide-eyed students. Deciding that since he was about to sleep on his feet, he would sleep no matter what on his pillow, Harry went up. A path parted through the students as he approached. Hands reached out and brushed his robe as he passed. 

“Good going, Harry.” “Thank you, Harry,” quiet voices said as he made his way through the crowd. He glanced around himself. He knew most of the faces there, if not the names, but a wide gulf had opened between himself and them that staggered him in his current state. Smiling faintly to cover, he kept walking. Some followed one or two corridors, then decided to return to watch the Ministry at work.

“Harry!” Hermione rocketed out of her chair and hugged him as he stepped into the common room.

“What are you doing up here?” Harry asked.

“Avoiding Percy,” Ron said. “That and Tonks walked us here from the Dispensary with a sharp comment about not seeing us in the way.”

“He’s your brother,” Ginny pointed out.

“So why are you here as well?” Ron asked his sister.

“You didn’t get hurt at all?” Harry asked them.

Ron held up a bandaged arm and then a bandaged ankle. “Treated and released,” he said. “Hermione had tentacles for hair but that was easy to fix. Ginny, well, she can tell you if she wants. She’ll kill me if I do.”

Ginny had turned bright red and stared at the ceiling.

Harry swayed slightly. “My nap got interrupted,” he said, then giggled. “I need to go back to sleep,” he added in full seriousness.

“We’ll wake you for the party,” Ginny said.

At the base of the stairs, Harry turned. “What party?”

“There has to be one,” she insisted.

“Sure,” Harry murmured. “As long as it is at least three hours from now.”

Harry was awakened in less than an hour by Pomfrey. She fussed over him until he convinced her that he really didn’t need anything but sleep. When the door closed again, Harry tugged the gap in the heavy drapes closed completely and hoped that was the last interruption.

“Mr. Potter?” a familiar voice woke him. Harry leaned over and pulled the drapes aside. The sun was low in the sky now. Professor McGonagall stood between his bed and Ron’s, her head cocked to the side.

“Professor,” Harry said a little sleepily. 

In a teasing voice she said, “We cannot start the party without you.”

“Party?”

“Yes. The headmaster thinks it best we keep everyone out of trouble as much as possible. Far too much magical celebrating went on last time in the middle of Muggledom.”

“What time is it?”

“Six-thirty.”

Shocked at how long he had slept, Harry swung his legs off the bed and stood up. He looked himself over and shook the worst of the wrinkles out of his robe.

“Uh ah. Dress robes, my dear,” McGonagall said kindly.

Harry’s foggy brain sharpened up at that. “Why?”

“There may be one or two photographers,” she said.

Harry scratched his head and went to his trunk. He pulled out his black dress robe with the satin collar and cuffs and his toiletry kit. His body was moving on automatic. At the door to the dormitory, he turned suddenly. Rubbing his eyes, he asked, “Voldemort is gone, right? I didn’t just dream that?” He readjusted his glasses and peered up at her better.

“Yes, Mr. Potter,” she replied. Harry could hear a smile in her voice.

Harry cleared his throat. “Good.” He opened the door and headed down. 

McGonagall waited in the corridor outside the boy’s toilet while Harry freshened up and changed. Dampening his hair, he tried to comb it into something presentable. Finally with a shrug, he gave up, put the comb back in his kit, and stared at himself in the mirror. He didn’t look like someone who had defeated Voldemort. He sighed as he met his own green eyes. They looked less than victorious, more burned out. He wished with an acute stab that his parents could see him now. They would be proud, he was certain, or at least very relieved. He sighed again and swallowed hard. All of that emotion from the battle was still very much at the surface.

McGonagall was waiting. If she hadn’t been, he might have spent the rest of the evening alone in the boy’s toilet rather than face everyone.

“All right, Mr. Potter?” his professor asked kindly when he stepped out.

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry replied quietly.

She stopped and put a hand on his shoulder. “Harry, are you up for this? You certainly don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” she added in a light tone. “I think you could ask just about anything from us, in fact. Frankly, we’ve been feeling badly, having the party without you. You missed the last one and that was your doing as well,” she added easily.

Harry gave her a small smile. “I wouldn’t want to miss it, Professor.”

She hooked an arm around him, ostensibly to lead him down the corridor. She gave him a half-hug first, however, and pushed his hair back. Harry looked up at her in surprise. McGonagall was usually much more restrained than that. 

“Professor?”

“We’re so proud of you, Harry, my boy,” she said, almost shrilly, and pulled him against her side again.

Harry dropped his gaze. “Thank you, Professor.”

They started down the corridor. “You aren’t insufferable at all,” she said, half to herself. “Why does Severus keep insisting that you are?”

Harry gave her a worried look then got distracted by having to keep up with her much longer stride.

In the Entrance Hall, Harry could hear the murmur and clink of a party going on beyond the doors. McGonagall steered him away from the first door, which he usually used since it was closest to the Gryffindor table. At the center doors, she gave him an affectionate smile, pulled open the large carved door, and gestured for him to lead the way in.

Harry glanced into the hall as he followed her gesture and hesitated on the threshold. The Great Hall had been arranged similarly to the way it had for the Tri-Wizard Tournament Ball, with large round tables, each with their own cluster of floating candles. Four tables sat on the raised platform at the end, with chairs only facing forward or sideways. Double the number of people were in the hall than normal.

Conversation died away as Harry took in the room. Heads turned to him. Chairs shifted. One of the head tables captured Harry’s attention as Dumbledore stood up, his flowing baby-blue robe sparkling in the candlelight. Fudge moved to stand as well. They started clapping. The rest of the room picked it up immediately.

Stunned, Harry required a nudge from behind to get moving again. He walked dazedly along a narrow aisle up the middle, through the sea of now standing and clapping witches and wizards, up to the platform. Dumbledore met him at the edge and shook his hand. 

“Come up here, Harry,” the old wizard invited.

Working hard to take in what was happening around him, Harry took a seat beside Fudge, facing the rest of the hall. The clapping faded and a commotion from a table to the left caught his attention. Harry stiffened a little when he saw Fred and George leading the rest of the Weasleys in holding up their cups. “To Harry!” the twins roared. The rest of their table and a scattering of others around the room joined in, echoing it as well as the following hip-hip-hooray! Harry smiled lightly at their antics. The state of the Weasleys and the cups made Harry suspicious about whether that explained McGonagall’s more outgoing behavior as well.

Dumbledore, still standing beside his chair, put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Thank you all for coming. Especially on such short notice,” he added congenially. “I thought it only fair that we make up two rounds of parties to Harry, who wasn’t exactly cognizant of the last festivities the wizarding world held to celebrate Voldemort’s defeat.” 

Harry was glad to see no one hissed this time. Someone shouted, “Here, here.” It sounded like Hagrid. Harry looked around to try to find him, figuring that should be easy. A sea of ecstatically happy faces met Harry’s own as he scanned the crowd. At a table on the right, Hagrid sat talking with Mundungus. He winked at Harry when their eyes met.

“Harry?” Dumbledore was saying to him. Harry’s head snapped up at that. “Would you care to give us a few words on this historic occasion?” Harry blanched, but the old wizard had his arm out to invite him to stand.  Dumbledore leaned close as he guided Harry out from behind the table. “This could end up in a future History of Magic textbook, my boy,” he winked.

Harry cleared his throat. His eyes took in the rest of their table as he stalled. Professors Sprout and Snape were there as well as someone who appeared to be the Bulgarian Minister of Magic. “Well,” Harry began slowly, “the first thing that comes to mind is: good riddance.” The room laughed lightly and murmured conversation broke out for a moment.

He took a deep breath and assembled his scattered thoughts. “We all have lives to go back to,” he said, thinking, I have a life that starts right now, forget going back. Bolstered by that, he thought about the frantic lives of the teachers who were also Order members, and went on. “Everyone needs to try to remember what was important to them before this all started, because those things are what really matter. Not the things you do because you have to.” A few sounds of agreement came from the closest tables. 

Harry wanted to say something about those who didn’t make it to see this day, but just considering it made the frail foundation he stood on tilt crazily. Far too many eyes were upon him to risk anything like that. He had been silent too long—the shifting feet around the room told him so. Mentally backing frantically away from unsettling thoughts, Harry said lightly, “Myself, I am looking forward to a lifting of the ban on Quidditch.” The room laughed more this time.

“That will be arranged, Harry, I assure you,” Dumbledore said.

Ron’s shout of joy made Harry grin as he looked over at the Weasley table. Harry scanned the full set of redheads. Even Percy was there although, as usual, he looked like he disapproved of something. “It is good to see so many here,” he said without thinking.

“Yes, Harry, it is,” Dumbledore said, patting Harry on the shoulder. “And we have you to thank for that.” As though he realized the unstable ground Harry had tread onto unthinkingly, Dumbledore went on, “Please, everyone, enjoy your dinner. Dedalus Diggle has promised us a fireworks show from Hogsmeade at ten o’clock.” With cheerful conversations roaring back to life around them, Dumbledore led Harry back to his seat and took his own beside him. 

“Well spoken,” McGonagall leaned over to say from beside the headmaster.

“No one warned me,” Harry said with a hint of accusation.

“Impromptu speeches are always better,” she said as though it were perfectly obvious. She toasted him with her cup and drank a large gulp, confirming Harry’s suspicions. Harry suspected he would find butterbeer in his own chalice. It had mulled mead instead, to his amazement. It burned his throat even with just a sip. He took another gulp anyway.

Plates of roast mutton and goose appeared on the table, dressed with vegetables. Suddenly incredibly famished, Harry served himself from the closest plate and waited impatiently for others to serve themselves so he could start. The Bulgarian Minister smiled broadly at him when Harry looked his way.

“I do not know if you vil remember me,” the wizard said. 

“I think so,” Harry said. “From the World Cup.”

The wizard smiled more. “Yes. I am most flattered. But we were not properly introduced,” he said in his slavic accent as he stood and held his hand out across the table. “Gorazd Obolensky.”

Harry leaned forward for a quick handshake. “Good to you again, sir.”

As Obolensky sat back down, straightening his stiff dress robes as he did so, he said, “I think I was verily lucky on the drawing of the tables tonight.” He grinned at Dumbledore and stabbed his fork into his meat.

Harry took this cue and started devouring his plate.

“Do they not feed you here?” Obolensky asked, seeing this.

After swallowing, Harry said, “Yes, sir. It’s just that I slept through lunch.”

“Ah, yes, the appetite of a—what are you, sixteen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ehem,” Fudge cleared his throat making Harry wonder whether maybe he shouldn’t be talking around his own Minister. “Have any future plans, Harry?”

Harry almost rose to the question, but held back on instinct. “Still considering things, sir.” In his peripheral vision, he saw all four teachers at the table pause as he said this. He glanced at McGonagall, who gave him a disapproving look, then rolled her eyes as though she were giving up on him.

“Well, young man, be sure and let us know what you decide, hm?” Fudge said, sounding the doting uncle.

Harry silently congratulated himself for keeping mum. He didn’t want to get into the very competitive Aurors program that way.

“Things are going to get much easier,” Fudge went on. “We’ll have to relearn what it is like to worry about something as trivial as the consistent thickness of cauldron bottoms.” He chuckled to himself.

Harry made it through the meal, although it seemed to stretch on a little long. Fudge pushed his chair back and said, “Have to make the rounds.” He tossed his bundled serviette onto his bone-strewn plate and bowed to the table before moving off. The plates soon cleared themselves and the next course appeared. Harry took a rice pudding from the serving tray that circled slowly above the center of the table before vanishing again a minute later.

Obolensky shifted down a seat, bringing his own slice of chocolate cake with him. “Do you mind?” he asked. Harry shook his head between bites. Obolensky made a noise of pleasure at his first bite. “Very good. My compliments to the chefs,” he said to Dumbledore.

Dumbledore nodded acceptance of the compliment as he poured tea for himself and McGonagall beside him. “Things in Bulgaria will settle down quickly, I assume?” the headmaster asked.

“We expect. We have lost all of our Dementors and vahmpires but presumably some will try to return. How we will handle them then…we shall see.” He smiled at Harry as he took another large bite of cake. “Such minor problems,” he said a little dreamily. He shook his dark head. “I heard rumors about you, Mr. Potter, how you werle expected somehow to do what you did before. And I remember the small boy from the top box at the Whorld Cup and I thought, he has not a chance.”

Harry laughed. “Did you put money on that?”

Obolensky started to answer then looked taken aback. “Of course not.”

“Well, that’s all right, then,” Harry said amiably.

The Bulgarian Minister pulled himself together. He seemed to find Harry’s attitude a little worrisome. “I hope to be as flippant as you are about this someday, Mr. Potter. Or perlhaps the mead that is the explanation?”

Harry shrugged. The other extreme was less sustainable, but he wasn’t going to try to explain that.

Obolensky picked up his serviette and shook it out with a spell that flattened it neatly. He arranged it with the Hogwarts seal on the top left and leaned in close while he fished in his pocket. “Vhould you mind, terribly?” he asked as he pulled out a never-out quill. He shook the quill and incanted something that made the nib into a little hard sponge that filled with black ink from the never-out charm of the quill.

“What was that charm?” Harry asked, distracted from what he should have seen coming.

Obolensky smiled widely. “I can teach a spell to the famous Harry Potter,” he murmured with a hint of reverence. He shook the quill back to normal with a canceling spell. “This spell is Znakpisatel. Herle…” he repeated it, canceled it and handed the quill to Harry. 

It took three corrections of his pronunciation, but finally, Harry made what was essentially a Muggle marker pen out of the quill. Harry had been missing marker pens in his wizard life and thought this a clever spell.  “Cool,” Harry said happily.

“Would you mind?” Obolensky repeated, shifting the serviette over a little closer. “I promised Victohrl I would return with your autograph vor him.”

Harry blinked at him in surprise. “Victor?”

McGonagall cleared her throat. Harry glanced at his teachers, who gave him looks of mixed amusement. Snape rolled his eyes.

“Victor Krum?” Harry asked the minister in disbelief.

“Yes. I know dat you have met sometimes, correct?”

“Yeah,” Harry confirmed. He looked down at the cloth before him, a bit dazed. “What would you like it to say?” Harry asked slowly, thinking of how fun it was going to be to tell Ron about this.

Obolensky murmured something in Bulgarian as if trying it out for sound.

“You’ll have to spell that out,” Harry said, amused.

“To my dear friend, Viktohrl,” Obolensky suggested.

Harry took a deep breath and in his best hand, wrote that out and signed below it. There was a lot of blank space at the bottom. He thought a moment and then added, Voldemort Demise Party, May 1997,  along the bottom edge.

“Ah, velry nice,” Obolensky said, admiring it. He folded it carefully and put it in his pocket. Harry gave him the quill back as well.

“Tea, Harry?” Dumbledore asked when Harry sat back with a tired sigh.

“Please, sir.” 

“Then I think we shall allow a few of the reporters in when you have perked up a little.”

Harry made a small noise of disgust. He took the offered cup and saucer and held them while Dumbledore poured. “You said something about fireworks?”

“Yes. In order to avoid Mr. Diggle getting into difficulty with the Ministry again, he was invited to set off his spells here in Hogsmeade. Quite a party is going on there as well tonight.”

“What did he get in trouble for?” Harry asked as he sipped his tea.

McGonagall crossed her arms. “Last time, he filled the sky over Kent with magical fireworks. Fortunately, the Muggles thought they were shooting stars. The hordes of owls flying by day they remembered much longer.”

At Harry’s alarmed expression, Dumbledore leaned close and said, “That is why we have all of the troublemakers here tonight.” Then he winked.

Harry looked around the loud room and commented, “People do seem pretty happy.”

“Everyone but you, Potter,” Snape commented stiffly.

Harry gave him sharp look but didn’t reply. He couldn’t deny that he felt as though someone had taken him apart and put him back together with the pieces crooked.

“Come now, fame and fortune await,” Snape went on.

“Severus,” Dumbledore said with mild correction. “Harry has had a very long day.”

Harry has had a very long six years, Harry thought.

“The minister is not here,” Snape said as he crossed his arms.

“A minister is,” Dumbledore pointed out mildly.

Obolensky leaned close to Harry. “You have an arch-nemesis?” he asked with a glance at Snape. He sounded genuinely amused.

“Yes,” Harry replied dryly.

“Another pudding, Harry?” Dumbledore asked kindly. “Or anything else?”

Harry, feeling testy, looked up at the headmaster. “Do I get to join the Order now?” He had meant it as a joke, but found himself far more raw about it than expected. Dumbledore’s blue eyes pierced him in return. The instinct to back down tugged at him, but Harry overcame it easily for the first time ever and held that bright gaze levelly.

McGonagall interjected airily, “You still aren’t of age, you know.”

Harry’s emotions seesawed into annoyance with them all. He looked away from them out over the room. Many tart replies came to mind. He swallowed them all on the assumption that he would regret them later.

Obolensky pushed his chair back. He patted Harry’s hand and said, “It vhill look better in the morning, I think.” He stood up. ”I should really be doing as yourl Minister Fudge is. If you vhill excuse?“

Harry nodded as the others made noises of ascent. When the Bulgarian had stepped to the next table, Dumbledore said, “I will not apologize for protecting you, Harry.”

Harry fixed his gaze out over the room as fury flashed through him. That protection had cost him Sirius. If he had been anywhere else, he would have gone into a rage. He would have screamed that if Snape were such a useful Order member, he would have killed Voldemort himself. He would have pointed out that their protection had not really been all that good anyway. He swallowed and blinked hard, struggling desperately to bury it all.

The noise of the room faded out and a rush sounding as wind filled his head. Queer, muffled voices cried out from a distance. A grey-green haze overlaid the Great Hall filled with bright flickering green strands like a massive dilapidated spider web. An odd thing came at him. He squinted to try to see it better. It looked like a black star with amorphous, straining limbs. The stretched voices got louder. Other dark patches circled slowly, hungrily, feeling their way through the haze. Harry jerked back to escape it.

“Harry?” Dumbledore said in a very concerned voice. Harry’s chair had been turned to face Dumbledore’s and he had Harry’s arms in his hands. McGonagall was on her feet leaning over the headmaster’s shoulder. “What happened?”

Harry caught his breath. “I don’t know,” he replied. Though fear had tempered his anger he still didn’t feel generous enough to work out how to explain what he had just seen.

Dumbledore frowned at him. “We cannot help you, my boy, if you do not let us,” he said stridently. When Harry refused to look at him, he said gently, “Perhaps the party is not the best place for you right now.”

“I want to stay,” Harry insisted. He didn’t relish the thought of lying alone on his dormitory bed imagining everyone down here having fun, waiting for that green world to just suck him in for good the next time.

“I can see that your self-control is too thin. Understandably, given the strain you were under just prior to now.” Dumbledore turned to Snape. “Severus,” he said and tossed his head. Snape stood immediately and departed. Harry watched him go in confusion.

McGonagall sat back down, pushed her chalice away and poured herself some tea. She kept her eyes on Harry as she rapidly sipped it down.

Presently, Snape returned and slipped something surreptitiously to Dumbledore before returning to his seat and taking on an expression identical to McGonagall’s, one of careful scrutiny.

Dumbledore took Harry’s chalice of mead and, behind the table, poured the contents of the vial into it. As he set it back on the table, Harry asked, “What is that?”

“It is a mood altering potion,” Dumbledore said. “I would normally strongly resist giving you such a thing, but I insist you drink it if you are to remain this evening.”

Harry gave him an accusing look and his anger built again, although fear of the vision cut it off short. 

“I’m doing this for your own good. You are more than free to rant at me another time, but a scene here tonight would mark you forever in everyone’s minds. I will not risk that happening.”

Harry glanced at the cup, then stared at Dumbledore’s hand on the table, at the glittering silver rings on his fingers. He felt utterly drained and strangely defeated. He lifted the chalice and downed the contents in a fiery set of gulps.

“Thank you, Harry. We’ll let that settle in and then we’ll give the reporters their chance while the potion is at its peak. Have another pudding,” Dumbledore suggested, pulling a dish of chocolate bonbons off the tray that had appeared as he said it.

Grudgingly, Harry bit one in half. They were frozen solid. His breath turned the chocolate white on the remaining half. Harry stared unseeing out across the Hall as he thought about what had happened. The vision didn’t make any sense. He replayed it in his mind and wondered if he had fallen asleep for an instant. He started to care less about it. His shoulders felt disconnected from his body, too lax somehow. A group of wizards discussing something with grand arm motions caught his gaze. They were jesting and laughing. A witch sat slightly away from that table with a toddler in her lap eating cake with its fingers. Chocolate was smeared over its face and hands, the mess completely disregarded by everyone. With a painful twinge, Harry wished away everything in front of him and longed to rewind his life backward to let it play out again another way. 

“He is fighting the potion,” Snape observed, drawing Harry’s thoughts back to the immediate table.

Dumbledore stood up and peered down at Harry. “I don’t mean to,” Harry tried to explain.

“Come, let’s visit some friends. You are in need of a distraction.”

Harry followed him off the platform and over to the Weasley table. “Harry!” several of them shouted when they saw him step over. “We thought you’d got too good for us,” Fred said. At Harry’s look of hurt disbelief, he slugged him lightly in the stomach. “Just kidding, Harry,” he insisted quickly.

“Great party,” Ginny said, stepping over from a nearby table full of students. She gave him a light hug. “I don’t know what we’d do without you,” she said playfully.

“Harry,” Mrs. Weasley said emotionally from two seats away. She reached across the table toward him in vain, as it was too far. Harry wondered how many chalices she had consumed as he humored her and walked around to her seat. Without standing up, she hugged him around the middle, pressing her cheek into his belly. “I can stop worrying about you so much now, I guess. I can’t believe you did it.” She sniffled.

“Mum,” Ron said uncomfortably. “Sorry, mate, too much mead,” he said to Harry. Harry just shrugged that it didn’t matter. She finally let him go. He went around the table in a floating haze, shaking hands…even Percy’s. 

As they stepped away from that table, Dumbledore whispered in his ear, “I much prefer the real you, but this will have to do.”

At the allotted hour, they settled on the lawn to watch the fireworks. Diggle outdid himself by everyone’s estimation. The extravagant display went on and on. Harry sat on the grass between Hermione and Ron to watch it. The other guests of honor sat in overstuffed chairs near the steps. Harry was certain he could have joined them but had no desire to.

An hour into Dedalus’ show, Harry could feel the potion wearing off. As the fireworks continued, he felt more and more like a boat left aground during low tide. 

Hermione touched his hand. “You all right, Harry?” she asked quietly enough that Ron didn’t hear over the sounds of the crowd and the fireworks.

“No,” Harry answered. “I feel really strange.”

She gave him a pain-filled frown and fiercely grasped his hand. “Even though you should feel better not having Voldemort rattling around in your head, it will probably take some getting used to,” she said hopefully. “Do you feel relieved at least?”

“Yes, definitely.”

“Everything is ahead now.” She smiled earnestly at him. It was infectious, easing the ache in his chest at least as well as the potion had. He took a deep breath as a giant flower in blue and red burst into the sky, its petals segmenting and drifting on the wind.

As the display went on and the crowd quieted, Harry leaned back in the cold grass and closed his eyes. The colored lights flickered through his eyelids. Eventually, he fell into a calm sleep.

Hermione noted Harry had drifted off, despite the whistle and sizzle of the spells over Hogsmeade. She nudged Ron, who rolled his eyes and shook his head. “He’d fall asleep during a World Cup Quidditch match too, I think, even if he were playing in it.” Hermione giggled. Ron took her hand and held it across Harry’s supine form. 

A time later, someone bent close from behind. Hermione turned and found the headmaster crouching near Harry’s shoulder. “How is he doing?” Dumbledore asked. At Hermione’s shrug, the old wizard frowned. “Perhaps it is time to take him to his dormitory.”

“He is sleeping all right,” Hermione pointed out.

“I doubt if the cold ground is doing him any good,” Dumbledore commented quietly.

“I’ve been using a warming spell on it for him,” Hermione said.

Dumbledore gave her a soft smile. “We shall leave him here then.”

A booming firework woke Harry a half hour later. The memories of the day flowed through him as he watched a thousand spinning wheels throw sparks throughout the night sky. He sat up and looked around the lawn. It had thinned down to half the number as before. Harry looked up as Fred and George came by with steins, full to the brim.

“More mead, Harry?” one of them asked.

Harry accepted a heavy mug. It was pleasantly warm, so he wrapped his hands around it gratefully. Ron took one too. Hermione insisted that she would share Ron’s. 

Halfway through the mead, feeling sleepy and over-warm, the fireworks finally finished. Everyone clapped for a long time. Harry wondered if the many distant figures moving around the side of the lake could hear them. The figures flashing in and out of the firelight made him catch his breath. It reminded him of the things moving around in his green-hazed vision. 

“Harry?” Dumbledore queried from nearby, closer to the castle steps. They all stood up and stretched at this cue. The headmaster clearly wanted to ask something, but the crowd pressed in, touching Harry and expressing their gratitude. Harry drew his eyes from Dumbledore’s and addressed each person as much as possible.

The next morning, breakfast was served an hour late to accommodate the party ending after two in the morning. As everyone settled into their seats, Dumbledore stood up. “Welcome, everyone, to your first full day of freedom. We are going to make this a Hogsmeade day for the Third to Seventh Years.” Cheering interrupted him at this point. “Wait, wait,” Dumbledore said in amusement. “I’d also like to announce that we have decided, after much deliberation, to cancel end-of-year examinations.”

Ron jumped out of his seat at this. “Yes! I love you, Harry,” he said, shaking his friend’s shoulders roughly in celebration.

Dumbledore went on, “As well, we shall have an exhibition Quidditch match on the afternoon immediately following the last day of O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. testing. Yes, yes, you cannot skip those, I’m afraid. This match will be composed of teams combining two houses. Hufflepuff and Gryffindor will form one team. Slytherin and Ravenclaw another. Two practices will be scheduled for the weekend before for each team. Equal numbers from each house must be on each team, including the backup. I will let the captains work out how positions will be assigned.”

Much conversation followed this announcement.

“That is all,” Dumbledore said. As he sat down, plates of food appeared in the center of the tables.

“Did you see this?” Hermione asked Harry with a nudge of her elbow. She held out the Daily Prophet for him.

Harry took it and gaped at the photo below the two-inch-tall headline of “Voldemort Defeated!” It was a black and white image of himself standing over Voldemort’s body, taken from the level of the outside steps, so it looked slightly up at him. At first he thought the image wasn’t moving, then he realized that the hem of his robe shifted as though in the breeze. “I didn’t see a photographer,” Harry said thoughtfully.

“Apparently the Ministry leaked the picture, one of their recording staff took it when they came in with the Aurors.”

Harry glanced through the article, glad to see there was no mention of his lack of a girlfriend. There were lots of quotes from various officials and diplomats, even Muggle ones, praising Harry’s success. He finished the lead article and looked back at the picture. His eyes looked haunting, even to him, like he was seeing something far off that no one else could. When he tried to give it back to Hermione, she told him to keep it. She had another copy.

“We’ll have to find Zacharias after breakfast,” Ron said. “Work out the teams right away.” He had a deeply committed tone to his voice.

“You can be captain, you know,” Harry said as he bit into an oily strip of bacon.

“You are,” Ron said in surprise.

“No one is, Ron. There weren’t any teams until two minutes ago.”

Ron looked at him closely. “You want me to do it instead of you?”

Harry considered the best tactic here. “I’m sort of tired of doing everything,” he hedged.

“I mean. I will if you really want me to. But I think you should be captain.”

“Co-captain, remember. And I’d rather you do it. Really. You and Zac for this match. Honestly, Ron, you sound like you care more about winning than I do. That makes it better for the team.”

“You still want to be on the team though, right? Seeker?”

“Yes, I would. But we’ll work that out with Zac later.”

Zacharias Smith found them before they finished. “Mind if I sit down?” he asked. He had three other players in tow. He sat beside Ron and leaned over him to talk to Harry.

“Ron is Gryffindor captain,” Harry pointed out.

“Oh, okay.” He turned to Ron. “I figure it like this: Me, Bell and Weasley as Chasers. Sloper and Riggs as Beaters. You as Seeker,” he pointed at Harry. “And since Eleanor is really bumming about not playing, you and she have a face-off for Keeper.” He said this last to Ron.

Ron thought a moment. “Okay, I’m all right with that, except, who are we going to swap out if I win the position? Not you,” he said to Harry. 

“I didn’t say anything,” Harry insisted. “I know Katie really wants to play as it’s her last year. Jack might be willing to play as extra.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Ron said. “What kind of formations do you like to use?” he asked Zac.

As breakfast wound down and the co-captains debated, many students came over to congratulate and thank Harry on their way out. Harry chatted with them, thinking that it would be good to get over this so things could return to normal. Dennis Creevey asked him to sign his copy of the Prophet.  Harry grinned and used his marker pen charm before putting his signature in the bottom corner of the photograph.

“Where’d you learn that?” Hermione asked.

“Minister Obolensky,” Harry explained after the Creevey brothers had left. “He had me sign a Hogwarts napkin for Victor Krum at the party last night.” At Ron and Zac’s expressions, Harry added with a quirky smile, “Said Victor’d made him promise to bring something back.”

Ron shook his head. “I’m sorry, Harry, but Voldemort is just not as important as Quidditch.”

“Tell everyone else that.”

At lunchtime, McGonagall stopped by their table and put three letters in front of Harry. The top one was from Mrs. Weasley. He gave his teacher a questioning look. She paused in departing to say, “See me after lunch and I will explain, Mr. Potter. And, no, I am not doubling as a school owl, if that is your question.”

As instructed, Harry headed up to his Head of House’s office. He hoped his fellow students settled down soon, their grateful outpourings were starting to wear thin even over his own relief.

“Ah, Mr. Potter,” she said in a welcoming voice when he stepped in after knocking. She bent over behind her desk and lifted up a wooden box which she placed on top. “These are yours, I believe.”

Harry froze and blinked at the box, which was almost three quarters full of letters.

McGonagall went on. “We have put a diversion spell on the castle for the owls delivering post to you. Here is today’s.” As Harry peered tentatively into the crate, she went on, “They have all been checked for curses, so have at it.”

Harry put a hand on the lip of the box and said, “I have assignments due tomorrow, Professor,” he pointed out, trying to imagine opening and at least perusing all of these.

McGonagall’s lips curled slightly as she gave him a much softer look than normal.

“Professor?” Harry prompted, when she didn’t speak.

She came around the desk and said, “I think I can probably assist for a little while.” She flicked her wand and three more smaller crates appeared on the floor. “Let’s see what we have here,” she muttered as she reached into the large box. With a letter opener from her desk, she slit the first one, unfolded it, and glanced over it. “General appreciation,” she stated and dropped it into one of the boxes. The second and third were also so classed. The fourth, on much finer paper, she looked at a little longer before handing it to Harry.

Harry unfolded the creamy smooth paper and read the first line of flourished script. He glanced at the envelope and the fancy seal in white wax on the flap. Freelander, it read, with a crest of a sheep and a flying pheasant. Harry had to reread the first two sentences to understand them. “Is this guy a nutter?” Harry asked his teacher. 

“Lord Freelander is a very nice man, Harry. I’ve had the honor of meeting him on at least two occasions. His great grandfather was a wizard and so is he. Some families have magic only every few generations and his is one.”

“But he doesn’t know anything about me. Why in the world would he want to adopt me?” Harry asked as he glanced at the rest of the letter. 

“Succession, Harry. He has no children of his own, I believe.” She dropped two more letters into the first box. “If I were you, I would not dismiss it out of hand. You could do worse than an estate with a wing of your own, horses to ride hither and thither, and all the personal tutors you could wish for to continue in whatever career you fancied.”

Harry gazed at her as though she too had lost her grip on reality. He accepted the file folder she handed him to store the letter. The last sentence caught his eye as he started to fold it. It offered, independent of the other things, to pay for his apprenticeship, should he require it. Harry, feeling a little numb, slipped the letter back into its envelope and stowed it. McGonagall handed him two others.

“I hope those aren’t the same,” Harry said, seeing one on almost equally nice paper. 

“One is…similar,” she said. “The other just exceptionally well written.”

Harry opened the top one, written on scented pink parchment. It was an offer of a daughter’s hand in marriage, the accompanying photo wasn’t too bad. He was very glad she wasn’t anyone he knew from school. He folded it away and dropped it into one of the unused crates. McGonagall, seeing this, dropped the one she had just opened on top of it with a wink. Harry shook his head in dismay as he unfolded  the second one.

“Have a seat,” McGonagall said, pulling a chair over from the wall for him. 

Harry accepted it as he read the letter in his hand. The handwriting was simple but the words were startlingly eloquent, forcing him to imagine they were intended for someone else in order to get through them. He wished he had had such words last night when he had been asked to speak. When he had finished, he folded it carefully. Gratitude conveyed in that manner felt very different from everyone else’s. 

McGonagall continued opening and sorting as Harry stared at the cages on the far wall. When he finally returned to himself, he was surprised at her patience. He dropped the letter into the fullest crate and accepted the next handful.

Classes finally returned to something resembling normal by the end of the week. Harry moved through them in a daze, raw and quick tempered. Everyone gave him leeway, though, so he didn’t get into trouble for it. He didn’t sense any diminishing of everyone’s tolerance of him, either, which only added to his feelings of separation.

His spare time was spent answering letters. He had started with the easy ones: the handful of exceptionally moving letters of thanks. He spent many recopied parchments on composing a heartfelt response that he then rewrote, with slight tailoring, to each of them. That left three letters that he couldn’t ignore, mostly because McGonagall had strongly urged him not to. These letters included the one from Lord Freelander and were similar in that they made offers of financial assistance for his ongoing training. Even after taking them out of his knapsack many times over, they still brought a flush of something akin to pain. He knew he shouldn’t be annoyed at the two men and one woman of social standing who had penned the letters he now held, but he couldn’t completely help himself.

McGonagall’s firm insistence that he reply played through his mind yet again as he sat alone in the quiet library late one night. He pulled out Lord Freelander’s letter and a blank parchment. He just had to write what he truly thought, he told himself. Writing extra neatly, he wrote out the salutation. He thanked the man for his kind offer. He was flattered, among other less clear emotions. Harry put that down, the first part anyway. In awkward phrasing he explained that he couldn’t see himself being adopted, at least not right now, ten years ago, certainly, even three or four, maybe.

Harry reread what he had written so far, discovering that he couldn’t write an honest letter to someone else until he had first written one to himself. No wonder he had left these in his book bag all this time while he stumbled through his regular routine. 

He put the quill down and rubbed his eyes. What was the real problem, anyway? he asked himself.  He imagined himself with a house to go to, a nice one. That sounded very appealing in and of itself. But when the nightmares started, what would his new guardian think? What if he slipped into that vision? He would have to explain that he wasn’t what they thought he was, and the thought of having to do that made him feel sickened.

He reread Freelander’s letter and, feeling that this stranger had gone out on a limb, Harry felt he should reply with as much honesty as he could manage. He picked up the quill again, and explained, in what felt like clumsy prose, that he needed to find his own way from here because, until now, the prophecy had left him no path of his own. He reiterated his gratitude for the offer and his hope that assistance remain available, should he need it.

With a frown, he rewrote it out three times and closed them all in envelopes.

In Potions, Harry frowned at the instructions and added two drops of essence of silver leaf. He stirred once and waited for the cauldron to cool down. Snape stepped past, pausing to eye Hermione’s cauldron and then Harry’s. Hermione gave their teacher a warning look.

“What was that for, Ms. Granger?” Snape asked.

Very quietly, she said, “It was a Don’t be cruel to Harry look, sir.”

“Hermione,” Harry said.

Equally quiet, Snape retorted, “Have I been cruel to our resident hero even once this week? Granger, Potter is the one being cruel to himself.” At her look of confusion, he went on just above a whisper. “His wallowing in self-pity is doing him far more damage than I ever could.”

Harry's silver stirring stick hit the table with a twang as he put his hand down suddenly. Then his eyes glazed over.

“Profes—” Hermione started to protest. Snape jerked his hand up in front of her to halt her response as he watched Harry intently. Hermione turned to Harry and reached for his arm, only to be restrained by Snape.

The web pulsed and glittered around Harry. He thought this time that he could feel the torn strands like open wounds. He was immersed in the vision, part of it, but he could escape. He simply had to suppress his anger. As he gathered himself together to back off, a dark shape slithered up just before him, sliding through the spaces of the web effortlessly to loom above him.

With a gasp Harry returned to himself and looked up at his teacher. Startled to find Snape standing so close, Harry jumped back off his stool and had to catch himself on the bench behind to remain standing. The whole class froze and stared.

Snape’s brow went up. “Ms. Granger, monitor the class for five minutes while I speak with Mr. Potter.” Snape went to the door. “Potter?” he said in a voice not to be disobeyed. Embarrassed and breathing fast, Harry rubbed his temple and followed quickly. In the empty corridor, Snape pushed Harry gently but firmly against the stone wall. “What did you see?” When Harry shook his head, Snape said, “Look at me.”

Harry shook his head fiercely and stared at the bottom edge of Snape’s robe, determined not to be Legilimized. “Don’t you dare,” Harry whispered. It came out shaky rather than insistent like he had tried for.

“All right, Potter, but you must tell me what you saw.”

“I don’t know what it is,” Harry complained. “A web. Glowing. It is all torn up. And there is this thing like a giant sea urchin—it moves around on it.” With a frustrated frown he looked up at his teacher, who looked nonplussed. “Any ideas?” Harry asked sarcastically.

Snape rubbed his forehead with his fingertips as he thought. “No, I don’t. Except that it seems to happen only when you are very angry, correct?”

Reluctantly, Harry admitted, “Yes.”

“Perhaps then, you should endeavor not to be,” Snape drawled. Harry glared at the door to the classroom, ignoring him. “Cheer up, Potter. You have everything you could have wanted—the world wrapped around your little finger.”

“I don’t want it,” Harry said. “What good is it?”

After studying the boy, Snape opined, “It must be worth something. Everyone seems intent on obtaining it.” At Harry’s lack of response, he said, “Stay after class. Perhaps we can determine something about this web thing in your vision. I would do it now but I have visions of my own—of Mr. Malfoy shrinking Mr. Longbottom down into a potion bottle and then shelving it.”

Harry laughed despite himself. “You don’t really think that’s possible, do you, sir?”

“When teaching Slytherins, I have found it does not pay to underestimate their creativity or their dogged pursuit of trouble.”

Harry shrugged. “Your house, sir.”

Snape put his hand on the door. “As I am frequently reminded,” he said as he pushed it open.

“What was that?” Hermione asked when Harry returned to his seat.

In a faint whisper, because everyone around them was trying to listen, he replied, “I don’t know. It happened during the party too. When I get really angry, I get this weird vision.”

“That doesn’t sound good. Don’t get angry anymore,” Hermione urged him.

“Thanks for the advice,” Harry breathed flatly as he tried to figure out where he was in his brewing.

After class, Harry followed his teacher to his office. “Sit down,” Snape said as he closed the door. Harry obeyed, slouching in the visitor’s chair. Snape leaned against the front of his desk and crossed his arms. “I am curious whom you are punishing,” he said.

Harry’s brow furrowed at that, but he didn’t have a reply.

“I will assume you are not so foolish as to think you can punish me with your difficult behavior.” He paused. “Your friends…seem accustomed to it, quite frankly.” He waited for Harry to meet his gaze. “If you are trying to punish the headmaster—I will tell you in strict confidence that you are succeeding.”

Harry felt hurt at that, then turned away to gaze at the shelf to the right of him. Glass bottles with frosted glass stoppers sat in neat rows upon it. Was Snape right? Was that what he was trying to do? Part of him didn’t understand why he wasn’t just ecstatic to have reached this point: free to do whatever he pleased. He rubbed his scar, which made him realize that it hadn’t so much as tingled in the last week. He should be thrilled just for that, but hurt and anger kept wiping it out.

Snape huffed and said, “If the other teachers haven’t convinced you, presumably I won’t be able to.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked him quietly.

“No one else has spoken to you? Not even Professor McGonagall?” When Harry shook his head, Snape hissed in frustration. “You are sacrosanct, Potter—that is the problem,” he stated, as though it were Harry’s fault.

“You were going to help me with this vision…” Harry reminded him, regretting giving in and telling him anything about it.

“Yes, I was, wasn’t I?” Snape said as though he regretted it as well. 

“I can just go. That would be fine too,” Harry said, then added, “Sir.”

Snape stood silently, crossed his arms, tapped his fingers on his crossed arms. “A web, you said…”

Harry shrugged his right shoulder. “Sorta. It’s not clean like a spider’s web. It is more like something made of slime or taffy. It glows green.”

Snape’s head came up at that. “It was the same both times?”

“Mostly. This time it…” he frowned and stopped.

“Potter,” Snape threatened to make him continue.

Harry struggled for words. “Uh, it was as if where it was torn was an open wound.” He shook his head, frustrated. “And the urchin thing was almost more like an amoeba, reaching out in all directions. I didn’t hear voices this time.”

Snape stiffened at that. “What did they say last time?”

“I couldn’t understand them. They were muffled and distorted, but they were getting louder.” Harry didn’t add that they had sounded a bit like people in torment from a long way away.

“My fear, Potter, is that you are tapping into something the Dark Lord left behind.”

“That is kinda what I’m assuming,” Harry admitted quietly. He sat back and looked at the ceiling. “I have to keep reminding myself he’s gone.”

“We all do,” Snape said, sounding almost human. He gave Harry space to consider this before adding, “I do not intend to come across as completely unappreciative for what you did, but old habits die hard.”

“Are you saying that you have actually been trying to be nicer to me?” Harry asked in disbelief.

“It seemed…reasonable to do so,” Snape grudgingly admitted.

Harry snorted. “I hadn't noticed.”

Snape uncrossed his arms and rested his hands on the desk behind him. “Regarding this vision. It appears very organic, correct?” At Harry’s nod, he continued. “I do not know what it is, but I suspect it will dissipate if left alone. It is worrisome that you felt it more the second time. That implies to me that you are capable of sustaining it, even if you don’t know what it is.”

“It just fades in when I get angry,” Harry explained.

“That was the Dark Lord’s primary emotion.”

Harry sighed. “I’ll try.”

“Try very hard. It has only happened twice?”

“Yes.”

“If it happens again, Professor McGonagall wants you banned from the Quidditch match.”

“No.” Harry grimaced. “You’d like that though—wouldn’t you, sir?” he accused grimly.

“Hm. A combined Ravenclaw-Slytherin win is not worth much, really,” Snape replied airily.

Harry lowered his brow at his teacher. The dark edge was gone from Snape’s voice—he just hadn’t noticed.

“It is time for class,” Snape pointed out dismissively.

The last weeks of the term sped past even without examinations looming. Harry kept himself tightly under control and avoided the strange vision. Nevertheless, McGonagall would not let him play in the exhibition match without adding a sticking spell to his broom. That would severely limit Harry’s maneuvering almost to pointlessness. And despite arguing with her for half an hour, she would not relent. She even insisted on it for practices as well. Harry did not want news of it to spread too far so he told Ron only under the condition that he not tell anyone else. Ron was so embarrassed for him, his promise to keep mum seemed the most genuine Harry had ever heard from him.

The night before the match, Harry had dreams of dark, slippery shadows tracking him in a hazy green landscape. Sticky strands of glowing taffy held him back from running away. He struggled frantically, tangling himself more and more as his pursuers drew closer. He woke with a start just as they came upon him.

“Harry?” Ron said from the next bed in a tone that said, this better not be what I think it is.

“Yeah.”

“Nightmare?”

“Yep.”

“Have any more potion?” Ron suggested.

“No,” Harry said.

“Too late to get more?”

The clock read a few minutes after one. “Probably,” Harry said.

Ron’s bedcovers shifted, then he said, “No it’s not. It’s just an hour after midnight. Not like it’s morning or anything.”

“You want me to go knock on Snape’s door at one in the morning?” Harry asked in disbelief.

“Whassa?” Dean uttered from between the edges of his bed drapes.

“Ron wants me to go down and get a sleeping potion from Snape at one in the morning,” Harry complained.

“He needs it. He’s having nightmares,” Ron sounded way too much like his dad. “Harry, we have one Quidditch match. You need to be at your best. Maybe Dean will go get it for you…”

Dean shut his drapes quickly. “G’night,” he muttered.

“I’ll get it for you,” Neville said as he slid out of bed and began to slip his shoes onto his bare feet.

Harry tossed his drapes aside. “Neville, don’t do that. You hate Professor Snape.”

“So do you,” Neville retorted. “It is the least we can do for you. We owe you a lot, Harry.”

“No you don’t,” Harry said in a pained voice.

“I’ll go down with you, then,” Neville said factually, pulling his robe on.

“Maybe McGonagall would go get it,” Ron suggested.

“That’s an idea,” Harry said. He put on his robe and slippers, and padded out. Neville followed.

They knocked on McGonagall’s door. A long minute ticked by before she opened it. She looked like she had been sleeping heavily. “What is it?” she asked drowsily.

“I’m sorry, Professor. I wouldn’t do this if it weren’t the night before the only Quidditch match, but I’m having nightmares and I can’t go back to sleep without more potion.”

“And?” she asked.

“I was hoping you’d get some for me…” Harry said with a plead in his voice.

“Potter,” she said a little harshly. “You are more than capable of finding the dungeon, even in the dark.”

“You’re going to make me get it?” Harry asked in surprise.

“Potter, despite your hero status, the world, or at least this school, does not revolve around you. Professor Snape doesn’t bite. Get it yourself.”

“I don’t think I’ll bother then, Professor. You don’t care if we lose the match?”

She had started to close the door, but held it halfway. “It is a combined Hufflepuff match. It does not matter.”

“Boy, Dumbledore really knows how to ruin a Quidditch match,” Harry griped. “Professor Snape doesn’t care who wins either.”

“Then I truly do not care who wins, Harry. Annoying Professor Snape would have been the only remaining consolation. Was there something you wanted, Mr. Longbottom?”

“No, Professor, I was just here for moral support.”

“Hm. Well, goodnight,” she said with some finality and closed the door softly, although the latch clicked loudly anyway.

Harry stepped back, more than a little hurt. He took a few deep breaths and Occluded his mind to keep real anger at bay.

“So we can tell Ron that was a bad idea,” Neville commented.

They stepped slowly back down the corridor. “Sounded like a good one. Usually she goes out of her way to help the team.”

“I really am willing to go down and get some for you, Harry,” Neville insisted. “Snape can’t hate me any more than he does already.”

Harry scoffed. “Don’t bet on that.” He exhaled hard, still smarting dangerously from McGonagall’s dismissal. “Let’s go. If we could face Voldemort and his closest followers, we ought to be able to handle Snape.”

As it turned out, light was shining from underneath Snape’s office door. Harry, relieved to see that, knocked on it. Footsteps came across the floor and even with this warning, when the door opened abruptly, both of them jumped. 

Snape looked between them with his sharp gaze. “A bit late to be wandering about, isn’t it?” he sneered lightly at them as he leaned a bit menacingly out toward them.

“I need more sleeping potion, if you would, sir,” Harry explained.

Snape’s entire demeanor changed. He straightened and gave Harry a long look before gliding back into his office. Harry and Neville stepped just inside the door to wait. Snape closed a low cabinet and examined a small bottle in his fingers. A black-edged grimoire sat open on Snape’s desk. Two lamps were lit to read by. Snape stepped back over with the bottle held out, then retracted it at the last moment as if reconsidering.

“Mr. Longbottom, leave us alone,” Snape said, putting his hand on the door.

Neville glanced at Harry to verify that this was all right, then stepped out. Snape shut the door and kept his hand on it. “What is in your nightmare?” he asked.

Rambling in a tired way, Harry replied, “I’m being chased through a world a lot like the vision, which I haven’t had again, by the way. But it isn’t the same, really. I think I am just dreaming something like the vision. But I won’t fall back to sleep, and I sorta want to be awake for the only Quidditch match of the year.” He waited as Snape studied him with his dark eyes. Harry wondered idly why McGonagall hadn’t asked what his nightmare was about or worried what his strange vision meant. 

Snape held out the bottle. 

“Thank you, sir,” Harry said honestly as he pocketed it. “It isn’t going to be much fun anyway—McGonagall insisted on adding a sticking spell to my broom.” Harry immediately thought better of that. “Please don’t tell any of the students in your house, sir. I’d never hear the end of it,” he added tiredly.

Snape shook his head once. “No one has probably told you this, Potter. But there are those who are certain the remaining Death Eaters are determined to take revenge upon you.”

“That wouldn’t be too surprising. What else do they have?” Harry thought for a moment. “But we are still having the match. Why?”

Snape raised a brow at him. “Because Dumbledore is determined to cheer you up. That and forty Ministry wizards will be there on guard. I think they are actually hoping the event will draw out the remaining seven, although personally I would consider it a very unwise way of going about it.”

Harry tried to imagine Pettigrew showing up at the match, his metal arm glinting in the sunlight. It didn’t seem very likely.

Snape went on. “The insistence on the sticking charm probably has less to do with your propensity to phase out than the inherent risk of getting hit with a spell at a great height.”

Harry thought that over. “You are being nicer to me,” he commented. At Snape’s doubtful look, he added sadly, “All I’ve ever wanted was to know what was going on.”

Snape crossed his arms and straightened his shoulders. “I am not one to bury truths simply because they are unsavory or negative.”

Harry started to reply then thought better of it. Instead, he reached for the door handle to leave.

“Yes, Potter?” Snape challenged him, quickly putting his hand on the door to hold it closed.

“I was going to say that you look for the unsavory and negative, but I wasn’t sure if that was a fair thing to say, so I wasn’t going to say it,” Harry explained. “Sir.”

Snape removed his hand and re-crossed his arms. “You would best go if you are going to get much sleep. For the match.”

As Harry opened the door, he muttered, “Thank you, sir.”

Neville stood, leaning against the far dungeon wall. He pushed away from it as the door opened. “Professor,” he said quietly.

Snape gave him a curt nod and closed the door. At the end of the corridor, Neville asked, “What did he want?”

“He wanted to know what my nightmare was about,” Harry explained, feeling hurt again by McGonagall’s reaction to his asking her for help.

“Did he know what it meant?”

“Not that he said. I don’t think it means anything except that I’m keyed up for the match.” Harry fingered the bottle in his pocket as they walked, reassured by the distinctive shape of the warm glass.

The crowd cheered as they flew out onto the pitch. They especially cheered when Harry’s name was announced, making him think that more visitors were in the stands than normal. The seats did look rather full, with children on laps and more fans standing along the staircases on the sides of the towers.

Harry paced Malfoy around in a wide circle as Madam Hooch gave them all the usual warnings. For once, Malfoy remained silent as he looked over the players on both teams, his mouth grim.

The whistle blew and the players flew into position. Huffindor, as they had called it during practice, went on offense first. Ginny and Zac looked like they would reach the goal posts easily until a Bludger, hit by Parkinson, struck the nose of Ginny’s broom, spinning her around several times. Zac’s pass to her, just before, flew wide to be picked up by a Ravenclaw chaser.

Harry took his eyes off the game to check Malfoy’s location. The other boy circled lazily, eyes alert. Harry took up the same stance, a half turn around the pitch. The crowd rose to their feet as the opposition scored. Minutes later, Zac put one through as well, tying the score. Harry glanced up at the lake as a breeze ruffled his hair. He really hoped the game went on a good long time. If he saw the Snitch and Malfoy didn’t, maybe he would just pretend he hadn’t.

Harry passed behind the goal posts as Ron made a save on the center, which unfortunately went right back into the hands of a Slytherin, who tossed it behind his back and through the left hoop. Harry returned to looking for the Snitch.

Malfoy made a dive. Harry changed course but not severely, refusing to be fooled. Apparently it was nothing or a dodge, because the blond boy returned to his earlier altitude. Harry watched Malfoy as he climbed. He was too big to be a seeker, really. He probably would not be next year. Maybe he wouldn’t be on the Slytherin team at all. That thought cheered Harry quite a lot.

The game went on. It was sixty to thirty against. The crowd had quieted, chants gathering steam only occasionally. Malfoy seemed to be getting anxious: he circled faster, looking around himself with more turns of his head. Harry, though he wasn’t impatient yet, couldn’t just let Malfoy win. He cut Malfoy off and took up a position just ahead of him. Malfoy zipped past him with a nasty look, brushing Harry’s shoulder with the tail of his broom. The bristles were sharp and tore at his sleeve and rasped his skin. Annoyed, Harry considered ducking under Malfoy to pass again. He didn’t get the chance. A green haze filled his eyes, making it hard to see. Harry curved away sharply.

Harry circled in the opposite direction, occluding his mind to shake the vision, grateful now that he didn’t have to worry about falling from his broom if he lost himself to it completely. A cold wind lifted his scarlet cloak, making him shiver. It felt like a breeze from the deepest part of the forest. He turned again at random, crossing the pitch the short way to pace beside Malfoy as he circled. Dimly, he heard the crowd cheer another goal. Another breeze chilled him, and this time it didn’t feel so much from the forest as from a crypt.

Heart pounding fiercely, Harry looked out across the lawn toward the forest, green haze coming and going from his vision. Malfoy cut him off. Harry dodged instinctively to avoid him. In his mind, the black spiked sphere was very close, reaching hungrily with its limbs as though to enclose him. With great effort, Harry drew in a breath and shook his head.

The crowd was shouting. Harry saw Malfoy turn suddenly to cut him off again. The Snitch hovered just on Harry’s right, its gold fluttering wings penetrating the veil over his vision. He started toward it, his limbs felt numb and cold as he stretched out his hand. The Snitch dodged farther right, increasing Harry’s advantage. Malfoy ducked down to get around Harry, betting the Snitch, already high, would dart lower.

Fear gripped Harry in that moment as he realized his green vision corresponded to the real world and that the spiked shadow was behind him, for real. He turned his broom sharply the other way and stared out over the lawn leading to the forest. It was closer yet, approaching from that side.

“Oh, no,” McGonagall said, putting her hand over her forehead. “We shouldn’t have let him play.”

Dumbledore murmured a spell and stared intently at Harry.

The crowd roared and groaned. In the back of his mind, Harry assumed that Malfoy had captured the Snitch. It felt to Harry like the world was ending, but not because of the match. Shaking now, Harry raced to the top box. “Something is coming,” Harry shouted and pointed toward the forest.

Dumbledore moved to the front of the box. “Harry, what is it?”

“I don’t know. Get everyone inside, sir. Hurry.” His hands visibly trembled as they clutched the broom handle.

Dumbledore didn’t hesitate. With a Sonorus charm, he announced that everyone was to evacuate to the castle immediately. The ministry wizards gathered below the box. Tonks yelled up to Harry, “What is it?”

Harry gasped and glanced fearfully over his shoulder again.

“Harry, get inside, now,” Dumbledore ordered him.

Shaking his head to clear his vision, Harry recognized the grip on his heart. The teachers were at the edge of the box now, cajoling him to move. “I feel it,” Harry said. “Do you?”

The teachers shook their heads. “Harry!” Dumbledore shouted at him, sharp edged.

In his vision the ball now appeared as hundreds of separate things, each moving forward, forming a streaming pack. Glowing points of light appeared here and there. He wondered what they were. Ron and Ginny came alongside him then, hovering easily. Harry pulled out his wand. “Dementors,” Harry said. 

Everyone looked to the empty lawn where Harry pointed. “How many?” Ron asked.

“All of them,” he replied darkly. 

The stands were half empty.  Harry watched the line of people moving toward the castle doors. The black figures separated, spreading that way. “They aren’t going to make it,” Harry said. He felt freed up now, less numb. “They are supposed to be after me, but they are getting distracted.”

Ron and Ginny zipped off, collecting a D.A. member each off the stands and flying to the line now running to the castle. Tonks and the ministry wizards saw this as well and instructions went out to protect the path to safety.

“Harry,” Dumbledore said in a stern tone as he leaned over the edge of the nearby railing.

Harry looked Dumbledore in the eye and shook his head. He flew the other way, trying to draw the Dementors off. He could see them in his mind, and apparently now others could feel them because some were starting to panic. Ron, Ginny, and ten other D.A. members had lined up over near the steps. Patroni circled them. Harry could see dark figures shifted to avoid them, but there were far too many Dementors, more than Harry imagined existed. Ministry wizards joined the students. They appeared to be arguing.

Some of the Dementors had fallen for his ruse, but most hadn’t. Harry swooped down and landed near the lake, as far from the castle doors as he could get. The black swarm in the green world shifted toward him nearly as a whole. Harry’s limbs went numb again immediately. He readied the Patronus charm in his mind, but held off. He wanted to attract them, not repel them.

The teachers were coming across the lawn after him. Snape caught up with him first. He started to chastise Harry, then paused and looked around himself in concern.

“Feel them?” Harry asked. “There are hundreds of them.”

“Your vision?”

“I suppose so,” Harry answered. “You should be helping with the crowd. I can get away on my broom,” Harry said as McGonagall, Sprout, and Dumbledore joined them. He may have been lying. He couldn’t feel his fingers holding the broom handle. “Now we’re all surrounded,” he said.

The teachers had their wands out. They turned slowly, checking for targets.

“They’re waiting for something,” Harry said. The crowd was almost all inside the castle now. “Do you have a really good Dementor spell, sir?” he asked the headmaster. Dumbledore didn't reply, just moved his head as though listening for something.

Deciding it was almost too late, since he could no longer feel his hand clutching his wand, Harry cast a Patronus. The stag immediately faltered, kicking up on its hind legs. McGonagall followed suit—a tiger joined the stag, stalking hunch-shouldered in a tight circle around them. Snape held his wand before him, but did not cast anything. Harry wondered if maybe he wasn’t capable of it.

“Harry, I need to see them,” Dumbledore said. He lifted Harry’s chin with his finger and stared into his eyes. After a breath, he said, “My dear boy, I cannot believe you placed yourself here, given what you see.”

“I was trying to draw them off,” Harry explained, pointing at the crowd now trickling in the door, some being carried.

“Yes, but Harry, you should have some desire for self-preservation.” Cold swept through them all at that moment. “My friends,” Dumbledore said to the teachers, “we are in a most serious spot of trouble here.”

The teachers looked very alarmed at that.

“They want me. Just go,” Harry said, stepping back away from them. His back prickled with cold as he did this. Hope drained from him. Sprout and Snape grabbed hold of him and pulled him back into the middle of their small circle. They did not let go. Harry had thought his arms were numb, but pain shot through his wrists from their fierce grip. 

The Ministry wizards were splitting up now. Some stayed to guard the doors and many started in their direction, but hesitated. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Harry muttered, watching Tonks in the group fighting in their direction as though invisibly repelled.

“What are they waiting for?” Snape snarled. “If there are so many of them…”

The air wavered in grey wisps as though the Dementors considered becoming corporal. Harry froze. “They’re confused,” he whispered. He closed his eyes, trying to find the figures in his mind.

“Harry, please be careful,” Dumbledore said.

The wind in Harry’s mind sounded this time like harsh breathing. The teachers around him gasped and he felt them shuffling in closer. Harry did not dare open his eyes—he had a hold of something in his mind, something very hungry and manifestly bored to distraction. He felt betrayal as well from the presence. “They were promised a feeding,” Harry said. “They don’t understand their instructions anymore.”

Hands fell on Harry’s shoulders and held them. “Keep your eyes closed, Harry,” Dumbledore ordered. Harry heard shouting in the distance and spells being cast. The press of bodies around him grew tighter, which blocked the cryptic breeze from reaching him, although he could smell it. 

“Can you make them leave?” Dumbledore asked. Harry could hear in his voice a straining to make that question sound reasonable.

Harry grinned painfully, “How would I go about that, sir?” The combined sound of hundreds of Dementors all pressing in close, lungs rattling, bones clunking, made Harry squeeze his eyes shut harder. He didn’t need to see it. He could imagine it well enough.

“Renegotiate,” Snape stated.

“I already offered them me in exchange for you, but you wouldn’t leave,” Harry quipped. His fear had grown old and no longer gripped him so tightly, leaving him reckless.

“Not acceptable, Harry,” Dumbledore said in strangely conversational tone. The sound of the ministry wizards battling toward them grew louder.

“I’ve had to say we aren’t with them,” Harry pointed out.

“Good plan,” Sprout offered shakily. Harry had never heard her frightened before.

Harry delved into the vision again, using his anger growing up with the Dursleys to enter it. An offer emerged to consume these Muggles in revenge and Harry denied it, reflexively afraid to even dwell on the possibility, even fancifully. The web, active and surging during the offer, fell quiescent, waiting. Harry realized they had more patience in them then he would have imagined. Not today, Harry thought at them, trying to seem authoritative. He had a feeling they had stopped to negotiate because they sensed Dumbledore may have the power to give them something more, or that he did.

Harry relaxed a little more and tried to feel his way through the vision. The Dementors found his access to their web interesting. Only the Dark One had spoken to them thusly in a very long time.

“What are Dementors?” Harry asked.

“What do you mean?” McGonagall asked.

“Are they real, I mean natural?”

“They are a very old wizard creation, Harry. Magical guards spawned to protect treasure in ancient times.” Dumbledore provided this. Harry could hear fatigue in his voice. The ministry wizards sounded farther away.

“I’m going to try something, in that case,” Harry said.

“Be very very careful, my boy.” Dumbledore’s hands tightened on his shoulders.

Harry reached out in his mind and reconnected one of the broken strands before him. The web shuddered and glitter flashed around it. Something shifted in the real air around him as well.

“What did you do, Harry?” Dumbledore asked carefully.

“I’m negotiating,” Harry said slowly. “Can you call off the Ministry?”

“Harry?” Hermione’s voice roused him and he opened his eyes to the darkness of the hospital wing.

“You are insane, Harry,” Ron said earnestly. “Completely effing insane.”

Harry laughed at him as memory flooded through him. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do,” he said in a hoarse voice.

“What did you do?” Hermione asked. “The Dementors just left. Poof! And the teachers had to carry you up here.”

Pomfrey stepped over, glanced over him, and walked out. She stepped down the corridor, down the stairs and into the staff lounge. “He’s awake,” she stated to those assembled.

“Lucid?” Dumbledore asked.

“Rather,” she replied.

Dumbledore shook his head in amazement and rose to his feet. The staff followed him out and up to the dispensary.

Harry looked up as they entered and came over. Most of them hesitated too get close, or seemed to. Dumbledore stepped up beside the bed next to Hermione. He sighed when he saw Harry’s bright eyes. “So, Harry…what happened?”

“I gave them something so they would leave,” he replied factually, then cleared his rough throat.

“What did you give them?” Dumbledore asked in his usual calm curiosity.

Harry glanced around at the other faces. They looked more perplexed by him now then they had after he had killed Voldemort. “Um, I’m not sure how to explain it. And…I’m not sure it was a good idea.”

Dumbledore shot him a deeply intense look, then calmed. “We were afraid, Harry, that you had still given them yourself.”

“I didn’t need to. And I’ve cut myself off from them, so I can’t see them anymore. That’s the last thing I remember.” He wrapped his arms around his middle as he remembered the moment they sensed his intent. Their icy minds had tried to grab hold of him. He had severed the web attaching him to them just in time.

Dumbledore studied him. “Everyone,” he said, “please leave Harry and me alone.”

With a few backward head turns, the staff departed. Dumbledore gestured at Hermione and Ron to follow. “He already told us,” Ron protested.

Gently, the headmaster said, “Out with you anyway.” When the room was clear, he moved to sit on the edge of the bed. “We continue to underestimate you, my dear boy.” He shook his head slowly. “I never imagined so many Dementors in one place, especially never imagined surviving being surrounded by them. They truly wished to leave nothing to chance when they sent them after you during the Quidditch match.”

“It was some kind of bonus deal for them—all of those victims,” Harry said. “The deal was, me first, then they could take what they wanted.” He waited for Dumbledore’s response and went on when none was forthcoming. “Voldemort had become one of them in a way by tapping into their joined minds. That is what I was seeing. He punished them until they did what he wanted. Tore the web of their minds apart, which made them crazier I think, or at least more desperate.” He paused again. Dumbledore sat patiently without comment.

“I fixed the web that I could reach. That was the deal,” Harry said quietly.

Dumbledore raised his chin in surprise. “You were screaming at the end, Harry. Did you know that? Right before you passed out and the Dementors disappeared.”

Harry flushed and cleared his throat again. “No, I didn’t know. I barely got away from them. They grabbed me as I cut the strands connecting me. It was horrible, like having my soul turned to ice crystals.”

“You seem all right, now.”

“I feel the same as I did.” He shrugged. “At least those visions will stop.”

Dumbledore straightened his robes and sat back. He patted Harry’s arm and sighed. “We should discuss the summer, Harry. Despite your continued cleverness, we are concerned about your safety. We want you to stay here at Hogwarts until the Ministry has apprehended the remaining Death Eaters.”

“I don’t have to go to the Dursleys?” Harry asked excitedly.

“In the past, we have not been here to keep watch. But with Voldemort gone, we can be more flexible. As well, the spell’s effectiveness is in question with regard to your aunt’s house since it was a binding upon Voldemort himself and, by proxy, his followers.”

Harry felt extravagantly relieved. With a sly look, he asked, “Can I write them the letter that says I’m not coming back?”

The headmaster pulled his robes together and stood. “If you can behave yourself while doing so…of course.”

Harry was released from Pomfrey’s clutches at breakfast time and, before heading down to the Great Hall, had to rush back to his dormitory for a clean set of robes. By the time he had changed, the corridors were nearly empty. He came up behind Dennis, hoisting open the door to the Great Hall with some effort. Harry helped from behind and gave the younger Creevey brother a smile. Dennis nearly fell over when he saw who was behind him. He stepped aside with his mouth open and watched Harry pass. “Dennis?” Harry asked the boy. The whole large room quieted and everyone, it seemed, turned to watch him come in. Harry only now realized his mistake: by being late, he had made an entrance.

The expressions of his fellow students had shifted to quiet awe or even fear from the ecstatically impressed they had been before. Huffing in frustration, Harry stepped along the table to where his friends were and sat down. 

“Good to see you, Harry,” Ginny said when Harry greeted them all.

Plates of food appeared. The hall was a long time returning to a normal level of conversation.

After breakfast Harry took himself away from his friends to write the letter to his relatives. He had originally planned on mailing it, but owl post would make more of an impression and it would arrive in time, since the train left tomorrow morning and they presumably would be expecting him. He pulled out parchment and quill and wrote:

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, 

I am writing to inform you that I won’t be returning for summer holiday. I have destroyed Voldemort so I am no longer required to seek refuge with you for protection.

He grinned at that opening. It was succinct, just the way his uncle liked it.

I don’t expect to be needing anything from you in the future. I probably should thank you for the shelter and meals, although I find it hard to do that. Mum would have been disappointed, I’m sure, if she knew how low you managed to keep a bare minimum of care.

He reread the last sentence. It was as tactful as he could be while still saying what he absolutely had to. It would kill him to not say anything. He burned with an undeniable desire to put them in his past and that required getting beyond these statements.

Remember me to everyone, especially Aunt Marge.

Harry grinned maliciously at that and signed it.

The leaving feast was a loud affair. Harry declined sitting at the head table when Dumbledore offered it. He much preferred to sit with his friends before they departed on the morning train without him. His fellow students still seemed annoyingly reverent around him. Harry didn’t believe Dementors were worse than Voldemort, but everyone else definitely thought so.

Dumbledore stood up and clinked his glass for attention. “Good evening to everyone. It is time to wrap up another school year. I don’t think we’ve had a more interesting one since our Founders passed on. First off, after much complaining by the students, we have decided to award the cup based on merit points alone, so we are celebrating Ravenclaw’s first house cup in over fifteen years.” He waved his wand and blue banners bearing an eagle unfurled from the ceiling across the Hall. The Ravenclaw table erupted into cheers and much back beating. 

Ron leaned over and said in a cheated voice, “What, he didn’t give Gryffindor a thousand points for destroying Voldemort?”

“Everyone helped with that, Ron,” Harry said offhandedly.

“We also have…” Dumbledore went on as he picked up a looped ribbon with a medal attached and glanced at it briefly. “Not one…” He lifted another identical medal and draped both over his gnarled hand. “…but two awards for special service to the school for…” He pretended to read the name off the medal. “…one Harry Potter.”

Even louder cheering broke out, startling Harry. Ron and Hermione pushed him out of his seat and gave him a shove toward the front of the hall. Students reached out to slap his arms as he walked up. He mounted the platform beside the headmaster and stared at the edging on the old wizard’s bright blue robes as the cheering continued. Out of the side of his eye, he could see the teachers behind the table all standing and clapping as well. 

Dumbledore draped each medal over him. They felt heavy as they bumped his breastbone. Harry held one up to look closer. It had his name inscribed in a flourishing script. “Thank you, sir,” Harry said as he finally met the headmaster’s gaze and accepted the offered handshake.

“You deserve much more, Harry,” Dumbledore said. He patted Harry on the shoulder and gave him a nudge in the direction of his seat. “Unless you have something to say?”

“No, sir,” he replied quickly. As he walked back to his seat, the Gryffindor table remained standing until Harry sat down. “All right. That will get annoying if it continues,” he commented loudly.

“One for the Dementors, I take it,” Ron said with his mouth full, as he eyed Harry’s medals.

Harry slipped them off. Hands reached out to look at them. He handed them away without care and served himself mashed potatoes. Had he been looking at the staff table at that moment, he might have seen Professor McGonagall elbow Professor Snape. 

The next morning, Harry waved the train away from Hogsmeade station. It felt very strange to do so. As the train rounded the bend and disappeared except for the plume of steam blooming over the trees, Harry headed back up to the castle with Hagrid.

As they rounded the lake with Hagrid taking extremely slow steps in deference to Harry, the half-giant said, “I have teh go inter Diagon Alley for some things. I asked Dumbledore if’n I can take you along. But he said ‘no.’”

“Thanks for asking, though,” Harry said.

Hagrid put a hand on Harry’s shoulder as they walked. “You amazed e’eryone this time, Harry. You really did.”

“Why? Voldemort was much worse. Why is everyone so impressed by the Dementors? I don’t get it.”

“I think it was a matter o’ being tha’ on top o’ He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named tha’ is getting teh people. They don’ know what teh expect nex’. Everyone knew you could do in the other bloke—you’d done i’ before. No one saw this one coming.”

Harry hung around with Hagrid for a while as he re-sewed his massive boot, watered the pumpkin patch, and mixed meat scraps with chicken blood for the Thestrals then set the buckets of it in the sun to ripen and congeal. 

Hagrid wiped his bloody hands on his thick leather apron before pulling it off. “Well, Harry, I gotta run. I’s lunchtime anyway—yeh best be getting up to the castle.”

Harry studiously avoided glancing at the dark buckets again as he departed since he was hoping to enjoy lunch. The lawn was teaming with crickets as he walked and the sun was even warmer today than it had been all school year. That seemed promising. 

The Great Hall was alight inside from the tall windows. A few owls were just flying back out the upper open panes as Harry made his way to the end of the Hufflepuff table where the staff were seated. A place seemed to have been saved for him at the end, beside Dumbledore and across from McGonagall. With casual hellos all around, Harry slid onto the bench. Everyone was already eating, so he served himself a small chicken pie and ignored the salad and pea soup. The filling of the pie was hot, so he nibbled along the crust before dropping it back onto his plate to cool.

“Are you going to find things to occupy yourself without your friends here?” McGonagall asked.

“I expect so, Professor,” Harry replied evenly. He wasn’t feeling too congenial about her still. A subtle shifting happened around the table as though everyone sensed his mood. Harry realized that, while the subtle went completely unregarded by his friends, the teachers were acutely aware of it. 

McGonagall eyed him, then went back to eating her soup. Snape leaned forward from two seats down and asked airily, “Nightmares all over, Potter?”

Harry paused in cutting into the hard crust of his pie with the edge of his fork. Last night hadn’t been dream-free by any means. The same hazy world with a few slithering shadows had woken him twice despite whatever potion Pomfrey had forced on him, but no web and no wind. “Not exactly,” he said thoughtfully.

Groans, sighs and one dropped fork accompanied this revelation. “Should I simply have said ‘yes’?” Harry asked the headmaster.

“Not if isn’t true,” Dumbledore replied as he gave his staff a disapproving once-over.

“You have something else for us, Potter?” McGonagall asked with more than a hint of chastisement.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” Harry replied quietly. He took a bite of his pie despite not feeling very hungry anymore. After finishing half, he really wasn’t hungry. He stood up. “May I go, sir?” Harry asked the headmaster.

“Of course, Harry.”

He walked quickly out of the hall even though he had no place to be. His footsteps echoed much more than usual. On automatic, he started up the Grand Staircase and headed for the Gryffindor tower. In the middle of the corridor, he changed his mind. He had an inkling that McGonagall was going to come looking for him, at least part of him hoped she would, even though he didn’t feel like talking to her. He ran through the list of likely places she would look next, like the library and courtyard. Turning around, he headed for the staircase to the dungeon. 

The dungeon corridors were studiously quiet and cool, even on such a warm day. Harry wandered all the way to the end, past the classroom and the entrance to the Slytherin common room. He had never come down this far. Around the corner were more doors that had no labels so he assumed they were storage. A tall, dusty, glass trophy case sat at the turn in the corridor. On the top shelf was a large mahogany plaque with small gold fixtures for every year Slytherin had won the house cup. This was a Slytherin-only duplicate of one in the trophy room that Harry himself had been forced to polish during various detentions.

Harry bent over to peer at the other awards on the lower shelves. There was a medal from 1423 to one Mathias Priorton from a town in Hungary for removal of a plague of fire locusts. Harry thought the Slytherins were stretching it a bit if that was the best they could scrounge up. Beside that was a row of trophies for best in show at a biannual 1600s Quidditch festival. Harry wondered if they still held it. That sounded like fun. On the end, partially behind the base of the last trophy, was a medal for special services to the school. The name inscribed in staid block lettering was Tom Riddle.

“Goes to show,” Harry muttered to himself. As he crouched to study the very bottom shelf, footsteps sounded in the preceding corridor. Harry held still as he heard a door open and the footsteps fade. The door didn’t close. He assumed it was Snape going into his office. If he didn’t close his door, Harry might have to sneak past with a Disillusionment spell when he wanted to leave. 

The bottom shelf held two short silver staffs with large gems on top. They didn’t appear to have any labels. More footsteps approached and stopped.

“Have you seen Potter?” Harry heard McGonagall say. He held his breath to listen better.

“No,” was the reply just audible from inside Snape’s office.

“If you see him—”

“In the extremely unlikely event of him showing up in my office, I will certainly do so,” Snape interrupted blandly. He sounded unhappy at being disturbed. Harry’s lips quirked at the thought of showing up right after McGonagall left.

“Apparently, he has a bee in his bonnet about something,” McGonagall commented in an annoyed tone.

“That is…phenomenally caustic,” Snape said, making Harry’s brow furrow until he heard the dull thunk of a bottle being put back down. He grinned a bit more at hearing McGonagall getting the same treatment from the Potions Master as any student.

“I’ve looked everywhere likely,” McGonagall said, half to herself.

“I doubt he has left the castle. He seems to have learned something akin to obedience in the last few months.”

Harry growled at that and tried to think of ways to prove that wrong in the coming days.

“Albus seems to think it critical that I speak with him,” she sighed, sounding like she had other things to do. Harry frowned, feeling stung yet again.

“It is unusual for you to have a problem with Mr. Potter,” Snape observed.

Her feet paced the length of the room and her voice was harder to hear. “I think he is angry that I turned him away the night before the match. Wanted me to come down here to get a potion from you.” She said this as though it were very difficult to believe.

“He did come down,” Snape commented. “He didn’t tell you why he needed it?”

“Said he was having a nightmare,” she said dismissively.

“Yes,” Snape said in an oddly mild tone. “I believe that was the one where he dreamed he was trapped in a web of the Dementors’ minds.”

In a defensive tone, she said, “How was I to know he was dreaming about that? Goodness…he told you?”

“I asked. And I feel compelled to point out that his dreams are usually significant. I was reading Diagenes’ Treatise on Visions and Other Disturbances of the Conscious when Potter knocked. I was trying to find a reference to web-like visions.” Harry blinked at that, remembering the large grimoire.

McGonagall countered, “What was I supposed to do? Usher him into my office and give him a cup of cocoa? Pat him on the head and insist it will be all right?” 

Harry, tired of crouching, stood up and stared unseeing at the house cup plaque. McGonagall ranted on. It sounded as though she was pacing in shorter laps. “Just as well the boy doesn’t have parents—the things that happen to him…the worry alone would kill anyone. He faced down He-Who-…Voldemort for Merlin’s sake. He doesn’t need to be coddled. I assumed if I asked him his dream, he wouldn’t tell me anyhow.”

Snape spoke then. “His dream would not have been significant to you, since I am quite certain he didn’t tell anyone but myself about his vision. I was rather surprised to find that no one had spoken to him at all, not even his Head of House.” There was silence for a long moment before Snape continued in a slightly harder tone. “Minerva, he attacked the Dark Lord, with his mind. I cannot conceive of it. That is akin to bathing in maggot-infested rotting flesh.”

Harry straightened in surprise then thought, It wasn’t that bad. 

Snape was still going. “After this, the boy mopes around the castle, clearly hurting, and when I pull him into my office because he is having a vision in the middle of my class, I find that no one has spoken to him about the battle, let alone his visions.” Harry held his breath again, his emotions confused.

With a hint of accusation McGonagall asked, “Did you?”

“It isn’t my place. As well, it isn’t even slightly within the realm of my abilities.”

McGonagall sighed. “I guess Albus should have done it. He mistakenly believes Harry needs extensive space to work things out on his own, and I don’t think that’s true. Maybe it was never true. He persists in his belief that if the boy has a problem he will come to him.”

Yeah, if I knew the password, Harry thought. 

McGonagall sighed. “I just thought it ridiculous he couldn’t come down and retrieve his own potion.” She paused. Footsteps scuffed across the floor. Harry envisioned her confronting Snape. “You are one to talk about how he should be treated. You are the one who has made certain the boy cannot stand the sight of you.”

Harry strained to hear Snape’s response, but nothing was forthcoming. His shoulders drooped in disappointment.

“Well, if you do see him,” McGonagall repeated in frustration as footsteps sounded in the hallway now.

Harry waited what seemed like a long time, but was probably only ten minutes, before he ventured back around the corner and peered in Snape’s doorway. His teacher sat at his desk, one finger pressed against his forehead as he sorted through a stack of parchments. He showed no reaction as he glanced up at the doorway. “Potter,” he said flatly in a sort of greeting.

“Sir,” Harry said, thinking quickly of a topic. “You shouldn’t have exams to mark,” he said in reference to the parchments.

“No. One advantage of the headmaster’s rather generous edict.” He picked up the top sheet and squinted at the heading. “I have been sent the O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. Potions essays from Durmstrang. Seems they lost the three wizards qualified to grade them in a battle with some of the Dark Lord’s supporters.”

“Oh,” Harry said. He had already started to forget about that for hours at a time. 

“Professor McGonagall is looking for you, by the way.”

“Oh?” Harry said again, this time in forced surprise. He glanced around the room. “Guess I should go see her,” he said a little reluctantly.

Snape was leaning over the parchments, which made his hair fall over his eyes. He looked up at Harry through it. “Still having nightmares?”

Harry shrugged. 

“Meaningful?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

Snape dipped his quill and made a notation on the top parchment. “Let me know if you need more potion.”

“I will, sir,” Harry said, his emotions confusing him more. He stepped to the doorway. “I’m dismissed, sir?”

“You came in voluntarily, as I recall.”

“Right. See you at dinner then, Professor.”

Harry wandered slowly up to McGonagall’s office. Her door was open as well. He wondered if that were always true when the students weren’t around. Maybe it was just to get a better breeze from the window. Knocking on the doorframe brought her head up from the filing drawer she had been bent over. 

“Mr. Potter, come in.”

“I was told you wanted to see me.” Harry said this then hoped she had told more teachers than Snape.

“Yes.” She put the folder she had pulled on top of the cabinet. “Close the door and take a seat.” As Harry obeyed, she sat at her desk and clasped her hands before her. She looked more tired than he had noticed at lunch, making him feel kind of bad. He should have just answered her in an ordinary tone, and none of this would have happened. She said, “I apologize for my comment at lunch. You certainly would prefer, I know, to be free of disturbing dreams. And should you need us, we will most certainly be here for you.”

Harry looked down at his hands. He felt a strange tug of war between wanting to not need them at all and wishing they would pay him a little more heed.

She went on. “The other night, had I known you were dreaming of real Dementors, I would have…well, I don’t know what we would have done for you. But something…we always seem to come up with something. I certainly wouldn’t have sent you off so harshly.” Her shoulders fell as she finished. When he didn’t respond, she prompted, “Harry?”

“Ma’am?”

She waited, then said, “And you are still having nightmares?”

“Yes,” Harry replied softly.

“Do you want to tell me what is in them?”

Harry deciding that she might as well know, plunged in and said, “I’m wandering through this green haze and these shadows are—I don’t know if following me is quite right—hunting me, maybe. They were there before when I was seeing the Dementors’ web, but that is gone now and this isn’t.” She didn’t have a response. Harry added, “With Professor Snape’s potion, the dreams don’t wake me as much, so they don’t really matter.”

“I suspect they still matter,” she said, then added in a strained voice, “But I don’t know how they matter.” 

Harry realized at that moment that much of his teachers’ attitude toward him was borne of helplessness. They didn’t want to deal with him because they didn’t know what to do, not because he was an annoyance they would rather be free of. That made him feel a little better. He leaned forward in his chair and propped his hands on the armrests. “I’ll let you know if they change or if they start to make some kind of sense,” he said, hoping it would get him away.

“You do that, Harry,” she said gently. She looked around herself and then reached for the file on the cabinet and opened it up. “You may go,” she said when she realized he was waiting for a dismissal. She too didn’t seem to think he needed to stick to protocol.

Now that he didn’t need to avoid McGonagall, he headed to the tower. The common room was quiet, the grate dark. It was going to get very boring and lonely here, he realized. At least at the Dursleys he had tormentors for company. He went up to his dormitory. All of the beds but his own had been stripped of bedding and only one trunk sat at the foot of one bed, his bed. The sight was a little daunting. Over holiday break when he was here, his roommates’ things still remained.

Deciding to write his friends, he pulled out a quill and a stack of parchments. Writing careful letters to every one of his friends required nearly all of the time until dinner. 

He headed to the owlery, where the school owls were settled in large numbers since they were unneeded. Harry gave Hedwig Hermione’s letter and coaxed eight other school owls down for the others. As the birds flew off, Harry hoped his friends didn’t think it pathetic that he had nothing better to do than write them the same day they had left school. His next thought was, he hoped they all weren’t so busy with summer family things that they didn’t have time to write back. Harry sighed as he stared at the shafts of evening light coming into the dusty air of the owlery. He wished he had summer family things to be doing. Wished it a lot.

As he walked slowly back to the tower, he regretted not keeping Hedwig for company. He could have put her cage in his dormitory without bothering anyone. 

Harry lay on his bed, staring at the inside of the canopy until the clock read six for dinner. He didn’t really feel like sitting with the teachers again, but he was hungry and there wasn’t anything else to do. If he didn’t show up, he worried what they would think. Maybe they wouldn’t notice since it wasn’t subtle enough.

Rubbing grit from his eyes, he stood up. After stopping in the boy’s toilet to wash up and comb his hair down, he headed for the Great Hall. The teachers were arranged almost identically as they had been before, except Tonks occupied the seat he had had earlier. He greeted the Auror warmly and received a tight hug in return. “So good to see you, Harry.” She returned to her seat and her conversation with Dumbledore. Harry wandered down to the end across from Hagrid and Filch and beside Trelawney. 

Harry ate quickly, stopping only to answer Hagrid’s attempts at conversation. As he stood to leave, Dumbledore said, “There is pudding, Harry.”

Harry took this as a strong request to stay, since there always pudding. He sat back down, flushing under the attention he had attracted with his attempted early departure. 

“I hear you are having prophetic dreams, my dear boy,” Trelawney said quietly. “You certainly haven’t shown much promise in class, but the Sight can manifest at any time.”

“They haven’t been about the future, Professor, just the present.”

“Ah,” she said, as though that diminished his dreams considerably.

Harry had to stop himself from tapping his fingers on the table. The problem with staying for pudding was that he had to stay through everyone else finishing dinner. 

“Hope yer stayin’ out o’ trouble,” Filch said, pointing his knife at Harry—not an ordinary butter one—but a very sharp, folding, bone-handled one he kept in his pocket and was using to cut his meat.

“Yes, sir,” Harry said, feeling a little beaten down by being here.

“Ah, you’ll settle in all righ’, Harry,” Hagrid said. Harry, never one to let Hagrid down, nodded that he agreed, even though he didn’t.  He couldn’t get visions of all the other students—home with their parents, planning trips, playing sports, visiting friends—out of his head. His chest felt tight if he let himself dwell on it for long.

“At least I’m allowed to consider it home now,” Harry commented to himself. Gazes shifted over to him at that. Harry put his head down and stared at his hands coming out of the sleeves of his robe, even though it made his thoughts close up more, and the feeling worse.

Harry explored the castle over the next few days. He discovered a large wooden box of blue wombats in an attic, thought of telling someone, maybe Hagrid, then decided that, since they looked pretty happy, Hagrid was probably responsible for them being there. He also discovered a secret passage that wasn’t on the Marauder’s Map. It led from the sixth floor landing via an old staircase and narrow passage to the Defense Classroom. One of the panels on the back wall turned open in the middle with a simple unlock spell. Harry didn’t know what use it might have, but it had potential. He locked the panel with a much better locking spell before leaving the room.

This led to him pulling out the Marauder’s Map to try to figure out how to edit it. His dad had helped create it while he was at school. Certainly Harry could work out the magic given enough time. And time was what he had. He wrote Hermione and then, thinking more, Fred and George, to ask if they had any ideas on where to start.

While he waited, he went to the library and started reading. He read through dinner apparently, because he got to find out what happened when he did not show up for a meal. The door to the library opened suddenly and Professor Sprout put her head in, started to pull it back, then stepped in. “Mr. Potter, there you are.”

Harry looked around as if that didn’t make any sense.

“Just wondered where you’d got to since you weren’t at dinner.”

Harry glanced at the clock in surprise. “Lost track of time, ma’am,” he explained.

“Very good,” she brightened upon hearing that. “Well, carry on. Oh, you do know how to get to the kitchens if you want something later?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She smiled at him and departed. Harry went back to reading a very interesting book on paper intelligence spells. It didn’t provide anything about the Map, but he was starting to think that this book was probably the one Tom Riddle started with when he created his diary.

Harry lit a lamp and kept reading. He had had to pull over a few lamps from the other tables. It seemed like the bright days outside made it harder for him to read at night.

“Interesting reading, Harry?” Dumbledore’s voice came from the darkness. He had not made a sound coming in.

“Yes, it is.” Harry glanced around at the rather significant pile surrounding him. It would be hard to pretend he was reading idly.

Dumbledore stepped over and peered over his shoulder, tilting his head up to look through his half-moon spectacles. “Hm.”

“I was curious how Tom Riddle created that diary,” Harry said.

“Thinking of creating your own?” Dumbledore asked amiably.

Harry laughed lightly. “No sir. Just curious.”

“Well, Harry you are free to keep whatever hours you wish, but given the propensity for boys of your age to keep rather late hours, you might want to at least attempt to sleep at a reasonable hour.”

Harry glanced at the clock. It was just after eleven. “Yes, sir.”

Dumbledore patted Harry’s shoulder and departed. Long after the door to the library closed, he could feel the spot on his shoulder where the old wizard had touched him. Feeling unsettled, Harry stacked the books neatly and put a note on them for Madam Pince, even though she hadn’t been at meals.

Harry slept well that night and woke feeling better than he had in a while. He didn’t like using the potion every night: that seemed like a cheat. Reading himself into exhaustion made for a good alternative.

Harry stalled on figuring out the Map. He was too afraid to damage it to try anything really experimental. He needed to figure out a way to make a new one and that would take a lot more reading, from which he needed a break. Bored again, he wandered down to the dungeon without really thinking about where he was going.

Snape was brewing something in his office. It smelled like lemon balm. Harry knocked on the doorframe when it looked like an opportune moment. He didn’t think it a good idea to startle Snape, although it occurred to him that he had never seen that happen.

“Potter,” Snape said in a kind of greeting.

Despite his teacher’s tone being neither inviting nor dissuading, Harry stepped in and went over to peer in the cauldron. Ground pearl dust was added in a steady stream while the liquid boiled. It turned a swirling pink.

“What is that?” Harry asked.

“Amorphous Solution.”

“Oh.” That was an ingredient they had used for one potion near the end of the last year.

Harry considered asking Snape if he knew anything about parchment intelligence spells but decided against it. Snape had not only seen the Map, but had been insulted by it. He might realize why Harry was asking. “You’re making a lot of it,” he observed to make small talk.

“There is a lot of brewing I would like to do over the summer since it looks like I will be here.”

“Normally you wouldn’t?” Harry asked.

“Of course not. You may enjoy considering the school home, but I do not.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “I don’t enjoy it. I don’t have any choice.”

“One almost always has a choice,” Snape stated as he drew out the stirring stick and wiped it with a rag.

Harry thought about that. He could, he supposed, consider the Burrow as his home instead. The Weasleys had certainly urged him to do so in the past. It didn’t seem like two weeks in one place over sixteen years would quite qualify. Grimmauld Place might qualify if it had not been auctioned to some wizard from Edinburgh who may or may not have managed to remove Mrs. Black by now. He refused to go back to thinking of Privet Drive as home. He would consider any place before that.

“Gave you rather a lot to think about, apparently,” Snape commented.

Harry looked up from staring into the burner flame below the cauldron. “Yes, sir,” he agreed, feeling empty inside. He headed for the door, still thinking.

“Potter,” Snape said, halting his departure. When Harry turned, he asked, “Still having nightmares?”

Harry nodded.

“You are not out of potion?”

“I don’t use it every night,” Harry explained.

“That is of course, your choice,” Snape said.

Harry had a realization that night as he sat on his bed, running the Map through its paces. He had stared at the introduction so many times that he had ceased to read it. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, & Prongs it listed. The thought that Pettigrew had touched the Map at some point made Harry feel unclean. But it had also been his dad’s, so that overrode his desire to destroy it in a fit of pique. Padfoot and Prongs could not help him anymore but Moony might be willing to.

Heart beating a little fast, Harry pulled out a parchment and quill and wrote a letter to Lupin. He had not seen his former teacher since the Voldemort Demise Party. He had a lot to tell him, so the letter went on a long time before Harry got around to asking for help with adding a secret passage to the Map. Since he kept Hedwig in his room now, he sent the letter off right away. Hedwig gave him a friendly nip as he held her at the window. He supposed it was because she much preferred deliveries at night.

His response arrived at lunch the next day. Seeing the return address, Harry tucked the letter in his pocket rather than risk someone reading about the Map over his shoulder. He cut his lunch short and headed off with a wave at Hagrid, mostly to make sure no one thought he was testy about something.

In his room he opened the letter. Lupin’s first paragraph was filled with a long series of grateful statements about Harry’s success against Voldemort. He told Harry that he was working with Gringott’s part time, but he couldn’t say what his work was exactly. Following this he explained in detail what he knew of the Map, seemed eager to do so. He attached a list of book references, apologizing that he knew there were others Harry would need and, if he remembered them, he would pass them along.

Harry reread the letter, then quilled another one, asking specifically how easy it would be to damage the Map while he worked on it, or should he start again. Lupin’s insistence that his dad and Sirius would be thrilled to know he was keeping it up to date, as amending it was something they had been diligent about, made Harry’s heart twist as he wrote out the reply.

With a heavy heart, Harry sent Hedwig back off. He lay back on his bed and stared at the canopy for a lot of the afternoon.

Eventually, the list of references got him curious enough to return to the library. He had found some of the right books but not the right chapters. He settled in to read, facing the clock, so as to not miss dinner again.

“Moving?” Harry asked a few days later as he encountered Professor Snape hovering a trunk along the second floor corridor. Harry immediately answered his own question. “Ah, Dumbledore finally let you have the Defense teaching job.”

Snape gave him a look that dared him to make further comment. Harry just shrugged. “Hermione will be disappointed, I think.” He followed along as Snape took the empty trunk back to the dungeon. “Are you going to last more than a year?” Harry asked with extra innocence.

“I do intend to.”

Harry had to walk fast to keep up once they were down the stairs. “Are you good at teaching Defense?” he asked honestly. “I need to score well on my N.E.W.T.s”

“What do you need those for? Supreme Ruler of the Wizard Universe does not have a N.E.W.T. requirement,” Snape commented levelly.

Harry brushed that off. “No, but the Auror’s program does.”

They had reached the dungeon. Snape stepped into his office and opened the trunk in front of the next full bookcase. Harry wandered over to the low cabinets along the right-hand wall. An entire row of cauldrons bubbled away on the tops of them. “You have been busy, Professor.”

“Those are the long-brew potions needed for the school’s stocks. While school is in session, it is very difficult to successfully brew them. Something—or someone,” he sneered, “inevitably happens to them.” He had packed the remainder of the books away and started in on other items from the shelves. Breakables were wrapped in rags before being placed atop the books.

“Misthria Potion?” Harry asked as he watched a gold-flecked liquid simmer in a brass cauldron.

“Yes,” Snape replied, a little surprised. He watched with hooded eyes as Harry walked down the line, peering into each.

Running feet brought both of their heads up to the doorway. Trelawney, trailing a diaphanous shawl with little bells on the hem, stopped breathlessly in the hallway outside the door. Upon seeing Harry, she smiled sweetly and composed herself. “Severus,” she said in a friendly voice as she leaned lightly on the doorframe, “you are needed upstairs.” Snape stepped over to her and, after a brief hesitation, stepped around her and away. “How are you, Harry?” she asked as though they were neighbors talking over a fence.

“Fine, Professor,” Harry replied carefully.

She caught her breath and looked around the room casually. “I can’t wait to meet the new Potions teacher. Can you? Greer I think her name is.”

“Is she as nice as Professor Snape?” Harry asked.

“Uh,” she said thoughtfully and then giggled almost girlishly and pushed her glasses up. “That’s a good one. One would tend to assume maybe a little nicer.”

Harry turned back to the cauldrons, hoping she would go away. He was worried she would start prophesying again at any moment. She only ever did that when they were alone together.

“Well, I’m sure I’ll see you at lunch. Bye for now.”

Harry sighed and shook his head. Beside the next potion a book lay open. Harry perused the instructions and peered into the cauldron. The next step called for linden bark threads. A small basket of them sat on the shelf below. They were to be added as soon as the potion boiled clear. It sure looked clear to Harry, who felt pretty confident he could spot that. He listened and didn’t hear any footsteps. Shrugging at the thought that the potion would be ruined if he did not add the ingredient, Harry started dropping threads in, one at a time, as it said.

“Really, it is nothing,” Dumbledore was saying as Snape entered the Great Hall. McGonagall was in the middle of helping the headmaster up. “Just a moment of unbalance.”

Snape crossed the room in an instant, taking Dumbledore’s other arm. “Hospital wing?” Snape asked his colleague.

“Really, I must insist that is too much,” Dumbledore said.

“Yes,” McGonagall answered Snape in a hard tone.

On the fifteenth thread a deep emerald bloom spread from the thread throughout the liquid. It was a very nice color. Harry dampened the burner like it said and read the next step. The mixture was supposed to be thickened before it cooled. Harry realized that he recognized it now. It was the insect bite ointment Pomfrey gave out in little tins. Harry looked around on the shelf below and didn’t see any gelatin, agar, or anything like that. The other stocks were being rearranged, so if there had been an organization scheme, he was not likely to pick up on it now.

He wandered over to the cabinet that was still left undisturbed. On the top shelf was a dusty jar of tapioca beads. Still hearing no footsteps, he took down a clean mortar and pestle, ground a handful of beads into fine powder, and stirred it slowly into the cooling liquid. He stopped when it was about halfway thickened to what he remembered the ointment to be, figuring that it would set more when it finished cooling.

He moved the cauldron to a worktable, sat on a stool and stared at it with a faint frown. He couldn’t very well just leave it like this. Even though he was pretty sure that if it set up in the cauldron it could be reheated and poured out, the incompleteness of it bothered him. He looked around for any empty shallow tins with screw-tops like Pomfrey had. The side door to the supply room stood ajar, which was not normal for Snape. Harry peered inside and saw what he needed between stacks of filter paper and empty one-dose vials.

Using bundled rags to protect his hands from the heat, Harry poured the green glop out evenly into four large tins and set them apart to cool on the work table. He stared at their glistening jewel-like surfaces, and waited.

“What happened?” Pomfrey asked as the trio entered the hospital wing trailed by the Divination teacher.

“My staff is overreacting,” Dumbledore stated as he was lowered onto a bed. “A mere moment of disorientation is all.”

“He fainted,” McGonagall supplied.

Trelawney stepped to the end of the bed, jingling softly as she shifted nervously from foot to foot.

“Well, I think we’ll keep you here overnight, Professor,” Pomfrey said as she checked his pulse.

Dumbledore graced them all with a chastising look but gave in.

Harry was just deciding that the tins had cooled enough. He wiped out a lid with a clean rag and touched the side of a tin to see how much it jiggled.

“Potter?” Snape said as he stepped in the doorway. His gaze shifted from the empty spot on the side cabinet back to the work table. Brow drawn low, he stepped over and lifted a tin to look across it. “Hm, what did you use to thicken this?”

“Oh,” Harry fidgeted once. “I couldn’t find anything but the tapioca.” He gestured at the tall cabinet. As Snape eyed the ointment again, Harry added quickly, “I thought it was nonreactive in this case.”

Snape’s dark gaze slid over to him at that. “It is. It seems to set the color better as well.” He put the tin down and pushed it over. Harry waited to be yelled at. When nothing but a close look was forthcoming, he put the cleaned lid on that tin and pushed it to the side. As he started to wipe out the next lid, Snape said, “Are you bored, Mr. Potter?”

Harry swallowed in relief. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Snape stepped back over to his trunk. “Many of the potions are rather basic, if you truly wish to assist.” Harry brightened. “Do try to practice somewhat better technique than you usually manage in class.”

“That’s easy when you aren’t hovering around waiting for me to make a mistake,” Harry said, then held his breath.

Snape looked up from continuing to pack breakables. “Is that how you explain your rather extraordinary O.W.L. performance?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s Dumbledore?” Harry asked when they sat down to lunch.

“He is on a small holiday,” McGonagall supplied.

“He could use one,” Harry said stridently as he assembled a roast beef sandwich for himself.

“Yes,” McGonagall commented emphatically, sounding a little put-out herself.

Harry stared at his sandwich for a long moment before reaching for the horseradish.

“Professor, can I speak with you?” Harry asked after he knocked on the doorframe of McGonagall’s office.

She was sorting through a large stack of parchments. “Of course, Mr. Potter. Come in.”

Harry sat down in one of the visitor’s chairs. Mice ran around in the cage above his head. He waited for the burst of noise to stop before he took a deep breath and asked, “No one is usually here right now, are they?”

She sighed, “No. Not usually.”

Harry slouched and said, “I feel bad making everyone stay on my regard.”

“Harry,” she said. “I’m sorry for the implication I made earlier. It is truly not a problem. We would be ten times busier and under a hundred times more stress if you hadn’t finished Voldemort off for us. If we forget that for a moment and imply that you are any kind of a burden, whatsoever, then we are sorely in the wrong.”

Harry frowned and stared at his feet.

“Has anyone implied that besides my slip at lunch? Has Professor Snape?” she asked suspiciously.

“No, ma’am. He seems happy to be moving his office.”

“Yes, I can imagine he would be.” She straightened a stack of papers that threatened to slide off the desk. “For myself I am taking care of things that I would be doing just before the year begins anyway. Getting it done now means having less to do later. I expect the Ministry will have managed to round up Voldemort’s remaining associates in short order, and we can all do as we wish then. If not, I will personally hunt them down myself.”

“Can I help?” he asked eagerly.

“Harry Potter, you have done far more than your part already. Take a rest now.”

Harry sighed and felt the walls of the castle closing in again.

Harry spent the rest of the day with his notes from the references. He had prepped a piece of lambskin parchment with the spells he had found in the second book. But he could not decide exactly what he wanted the sheet to do. The little word animation at the beginning of the Map’s activation amazed him when he broke it down into its components, unless it was a single more complicated spell that took care of the many small details. He sighed. He had found a book that described how the scoreboard at the Quidditch World Cup worked, but most of the complication with that had been the ability to constantly update it from several locations. Harry wanted something that had some smarts without further intervention.

On a separate piece of paper, he made sketches of Hedwig in several poses. He took a deep breath and used a duplicatramus spell to copy one to the smart parchment. He then tried to get it to show when he tapped the parchment and said, “Hedwig”. The image seemed to have disappeared completely. With a frustrated sigh, he read through his notes again and wished Hermione were there. Maybe he could get Lupin to visit and show him, he thought, as he pulled out a volume from the stack, pushed up his glasses, and sat back to read some more.

When he reread the text after a few spell attempts, much more of it made sense. He supposed he would just have to keep trying and reading until it worked. It must have been easier for his dad, he had three friends to help him. Or maybe his father just had been better at magic.

Snape stepped into the dispensary carrying a smoking stone cup. He set it on the stand beside Dumbledore’s bed, careful to do so quietly.

“Severus,” Dumbledore said, not asleep as he had first appeared. “Have a seat. I have been thinking and I want to speak with you.”

Snape went over to the next bed and picked up a chair. “That is a downside to your incarceration here.”

Dumbledore laughed. “My dear Severus, you can always be counted on to speak the truth—as you see it anyway. I wonder if you’d permit me to do the same?”

Snape sat back with his hands clasped over his abdomen. “If you wish,” he replied tediously.

“This little setback came upon me unexpectedly. It makes me very concerned that I have somewhat less time than I thought. As well I am even more relieved to have certain critical things taken care of.” He reached over to the night stand for his glasses and perched them on his nose. “After a hundred and sixty years I have to remind myself that I cannot possibly take care of everything personally.” He steepled his fingers and sat silently for a long minute. “I want you to consider something for me, Severus.”

“Consider, meaning it is not an instruction you are giving me outright?”

“I would never make such a request outright.” He looked Snape over. “You have come a long way, Severus,” he observed.

Snape hmfed and exuded vague insult.

“Realize, it is the only reason I am asking this of you.”

“It is just for my consideration?” Snape repeated. “I assume given the abrupt change in circumstances that I have more leeway now. But we have not formally discussed this.” At Dumbledore’s deep nod, Snape asked tiredly, “What is it?”

Dumbledore’s eye twinkled as he said, “I want you to consider adopting Mr. Potter.”

Snape’s eyes widened in dismayed disbelief. “You are surely joking, Albus. Or addled.”

Amiably, Dumbledore replied, “No, Severus, I am not.” When Snape shook his head, Dumbledore said kindly, “Think about it longer than that.”

“There is nothing to think about!”

“Severus…” Dumbledore hesitated. “Here is where you are granting me the right to state things as I see them.” He waited for Snape to sit back again, artificially relaxed. “I saw that boy bring out a side of you I did not imagine existed.”

Snape frowned fiercely and looked away down the long side of the wing.

“Yes, I know what you are thinking,” Dumbledore intoned. “But I know you saw him bring down the most powerful wizard in the world with precisely that set of emotions.”

Snape scoffed. “What you don’t know, and what Mr. Potter skipped telling the Ministry, is that I very nearly made him fail at it.”

“I think you underestimate Mr. Potter.”

“And you underestimate what happened,” Snape shot back. “You were not there. And your request is absurd,” he stated angrily. He did not meet Dumbledore’s gaze. “I certainly hope that is the only request you have of me.” He stood up and noisily shifted the chair out of the way.

“Yes, Severus, it is,” Dumbledore stated kindly.

“You should drink that within the next hour or so,” he snapped, indicating the potion beside the bed.

“Thank you,” the headmaster said sincerely.

With a deep furrow to his brow, Snape stalked out of the wing.

“Do you need any help today?” Harry asked from the doorway. He almost didn’t—Snape seemed miffed about something as he sorted through the shelves of potions that surrounded the room. At some point, Harry apparently had learned the subtle difference between everyday Snape orneriness and real anger.

Snape looked up and considered him a long moment with an unreadable expression. “There is not much to be done today.” As Harry’s face fell, he added, “But the burn plaster will need to be finished tomorrow, if you want to familiarize yourself with the instructions for it at this time.”

Harry stepped in and accepted the potion manual. He flipped it open and glanced at the relevant pages before closing it around his finger at that spot. He hesitated, undecided about whether to stay or go. Snape went back to his task, which involved evaluating each bottle of any age at all. He looked intent on it.

“Thank you, sir,” Harry said and slipped out the door.

Harry tossed fitfully in his four poster and with a groan, woke up. Grey light filled the tall windows. The dark shadows from his dream faded only slowly, taking with them his panic to escape them. He got up to use the lavatory and didn’t feel like sleeping anymore. He turned up the lamps, sat on the floor, and sorted his chocolate frog cards. The one of Dumbledore winked at him and he picked it up and read the back of it for the hundredth time, remembering the first time he had read it on the train on the way to his first year here. That moment seemed ten lifetimes ago. Flamel’s name made him wonder suddenly if Dumbledore hadn’t also been using the Philosopher’s Stone to make elixir. And the Stone was gone. The thought chilled him.

Two days later, Dumbledore returned to dinner.

“Did you have a good rest?” Harry asked him.

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled as he replied, “Yes, my dear boy, I did.”

Harry served himself two chicken legs and a jacket potato. McGonagall spooned a serving of peas beside it. Harry frowned at her but didn’t say anything. Sprout was back today. She explained to him about the regular care everything needed. Harry felt better that at least she was here by choice. Hagrid beside her also was. That just left McGonagall, Trelawney and presumably Dumbledore there only to protect him. He felt better when he realized this.

After dinner, Harry sat in the Great Hall before the fire, reading the potion manual Snape had given him. It had recipes for all the basic medicinal potions the school used. Harry was fascinated by what went into some of the things he took for granted. The fire lulled him with its heat. After a while, eyes heavy, he set the manual aside and put his head down on his arm.

Shadows that shifted from distinct hooded outlines to smokey, snaking wraiths tracked Harry through a looming forest of dead trees. Tired of running, Harry stopped and faced them with his wand held at ready. They faded out, reappearing in the distance, moving from one trunk to the next, out of range, waiting. Harry let his wand hand rest at his side in frustration and impatience. Suddenly, the leaves stirred right at his feet and a shadow loomed up right in front of him.

“Potter?”

Harry jerked awake and stared at Snape, leaning over the table before him. Breathless from the panic in his dream, Harry took a moment to recover.

“Nightmare?” Snape asked accusingly.

Harry rubbed his hair back and forced his breathing to slow. “Yeah,” he admitted, amazed at how much his heart raced. He stretched his stiff neck in a bid for normalcy. “What time is it?”

“Nine thirty.”

Still unbelievably sleepy as well as jittery, Harry stood up with the aid of the tabletop. “I guess I should go up to the dormitory,” he mumbled.

“Do you want this?” Snape held out the potion manual.

“Yep, thanks,” Harry said a little more coherently. He took the book and left the Great Hall.

Up in his room, Harry sat on the bed and tried to shake the fear that gripped him. That was the second time that had happened—that the shadow looming close in his dream was actually Snape in the waking world. He hadn’t wanted to believe that the shadows were anything more than the invention of nightmares, not real.

He changed and slid into bed and tried to recapture the utter exhaustion he had felt just minutes ago.

When Harry entered the dungeon the next day, Snape immediately reached into his pocket and held out a small bottle. “Here,” he said.

Harry stepped over and accepted it. “Thanks,” he murmured and put it in his own pocket.

“I’m surprised that you still need it,” Snape said as he flipped page by page through a thick book on his desk.

“I’d like not to,” Harry admitted, reading upside-down as Snape’s finger traced a set of potion ingredients on the page before flipping to the next. He wanted to ask Snape if what he suspected was true, but didn’t know how.

“Care to cut up ingredients?” Snape asked. “Not the most interesting task.”

“Sure,” Harry said. He took the long wild carrot roots and knife to the worktable and set to cutting them so the fibers were as close to a quarter inch long as possible.

Snape came over a little later and scooped up a small pile of them. “Have you determined if there is anything significant in these dreams?” he asked. “I only ask because this is often the case with you.”

Harry shrugged. He would feel better if he told, he thought. “I’m being chased, hunted more like, by black shadows.”

“Hm,” Snape replied. He took the roots to the first cauldron and dropped them in.

Heart pounding a little, Harry said quietly, “I can’t count them, I don’t know if there are seven of them.”

“Or eight, or even twenty-six for that matter,” Snape commented levelly. He stirred a second cauldron before stepping back over and looking down at Harry. “More than symbolic, Mr. Potter? These shadows?” he asked.

Harry dropped his gaze and went back to peeling and cutting.

“You apparently have reason to believe they are,” Snape went on. When Harry didn’t respond, he said, “Have you spoken with the headmaster about this?”

Harry shook his head. “Think I should?”

“I think he may have some insight to offer you,” Snape said as he sorted through the remaining ingredients, throwing away the dry ones.

Harry didn’t feel like bothering Dumbledore with it. He went back to his careful cutting. Moments later, he said, “I wish the Ministry would hurry up and apprehend them, then it wouldn’t matter. The way it’s going, I’ll have to get them myself.”

“I even catch you attempting that, Mr. Potter…” Snape growled as he leaned in close, making Harry lean back. “You will have detention with me every day from now until you complete your N.E.W.T.s.”

Harry blinked in shock at the vehemence in his teacher’s voice. Snape spun away back to the cauldrons and for a fleeting moment, Harry thought Snape too had surprised himself. “Yes, sir,” Harry replied automatically, sounding oddly like he meant it.

The dormitory had started giving Harry that closed-in feeling, so he took one of the parchment spell books down to the Great Hall to read. It was an innocent enough book titled, Witch Writing. It was short on theory, but it had a lot of examples and ideas, mostly for dolling up letters to friends.

It was only an hour before lunch, so Harry took up a spot near the far end of the Hufflepuff table. A basket of chocolate frogs sat in the center of the area where the staff usually ate. Gradually, the staff came in and sat and talked over tea beforehand. Harry, feeling peckish, took one of the yellow, five-sided boxes out of the basket and opened it, coming down with an odd sense that everyone was watching him. Looking up, he found faint smiles from around the table, which was a little strange, although it shouldn’t have been worrisome.

The dark brown frog hopped over his book and climbed his hand. Harry raised his arm automatically to make it harder for the magical frog to leap away. It froze in a climbing position, clinging to his pinky. Trying to ignore his sense of unease at the teachers’ behavior, Harry broke off a leg and went back to reading as he ate it. He could have sworn the table relaxed a little as he did so.

Dumbledore arrived and so did lunch. Harry put his book aside, set the remainder of the frog on the edge of his plate, and made himself a sandwich. Lunch was unusually quiet, adding to Harry’s growing edginess. He was getting a lot of glances too, he was sure, although it wasn’t something he usually paid much heed to.

He finished his sandwich and his frog. His plate disappeared so he reopened his book. He reached over for the yellow package beside the book and felt a ripple run through the table, not unlike the one he had caused in the Dementors. He glanced around at everyone and received the same faint smiles. If they were trying to make him crazy, they seemed to know exactly how to go about it. Suppressing a sigh, Harry idly pulled out the chocolate frog card and crumpled the package as he tried to find where he had left off in the chapter on cartoon spells.

The first thing Harry thought was, he did not have this card, as the picture was not a portrait and all the ones he had were. He gave it his full attention then and froze. On the card was a color version of the picture from the Ministry of him standing over the crumpled body of Voldemort. As he stared at it, the breeze disturbed the hem of his robe in the picture. The look in his eyes was even stranger with the bright green of them piercing through.

He moved his thumb to see his name printed fancifully on the bottom border. Chagrined, he looked around the table. At least he now knew why everyone had been behaving so strangely. “This isn’t a joke, is it?” At Dumbledore’s shake of his head, Harry looked at the card again. He flipped it over. On the back it read Destroyer of Voldemort at the top, as though it were some kind of honorary title. In the biography was written, As an infant, survived an attack by Voldemort that killed his parents. Defeated the selfsame dark wizard sixteen years later. Famed as well for the expulsion of over two hundred Dementors from the Hogwarts Quidditch grounds. Won the Tri-Wizard Tournament of 1994.

“Better not do anything else,” Harry quipped. At the questioning looks he explained, “No more room on the card.” He put the card into his book as a page marker and stood up.

Dumbledore gestured that he should take the whole basket.

“Those are all the same?” Harry asked.

“The company sent them,” the headmaster replied.

With an odd reluctance, Harry reached over for the basket and took it up by the handle. When Harry was gone, Dumbledore steepled his fingers before him. “If I could do just one thing this summer holiday it would be to remove that boy’s melancholy.”

Snape sat back and crossed his arms. “It would undoubtedly help if he ceased to have nightmares.”

“He is still?” Dumbledore asked in surprise.

“Yes,” McGonagall replied. “Though who knows what they mean.”

Snape sat straighter. “Potter believes he is seeing the remaining Death Eaters hunting him, which is not impossible given that he inherited another vision of the nonphysical world from the Dark Lord.”

“I am afraid there is more to this than poor sleep,” Dumbledore said as he stood up.

Harry sat on the floor beside his bed, staring out the window at the castle grounds. He had his entire stack of chocolate frog cards on the floor beside him. The Destroyer of Voldemort one had the highest series number and there was no gap between himself and Marigold the Malevolent, so he assumed they had only issued one new card. It was odd to imagine future Hogwarts students trading it on the train to school. They would get entirely the wrong impression from the text on the back.

He gazed out the window again. He had sat in this precise spot six years ago the night after he had arrived on the train the first year. His emotions now couldn’t have been farther from what they were then. Back then he had been painfully hopeful and so happy to have been rescued from his relatives. It occurred to him that it was easier to be happy when things were simpler.

Dumbledore sat down on the bare bed beside him where Ron usually slept. As usual, Harry hadn’t heard him enter. Dumbledore’s eyes glowed pale blue in the sunlight. “You deserve the chocolate frog card, Harry.” Harry took a deep breath and stared outside again. Dumbledore went on, “It is unproductive, if not harmful, to continually wish for things that are impossible to obtain.”

Harry dropped his eyes and looked at his hands, pulled halfway into his sleeves.

“Come here, my boy,” Dumbledore invited. Harry stood up and sat on the bed beside the old wizard. Dumbledore put an arm loosely behind Harry and said, “Our pride is not enough for you, apparently.” 

It wasn’t, Harry thought. It only served to remind him of what he was missing. 

Dumbledore went on. “We are very proud of you,” he said, patting him on the arm. “You have a whole year of school ahead of you, as a Seventh-Year, no less. Top of the pack. A whole season of Quidditch. You are looking forward to that, I expect?” He waited for Harry to nod. “And your marks the last term were most impressive. I expect you can earn your way into any program you wish to enter. We are all very aware that you do not intend to influence your way in.”

“I don’t want anything from Fudge.”

“Minister Fudge, Harry, and you are not obliged to accept anything from him.” After a pause, he said, “You have been writing to your friends?” Another nod. “And working on some project of your own with parchment spells. If you need any help, I, or any teacher, would gladly give it.”

Harry pulled away and removed the Map from the drawer beside the bed, marveling in part of his mind that he was going to show this to the headmaster of all people. He grinned a bit at what his father would be thinking if he could see him now. “I want to edit this,” he explained, “but I’m having a hard time figuring out how.” He sat back down, unfolded the Map, pulled out his wand, and activated the parchment.

“My, my,” Dumbledore said as he put on his spectacles and peered at it.

“I don’t want to damage it, so I’ve been trying to make something similar first, but it’s terribly hard. I’m thinking that my dad was much better at magic than I am.”

Dumbledore handed the Map back. “That is possible, Harry. He managed the marks you have now without seeming to work at it. But I am certain you are much more clever, especially when things are most dire, if that is any consolation.” Dumbledore rubbed his hands together. “Do you have a blank parchment?”

Harry sat in the Great Hall in what had become his usual spot. Ron had sent him a deck of wizard cards and a book of games to play on his own. At first he had been a little insulted, but boredom drove him to try it out and he was getting more amusement out of it than expected. Most of the games required careful strategy. Some of the cards aged after they were dealt and changed value. Some cards reacted to the presence of other cards and changed predictably or randomly depending upon the game.

The post owls arrived. One dropped a letter in front of Harry. Another three, flying together, dropped a package on the end of the table in the spot for mail when the recipient wasn’t around. Harry read his letter from Hermione. She was really good about writing immediately when she got Harry’s letters. Harry took out a quill and wrote a reply on the back. He told her about his ongoing shadow-filled dreams and his frustration at still being stuck at school.

The school barn owl, used to this routine from him, waited for him to finish. Harry gave the letter back to it and it took flight, scattering the nut shells from the bowl on the table. Snape stepped in and looked at the package before picking it up. He untied it as he came over and looked over Harry’s shoulder. “Red seven-flint on the black obsidian,” he said.

“That will turn the nine into a dragon and I’ll lose,” Harry said. He picked up the seven-flint and held it near. The other card flickered threateningly.

“Haven’t you already lost, then?” Snape asked.

“No, I have the deck in novice mode.”

Snape tossed the brown paper from his package aside. It disappeared before it hit the floor. “Potter, I can’t imagine you doing anything in novice mode,” he commented as he flipped through the stack of books in his arms.

Harry, spying the title of one, asked, “What are those?”

“Potential texts for Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

Harry stood by kneeling on the bench seat and looked at the pile more closely. “Can I see one?”

Snape selected one and handed it over.  Harry leaned on his elbow and flipped through it. “Which year is this for?” he asked doubtfully.

Snape considered him, “What is wrong?”

Harry frowned lightly. “We’ve done—” he stopped and flipped to the table of contents. He listed spells under his breath, “Grand flecture, Whistler, Frompten, Polarized blocking. Those four,” Harry said, pointing. “We haven’t done those.”

“Haven’t?” Snape took the book back and glanced at it. “Potter, I have Grey’s syllabus—you have only covered two of this list.”

Harry shrank down a little, half expecting an outburst as he said, “Not in class. In D.A.”

Snape raised his chin before he turned on his heel. “Come with me, Potter.”

Harry stood up and followed, figuring it was all right to leave his game as it was, although by the time he came back the cards would be different anyway. Snape led the way up the stairs and down the corridor to the Defense classroom. 

“In here,” Snape pointed.

“Am I in trouble, sir?” Harry asked uncertainly.

“Not if you are telling the truth,” Snape said. He went to the front of the classroom and stepped up onto the platform.

Harry stepped up onto the other end. “Can’t you just tell by looking at someone if they are?”

Snape froze at that. He raised a brow and replied softly, “Usually.” He pulled out his wand. “First spell is a Titan Block. Let’s see it.”

Harry took out his wand and thought a moment. “Are you going to spell me with an attack to bring it up against?” he asked, thinking that would make sense. He was used to that from D.A.

“What if I told you you have a persecution complex?” Snape said sharply.

“If I insisted I didn’t, wouldn’t you think I was overly optimistic?” Harry retorted.

“I suppose you have a point.”

Harry cleared his throat and tried not to grin. Finally he put up his wand, mostly because Snape looked impatient with him.

“Ready?” At Harry’s nod, Snape said, “Figuresempre!”

Harry put out both hands, palms outward, his wand hooked under his right thumb. A shimmering orange dome flared, absorbing the incoming curse.

Snape pulled the book out of his pocket. “Next is Grand Flecture. You said you didn’t know that one…”

“Can you show me?” Harry interrupted.

“Why not, Potter.” Snape said in resignation and stepped over to him. He held out the book. “It is a spell to repel anything physical around you. Timed correctly, you can avoid being struck by something, or many things, thrown at you. Or, you can use it to force a path through something moveable, like brush, or even people, should you be in that much of a hurry.”

Harry smiled at that and wondered if Snape were really trying to make a joke. He took the book and read through the description quickly. “Can you show it once?”

Snape moved two heavy stone pedestals onto the platform and placed a wooden block on each. He stood between them and, holding his wand straight up, said, “Hovequanta.” The blocks flew in opposite directions away from him.

Harry set the book down on the floor, picked up one of the blocks and placed it back on the pedestal. Snape did the other and stepped out of the way. Harry stepped into position and thought a moment. The book said the spell felt like a globe expanding in sections away from the caster. He took a deep breath and holding up his wand, spoke the incantation. The block on his right moved to hang half off its pedestal. The other didn’t move. 

Harry put the one block back into position and tried again, thinking harder about a globe sectioned longitudinally like in the picture, surrounding him in all sides except the floor, because repelling the floor randomly seemed unwise. He dove deep into concentration and executed the spell. Both blocks flew off their perches.

“Huh,” Harry muttered as he moved to pick them up. This was a heck of a lot easier than making parchment write on its own.

Snape shook his head at him.

“That wasn’t right?” Harry asked, concerned since he thought he had succeeded that time.

“It was acceptable,” Snape said evenly.

Harry jumped over and scooped up the book. “What’s next?” he asked eagerly.

An hour later, when they had gone through all of the spells, Harry jumped down from the platform. The stack of other years’ texts lay on a desk in the first row. He picked up one and thumbed through it. “Which is the sixth-year?”

“I have a question for you first,” Snape said. “How many students know the spells you know? Not counting the four new ones, obviously.”

“It varies. Not everyone came to every session of D.A.”

“There were nineteen students on the staircase the day of the battle. Safe to say they all do, correct?”

“Yep, that was pretty much the core. Some of the younger ones we made stay behind.” Harry picked up another book as he talked. That one looked like first-year, or he hoped it was. He didn’t see Snape’s thoughtfully surprised expression as he said that, as if re-evaluating some long-held understanding.

Harry said, “There were probably forty-five who came to most sessions—”

“Forty-five?” Snape echoed in surprise.

“And another fifteen who came depending upon the topic. Easy stuff that is really useful brought in the most students.”

“Such as?”

“Basic counter-curses, spell detection, stuff like that. Which one is the sixth-year?”

Out of his pocket, Snape handed over another book and watched Harry as he perused the contents.

“If I am out sick, you can simply teach the class,” Snape muttered.

“What?” Harry asked, distracted by the book.

“Nothing, Mr. Potter.”

“I don’t know this one,” Harry said brightly, pointing at one halfway down the contents.

“It is also referred to as a Banana Peel.”

“Oh, I do know that one, then.” Harry snapped the book closed and handed it back.

“Hm. You are making me realize that I need to rethink this. At least for the upper levels.”

“Sorry, sir,” Harry said sheepishly.

“Do not apologize, Potter,” Snape retorted. “You needed those students. Not a single one lost their life. I would not have imagined that possible—not against some of the wizards I know were there. We shall have a more interesting class than expected, that is all. With Dumbledore’s permission, perhaps we can do some advanced offensive spells as well.”

Harry’s head snapped up with acute interest.

Snape set the books on the desk and straightened the chairs. “Remember what I told you,” he threatened.

“Yeah, detention for the rest of my life, or something.”

“Precisely,” Snape stated as he strode past him to the door. As he opened it, he said, “You still have a few hours before dinner. Perhaps you should wander up to McGonagall’s office and finish your last year’s lessons with her as well.”

Harry scoffed. “Her class is hard. I’m not very good at Transfiguration. Hermione is.”

“Disgusting having friends like that, isn’t it, Potter?” Snape said.

Harry sat in the Great Hall building a card house out of his wizard pack, McGonagall stepped in and said, “Potter, I really do think you need to get out. Come with me.”

Harry jumped up and followed her across the Entrance Hall and down the steps to the lawn. “Are you my only escort, Professor? Headmaster said two to leave the castle.”

She slipped on her traveling cloak as they walked. “From what Professor Snape tells us, you qualify as your own escort. As well, several Order members are in Hogsmeade today. Come along.”

They walked down the lawn. Harry was grateful that only a few figures loitered at the gate. He and McGonagall approached and the figures started to take interest in them. As they drew closer, they started calling out his name excitedly.  Harry’s steps faltered. McGonagall slipped an arm through his and pulled him along. “There are only four of them,” she admonished.

An old wizard shook Harry’s hand vigorously as soon as they passed through.  A woman with her two small children bent down and said. “Look, dears, it is the famous Harry Potter.” The tow-headed children clung to their mother’s skirt and stared at him with wide-eyed, unblinking gazes.

McGonagall steered Harry through. “Just out for a butterbeer. Excuse us, please.”

On the high street, people turned and gaped at him. Quietly, Harry said, “You are reminding me of all that is good about the castle.”

“Relax, Harry. Everyone else is now.” She tugged open the door of the Three Broomsticks and gestured for him to enter.

“Blimey, it’s ’arry Potter!” someone exclaimed, and the room broke from quiet murmurs to shouting and chaos. Everyone got up from their seats and came over. Madam Rosmerta came out from behind the bar and seated them at the best table near the bar.

“Two butterbeers, please,” McGonagall said, completely unshaken by the goings on around her.

Harry shook everyone’s hand and a few people’s twice. Eventually, after much back pounding and expressions of worship, the crowd settled back at their own tables, although the conversations were much more raucous than before.

“You survived,” McGonagall said as she poured her bottle out into a mug. 

Harry made a noise that indicated it had been a close call.

His teacher leaned forward and asked, “How are you doing, Harry?”

“I’m doing all right, Professor. A little bored.”

“You’re spending a lot of time in the dungeon,” she said.

“Sna— Professor Snape gives me things to do.”

“It’s a little surprising, is all. You two haven’t got along well in the past and during meals it seems as if that is still true.”

Harry’s brow furrowed. “Does it?”

She took a gulp of her mug. “Well, if you aren’t noticing maybe it is my imagination.”

Halfway through their butterbeers—which Madam Rosmerta insisted were on the house, forever—murmuring behind them started to raise alarms with Harry. He settled back in his seat and tried to listen in. Moments later, in badly tuned voices, an old drinking song started, although the lines had been changed. Harry listened with growing bemusement as the lyrics roared out with much shouting.

I’ll sing thee one, ho

green glow the wizard, ho!

what is your one, ho?

one is gone destroyed and gone and ever more shall it be so

I’ll sing thee two, ho

green blow dark wizard, ho!

what is your two ho? 

two and twenty wanded boys spelt on his head, oh

one is gone destroyed and gone and ever more shall it be so.

Harry sank down in his seat with his mug. “At least they made it into a group effort,” he offered.

“Well, this must be my lucky day,” a familiar voice said from behind them. Rita Skeeter stepped over and started to pull out a chair at their table. 

“Ms. Skeeter,” Harry said a little less than welcoming.

“Please, have a seat,” McGonagall said, getting a sharp look from Harry.

Skeeter took out a pad and a normal quill this time. “Anything to say, Mr. Potter? You have been quite the recluse.”

“He is being protected from the remaining Death Eaters,” McGonagall pointed out factually. Skeeter made a note of that.

“No more attempts on your life, Mr. Potter, since the Dementor incident?”

“No,” Harry replied. “Not that I’ve been informed of, but I’m not informed of much. You must realize.” He sipped his butterbeer and watched her write that down. He didn’t look over at his teacher.

“Plans for the future?” Skeeter asked without looking up from her writing.

“Still deciding. I have a whole year to figure that out.” Working with Fudge, if he were an Auror, was starting to seem unsavory, even if working with Tonks still sounded like fun.

“Glad to have Voldemort gone?”

“Thank you for using his real name,” Harry stated. “And yes, very much so.”

“But you aren’t free to move about as you please because the seven are still loose, correct? You’re still a prisoner?” Skeeter asked this in a tone that sounded mild, but really wasn’t. Harry wondered in concern what she was really trying to ask, at the same time as he was glad that someone else recognized his situation.

“No, I can’t go out without an escort, but Hogwarts isn’t a prison—it’s my home, as it has been for six years.”

Skeeter glanced at McGonagall before she asked Harry, “What do you think your parents would say if they could see you now?”

Harry was very grateful that Skeeter didn’t have her Quickquotes quill because this time his eyes did feel a little warm. “I don’t know,” he replied flatly. She had cut right to the heart of what was bothering him.

“Mr. Potter, you may make up whatever you like. What would you want them to say?” Skeeter waved to Madam Rosmerta for a pot of tea.

“I didn’t know them,” he insisted, staring into his butterbeer as he grappled with himself.

“Move on to the next question, Ms. Skeeter,” McGonagall interjected.

“You knew them,” Skeeter pointed out to her. “What do you think they would say?”

Harry looked up at his teacher as she sat back and thought that over. He tended to forget that many of them had known James and Lily Potter at least as students if not from the Order. McGonagall had, as well as Dumbledore, Flitwick, Hagrid, Lupin, and even Snape. It gave him a flash of anger to think that he was the only one who didn’t know them.

McGonagall sighed. “It is a long way to think back.” She glanced at Harry with a sympathetic expression. “They were very intent on defeating Voldemort and didn’t hesitate to get into fierce, dangerous battles with him and his followers whenever they tried to extend their power. It was not the best of circumstances in which to try to raise a child. But like the Longbottoms, I think they felt that they needed something to pin their hopes on. We are all very grateful now that they did.” As she said the last, she stared evenly into Harry’s eyes.

“Do you still miss them?” Skeeter asked Harry.

“I miss not having parents,” Harry replied flatly. He finished his butterbeer and set the mug down. He easily imagined all the other students practicing Quidditch in their yards, taking holiday, waking up late to breakfast with their families. 

“Must be difficult,” Skeeter said as she looked over her notes. “No particular future to look forward to and a dark past to keep you company.”

Harry hoped the article didn’t read like that. “I have plans, I just don’t feel like sharing them.”

“How about off the record?”

“Is there such a thing with you?” Harry asked. 

She put her quill down. “There is now.”

“What’s with you, anyway?” Harry asked, curious about her good behavior.

Skeeter hedged by topping up her tea cup. “I’m on a very short leash. Finding you here is my big chance to move up again. Plus, I’m still under a cloud of blackmail, am I not?”

“I suppose you are,” Harry said. “The deal didn’t include Voldemort.”

“What is this?” McGonagall asked sharply.

“It wasn’t me,” Harry insisted.

“It wasn’t him,” Skeeter confirmed. “Another of your students is presently blackmailing me to not write anything unfavorable about dear Mr. Potter, although that isn’t hard to follow as he is all the rage at the moment and anything negative would get the Prophet flooded with angry howlers. It is blasted hard to work when that is going on,” she complained as an aside. “Well, I do appreciate your time.” She stood and put away her pad and quill. “Nice to see you again, Ms. McGonagall.”

When the door closed after her. McGonagall leaned in and said, “Am I to understand that one of your friends is blackmailing a Prophet reporter? To your benefit?”

“Don’t you remember all of those awful things she wrote about me during the Tri-Wizard Tournament?” Harry asked.

“No,” she said firmly. “Who is this student?”

“You have to ask? Who is clever enough to pull that off?” Harry said.

“Hm,” McGonagall growled.

“Skeeter wouldn’t have got into trouble if she hadn’t been breaking serious wizard law. That is what we have her on, and that’s why she’s behaving.”

“What law is she breaking?”

“As long as she’s holding up her end, I can’t tell you,” Harry pointed out and felt a bit of justice in it.

“Are you in deep anywhere else that we should know about?” She asked a little smartly. “We are only charged with your continued safety, young man.”

“Are you finished with your butterbeer, Professor?” Harry asked, very ready to leave.

Days passed. Harry ignored the Prophet—he had no desire to read the other side of the interview with Skeeter. He learned how to charm parchment to do some interesting things, but he didn’t know how the Map knew where everyone was. He managed to make a copy of the physical part of the Map with his additions and even gave it modes where it showed just a normal map of the school with the current classrooms labelled or, with an additional charm, showed the secret passages including the one to the Chamber of Secrets that the old Map also lacked.

He made two more copies and sent them off to Ron and Hermione, feeling anxious about their replies after he did so.

His friends didn’t reply by the next day, making Harry realize that he needed something else to occupy himself. There weren’t any potions to work on. Bored, Harry wandered the castle and the bailey. He wondered if he should start up a new hobby, like sketching, or violin, or…anything. The bailey was too small for much flying which was a shame as the weather was beautiful, but then again the sun was shining like this the day Voldemort showed up. If the Ministry would just catch the remaining Death Eaters, he could go flying again around the much larger outer grounds.

Feeling frustrated and caged, Harry sat beside the fountain and rolled up his sleeves to get some sun. He tried to imagine what Voldemort’s remaining followers were doing right then. They didn’t seem particularly close in his dreams. He hoped that meant they didn’t have any good plans after the Dementor one failed so brilliantly.

That night, Harry was jarred awake, shaking with chills. He jerked the drapes aside and turned up the lamp. His own breathing sounded harsh and urgent in his ears. The sight of the curved walls of the dormitory calmed him somewhat. He pulled his legs against his chest and hugged them while he waited for the remainder of his distress to fade.

Remembering Pettigrew’s falsetto words of reassurance from the dream, he started shaking again. Wormtail had been leaning over him, stroking his forehead about where his scar was. Harry felt a bit as though vomiting might improve his stomach. He grabbed his dressing gown and shrugged into it as he stumbled down the steps. The Fat Lady slammed closed as he stepped out into the corridor.

By the time he made it to the boy’s toilet, his stomach had calmed even though his shivering hadn’t. He ran the water hot and held his hands under it until they turned pink, then washed his face. Feeling better, he walked back to the common room and sat on the couch. The clock read half past three. The room was utterly silent. Harry really wished he had someone to talk to, as he wondered tiredly what had brought on this new dream. He toyed with the notion of going to Dumbledore, but the thought of him coming to his office door full of overbearing concern when all Harry wanted was an ear, dissuaded him.

When his eyes tried to fall closed, he went back up to his dormitory room, took a large sip of potion, and crawled back into bed.

Harry woke when the light came through the window since his drapes had not been re-closed. He rose, fuzzy-headed, thinking that a bath sounded like a treat, and that he would have to do it before the day heated up, or it wouldn’t be as pleasant.

Harry’s bath made him late for breakfast. As a result, everyone finished before him. Sprout and Hagrid idled over a second coffee before moving on and leaving him alone. The Hall became as quiet as the common room had the night before. 

Harry wished in vain for some kind of distraction, but the day oozed by, mind-numbingly.

That night, Harry took the potion before lying down at ten. Early, but then a good long rest was what he wanted most in the world. Exhaustion pulled him easily into sleep as he snuggled down between the covers.

Harry was cold—so cold he could barely move. He looked around himself groggily. The air was foul and dank. He was looking at the edge of something woven, like a basket or a coarse sack. Eventually, a figure approached and reached out to him. It was Pettigrew again. Harry tried to jerk away and managed to turn his head. It made him dizzy to do so. A hand stroked his forehead as Pettigrew chanted vague phrases of comfort. Harry jerked away from the hand again and caught sight of thick snake coils surrounding him.

With a cry of surprise, Harry tumbled out of bed, his unexpected limbs refusing to absorb his fall. He wriggled, gasping, to the center of the floor on flopping paralyzed arms that felt alien to him. He huddled there and waited for the panic to ease. His stomach rebelled. He swallowed hard over and over since he didn’t feel capable of making it down to the toilet.

When he finally came to himself, he looked at the clock which read fifteen before five. Almost morning. In fact, the sky looked to be brightening. The thought of imminent daylight and company at breakfast soothed his rattled nerves enough to give him enough sense to push off the floor.

Harry sat through breakfast in near silence, giving one syllable replies to Hagrid’s attempts at conversation. As badly as Harry longed for company, he didn’t actually want to participate in it. He also wasn’t very hungry, although he drank a lot of orange juice and coffee. Harry was still pushing his scramble around on his plate when everyone else got up to leave. He peered into his empty coffee cup, only vaguely aware of the movement around him.

At the door to the Great Hall, Dumbledore paused to look back at Harry, who sat with unusually bad posture on the far end of the long table. The headmaster stepped out and let the door close. “Severus,” he said to the retreating backs of his teachers. When Snape looked back, Dumbledore gestured with a tilt of his head that he should return.

Snape came back down the steps and over to the old wizard. Dumbledore said quietly, “Talk to the boy. Something is bothering him unusually so.” When Snape raised his chin in surprise, Dumbledore added, “I am not unaware where Harry has been spending most of his time.”

Snape huffed. “Why do you not speak to him?”

The old wizard sighed as his gaze focused beyond the wall. “Because after all that’s transpired, he still honors me to the point of sacrificing himself for my sensibilities. That and he will not have me to rely on forever. So at this point I do not want to bridge that gap.” He tossed his head at the door to the Great Hall to urge Snape back in.

Snape shook his head in faint disgust, pushed his hair back, and opened the door. The hall stood in a late morning grandeur it could not equal during the school year. The entire east wall of windows stood alight with color, setting the dust motes aglow like fairy lights. The floating candles glowed their most intensely, attempting to compete. Harry still sat at the far end of the Hufflepuff table, looking more forlorn than usual. Looking more like James than usual. The James near the end, beaten down by fighting against a lost cause.

The door to the hall, tall enough for a giant, closed with a low ringing thud at Snape’s back. Harry didn’t stir, saving Snape from immediately producing some appropriate approach to the problem before him.

For the first time in a long long while, Snape considered what Lily would want him to do just then. And for the first time since that awful night, he lacked any sense of what she might want beyond being there in his place to take charge of things her own way. At some point, that voice had slipped away. While she was alive, he’d spent too much time assuaging himself that he was better off not cursed like James with meeting her expectations. Then later, spent too many dark nights hoping against hope that she could not see beyond the veil just how low he had sunk. And what terrible choices he was facing—she who always found the high road, even if it meant building it from scratch. Too many times, and now… now where was that compass when he was facing this, of all things.

Snape approached with a sigh, shaking his head. Frowning at his own discomfort, he sat on the bench beside Harry, facing outward.

It required dozens of ticks of the clock over the hearth to conjure up words and an appropriate tone of voice. “Did something happen?” he asked.

Harry jumped lightly as though, as unlikely as it seemed, he didn’t realize Snape was there. Harry cleared his throat and replied, “Potion stopped working.”

“It does not completely eliminate dreaming, that is why it is safe to take regularly,” Snape explained. “Are the shadows moving in?” he asked, suddenly concerned that he’d neglected something so basic.

Harry shook his head. “Different dream.” He didn’t elaborate.

Snape watched the boy’s hands rubbing over each other as though to warm them, even though the Hall temperature was quite comfortable. “Does this other dream lead you to believe that you are in danger?” he asked, being as specific as possible.

Harry considered that before he shook his head. 

“If it does, you will inform someone immediately?” Snape half asked, half ordered.

“Yes,” Harry replied faintly. He hadn’t looked up from his barely touched plate of breakfast.

“The dream has removed your appetite?”

Harry nodded and swallowed hard as though to demonstrate his nausea.

Snape stood, having run out of angles to pry at with this topic. He watched Harry push his plate back to make room for his elbows on the table. The boy put his head on his hands, looking rather defeated. Snape departed, unwilling to probe further because he would certainly not appreciate anyone doing so to him in the same situation.

Dumbledore visited Snape’s office about an hour later. “You spoke with Harry?” he prompted.

Snape put down the crate of marble blocks he was sorting through for student spell practice. Many were cracked or had serious burn marks. “He is suffering from a new nightmare.”

“Did he tell you what was in it?”

“No, and I didn’t pry. Unless it is critical to, it seems unnecessary,” Snape went on, although he felt a bit like he was post-justifying.

Dumbledore stepped over to the desk. “I am concerned the dream represents some real danger to him.”

Snape replied, “I asked that specifically. He says it does not.”

“Hm.” Dumbledore picked up one of the cracked blocks of pure white marble and examined it.

Snape said, “If we are willing to trust his retelling, we should be willing to trust his interpretation.”

Dumbledore set the block back down. “I want you to keep an eye on him for the next few days.”

Snape studied the headmaster a little suspiciously. “Meaning?”

“Speak to him if this continues. Check on him: make certain he is sleeping, because clearly he is not doing so regularly.”

Snape blinked in surprise and gave Dumbledore a dismayed glare.

“Severus,” Dumbledore said congenially, “it is very little to ask. Especially compared to what has been asked of you in the past. I have worked hard to keep him unattached to me. Now, when my immediate future is even less certain, I do not wish to tether him to me more than he has managed to on his own.”

With a frown Snape turned away to pick up another crate of blocks to sort. Dumbledore stood and watched for a time, as though to verify Snape wasn’t going to protest further.

The dream woke Harry just after midnight, which wasn’t surprising considering he had crawled into bed at nine. He stumbled from the room again, unable to resist the need to satisfy his urge to flee if only from one room to another. The common room was its usual silent self as he dropped onto the couch. He stared at the bookshelves and wondered what he was going to do.

It was two when Professor Snape headed up to the Gryffindor Tower. As he approached the end of the dark corridor where the portrait guarded the entrance, he huffed his annoyance at this task. The house passwords were all set identically for the summer and the Fat Lady opened to Periwinkle. As he stepped into the common room and eyed the staircases to the dormitories, it occurred to him that he didn’t even know which floor the boy slept on. There were only seven floors to search, he thought in further annoyance.

It wasn’t until he stepped across the room that he noticed the figure in striped pyjamas curled on the couch before the empty hearth. He turned one of the lamps up slightly and considered the still form. At least Potter was asleep—that simplified his task, but it was a tense sleep, not normal and probably not restful. The boy even appeared to be shivering although the room felt pleasantly warm from the sun-baked stones of the tower. As well, the pilly, crocheted throw pillow his head rested on would have only seemed comfortable to a monk from an exceptionally strict order.

Snape surveyed the room. The houses all had spare bedding accessible somewhere. He tried one of the wardrobes—it contained games and sundries random. The next one had games as well but the top shelves had pillows and blankets. He pulled down one of each.

Using a transpose spell to avoid disturbing Potter’s sleep, he swapped the pillows before covering him. Potter still shivered. Snape was beginning to be curious what this dream was. He went to the hearth and opened the flue before lighting the logs that were stacked decoratively on the grate. The room didn’t need the heat, but the fire would provide more than one kind of warmth.

Harry woke up early the next morning. His first thought was that his memory of leaving his bed again must be mistaken as his head was on a very soft pillow. That was, until he opened his eyes and saw the common room. He fingered the blanket and noticed the black shards pulsing red in the hearth. Sitting up and scratching his head, he stared at that. If Dumbledore or McGonagall had come in, though they would simply have woken him and sent him to his bed. Maybe Dobby had done it, he considered, or one of the other house-elves. He stretched and, feeling better than he had the morning before, went down to wash up. 

At breakfast no one paid him any more attention than usual, leading him to assume the house-elves had bedded him down. He relaxed at that notion and forced himself to eat enough to cover the burn in his queasy stomach.

Harry wandered the castle most of the day, because if he sat still he felt chilled and sick again. His friends’ replies arrived and out in the sunshine, on a bench beside the keep, he read them. They were impressed with the maps. Hermione offered a few possible ways the Marauder’s Map knew where everyone was although she had to admit they were unlikely to really work. Ron was visiting his brother in London and his letter had a return address there. He described a little of what he had seen in the city in a way that made it clear he was holding back to not make Harry feel badly.

A chill overtook Harry at that moment. He folded the letters haphazardly and stuffed them into his pocket as he stood up to walk around the bailey perimeter yet again.

That evening, exhaustion drove Harry to his bed. Nothing short of nodding off in the library three times in a row could have done it. He took a sip of potion before pulling the covers up with painful reluctance.

His unease was more than justified. His dream this time was a confused blur of bloody white fur, animal panic, and an odd gulping swallowing of something still struggling ever so slightly, although part of him seemed to find that deeply satisfying. 

Harry fell down the steps to the common room and immediately vomited the little dinner he had eaten. He rubbed his mouth on his pyjama sleeve and suppressed the sob that tried to follow. 

“Potter?” a voice asked as someone stepped in through the portrait hole. A startled Harry looked up as Snape turned up one of the table lamps before coming over to him. “You are unwell. Let us get you to the dispensary.”

Harry managed with some assistance to get to his knees. “No, it’s the dream,” he explained as another bout of shivering overcame him. Snape pulled out his wand and Scourgified the mess before stepping away. Harry watched him step straight to the corner wardrobe and pull down a blanket. Surprise at the implication of that erased Harry’s fear. Dazed, he let himself be wrapped up and pulled to his feet.

Harry stepped toward the portrait hole and out with Snape keeping a grip on his arm for support. Harry insisted on stopping at the toilet.

As he leaned on the sink to wash up, Snape said, “You are certain you are not ill?”

“It’s just the dream,” Harry insisted. He bent down, washed his face, and rinsed his mouth before washing the cuff of his left sleeve. As usual, the warm water was a blessed relief to his panic. Clean, he finally had to turn it off.  He glanced at his dripping face in the mirror and shivered again, despite the warmth of the room and the steam still rising from the basin. He tugged the blanket tighter around himself and held it with his left hand. He felt dizzy so he leaned heavily on his right, propped on the sink edge. 

“She’s cold,” Harry explained. “He doesn’t know to keep her warm.”

Beside him, Snape straightened and said in deep tones demanded, “To whom are you referring?”

Harry closed his eyes with a wince and replied, “Nagini.”

Snape grabbed Harry’s arms and steered him to the bench along the wall where he forced him down. Crouched before him on the floor, Snape said, “Occlude your mind, Potter. Now.”

In a tired voice, Harry said, “I’ve been trying—I can’t.”

“Look at me,” Snape ordered.

Harry raised his eyes to his teacher’s unnaturally dark ones.

Snape said, “Put your emotion aside, Potter. You know how to do this. Force her out.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s me or her.”

“It does not matter,” Snape said sharper yet. “The result is the same.”

Harry forced himself above the sickening fear. He organized his thoughts with excessive effort, concentrating on the discomfort the tight grip Snape caused his left arm. Like a switch being pulled, the second existence went away. Harry blinked in surprise, fearful it was just going to jump back in again the next moment. After a minute of relief, his shoulders fell as he relaxed.

“Better?” Snape asked snidely.

Harry nodded and accepted the towel that was handed to him. He dried off his face and patted down his damp sleeve. With a hint of impatience, Snape held Harry’s arm out and used a drying spell on his sleeve.

“Thanks,” Harry muttered. He had left his wand beside his bed and he wasn’t very good at that spell anyway. 

“You should return to your dormitory,” Snape said.

Feeling almost himself, Harry stood up, hugging the blanket around him for moral support. 

As he escorted Harry back to the Gryffindor common room, Snape said, “From now on, do not fall asleep without Occluding your mind first.”

Harry nodded and stopped at the base of the stairs to the boy’s dormitory. “Yes, sir,” he said, feeling overly obedient. 

Snape didn’t reply beyond tilting his head to the side. 

Harry’s previous uneasiness around Snape returned with a vengeance. He delayed going down to breakfast so that he would have to sit on the close end which was usually where Hagrid, Sprout, and Filch sat. Through breakfast he occupied himself with steering a reluctant Hagrid toward the topic of wombats, and avoided looking over at the occupants on the end of the table. 

Feeling better than he had in days, Harry went back to his reading about parchment spells. Several times he thought of taking a break and checking if Snape needed help with anything. Each time he vetoed the idea immediately.

Occluding his mind before falling asleep worked well to keep his mind from wandering, and after a few days, he didn’t even have to think about it consciously. Safely separated from the horror of it, he thought back to the dreams to try to remember if there were any clues to Pettigrew’s location. Other than being in a cellar, he could not recall anything helpful.  

Harry fell back to his previous routine, fearing that he was going to spend the entire summer at Hogwarts. Pettigrew didn’t seem to think he was in any danger, which didn’t give Harry much hope. His notions of visiting Ron in London or the Burrow were now seeming to be only so much fantasy.

At dinner one evening the next week, Dumbledore observed, “It is almost your birthday, Harry.”

Harry glanced up and thought about that. It was July eighteenth. A month of the summer was gone already.

“I think perhaps a small party is in order,” Dumbledore continued. “Why don’t you invite a few close friends—not as many as I invited last time if you please. You can have the Great Hall for that evening.”

“Thank you, sir,” Harry said, feeling a bit honored by the offer. “I’ll do that.”

Harry used one of his new parchment spells to make up invitations. At first he was going to make them very elaborate, then decided all that showed was he had way too much time on his hands. He went instead with a simple animated flourish at the bottom.

Hermione wrote back the next day, accepting his invitation and asking if she could bring her parents as Ron was bringing his whole family and she wanted them to meet again. She also made some suggestions about his new Map and thought it was coming along nicely.

Harry wrote again to Neville, telling him to bring his grandmum. Neville replied the next day, sounding surprised to be invited, which made Harry think he needed to try harder with his shy friend.

The day before Harry’s seventeenth birthday party, he got up early and asked McGonagall if she would take him to Hogsmeade to get favors. She seemed to have much less to do now that they had all been there for so long.

As they entered Honeyduke’s, someone gasped and everyone turned to stare. Harry put his head down and looked around the shelves, determined to not be affected. He was uninspired though. Up at the counter he said to the clerk, “Anything new and interesting? I need party favors.”

The lady in a pink striped apron said, “We have you on a chocolate frog card.”

“Newer than that,” Harry said, trying to sound easy-going. “A little tacky to hand those out at your own party.”

“There isn’t anything newer than that. And I’d hand them out at my party, especially if they had me on them. Oh, except these.” She pulled out a box of red, shiny-wrapped sweets. “The wrapper is grain and sugar, so you can eat that. And inside each is different. All of them are fruit flavored and they turn your eyes the color of that fruit. Low-key, but tasteful.”

She rang him up for those and as he reached for his package, she said, “Can you sign this for me?” as she held up his chocolate frog card. “Headmaster Dumbledore signed his,” she pointed at the card pinned behind a sheet of glass on the wall behind her. Harry had never noticed it there and it looked like it had been there a while, given the amount of dust on the glass.

Harry shrugged and she happily slid the card over to him and handed him a never-out quill. When he gave it back, she stared at it a long moment then smiled at him and slipped it in next to Dumbledore’s.

The grass at the great curving base of the castle had been cropped short by the sheep brought in to graze on the grounds in the summer. The muted sound of their clustered bells drifted in and out on the breeze in eerie sync with the shifting of the cloud cover over the evening glow. By this time, the Muggle-innocent animals would be bedding down in the corral beside Hagrid’s shack.

Professor Snape swung his wand to take the closed flowers off an invasive symphyotrichum novae-angliae as he passed it. Unlike the other teachers he did his turn at grounds patrol alone. He strode rapidly, robe flapping, wand out, three or four spells at the edge of casting.

He reached the crumbling wall where the castle foundation met the lake and stopped. The breeze on this side emerged from the forest, chilled as if summer didn’t exist there. From the slight rise of the hillside, he scanned the dark tree line, half hoping something might emerge, something that he could take action against without any sort of moral quandary about it.

All remained quiet, however. The kinds of creatures that survived in a forest of this sort would sense this energy and never do him such a favor.

Late that evening, Harry stepped into the Great Hall in search of a snack, and stopped just inside the doorway. Massive piles of presents had been stacked on the Gryffindor table near the hearth where a fresh fire crackled. Since it was his birthday the next day, he feared they were all for him.

“A bit startling, isn’t it?” Snape’s voice came from behind him.

“Those aren’t for me, are they?”

Snape ignored the question and strode with his usual haughty purpose along the row to the piles.

“Professor Sprout has been intercepting the owls bringing these over the last weeks. The piles are sorted into people you might know…” Snape picked up a long narrow box. “Such as Victor Krum. And complete strangers.” He gestured at the larger pile on the end closest to the Head Table.

Harry gaped at the varied and colorful packages. Some of the wrapping had wizard pictures on it with little moving scenes. “Well,” Harry said quietly, “this makes up for a lot of birthdays with absolutely no presents.” He reached out and picked up a strangely shaped box with maroon and gold wrapping. Curious, he shook it and then glanced at the tag. Alarmed, he set it back down gingerly at full arm’s length, gave it a last little shove so it wouldn’t tumble off.

“What is it?” Snape asked.

“Fred and George,” Harry said and breathed out in relief when nothing untoward sprang out of it.

“I would imagine that nearly everything a seventeen-year-old wizard could want is somewhere in this assortment,” Snape drawled.

“Yep,” Harry agreed, trying to keep the restlessness from his voice. Some of the larger boxes from total strangers worried him. Fortunately, none of them appeared to have air holes. He worked his way back down the line, stopping beside Snape. “Do I have to write thank you notes for all of these?” Harry wondered aloud.

In his driest voice Snape replied, “Having never faced this dilemma, I do not know. Perhaps if Mr. Lockhart were here, he could tell you.”

“Having spent detentions helping him answer his post, I think I know what his answer would be.”

Harry sighed. The presents felt like a burden in that light, like a pale mockery of something actually meaningful.

“There is perhaps one thing you still wish for that is not here,” Snape stated as he picked up a silver-wrapped ball, looked it over casually, nose raised, then balanced it between other boxes.

Harry looked sharply up given how this comment spoke straight to his uneasiness. Snape wasn’t reading his eyes as Harry expected, but was looking over the presents. The low firelight was outlining his features, making them starker yet.

“Such as?” Harry asked, even though asking seemed dangerous.

Snape shook his head and spoke, half to himself, “Determining what one truly needs in the present seems to require some modicum of optimism for the future.” He picked up a black-wrapped box about wand sized, weighed it in his hand. “But the future is not something most of us are accustomed to hoping much for.” He breathed in and out once, set the box down and dropped his hands to his sides so they were hidden by his frayed sleeves. “For one thing, doing so would have broken us.”

Harry swallowed hard. This was open revelation of the sort he’d rarely heard from any teacher but Dumbledore, and never ever expected from Snape.

Snape tilted his head to the side and spoke ploddingly. “And it seems the reverse is true as well. Embracing the future requires facing the present without cowardice.”

“You should be used to that?” Harry trailed off. He thought he should manage to say something actually helpful here, but floundered.

“No.” Snape picked up a box wrapped in black velvet with a golden ribbon tied into a bow that continuously curled and uncurled. “It turns out. No.” He trapped the ribbon with his thumb to peer at the tag under it. “It turns out taunting fate and possible martyrdom is the easier path. Especially when there is no choice anyway.”

“I kind of understand that,” Harry said, glad to have something to say. “Sometimes it’s the only way to manage to do what needs to be done.”

Snape straightened to his full height and turned from the pile with a swish of his robes on the stone floor. “I did not intend to bring such maudlin thoughts when I entered. Certainly not to your celebration.”

“It’s tomorrow anyway.”

“Even so.”

“Well, it’s okay anyway. You’ve certainly been suffering my hopeless issues with…” Harry struggled for the right words that wouldn’t make things uncomfortable again already. “Good grace.”

“Really,” this sounded vaguely sarcastic. Snape moved one hand as though at a loss for words. He looked out of his depth, which would explain rambling on the way he was.

Harry spoke more forcefully, “You’re always the one willing to keep facing things that may be going horribly wrong. Everyone else is tired of it. Pretends it’s not happening because that’s much easier.”

“I can do no differently. To do otherwise is to court complete disaster.”

Harry had to look down at the floor to say the next bit. “Well, I really appreciate it. I probably haven’t said.” He swallowed against a new wave of uneasiness and turned back to the piles to distract from it. He picked up the box from Fred and George again, shook it lightly near his ear. It sounded like boxes inside of boxes. He held the box in both hands, looked over the hundreds more. “I feel ungrateful,” he confessed.

“Misguided they may be, the senders undoubtedly mean well.”

“Right,” Harry said quietly. “Yeah. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Snape tilted his head back, but not far enough to look at the night sky forming on the ceiling, more at the darkened windows opposite. “Are you wishing for something not in this pile? Something simple everyone else seems to have. Like…a home besides this castle, perhaps?”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked.

Snape appeared to bolster himself with a small frown. “It is not too late to be adopted, for example.”

Harry laughed in relief. “Oh, you mean those twenty-seven offers of adoption McGonagall sorted through?”

“There were that many?” Snape turned to him finally, pose shifting to challenging.

With a shrug Harry replied, “More than last time, according to her. She thinks it’s because I’m less hazardous now. I’d like to think that’s not true.” Harry acted a little put upon. Then moved a few presents between piles, sighing faintly.

A log shifted on the fire and it began crackled merrily again, shedding a yellow light on the scene.

“Don’t want to take any of them up on their offer?” Snape spoke with the kind of neutrality that could signal danger, but Harry was wondering what the large ring shaped gift was. It was large enough for a set of Quidditch hoops, which he could give to the Weasleys.

Harry shot him a look of humored disbelief. “Not really.”

Snape’s voice took on a strange distance. “Any particular reason?”

Harry shrugged helplessly. Sleepless nights had left him a litany ready for this. “I don’t know any of them. They think they know me but they really don’t. They almost certainly won’t be getting what they expect—” Harry stopped before he admitted how damaged it made him feel imagining trying to fit into a cheery home. He couldn’t deny that, in a fanciful moment or two, he had entertained the notion of being adopted by Lord Freelander, if only because it would mean hanging out on a nice estate instead of here at the castle for the rest of the summer. In reality the idea was awkward and strange, and he feared that it wouldn’t really address that deeply buried longing, might in fact solidify it into depression. With his hands Harry gestured that he couldn’t explain.

“What if someone you knew very well wished to?” Snape asked. He shifted a half step closer, while looking Harry over. “Someone who understands what has happened to you over the last six years.”

Harry hesitated answering. Thinking about it meant opening up buried memories and since his life didn’t depend on it, he really didn’t want to. It threatened to breathe new life into that tangle inside him and he had it managed at the moment. They both stood in silence. Finally, Snape stepped closer still, making Harry look up at him.

Quietly, Snape said, “Myself, for instance.”

Harry blinked at him. “What?” he asked loudly. The question echoed in the vast hall.

“I think we know each other rather well,” Snape said.

After a long stare of disbelief, Harry said, “You aren’t joking—are you, sir?”

“Have you ever known me to joke?”

“Not about something like this.” Harry thought about it more. “Maybe not at all. No, that’s not true,” Harry corrected himself. He was scrambling for space to think. “I thought you hated me,” he said.

Snape stood in complete stillness. “Have I given you that impression at all in the last three months?”

“Uh, no. I guess not.” Harry swallowed hard. “I don’t…You…” Harry’s heart was rushing in his ears.

Snape backed up a step. “You certainly don’t have to answer now. And there is no time limit on your answer.”

Harry regrouped. “I’m seventeen tomorrow. Isn’t that a little old to be adopted?”

“By wizard law, one can be adopted up to the age of financial independence, considered to be the average age to finish an apprenticeship, which is twenty. One can have a successionary adoption anytime at all after that.”

“You’ve, uh, researched this,” Harry said. Snape returned a look that said, of course. Harry stared at his hard angular face again, trying to slow his fast circling thoughts. “You’re seriously offering this?”

“I have been thinking it over since the end of last term.”

Harry dropped his arms and stared while a cold darkness leeched into him. “This is Dumbledore’s idea.”

Snape bowed crookedly and held up one finger. “His idea. But not his command to me. He made himself very clear on that point. And I admit, the idea was…quite startling at first.”

“But he talked you into it,” Harry said.

Snape suddenly stepped forward again, eyes fierce. “You talked me into it, Mr. Potter. Every time I, rather surprisingly, looked forward to your company in the dungeon. Every time I showed you a spell and, no matter how complicated it was, you required only at most three or four tries to produce a reasonable replication of it and I would think to myself how proud any wizard parent would be of you.”

Harry dropped his eyes to the stone floor as the gap inside himself twisted around like a snake.

Snape went on, “I do not offer this simply out of gratitude, in case you in turn think that true.” Harry continued to stare at the floor and didn’t respond. Softly, Snape said, “Consider it, Harry. You certainly know where to find me.” With that, he turned and stepped away.

Harry felt a bit like he did staring down at Voldemort’s body, as though someone had taken his heart out and haphazardly stuffed it back in upside down. He stood in the vacant Great Hall for a long time, watching the flames make his shadow flicker around the edges.

Harry remained in his dormitory through breakfast. He had woken with an overwhelming desire to reorganize his possessions. There was a box in the far corner of the common room of things people wanted to give away. Harry dumped a few things in there and threw some others out. Around eleven, too hungry to avoid it, he went downstairs. The party was scheduled to start at three. That gave him plenty of time to see to any last-minute preparations.

When Harry returned from the kitchens to the hall with a plate of food, he found the teachers seated in their usual place, early for lunch. Unable to avoid sitting with them, he walked the length of the room. He set his breakfast plate down on the end, across from Dumbledore. 

“Good morning, Harry,” the old wizard greeted him warmly with a wink.

“Morning, sir.”

“Sleep well?”

He shrugged. “Mostly.” He had had very strange dreams about the Dursleys and his parents, though the details were escaping him now.

As Harry poured himself some pumpkin juice, Dumbledore said, “I hope you don’t mind, Harry, if I give you my gift now. I’m not certain how long I can join the party for later.” He pulled a long slender box out of his pocket.

Harry put down his fork and accepted it. “I don’t mind, Professor.”

“Harry, you of all people have earned the right to call me ‘Albus.’”

“Uh,” he hesitated. “I’d have to work on that, sir.”

McGonagall, beside Dumbledore, put her hand over her mouth to hide her grin.

“Only if you wish to, of course,” Dumbledore said amiably.

Harry lifted the box top to reveal a dark peach feather quill with a gold tip. “Wow,” he said, “thank you, sir.” It was clearly a feather from Fawkes. The tip didn’t have a well. On a hunch, Harry wrote on the inside of the box with it.  The never-out charm wrote in continuously sparkling gold and peach ink. “Thanks. It’s wonderful.” He carefully boxed it back up and set it well out of range of his plate and juice.

Hagrid reached into one of his great pockets and brought out a smashed box and handed it over. “Can’ compete with the las’ one, but here yer are.”

“Hagrid, you are talking to someone who used to get old socks for Christmas and no birthday presents at all, so I am pretty easy to please.” As he said this he realized that maybe he shouldn’t have with Dumbledore right across from him. He concentrated on the difficult unwrapping job, made worse by much knotted string, and tried not to flush. Inside were a pair of rabbit-lined gloves.

“Maybe a lil’ more of a Christmas present, but they’re the bes’ I could think of. Made ’em myself.”

“They’re great Hagrid. They’ll be useful for practice in the autumn.”

McGonagall and Sprout had fetched their gifts from the pile across the room and presented them. Harry’s plate grew cold while he opened them and they joined his small pile. McGonagall gave him colored sheets of reusable parchment and Sprout an ever blooming flower in a glass bulb to put in the window of the dormitory. The rose scent of it hovered around him, even after he had re-closed the box.

“Severus,” McGonagall said airily, “didn’t you get Mr. Potter anything?”

Harry paused in pulling his plate back, an unexpected defensiveness rising in him. “He gave me his present last night, Professor,” Harry said, pleased with how even his voice sounded given how much his heart broke from its usual rhythm.

Dumbledore looked closely at Harry before he leaned forward to look down the table at Snape. The headmaster then gave Harry a knowing look, and Harry twitched his lips in confirmation.

“Do we get to see it?” McGonagall asked eagerly. “In all the time I have known him, I don’t think Severus has ever given anyone a present. No matter the occasion.”

“Uh,” Harry started. He glanced at Dumbledore for support. In measured speech Harry finally explained, “I haven’t accepted it yet…so there isn’t anything to show.”

McGonagall’s brow furrowed deeply as she tried to figure that out. Harry expected her to ask more, but she didn’t. He wondered if Dumbledore had nudged her under the table. Harry kept his attention on his plate the rest of the meal. He wanted his thoughts kept private while they churned.

“Harry!” Mrs. Weasley gave Harry a hug when she arrived at the castle door. Ron, Ginny, and the twins trooped in behind her, each patting Harry on the arm as they passed, presents in hand.

“Thank you for coming,” Harry said. “And I said, no gifts. You’ll see why inside.” He led them into the Great Hall. Hermione jumped up and greeted Ron and the Weasley parents warmly. Harry offered butterbeers all around. “We are still waiting on Neville and his grandmother.”

“Small party,” Neville said from the doorway.

“Hi, Neville.” Harry stepped over to him and took the large wrapped box from him with a shake of his head. “I was ordered to keep it small after the last one.”

“Oh, yeah. I can imagine.”

Fred held up his bottle of butterbeer. “Congratulations Harry. Never would’ve believed you’d make it to seventeen.”

“Here here,” Mr. Weasley, echoed. “To Harry.”

Harry rolled his eyes as they all raised their bottles. “We had enough toasts at the last party,” Harry insisted as he straddled the bench. The others joined him around the Gryffindor table and soon loud conversation filled their side of the hall.

“How are you making out here?” Hermione asked.

“Bugger to be stuck here,” Ron said. “When is the Ministry going to catch those blokes so you can come visit us?”

“It could be more interesting, but it isn’t so bad. It isn’t the Dursley’s,” Harry stated emphatically as he cut himself another piece of cake.

“There is that,” Ron agreed. He glanced over all of the gifts again. “I can’t believe all of these presents,” he said for the third time. “Wonder what is in ’em all?”

Harry put his plate and fresh piece of cake down. “Let’s find out!” he said and jumped up from his seat.

He and Ron tore into the boxes, revealing a mostly ordinary assortment of wizard gear along with a few Mugglish crossover things like t-shirts with magical pictures on them. Every time Ron expressed a liking for something, Harry gave it to him. Ginny, catching on to this, helped out as well. By the time they were finished, the table was a disaster of torn wrapping, open boxes and teetering gifts.

“So you ended up with Krum’s autograph anyway,” he said, looking over a heavily marked Quidditch bat.

“So, he and I are even, then,” Harry said. He stood up to get another butterbeer. Ron gathered up his goodies and brought them over to mess with them. Hermione was discussing Muggle relations with Mr. Weasley. Mrs. Weasley and Neville’s grandmother seemed to be plotting Neville’s future together. Harry looked at his friend in concern, but Neville seemed more interested in the flowerless chocolate plant Harry had received. 

“You are definitely the right lady for the job,” Arthur was saying to Hermione.

“I think I need Muggle expertise though to have a private practice, like law or policy.” Her eyes glowed eagerly as she spoke. “I’m going to apply to some Muggle programs this autumn. I have piles of brochures but I don’t have them with me. I’d be interested in your opinion.”

“Have you looked at Waxman’s Medicinals?” Molly was saying. “They have a farm and greenhouse not far from the Burrow. One of several, I hear.”

Neville looked up in interest at that. “Do you think they have internships?” he asked.

“Certainly worth checking,” Molly said.

Harry felt cold as he listened. Other than his sometime notion of becoming an Auror, he didn’t have any real plans. Thinking he would find some commiseration, he said to his best friend, “Have any plans, Ron?”

Ron began putting away the advanced wizard chess pieces that were refusing to battle outside of a real game. He said, “Bill says he’d have me on as an assistant at Gringott’s to see how I liked it. He said just getting around that place is an adventure.” He shrugged. “I think I’ll give it a try. Sounds interesting at least. Even get to train security Trolls every now and then,” he added with an odd smile.

Harry pushed his third piece of cake around with his fork and frowned to himself. He couldn’t imagine what else he would do other than become an Auror, and whatever it was, it sounded like he was going to be doing it alone. He sighed and finished off his lukewarm butterbeer.

“I’m going to take my parents on a quick tour,” Hermione said brightly hours later as the gathering broke up and moved to the doors. “I’ll come back down and say goodbye, Harry,” she added as before the group slipped around the corner.

“We had a nice time, Harry,” Mrs. Weasley said kindly, patting Harry on the shoulder. “Hopefully you can come and stay with us soon. We do so want to see you.”

“Happy birthday, Harry,” Fred and George sang in unison as they departed. The other Weasleys echoed this as they shuffled out into the Entrance Hall.

Harry hung back and, as their footsteps faded, shuffled to the table of presents. The large front door to the castle boomed closed. Harry stood alone before the half-crushed mound of open boxes and drooping torn paper.

Halfheartedly, he pulled a larger box free and began digging around for items to load into it for easier transport to the dormitory. The sudden silence of the room pressed in on him and, when the next item—the official Bulgarian Quidditch bat signed by the team—wouldn’t fit in the box, he set it down on the floor beside it and dropped down on the bench facing the fire. The crackle of the flames was the only sound in the large dark space around him.

Harry wondered at the oppressive feeling in his chest. Discussions about the future had left him feeling uneasy rather than excited as it clearly had his friends. He dearly wished to feel the way they did but didn’t know how to find his way there.

A shadow shifting in from the right brought Harry’s attention up from the dwindling fire. “Sir,” Harry said when he recognized the tall figure.

Professor Snape lifted a stray lid on the pile. “I do believe that you have not even managed to open them all,” he said dryly.

“No,” Harry agreed then wondered if Snape were hinting at something.

“You gave most of them away,” his teacher went on, as he held an empty velvet-lined box from Flourish & Blotts.

“Tried to,” Harry said. “Hermione took that one.”

“Ah,” Snape said.

“Did you want it?” Harry asked, a little surprised.

“Hm.” Snape put the box back down.

Grinning faintly now, Harry turned back to the pile. “There was another box like it with the same store wrapping.” He dug around to the bottom and pulled out a weighty, silver parchment wrapped box. With well-practiced movements, he pulled away the wrapping and opened the lid to reveal another dark gray desk journal with gold edging to the pages. After flipping it over, Harry observed, “You’re in luck, this one isn’t embossed with my initials. Hermione didn’t seem to care that the other one was.” He held it out to Snape.

“You are certain you do not want it?” Snape asked as he accepted it and flipped through the pages.

“Carry that in my book bag all next year? I don’t think so.”

Snape closed the journal and rested it on its edge. “Thank you,” he stated levelly.

Hermione’s voice issued from the Entrance Hall, still giving statistics and history at a rapid clip. Her parents followed her in and back over to the party table. “Well, Harry, we should go.”

Harry stood up and gave her a casual hug. “Thanks for coming. Thanks for the books.”

She started to turn away. “Hopefully I’ll get to see you at Ron’s before school starts.” As she stepped between her parents to leave, she hesitated and looked back at her father when he did not immediately move to follow.

Mr. Granger looked from Snape to Harry. “You all right left alone here, son?”

“Yes,” Harry replied automatically. His brow furrowed as he tried to figure the man out.

Hermione stepped back over. “This is one of our teachers, Dad, Professor Snape.”

“Oh,” Mr. Granger said and looked Snape up and down another time.

Understanding now, Harry glanced up at his teacher. In his thrown-back cloak with high collar and the dim firelight coming from floor level to just barely highlight his face through the veil of his hair, he did look rather menacing, and, as usual, he wasn’t trying not to. Harry felt that surge of defensiveness again, stronger this time.

Hermione’s mother patted Mr. Granger’s sleeve. “Come on, Hon. I’m sure they wouldn’t hire anyone, uh, dangerous.”

“Hire anyone who would try to kill Harry?” Harry suggested with such sarcasm that Hermione had to cover her giggle. “Can’t imagine that,” he finished a little bitterly, although he hadn’t meant to.

“Poor, Harry,” Hermione said in overdone sympathy and giggled again.

“Why are you laughing, dear?” Hermione’s mum asked, alarmed and critical.

“Ehem, uh, nearly every Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher we’ve had has tried to kill Harry,” she explained making her mother more alarmed.

“You know,” Harry said, turning his head to look up at Snape, “as much as you didn’t like Dumbledore hiring Lupin, at least he didn’t have it in for me.”

Snape crossed his arms. “You don’t recall running across the lawn away from a werewolf, Mr. Potter?”

“Oh, yeah. Well, he didn’t spend months plotting my death. That was an accident.”

“Hm,” Snape muttered.

“Harry,” Hermione said, “if you define it as ‘danger to Harry,’ you have to count five of the Defense teachers.”

Harry asked with extra innocence, “So, Professor, do I have to start worrying about you as well now?”

“You’re teaching Defense next year?” Hermione asked, sounding startled. “Who’s teaching Potions?”

Snape replied, “A woman by the name of Gertrude Greer has accepted the position. I know her only by reputation. She is expected to arrive tomorrow, in fact.” He gave Hermione a challenging look.

“I was looking forward to seventh-year Potions,” she explained with a hint of a whinge.

“I don’t mean to disappoint, Ms. Granger,” Snape said airily.

“That’s all right, sir. You should teach what you want to teach. It’s just that we need Potions more than Defense now…” After a pause where her mother pointed out the time, she added, “We really should go.” This time her parents followed her out of the hall. At the door she paused. “Bye, Harry,” she said as her mother put a hand on her shoulder to keep her moving. “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks,” Harry replied.

The outer door closed, reverberating through the vastness. Harry distracted himself by picking up an empty large box from the floor and putting gifts into it, tossing the smaller empty boxes into the hearth.

“Would you like assistance?” Snape asked.

Harry hesitated before replying, “Sure.”

They managed to pack everything into three large boxes. Snape handed Harry each of the last few unopened packages revealed at the bottom. Harry sighed and ripped them open, adding a ninth hat, a third broom compass, and a very soft scarf in Gryffindor colors to the last box.

“And this one,” Snape stated softly as he pulled a small, slender box from his pocket and held it out. “In case you cannot accept the other one.”

Harry stared, unmoving, at the box in Snape’s hand. He had been merely sinking before—now he was plummeting.

“Potter?” Snape prompted him.

“You don’t have to do that,” Harry said, voice a little thick. Walls that he hadn’t known were surrounding him seemed to have crashed in on him. “You don’t have to do any of this.” The flare of the hearth faded out at that moment, leaving the boxes and wrapping as glowing filigrees of ash.

Still holding the box out, Snape thought a long moment. “I find myself wanting to,” he said quietly. Too quietly to give away his tone.

Harry took the box and held it, unable to open it. He was certain he would lose his tenuous control if he did. The scene of minutes ago, of Hermione leaving with her parents, replayed again in his memory. He had never lost that ache of jealousy, of hopeless bitter longing, could conjure it now if he thought it useful.

“Are you sure about the other one?” Harry heard himself ask.

“I never do anything without due deliberation.”

Harry still held the box lightly in his fingers. It was a little heavier than he thought it would be from the size. “No, I don’t suppose you do,” he commented, stalling for time to try to pin down the emotion churning in him. It felt like fear, or even terror, but that didn’t make any sense.

His internal struggle must have reflected in his face because Snape said, “I don’t mean to distress you. My offer has apparently rendered you too vulnerable.”

A measure of control returned to him as Snape said that, making Harry wonder if half the fear hadn’t been of Snape recognizing what was happening to him. “You already did that,” he said and finally raised his eyes. “That’s how I finally defeated Voldemort, you know.” At Snape’s intense expression, Harry went on. “You thought you’d made a mistake, breaking my concentration. I thought you had too.” Harry’s heart raced as though it were happening all over again. “But he’d Occluded his mind too much—I couldn’t get at him anymore.”

Harry forced his hands to unclench. “The Death Eaters were regrouping and I looked around and saw you. All of these confused emotions came out and Voldemort latched onto the hate. He came straight at me with it. So certain he knew you…so certain he had me.” Harry paused and shook his head. He was breathing fast. “I didn’t have any choice—I had to pull out everything I’d felt at the abandoned manor. I had to relive all the memories I’d been avoiding because I couldn’t stand to realize I’d been needing something that badly that I couldn’t have.” Harry’s voice cracked at that. He paused to catch his breath and calm the burn in his eyes.

After a pause, Snape observed quietly, “That most certainly would have done in the Dark Lord.”

“He’d staked everything on that surge—hadn’t left himself any way to back out of it. The memories did startle him rather a lot.” Harry attempted a lighter tone, but felt even more vulnerable failing to reach it.

“I had been rather curious. You distinctly avoided filling in these details to the Ministry, and I had no right to pry if did you not wish to discuss it.” Snape sighed. “Having the Dark Lord gone. Is. Astounding. I have felt guilty. Actually. That I made you come so close to failing.”

“You didn’t. At all. You deserved to know that,” Harry said tiredly, but very much meaning it.

Harry stood clutching the present that didn’t seem to be crushing at all under the strain of his pained grip. He did not know where to go from here. Numbness had seeped in where everything had churned injuriously before.

After a long gap, Snape said, “Harry…you can have it, you know.”

Harry closed his eyes and floated a moment. When he opened them again he could feel that his expression was unduly pained so he closed them again and held them that way. Snape stepped close, his robes swishing over the sound of the fire. After a long pause he put his left hand lightly on Harry’s shoulder blade. Clenching his eyes tighter, Harry leaned forward and rested his forehead on Snape’s chest. They stood that way for a long time, until Harry’s breathing slowed to normal out of exhaustion.

“What do you think?” Snape asked as he stroked Harry’s back once, very lightly, fingers uncertain. After a long pause, Harry nodded. Snape caught his breath. “Are you saying ‘yes?’” he asked, startled. Harry nodded faintly again.

Taking a half-step back and drawing himself up, Snape said in an unsettled voice, “Happy birthday, Mr. Potter.”

The next morning, the teachers sat in a staff meeting. “I must say,” Dumbledore began, “that having more time over the summer with this many of you here does make preparations for the coming year go smoother. Although I am certain you would like to go home at some point.”

“Harry did apologize for keeping us here,” McGonagall said. She sat back in her chair with her datebook open in front of her. She closed it as if not wishing to look at it.

“I do hope you dissuaded him from his concern?” Dumbledore asked.

“Oh yes. I pointed out how much busier we would be if he hadn’t disposed of Voldemort. He seemed to accept that.”

“Thank you, Minerva. He doesn’t seem willing to voice his concerns to me.”

A silence fell. Snape sat hunched, flipping his quill over in his fingers repeatedly. 

“Yer antzier than a sack of fire beetles, Severus,” Hagrid said from the end of the table. 

Snape started at this comment, dropped the quill on the table, and sat back with crossed arms. Dumbledore looked him over once. “Everything all right, Severus?”

“Yes. Why shouldn’t it be?” he retorted stiffly.

“You are behaving oddly,” Dumbledore said gently.

“More so than usual,” McGonagall added.

Snape glared at both of them but refrained from comment. Dumbledore shifted smoothly onto school business. 

At the end of the short meeting, all but Snape stood up. “There is something I should discuss with you,” Snape said to Dumbledore. The rest of the teachers paused and looked back at him before continuing out of the room.

“Everything is not all right, I take it?” Dumbledore asked grimly when the door closed.

Snape again flipped his black quill feather across his fingers nervously. “He said ‘yes’.”

Dumbledore’s eyes widened. “Already?” At Snape’s nod he added, “I would not have imagined that.”

The headmaster pushed to his feet with difficulty and stepped to the window. He looked out for a time that ticked away on the official school clock. “It concerns me.”

Snape rubbed his chin in thought. “I think it need not. Bringing the Dark Lord down forced him to admit things to himself that he would not have otherwise. I believe he had less to deliberate about as a result.”

“Well then, congratulations are in order,” Dumbledore said. At Snape’s dubious expression, he shook his head. “You do seem unsettled…”

Snape collected up his parchments, rolling them tightly. “I may have thought the likelihood to be lower than it actually was when I was deliberating. Or perhaps the perspective is simply different this side of it.”

Dumbledore smiled affectionately. “It usually is.”

Harry walked through the day in a daze. He didn’t have any place he had to be or anything he had to do, which was unfortunate since he really could have used something to help him not vacillate so wildly between stunned and hopeful. He was in a hopeful mood when he encountered Snape in the corridor that afternoon. His eyes must have given him away because Snape straightened suddenly when their gazes met.

Recovering quickly, Snape said, “There are some arrangements to be made. If you are going to be available on Wednesday…”

“You think I have someplace else to go?” Harry asked.

“There is that. I have asked a solicitor to come— Are you ready for this, Harry?” Snape asked.

Harry swallowed hard. “Yes, sir. Just a little fast.”

“Do you want time?” Snape asked levelly. “You may have as much as you like.”

Harry tried on that idea. “I don’t think that will make any difference.” He looked down at his hands folded around themselves. “I’m just still getting used to the idea.”

“By all means you may certainly have time to become accustomed to the idea before going forward.”

With a shake of his head, Harry said, “I don’t need it. I’m not going to change my mind.” Indeed, he had latched onto the notion more fiercely than he had believed possible, imagining giving it up gave him an awful hollow feeling.

“Wednesday then after breakfast, in the Defense office.”

“All right.”

They both stood still without any inclination to move. “Would you care to help me test the efficacy of some old potions from the stocks?”

Brightening instantly, Harry said, “Yes. Please.”

Later in the afternoon, Harry sat alone in the Great Hall reading a Muggle paperback book Hermione had sent by owl that morning. It wasn’t holding his attention as well as he had hoped. So, when the front doors of the castle opened and closed and hesitant footsteps sounded across the Entrance Hall, Harry looked up at the doors with some interest. A woman with pinched features surrounded by a frame of short brown hair and wearing a maroon traveling cloak came in the first set of doors, stopped, and looked up at the ceiling in surprise.

Eager for a distraction, Harry put down his book and stepped over to her. “Are you Gertrude Greer?”

She frowned at Harry’s oversized Dudley t-shirt that had long since turned a mouldering mousy color. Then pawed through a large shiny purse slung over her shoulder. “Are you the welcoming committee?” She apparently found the parchment she wanted. It had the school seal on it. She read it over quickly, her lips moving faintly.

“I guess I am now,” Harry said. “Do you want me to show you to your office and classroom?”

She put the parchment back away, stuffing it in at random. She turned back to the Entrance Hall without answering his question. “I came on an earlier train in case they didn’t have room for my trunks on the fuller afternoon run.” She spoke in a tone that assumed he would care. In the outer hall stood five very large vertical trunks looking like menacing wardrobes.

“Maybe I should let you move those,” Harry said, imagining them filled with dangerous ingredients and delicate instruments.

She muttered a hover charm of sorts and the trunks lifted in unison like a platoon and followed them across the hall, Harry in the lead.

Down in the dungeon, Harry was glad Snape wasn’t around. A few cauldrons still bubbled on the benches against the wall. Greer slipped her gloves off and circled the room, glancing into the cauldrons as she passed, furrowing her brow in dismay again at his dingy shirt before going to the desk.

“What do you teach?” she asked as she clicked open a trunk and pulled out her desk set.

Harry walked along the cauldrons, checking instructions and potion status. Grinning, Harry said. “I don’t. I’m a student.”

Greer opened the drawers of the desk and arranged her things in them. The scene bothered Harry somehow and he tried to shake it as silly.

“I read the school rules. Students aren’t allowed to stay for the summer.” She spoke an Umbridge-like voice.

“I think the headmaster made an exception,” Harry said easily. The Draught of Isis was turning a nice fuchsia color which meant it would be finished before tomorrow. He stirred it a few times, bringing a cloud of debris from the bottom.

“I wouldn’t touch those if I were you,” she snapped at him.

Harry stowed his hands behind his back. “Your dungeon, ma’am,” he said, still feeling uneasy about that notion, as though he had something unfinished here that now never could be.

She shut one of the drawers with a thud and opened the cabinet behind her, usually locked because it held restricted ingredients. Snape must have left it unspelled for her. “If the headmaster lets the rules be broken so easily, that doesn’t bode well for my getting along with him. I must say.” She seemed to be thinking aloud to herself, but it still made Harry narrow his eyes at her.

“Then I am glad you are not the headmistress, ma’am,” Harry said. “I don’t fancy being hunted down and killed in revenge by Lucius Malfoy and Peter Pettigrew. Although I admit, being here restricts me from doing the same to them.”

She froze, her hands wrapped around a stack of files. “You’re Harry Potter,” she said with a grimace. Her eyes finally sought out his scar. She shook her head and put the files in a box on the floor. “I suppose if exceptions are going to be made…”

Harry stepped toward the door. “They do tend to happen for me,” Harry lilted, thinking ahead to the next one he could annoy her with. “I’ll leave you to your unpacking, Professor.”

At dinner, Greer stepped in just as everyone took a seat. Harry sat down across from Snape, realizing too late that there was an empty spot to his left, across from Dumbledore. With so few people, it was difficult to box himself in. Greer stepped over the bench to that seat and shook Dumbledore’s hand before sitting.

“Gertie, if you had owled that you were arriving early I could have made certain you were met at the station.”

“It is no matter, I am accustomed to handling my own trunks.”

Dumbledore went through introductions. Greer turned from the last one, Hagrid beside her, and rubbed her hands together as though overexcited by the food on the table. At least she didn’t wear flowered things the way Umbridge did, Harry thought. “Mr. Potter was kind enough to show me to my office when I arrived,” she said in a saccharine sweet voice.

Harry gave Snape a flash of dismay. “The Isis is almost finished, by the way,” Harry remembered to mention to him.

“It is about time,” Snape replied, as though the potion had it in for him.

Greer looked between them calculatingly.

“Mr. Potter has been assisting me in preparing the long-brew potions I took the liberty of starting before your arrival. During the school year, it is much more difficult to brew them successfully.”

“You should use the second floor girls toilet. It’s worked well for us in the past,” Harry said in a tantalizingly innocent tone. No other conversations seemed to have started as everyone served themselves.

“And what may I ask were you brewing?” Snape said.

Harry drank his pumpkin juice to stall. “Ask me in a year when Hermione has passed her exams.”

“Something dangerous?” Snape went on.

“Was for her.” Harry poured himself more juice. “She accidentally turned herself into a cat.” The memory was far enough removed that he found it quite funny now. When he stopped laughing, he pulled the plate of chicken legs closer and selected two.

“What is wrong with this toilet?” Greer asked, slightly concerned.

Harry sensed that she really disliked anything that might not be orderly and predictable. “Moaning Myrtle is the reason no one goes into it,” Harry explained. “She’s a ghost. You didn’t go to school here?”

“I attended Durmstrang,” she said in a tone that closed that topic.

More annoyed with the woman, Harry said, “Myrtle is harmless. Other things in there aren’t so.” He caught Dumbledore’s gaze, which held equal parts disapproval and mischief.

“Why are such things left for the students to stumble upon?” Greer asked bluntly.

“Oh, well, this one was left by one of the school’s founders, so it is a little hard to remove.” In as ordinary of a conversational tone as Harry could muster, he added, “Although the Basilisk is dead now. Someone put a sword through its head.”

Snape broke in. “It does not pose a threat to you, Ms. Greer. Or to anyone who does not speak Parseltongue.” He gave Harry a dark look.

“Well, I certainly do not!” she blurted.

Harry jumped at her outburst. As he settled down and adjusted his napkin, he muttered quietly, “Nothing wrong with that.”

“Nothing wrong with it, Mr. Potter?” she asked in shrill mockery as though he had done something wrong during class and she desired to make an example of him. “Only the darkest wizards are Parselmouths, Potter, or didn’t you learn that in this school of bright windows? Perhaps you still have a few things to learn, eh?”

Harry stared at her. In a soft voice, he said, “I have lots. I have to take N.E.W.T.s.” This comment brought forth grins from the other teachers. Harry took a bite of mashed potatoes, which were staying warm on his plate somehow. He wondered who was doing that for him. “And I have heard that about Parselmouths, ma’am. In school. Second year.”

Sprout and Hagrid looked at the ceiling at that moment. Harry mulled over whether to pop it on her now or save it for later.

“Well, that is good to hear,” she calmed down considerably as she said this.

“All dark wizards, ma’am?” Harry asked when the table remained silent as though to give him an opening. “Or, all Parselmouths are dark wizards? I just want to make sure I have this straight.”

As if flustered by his sudden stupidity, she frowned and said, “I’m certain there have been dark wizards who weren’t, many in fact. But there has never been a Parselmouth who wasn’t.” She waved her fork at him as she spoke with strong emotion.

“Do they have to register somewhere? You know, like Animagi?” Harry asked this with honest curiosity. He glanced again at Dumbledore, who continued to eat calmly. Harry kept expecting a small shake of the head from him, telling him to stop it.

“They should have to,” she blurted out. “Fortunately for all of us, they are incredibly rare.”

“Ah,” Harry said as though this cleared the topic up completely and it could be dropped. 

As Harry ate in silence, McGonagall caught his eye and gave him a disappointed look. Harry shrugged lightly at her. He had to take an entire year of Potions with this woman, after all.

“I hope you settle in easily here, Gertie,” Dumbledore said as he waved his plate away. “If there is any way any of us can assist you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

“I’m certain I’ll be fine,” she said primly, now sounding like Aunt Petunia.

As Harry finished his lunch, all he could think of was he hoped Hermione didn’t take a liking to this woman. Otherwise he might not make it through his three last terms of Advanced Potions.

“I am curious, Mr. Potter,” said Greer as she encountered Harry in the corridor. Harry had unfortunately chosen that moment to check inside the suit of armor that always seemed to be humming to itself. “Didn’t they give you any kind of a job to do around the castle for the summer?”

Harry thought she might treat him better today since he was wearing a decent set of robes despite the warm day. But apparently that wasn’t the issue.

She went on, “I have only been here two days but you seem to have no profitable activity to occupy yourself.”

“Um,” Harry began. “I’m only guessing, Professor, but I think the other teachers feel that offing Voldemort was worth a summer of unprofitable activity.”

“Hmf,” she said through her nose and strode away.

Harry wondered if he went down to breakfast now he could avoid her for the rest of the day or at least for the morning. Willing to eat alone in exchange for not seeing her for a while, he headed straight down to the Great Hall. 

As it turned out, he didn’t need to eat alone. Snape paced in vague agitation along in front of the head table. Concerned, Harry asked, “Everything all right, sir?”

“Yes,” Snape muttered. As Harry took a seat at the end of the Hufflepuff table, his teacher ceased pacing and sat across from him. “You are up early,” Snape observed.

“I went to sleep early. I think I’m bored again. That and I was hoping to avoid eating with the Dragon Lady.”

Breakfast plates appeared on the table. “You are not enamored of Ms. Greer?” At Harry’s doubtful face, he said, “Perhaps you would be willing to leave with me after the hearing.”

Harry froze. “You think Dumbledore would let me go?”

“I expect, Potter, that no one, Servant of the Dark Lord or otherwise, would expect to find you at my house.”

Harry grinned, “Probably true.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Potter, our house,” Snape corrected.

Harry’s eyes glazed as though he stared at something well beyond the side wall of the hall. A home to go to that wasn’t the Dursley’s. That thought was going to take some getting used to.

“Potter?” Snape prompted.

Harry looked at his plate as he pushed his egg around with his fork. “I was just thinking how nice it is to not be at the Dursleys. I like regular meals and not being beaten up by my cousin.” He fell silent, flushed in embarrassment.

“That bad?” Snape asked with a touch of his usual snideness.

“I think if you’d asked me to come home with you for a previous summer…I probably would have, just to avoid them.”

“Quite bad, then,” Snape stated dryly, making Harry smile again.

After breakfast, Snape left to meet the solicitor in Hogsmeade. Harry wandered slowly up to the Defense office. His hands were cold and his heart raced. He stared with much more attention at the portraits on the wall as he went, as a way of stalling. They all paid him more attention in return.

“Prithee!” a knight in one of them said. “Have you seen my horse?”

Harry shook his head. “No, sorry.” As he turned the corner, the knight was yelling, “She’s a bay. Sixteen hands. Let me know if you see her!”

At the door to Snape’s office, Harry hesitated for a time while clouds passed the windows at the end of the hall shifting the air from light to silvery. Finally, he reached for the door handle. The office was bright inside from rows of high windows. Books lined the walls now, half of them potion-related. He stared at the pensieve up on the shelf and tried to assemble in his mind how he had arrived at this strange point. Voldemort seemed in the distant past compared to the complicated seesawing of his emotions right then.

Sooner than Harry had hoped, the door opened. As he turned to it, Snape swished in. He appeared openly relieved to find Harry there, drawing a sheepish smile from Harry.

The solicitor was a woman with short, stiff, auburn hair and stout body that moved lightly on short legs. “Mr. Potter,” she said sincerely, “very pleased to make your acquaintance.” Her spiky auburn eyebrows bounced as she talked. “May I take this chair?” 

“Of course, Ms. Kranden,” Snape replied and sat behind his desk.

She pulled the chair up close to the front of the desk, opened her briefcase and pulled forth a thick assortment of parchments. “Now, since you are of age but under twenty, we can perform a custodial adoption or a successionary one.” She waited for Snape to reply.

“Which do you recommend?” Snape asked.

“Whichever we think the council is more willing to approve in this situation.” She finally found the sheet she was looking for. “A succession was authorized just two hundred and two years ago for the…Nigellus family. But they are considered perfunctory barring undue influence upon one of the parties.”

Snape leaned back in his chair, “Nevertheless. Custodial, I should think.”

Kranden pulled out a quill and dipped in the inkwell on the desk before filling in the date at the top of a long parchment form. “Given your age, Mr. Potter, and that no one would question your ability to attend to your own interests, you can in theory break from Mr. Snape at any time, just as one could from natural parents once one is of age.”

“I understand that,” Harry said.

She looked between the two of them. “A symbolic adoption, really,” she commented as she filled in the names in the blanks buried in the middle of the first paragraph of highly stylized script. Her writing stood out as cold and factual.

Snape stared at his fingernails and stated quietly, “Symbols are important.”

“Of course. I don’t disagree,” she replied automatically. She shifted the parchment up and scanned the intervening text quickly. “Now, Mr. Potter, you have no living immediate family?”

“No.”

“Relatives? Godparents? Anyone who might contest this?”

“I have an aunt and uncle—”

“Ever co-habitate with them?” she interrupted.

“My whole life.”

She looked up and considered him. She pulled out another form and made a note on it. “We’ll have to get signatures from them, at a minimum. They never officially adopted you, I assume?”

“Not that I know of. I doubt it.” Harry was both relieved by this and felt a little hurt by it at the same time.

She frowned at the parchment in her hand. “The council is not going to like that. Can you bring them in to witness that they are willing to release you? It’d be time consuming to go through a separation before the adoption. You might be twenty by then.”

“They hate wizards,” Harry said. “You’d have to trick them into it somehow. They hate me, for that matter.”

Kranden tapped her finger on the desk as she thought. She frowned as she reread the second parchment again.

“They starved me. They made me live in a broom cupboard. They put bars on my windows to keep me from leaving for school,” Harry explained, exasperated by the thought that Vernon and Petunia could still interfere with his life.

“We’ll make a case for abused and neglected then,” she said softly as she wrote out a note on the margin of the parchment. 

Harry kept his attention firmly on her writing. He couldn’t bring himself to meet Snape’s gaze. “They’d sign anything you gave them if it meant they never had to see me again.”

“We’ll start with that route then. If we can convince them that your relatives are wizard-averse Muggles, they may forgo the witness requirement. If not, we’ll take the neglect route.”

She made her way down the parchment, filling in each of the blank lines with her mechanical writing. She used a complicated spell to duplicate the parchment into five copies. Finally, she said, “Sign here,” to Snape as she turned the stack around to him.

Snape pulled out his usual raven quill and signed the top copy. Harry leaned back in his chair as he watched, feeling dizzy. As Snape flipped up the bottom edge of the parchment, he gave Harry a glance, then lowered his brow at Harry’s expression of distress. Harry forced himself to breathe deeply and felt a little better. After a long pause of consideration, Snape returned to his task.

The completed stack was turned toward the solicitor and she carefully straightened them before turning to Harry with an official air. “Mr. Potter, do you understand the ramifications of what you are entering into?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“All right, then.” She dipped her own quill again and signed each of the copies with practiced speed. She set the quill aside and straightened the sheets yet again. “We need two more witnesses to Mr. Potter’s willingness. The witnesses need to have long-standing familiarity with him.”

Snape stood and gestured for them to move to the door. “The headmaster will most certainly be willing.”

They stood in the headmaster’s office as Dumbledore glanced over the long parchment with his head angled back to see through his half-moon spectacles. With deliberate motions, he arranged the stack before him and turned to Harry, who stood back from the group. “Harry?” Dumbledore asked. 

“Sir?”

“All right, Harry?”

Harry shrugged and then forced his demeanor to brighten against an unusual panic that tried to grip him. It receded as he looked into the old wizard’s gentle, knowing eyes. “Yes, sir,” he answered with confidence.

Dumbledore pulled out a peach-colored quill and signed each of the copies before handing them back to Kranden.

The three of them exited. Harry glanced up as he moved to close the office door behind them. Dumbledore’s expression, as he sat with his hands folded before him on the desk, was more at peace than Harry had ever seen. He gave Harry a kind smile and a nod with more than the usual twinkle.

As he followed the others down the escalator, Harry considered that he would have agreed to this just for Dumbledore, had he known what it meant to him. At the bottom, as the gargoyles leapt back into place, Snape stood in thought. “Professor McGonagall?” he suggested.

Harry shrugged and said to the solicitor, “If she thinks we are playing a practical joke on her, will that reflect badly on us?”

Kranden cleared her throat. “I’m not the council. I’m just here to help with the paperwork.”

“McGonagall then,” Harry said. As they walked toward the staircases, Harry started to grin as he imagined his Head of House’s reaction.

At her door, Snape knocked and stepped in. “I am in need of a favor, Minerva, if you have a few minutes.”

“Certainly, come in.” She marked her page in the large book in front of her and closed it. Harry stepped in behind Snape with the solicitor trailing behind.

“Do you want to explain first?” Harry asked as he stopped just inside the office, thinking the two of them should wait outside.

“No, it is all right.” Snape took the parchments from Kranden and held them out to McGonagall. “I need you to witness these, if you would, after the solicitor asks you a few questions.”

McGonagall accepted the parchments and adjusted her glasses. Her face fell into shock as she read the first paragraph. She looked at the solicitor, then Snape, then finally at Harry, who sighed at her expression of stunned dismay. She dropped the stack down on her desk and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Just a moment. I want to talk to one of you,” she pointed between Snape and Harry, “alone first.”

Snape and Harry considered each other, unable to determine who should stay. 

“Potter, you stay,” she said impatiently. The others stepped out and closed the door quietly. McGonagall started to speak and then stopped. After another glance at the parchments she shook her head. “This had to have been Albus’ idea.”

Harry stiffened at that. A little coldly, he said, “He suggested it originally, but that’s all.”

She frowned and rubbed her eyes tiredly after setting her glasses aside.

“All you have to do, Professor, is witness that you believe I am doing this willingly,” Harry explained in a hard tone.

“Well, Harry, I can tell you are serious about this,” she said. “Are you doing this willingly, or to please Dumbledore?”

“I honestly didn’t realize how much this meant to him until five minutes ago.”

She considered that and sighed as she again perused the top parchment. “Some things cannot be recaptured, Harry,” she said wistfully.

Angry and hurt now, Harry replied stiffly, “And some things can.”

“Harry,” she said gently. “I will sign these for you—I don’t mean to imply that I won’t. And I do wish for you to find what you clearly feel you are missing.” She clasped her hands together, leaned back in her chair, and considered him with a sad expression. Quietly, she said, “The night Albus dropped you at your aunt and uncle’s house, I begged him not to leave you there. I am certain he did not realize how poorly treated you would be. But he insisted you grow up in isolation from your fame. Turns out he had other reasons as well that he didn’t share at that time.”

“I know them now.”

“Any of us would have taken you then. Any of us would take you now.”

Harry fidgeted a little. “I don’t think you understand me as well as Severus does.”

She sat forward and put on her glasses. In a lilting tone, she said, “Perhaps not. But had I known you were in the market for a replacement parent, I would have liked a chance to apply.” When Harry smiled at that, she went on, “When I ask you if there is anything you need, I do mean it, even if we can’t always figure out how to help you.” She considered him. “Clearly what you need is permanence. Call them back in.” She waved at the door.

“Are you certain bringing Mr. Snape along is a good idea?” Kranden asked Harry as they waited on the castle lawn. Snape was stepping down from the main doors, still out of range of hearing. “If they dislike wizards…”

“Are you kidding? All the better. They’ll think I’m going to be miserable. They’ll sign in an instant.”

Snape wore a Muggle outfit of starched white shirt and dark trousers. The cuffs and collar of the shirt were far too wide for current fashion. Kranden had done a better job, wearing a straightforward, conservative wool jacket and plain skirt. “Shall we?” she said as they congregated.

They Flooed into the nearest wizard enclave and then walked to Little Whinging. The sun was shining brightly and the wind was gentle. “You owled them, correct?” Kranden asked as they approached the drive.

“I used Muggle post, but yes. I didn’t tell them the time. Otherwise they wouldn’t be there when we arrived,” Harry said.

The neighbor lady looked up from her weeding at Snape and gaped. Snape gave her a narrow-eyed look in return. Harry waved at her and said hello in his most friendly manner. Her sour face looked more confused by this, mincing over to inspect her hedges in order to follow their progress up the pavement.

The door opened as they approached the step. Vernon held open the door and scowled, “Figures the neighbors’d see you. I don’t know what you want, but you better make it quick.”

“You didn’t inform him of the purpose of this visit?” Kranden asked Harry.

“All I told him is that he’d be rid of me for good after this,” Harry explained, as they followed Vernon Dursley into the house.

Petunia stood in the kitchen doorway with her arms folded and a scowl on her lean face that faded to fearful as Snape stalked past her with a dark glance. In the living room, Vernon took a seat in his regular chair without inviting others to sit. Snape followed into the center of the room and turned in a circle to look over the place. Vernon gave him a distrustful huff through his mustache.

“Thought I heard somethin’.” Dudley, now as tall as Vernon, sauntered into the room. He walked menacingly over to Harry, who stood his ground and stared far up at his older cousin. “Didn’ think you were ever comin’ back, Pottie.”

“Just couldn’t stay away,” Harry retorted.

Dudley gave Kranden a lewd appraisal then turned to Snape and froze. Snape—even in his approximation of Muggle clothes—looked like a wizard and with his current fierce expression not a very nice one. His black eyes, ragged hair, and hooked profile stood out starkly in the frilly decor of Petunia Dursley’s home. Dudley took an unconscious step backward and swallowed hard. “Who’s that?” he asked the room uncertainly.

“My teacher,” Harry replied casually.

“You let a wizard in here?” Dudley demanded of his father.

“I told them to make it quick,” Vernon insisted.

“What do you want?” Petunia asked from the entry to the hallway. Her prim voice shrill from barely controlled fury. Her eyes darting fitfully between each of the guests in her house.

Kranden set her briefcase on the low table and pulled out a parchment. “We are here to ask you to sign a document stating that you are willing to relinquish your status as Harry’s guardians.” She held the parchment out toward Vernon.

Vernon accepted it with a snort through his mustache. He didn’t look at it, just stared at Kranden. “Why?”

“It is mostly a formality, but it simplifies our other filings.” She sized up Vernon before explaining, “Professor Snape, here…” She gestured at the man behind her. “…is making an application to the Wizard Family Council to adopt Mr. Potter.”

“What?” Dudley sputtered, attracting Snape’s silent, intent attention. Dudley shut up immediately and backed up another step. “He can’t magic me without taking out his wand, can he?”

“Yes. He can,” Harry supplied confidently.

Dudley, sweating now under the piercing black look, backed up beside Petunia, on his toes ready to make a run for it. “You’re not going to let Harry do this?” he asked his mum.

Petunia’s eyes narrowed. “We certainly don’t want him back in this house.”

Kranden stepped up to her instead with another copy of the parchment, pulling a Muggle pen from her inside breast pocket. “Sign here, then,” she invited.

Petunia held the parchment and pen, one in each hand and considered Snape. “What do you know about this man?” she asked.

“I have a copy of his vitae,” the solicitor offered, gesturing at her case. “He has taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for the last—”

“Don’t mention that wretched place to my wife,” Vernon growled. He hefted himself out of his chair and stepped up to Snape. With narrowed eyes he said in a low voice, “I’ve heard there are good wizards and dark ones. You look like a dark one to me.”

Snape didn’t react, just studied Vernon closely. “And that would matter, how?” he calmly retorted.

“Seems a little strange, Potter losing everything to dark wizards, and all.” He looked suspicious now. 

Snape’s eyes narrowed as he crossed his arms and drew himself up straight. “I do not know, or care, frankly, how you might choose to classify me.” He stared through Dursley in silence before stating: “What I can tell you is that I am a strict disciplinarian. Misbehavior of any kind in my presence is punished most severely. Harry’s summer has been spent in long hours of extra readings, lessons, and menial tasks that I set him to. I do not tolerate wasted time.”

Vernon grunted approvingly and turned to take the parchment from Petunia. Harry backed up against the wall to get out of his way. “So why did you agree to this, boy?” Vernon mockingly asked him.

Harry hesitated before replying, “He asked me.”

“That’s all it took?” Dudley asked in disbelief.

Harry shot him a dark look, pained to find too much truth in his response. “It’s nice to be wanted.”

On the way back down the front walk, the solicitor switched her case to her right hand after shaking Vernon’s. After the door closed hard behind them, she said, “You lived here your whole life, Mr. Potter?”

“They were behaving better today to keep up appearances,” Harry assured her. 

“I cannot imagine,” she said. 

Harry leaned forward to look across at Snape. “You didn’t mean what you said, did you, sir?” he asked, worried.

“Potter, as far as I am concerned, you have earned the right to a frivolous existence living off of others’ pathetic gratitude. I would not recommend it, nor encourage it, however.”

Harry let go of a deep breath in relief. “I suspected that you were just saying what he wanted to hear.” He shook himself theatrically. “Legilimency with Vernon Dursley, brrrrr.”

“The lengths I am willing to go to, Potter,” Snape commented in a airy, suffering voice.

“I am not hearing any of this,” Kranden said as they turned off Privet Drive.

The door to the Wizard Family Council room opened and an elderly witch with a small girl in hand stepped out. She bent and spoke reassuringly to the child, patted the back of her hand. Harry stood patiently beside Snape waiting for their turn. At the moment he was just grateful to have made it through the Ministry Atrium in one piece. The receptionist who registered his wand stared at him in silent shock for an awkwardly long gap before he handed it back. By that time the entire Ministry, it seemed, had gathered ’round to shake his hand and thank him.

When they had finally escaped, Snape had commented, “You have not been very visible. It is true.” Harry had been relieved by that, since he had not been certain how Snape would react to such a scene.

Fortunately, the hearing room was in an out-of-the-way corner on the second floor below ground. Harry’d been worried about running into Mr. Weasley. Since he hadn’t owled Ron with the news, he wasn’t keen on making up a story on the spur of the moment, especially not in front of Snape.

Kranden gestured that they should enter. As they stepped inside, a witch seated at a small desk off to the side said, “Next we have the application hearing for Severus Snape. He is applying to adopt one…Harry Potter.” The witch scowled at the paper then looked up at them in surprise. The members of the council, peering down from elevated tiers, murmured among themselves and perked up considerably.

As the three of them approached the podium facing the council, the murmuring stopped and all the council gazed at Harry with amazement. Kranden ignored this and took out the sheaf of parchments. She unwrapped them, kept one copy of the long form for herself and handed the others over to the council secretary. “Good morning, members of the council, I am Felicity Kranden. I am assisting Mr. Snape in this application.” She went on to explain their application in legalese. Harry stood beside her with his hands clasped extra casually in front of himself. That panicky feeling was trying to build again and he did not want it to show.

Finished with her statements, Kranden stepped back and waited patiently as the secretary handed the forms over to the council chair after registering each document. “Any of them can ask questions now,” the solicitor whispered.

After looking over each sheet, at least momentarily, the chairwitch leaned forward. “Mr. Potter,” she began with a quizzical expression, “this is a bit unexpected.” She cleared her throat and sipped from a teacup before continuing. “The first question that pops into my head is, why now? Why not while you were truly underage and in need of a permanent guardian?”

Harry moved to the podium and glanced at Snape in question.

The chairwitch said stridently, “Do not look to him. I want to hear your answer.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Harry said. “It is just that there are some things Albus Dumbledore didn’t want anyone to know and it is hard to remember that they don’t matter anymore.” The gazes of the council grew even more interested. “You see, Dumbledore put a spell on my mother’s sister’s house to make me safe from Voldemort while I was there. I had to consider it my home for the spell to keep working. None of that matters now.” He started to step back and then added, “That is why now, rather than earlier.”

More murmuring ensued. It quieted as the chair said, “And your mother’s sister has provided a signature I see, as well as your uncle. Is there a reason they are not here in person?”

“They hate wizardom, ma’am,” Harry supplied. 

Kranden stepped up beside him. “I know my comment isn’t necessarily relevant, but for what it is worth, I will strongly attest to that.”

An old wizard in the back row said, “You have survived well enough, it looks to me. Seems like sticking with blood is the best thing.”

Kranden stepped up again. “If I may.” She pulled out another parchment and handed it over to the secretary. “This is just a partial chronicle of Mr. Potter’s treatment by the Dursleys.”

The parchment was subjected to the same procedure and eventually passed to the senior member, who frowned at it. “Locked in a cupboard, Mr. Potter?” she asked doubtfully.

“Yes, ma’am,” Harry admitted with difficulty.

“Manhandled? Were you ever seriously injured?”

“No, ma’am. Repelling magic usually kicked in before then.” The council peered down at him now in dismay and sympathy. Harry deeply regretted being there.

“Starved?” she went on, reading the list. “For how long a time?” she asked in an annoyingly factual voice.

Harry sighed painfully then jumped lightly as fingertips brushed the back of his arm. He angled his head and determined that it had to have been Snape. Bolstered by that gesture, Harry replied, “Not usually more than two or three days. My friends were sending me food packages by owl, but one summer my uncle bolted the window closed. And another summer the Malfoy’s house-elf charmed my uncle’s neighborhood to prevent any owls from approaching.”

“Why?” she asked honestly.

“It is a long story, ma’am, and not really relevant,” Harry commented.

The chairwitch continued to read the list. “I see. Basically the rest is a long list of general neglect incidents.” She stared at Harry. “You are trying to convince me that Albus Dumbledore, whom I know very well to be a kind and compassionate man, left you in this household for years, knowing this?”

“It turned out that there wasn’t any choice.” Harry swallowed with difficulty. Struggled for a long span. “But I also didn’t explain to him very well why I didn’t want to go back.”

The chairwitch sighed. “Well, that is something we are overly familiar with here, I’m afraid.” She put the parchment aside. “Anyone opposed to dispensing with the in-person requirement?” The secretary looked over the council and made a notation when no one raised their hand. The chairwitch then pulled the long application out again. “Ms. Kranden, this is a standard form, I take it. Right of board, abode, inheritance, all that? Nothing untoward buried in here?”

“No, ma’am. It is standard.” Kranden stepped back and waggled her eyebrows once at Harry and Snape.

The witch on the left of the chairwitch leaned over and whispered something that made the chairwitch’s brow furrow deeply. “You are certain?” she asked her fellow member and received an emphatic nod in reply.

“Mr. Snape, if I may?” she said. Snape stepped forward beside the podium and took on a pose of attentiveness.

“Is it true you were a Death Eater, Mr. Snape?” she asked in a grave tone. Gasps sounded around the room. 

“Yes, that is true,” Snape replied evenly. Harry saw Kranden blanch before her professional face reasserted itself.

The chairwitch seemed to be at a loss for words. She finally managed to say, “Why in Merlin’s Realm would we allow a former Death Eater to adopt anyone, let alone Harry Potter?”

Snape opened his mouth and Harry put up his hand to stop him. He felt a renewing energy pumping through him. “There are seven Death Eaters on the official Ministry wanted list. I can name them for you if you wish. You know as well as I that Professor Snape’s name is not on it. Otherwise, I would assume we wouldn’t have been able to waltz through the Atrium as we did.”

“It speaks to his character,” a younger wizard on the council said.

“That he put himself at risk spying for Dumbledore?” Harry asked the man. The wizard’s face puckered at that.

“Is that what you were doing, Mr. Snape?” the chairwitch asked.

“Yes.”

The chairwitch’s eyes locked onto Snape’s. “That is why you joined He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named?”

“Yes,” Snape replied again. Harry forced himself to remain casual at what he knew was a lie. Snape spent years fooling Voldemort, certainly he could handle one Family Council Chairwitch.

“Can’t penalize him for that,” the old wizard in the back who had previous wanted Harry to ‘stick with blood’ stated. “Someone had to put himself out there.”

The chairwitch frowned deeply. “Mr. Potter, do you trust this wizard?”

Taken aback, Harry replied. “Of course, ma’am. I wouldn’t have said yes to his offer if I didn’t. He’s saved my life several times.”

“How many?” she asked.

“Um, I don’t have a count. Er, let me see…the Quidditch incident was probably the first time.”

“I doubt you would have been killed. Just maimed,” Snape commented blandly.

At the expressions on the council’s faces, Harry elaborated. “Another teacher, Quirrell, was trying to get my broom to throw me in the middle of a match. Professor Snape used a counter-curse to stop him.”

“What happened to this Quirrell?” the chairwitch asked. 

“Oh, he disintegrated when he touched me while he was trying to get the Philosopher’s Stone.” Harry shrugged. “Having Voldemort sticking out of the back of his head turned out to be a bit of a disadvantage.” Harry waited for their expressions of shock to neutralize. He hated to say the next part, but he did it anyway. “There was the time Professor Snape stepped between a werewolf and me and my friends during the full moon. And then four months ago when he and Dumbledore rescued me after two Death Eaters tried to get even for my helping get Lucius Malfoy arrested.” The litany was draining him. With a sigh he added, “And again during the final battle when Belletrix Lestrange came at me after Voldemort had fallen. He stepped in the way again.”

An ancient wizard who resembled a moulding peach and, up to this point had not spoken, said in a gravelly voice, “Wanda, I think we should just give this boy whatever he wants. He wants to be adopted by an ex-Death Eater, I ’spect he can handle it.”

The chairwitch appraised Harry. “You want this Mr. Potter?”

“Yes ma’am, I do.” Harry said with an assurance that surprised himself.

She glanced over the application again. “Does anyone have any objections?” No one did. She held the parchments out for the secretary to pick up. “Register these, please.”

The secretary embossed each copy and brought all but one back to the solicitor. “You are all set, dear. Have a good day.”

In the corridor, Kranden leaned over to Harry. “Nicely done.” She turned to Snape. “But a bit of warning would have been appreciated.” She stewed for a moment. “Never obfuscate to your representation.”

“Sorry,” Harry answered for them. “And thank you, ma’am. The hearing wasn’t as easy as it should have been,” he said tiredly. He longed for lunch and tea.

“You need a break from things, I believe,” Snape said as they waited for the lift.

“When can we leave for your house?” Harry asked as they stepped into a mercifully empty lift. “Our house,” he corrected himself. “Merlin,” Harry breathed, still adjusting to that idea.

Harry spent the evening packing his trunk in a kind of daze. He had a hard time closing it and had to sit on the lid and bounce a few times to latch it. After he finally managed that, he noticed the bedspread and some other things that he would like to take. He’d have to borrow a second trunk.

Not sure where to find one, Harry headed to McGonagall’s office to ask. She looked up from her own packing when he knocked on the open door. “Do you know where there’s a spare trunk I can borrow, Professor?”

She stood straight and thought a moment. “In the north wing attic, I believe, are some old unclaimed trunks. Take whichever you like.” Before he could head off, she said, “Excited to be leaving for Severus’ house?”

Harry smiled. “Yes, Professor.”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t be,” she commented quietly in a tone of disbelief, although she smiled as she said it. McGonagall moved her hands to her hips as she considered him. “Good luck, Harry,” she said sincerely. 

“Thank you, ma’am. I’m not going to be gone long, so hopefully I won’t need it.”

In the attic, Harry did indeed find several dusty trunks, one with a fancy blue satin lining. He hovered it back down to the dormitory and set about repacking. It was going to be nice to set up his things without having to hide everything wizard related. He looked forward to that, and to his own space that didn’t feel grudgingly loaned or borrowed. As he and his dormitory mates had aged, their tower room had become cramped and territorial.

The next morning, Dumbledore saw them off personally. Harry shook his hand as they stood on the steps to the castle. The headmaster seemed to be aging faster now, making Harry anxious to look at him. “We’ll be back in three weeks, sir. According to Professor Snape.”

Dumbledore smiled and touched the top of Harry’s head fleetingly. “Have a good rest, Harry.”

Harry hovered his two heavy trunks down the lawn behind him while he carried Hedwig’s cage. He followed Snape, who had just one satchel. “Need assistance with those, Mr. Potter?” he asked pointedly.

“No, I’ve…It’s going to take me some time to get used to calling you ‘Severus’,” he said.

“Apparently.”

They boarded the afternoon local train and found an empty compartment. Harry dragged his large trunks inside and sat across from Snape at the window. He thought momentarily about hovering the trunks up to the rack and then decided that their present location in the middle of the floor would dissuade anyone from joining them.

With a hiss, the train started out again. Hogsmeade disappeared around a bend and the trees closed in. Harry stared out at the mountains sliding by until the trolley came up the aisle. He jumped up and opened the compartment door. “Want anything?” he asked Snape.

“Tea would be nice, if it is hot.”

“Two cauldron cakes, a chocolate frog, and a tea,” Harry said to the pink-frocked lady.

“Oy!” she exclaimed upon seeing him. Harry put his finger to his lips and she snapped her mouth closed and winked at him. “That will be eight sickles and a Knut, Dearie.” Harry reached into his pocket and handed over the coins. He piled the cakes in one arm and took the teapot with his other. The lady patted him on the head. Harry managed a false smile before turning and letting the compartment door slide closed.

“’Oy,’ is right,” he said as he handed the teapot over.

“Your public persona is most interesting.” Snape unscrewed the metal lid and poured the tea out into it.

“What does that mean?” Harry asked as he unwrapped a cake.

“Do you expect to be treated that way?” Snape asked snidely. “Patted on the head?”

“No,” Harry answered vehemently. “I get treated as though I’m thirteen or fourteen or something.”

Snape sipped his tea and considered him. “Your small stature is partly to blame for that.”

Harry frowned and sat back with his snack. A village came into view. The fields were radiantly green with pale dots of grazing sheep. After the second cake was gone, Harry opened the frog and let it hop onto the narrow shelf below the window. It tried to hop up to the open window, but Harry grabbed it in time. It solidified in that leaping pose as he sat back with it. He nibbled on one leg and worked the card free of the package. It was Dumbledore. The figure considered him with a tilt of the head, then stepped out of the frame. Chest constricted, Harry set the card on the shelf and tossed the box in the rubbish bin beneath the window. Snape lifted the card and glanced at it before replacing it between them.

Comfortably full, Harry turned sideways and put his feet up on the seat. As he curled his arms around himself, he asked, “How much longer?”

“Forty-five minutes.”

Harry leaned his head sideways against the back rest and closed his eyes. The movement of the train lulled him into a light doze. The next thing he heard was Snape saying, “We are here.”

Harry sat up and stretched his cramped neck. The wooden sign on the station read Shrewsthorpe. Snape had already hovered one of the trunks out. Harry grabbed the other and the cage and followed.

The partial sun made the village vibrant. Snape had said it was a half-wizard village. Harry couldn’t tell it wasn’t all Muggle by looking at it, other than things looked outdated. He watched Snape hover one of the trunks along to the steps and decided that it was okay to do the same.

The houses closest to the station were fieldstone with lots of white cement. Beyond that they were a little newer. Snape unhooked the gate in a low stone wall and stepped into the garden of an older house. Harry hovered the trunk through the gate and looked over the place. The mortar and face were rough where the whitewash had worn, the garden was a bit wild, the dark roof peaked steeply with tall narrow chimneys. It had an air of existing well past its expected era. It was about as far from Little Whinging as Harry could imagine.

Snape didn’t seem to be looking for an opinion. He opened the heavy wooden door and led the way along a narrow corridor into a main hall that seemed much larger than the place looked on the outside. The hall opened up to the next floor with a dark wood railing over wrought iron posts around the edge. Harry peered into the drawing room and tried to glance into what looked like a library before they headed up the stairs to the first floor. At the end, Snape opened the door and stepped inside. The wide warped boards of the balcony led to the stone floor of a bedroom. 

“I had the elf empty a room for you,” Snape said as he let the trunk hover to the floor inside the door.

The walls were plastered bright white with the dark heavy beams of the ceiling exposed. A massive hearth filled a third of the end wall. Harry stepped over to look out the small window onto the garden and the road. Two children on bicycles rattled past, racing each other. He turned back to the room and ran his hand over the thickly stained bed post. It was all his.

“It’s great, sir,” Harry said honestly. It didn’t remind him of the Dursleys one little bit.

They stood considering each other for a long silence, which Snape finally broke by saying, “I expect dinner will be in an hour or so.”

Harry nodded and, spying the wardrobe, went over and opened it. As he hovered his trunk over, Snape left him to his unpacking.

Taking extra care with each item, Harry hung his clothes up. There wasn’t much of any other storage. He hovered his trunks beside each other, one under the window. The room, even in the summer, was chilly. Harry changed robes to a thicker one and opened the other trunk. The bedside tables had small drawers and shelf space under them. He sorted through his stuff for things he would want out. His Quidditch books he set on the bed to put out, then put them back in favor of two textbooks for next year.

He found one of the quilts he had received for his birthday. With relish, he spread it out on the bed. It was orange and maroon with little lions here and there on the fabric. Not quite the Gryffindor symbol, but close. He dug in the trunk again and found the photo album. He carefully lifted it out and took it to the far side of the bed to put it in the night stand. Instead of putting it away, he couldn’t help flipping through it. Knowing it was a mistake didn’t stop him either. The photos of his parents holding him and waving made him feel more ambivalent than he had ever felt in his life. He shut the album a little hard and put it away.

A knock sounded on the doorframe. Harry jumped at it and turned. “Dinner?” he asked.

A chill like a spell passed over him as he followed Snape out of the room and along the balcony. He felt as though he had woken from a dream to find he was living someone else’s life. It reminded him of when he had first arrived on Diagon Alley with Hagrid and discovered that everyone knew him and knew more about him than he himself did.

With impatient movements Snape sat at the dining room table. His hair fell before his face as he did so. Harry sat across from him, pulling his chair up close to the table. A moment later a house-elf stepped in with a tray of covered dishes. As his large eyes fell on Harry, he hesitated in setting the tray down.

“Tidgy,” Snape said, “this is Master Harry, you will give him the same obedience as myself.”

“M…Master Harry?” Tidgy recovered and quickly placed the dishes on the table, removed the covers and with a deep bow said, “Anything else, Masters?”

Harry wouldn’t have minded some pumpkin juice, but he couldn’t bring himself to request it. He shook his head instead. Snape eyed him with a tilted gaze. “Bring Master Harry pumpkin juice.”

The elf bowed and quickly departed.

“Are you reading my mind?” Harry accused him.

Snape scoffed. “I do not require Legilimency for that. I have seen you drink it with every meal for the last six years.”

“Oh,” Harry said and realized he should relax. “Sorry,” he added quietly.

Snape served himself potatoes and peas. “Not hungry?”

Harry started. He had been focusing on calming down as the food steamed before him. He stabbed a piece of roast chicken. “Smells good.” As soon as his plate was full he started eating. It wasn’t quite up to Hogwarts’ standards but it wasn’t bad and there was a lot of it. Tidgy returned and gingerly placed a glass beside his plate. “Thanks,” Harry said automatically.

Snape’s fork and knife hit his plate as he set them down suddenly. “Potter,” he scolded in disbelief, “one does not—”

“Potter?” Tidgy interrupted in a frightened squeak. “Master is Harry Potter, sir?” The elf backed up a step as he realized his error of decorum. 

Snape gave the elf a disgusted look which made Harry grin. With a dark look Snape said, “Tidgy, you may GO.” After Tidgy backed out of the room, gaping at Harry, Snape said in a low voice, “One does not thank a house-elf merely for fulfilling their duties. One does not thank them at all, in fact.”

“Hm,” Harry uttered, unconvinced.

Tired from traveling and the oddness of settling into the house, Harry gave up on organizing his things and got ready for bed. He hung his clothes up and slipped into his pyjamas. The stone floor was cold. He tiptoed over to the wardrobe and took out the slippers that Hermione had knitted for all of them last Christmas. They were gold and maroon with pointed toes and leather bottoms. Her knitting had improved, even Ron had been forced to admit. Harry jumped up onto the bed and reached way down to set the slippers on the floor for morning.

The strangeness of this new place made him uneasy. He frowned as he considered that this was probably going to make his nightmares worse. He sighed as he turned down the lamp and darkness filled the room. He snuggled down under the soft covers and closed his eyes.

Snape, not hearing anything from the boy’s room for a while, stepped down the balcony and looked in. The door was open and the chandelier behind him cast warm light across the floor, illuminating a pair of maroon and gold footwear beside the bed. Upon the bed was a matching quilt. Snape wondered in that moment what had possessed him that he had brought home a Gryffindor. Arrogant and unthinking they were, he thought darkly to himself. 

He stepped silently into the room. Harry was fast asleep, curled on his side facing the door. Snape’s dark thoughts slipped away, and he instead hoped that the change in environment would mean a reduction in the boy’s nightmares. Being away from the very place where he had confronted Voldemort for the last time couldn’t hurt.

Harry woke with the grey light of early dawn seeping into the room. He was stiff with unusually long sleep so he decided he should just get up. Grateful for the slippers, he padded across to the bedpost to pull down his robe. Snape’s door was closed as he quietly passed it.

Yawning, Harry wandered around the ground floor. There was a library across from the dining room. He found a book on lumination spells and settled into a lounger. Three pages into it, Tidgy appeared with a tea tray which he placed on the table beside Harry. As the elf bowed low, Harry said, “Thanks.”

“You are being a very great wizard,” Tidgy said in a wavering voice, “to be thanking a mere house-elf.” After a fidgeting pause, he went on in a whisper, “I am not wanting you to have trouble with Master, Master Harry. Not for sake of me.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Harry assured him. He took a chocolate covered biscuit, noticing Tidgy noticing which he preferred. Tidgy bowed again and backed out of the room.

A while later another voice came from the doorway. “You are up early.” Snape stepped in and poured himself some tea which he drank in one gulp.

“I got to sleep early,” Harry said with a shrug.

“Sleep well?” Snape asked. He had started for the door and stopped to ask this.

“Yes.”

“No dark shadows?”

Harry thought a moment. “No. Not that I remember,” he said, surprised.

“Good,” Snape said. “If you do, let me know.”

“Immediately?” Harry asked, half-joking.

“If it seems appropriate to do so. If you ever feel unsafe, certainly. You have a right to feel secure here. It is the least that should be provided for you.”

Harry considered that, feeling a twinge. “Yes, sir.”

“I will have Tidgy start breakfast,” Snape said before he stepped back into the main hall.

As Harry joined him in the dining room a few minutes later, Snape looked him up and down with a flick of his dark eyes. “Such Gryffindor gear,” Snape commented at Harry’s maroon robe with a crest on the pocket and his Hermione slippers.

Harry paused in sitting down. He hadn’t thought about that. This was just his stuff. “Does it really bother you?” he asked in surprise.

Snape huffed. “Gryffindors in general bother me, yes.”

“I can get other stuff.” Harry shrugged as he replied. “This is just what I have.” 

Breakfast arrived and Harry took a piece of toast and started buttering it. Tidgy departed with a low bow. Snape hadn’t replied to that offer. Feeling a little unsettled, Harry added, “Maybe you’d feel better knowing that the sorting hat wanted to put me in Slytherin.” Harry said this as Snape’s teacup was halfway to his mouth. Snape froze that way and gave Harry a surprised appraisal.

“You turned it down?” Snape asked, truly curious sounding.

Harry thought the explanation to that was obvious, but maybe not so much in this company. “I’d met Malfoy and didn’t particularly like him. I’d met Ron on the train and he was the first friend I’d ever met. So I talked the hat out of it.”

“That is not supposed to be easy to do.”

Harry added jam to his toast as he said in alarm at the memory, “Yeah, it kept insisting how great I’d be if it put me in Slytherin.” Harry shuddered and bit into his toast.

Snape sat back and crossed his arms to give Harry a long look. “I have to admit, Potter, it does make me feel better.” After thinking further, he mused, “I do, however, wonder what it meant by ‘great’.”

Harry put his toast down and wiped his fingers. He poured himself tea and sipped it cautiously. “Before the final battle when my dreams were getting very…strange…” Harry fidgeted as he remembered those awful nights. Snape still sat back, considering him. “When it seemed sometimes like…Voldemort was trying to bribe me to join him. Who knows?” Harry shrugged. “There were whole minutes in a row where it seemed worth it, just to get it all to stop.”

“What was he bribing you with?” Snape asked as he returned to his breakfast.

Harry shook his head. “I don’t really want to talk about it,” he said. The heart rending memory of his mother calling, wondering where he was, still chilled him as much as the Dementors’ last stand did.

Snape didn’t press the question.

After breakfast Harry went back to his room to finish unpacking. He was still basking in the notion that he could actually leave things wherever he wished in the room when he departed for school.

In his trunk he found a few old robes that he simply banished away because they were too small. Underneath those lay an assortment of random things that hadn’t been touched in a while, like his Sneakascope. If it hadn’t been a gift, he’d have just been rid of it. His first- and second-year textbooks he shelved in the back of the wardrobe with the later ones in front on the high shelf. They hadn’t been given summer assignments this year, in yet another celebratory gesture, so Harry had not kept his texts in any order. Lining them all up by year like that was satisfying. They felt like trophies that way.

He banished a few other old things and then lifted out a few old Hermione hats, uncovering the silver mirror, in the corner on the very bottom. Harry stared at its cracked glass and agony took hold of his chest. He reached in and lifted it out: the present from Sirius that could have saved his godfather’s life. If only Harry had opened it in time.

The silvering had corroded more where the glass had broken. Unthinking, he ran his finger along one of the breaks, drawing a line of blood along it as the edge bit his skin. The sting in his finger resonated with the pain in his heart. Uncontrollably furious with himself, he kicked the trunk several times until his foot throbbed.

“My goodness, Potter,” Snape said from the doorway. 

Harry stopped and hunched over, cradling the silver frame against himself.

Snape went on, “I don’t know whether to scold you or insist you tell me what is wrong.”

Harry brought himself under some control and backed up to sit on the bed with his back to the door and Snape.

“Are you quite finished?” Snape asked.

“Yes,” Harry snapped. Snape’s unaffected tone made him want to fling himself out of control, but he resisted it, just barely.

After a long pause Snape approached and said, “What is wrong?”

Harry adjusted his arms around the mirror to hide it. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said quietly, forcing his voice to come out approximately normal.

Snape stepped closer to the trunk. “You never opened it,” he observed in an oddly easy tone.

The comment thoroughly chilled Harry. He wasn’t facing Snape, he thought frantically, how did he know what was haunting him? Harry watched his replacement parent reach into the trunk and lift out the small wrapped box he had given him on his birthday. Harry had forgotten completely about it. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he had put his robes away. Numbly, Harry accepted it as Snape handed it to him now.

With the mirror face down in his lap, Harry unwrapped and opened the weighty box. Inside was a gold pocket watch with the case shaped to resemble a snitch. Silver embossed wings arched fancifully around to frame the edges. 

“It’s beautiful,” Harry said in amazement. The cover popped open when he pressed the tab on the bottom edge. The face was shiny white with flourished numbers in maroon.

“Nine fifty-two, I believe,” Snape stated.

It took Harry a moment to come to himself and realize he should set the time. He pulled the stem and dialed to the correct time, then wound it some so it would run. He closed it and admired its shape again. “Thank you,” he said, feeling undone. He wondered if he ever again would trust his emotions to stay put.

“Do you need anything?” Snape eventually asked.

Harry finally looked up at him, at his intent dark eyes. “No,” he replied, feeling calm now although his heart still ached. “I think I’m all set.”

There wasn’t a ton of furniture in the Snape house. Harry tried to get comfortable with his unanswered post on a padded bench in the main hall. He wondered if it would be okay to put his slippered feet up on a straight-backed chair because there wasn’t an ottoman. It was awkward to ask because either it would be okay and asking would be silly or it would be forbidden and asking would be unwise.

Harry opted for putting one foot up on the bench with the writing set he’d received for his birthday from some distant admirer propped on his legs. The set had clips for a stack of letters on one side and a pad of paper on the other, as well as a built in no-spill inkwell and a blotter on a string.

Harry started with the letter from Ginny first, because he found it easier to write misleading truths to her than to Hermione, which was the next letter down. Certainly it was true that he was doing all right, and it was also true that he was disappointed he couldn’t meet them all somewhere for a day out, but it felt like lying all the same.

Footsteps brought Harry’s head out of his letter. Snape stood in the doorway to the drawing room. 

“Do you require a desk?”

“I’m good.” 

Snape stared at him as if not believing this. 

“Thanks again for the watch. It’s the nicest present I’ve ever got.”

Snape’s left brow went up. Harry had the oddest sense Snape thought he was lying. Harry cast his mind about for something to say that would sound true no matter what.

“I like the house. It’s not like my aunt and uncle’s at all.”

“I should hope not.” He glanced down at Harry’s lap, at the finished letters pinned to the board. “We should fetch a few owls from Hogwarts for you, it would appear.”

Despite the slightly snide tone, Harry answered the question seriously. “If that would be all right.”

“Of course it would be.” Snape shifted as if sighing silently. He took a step away but stopped. “Best to imply you are still at Hogwarts. I assume you know that.”

Harry’s palms went cold. He could not imagine explaining to anyone what had happened. “Yes, sir.”

“Also, you don’t have to address me that way. If you do not wish to.”

Harry considered that while his eyes roamed over the broad hearth on the far wall of the main hall. “I suppose I wish to.” He bit his lip. ‘Sir’ was the word Harry always resisted before, and it was the best he could do to show things had changed.

Snape turned his head slightly to the side, a gesture Harry had seen before but hadn’t understood. Now he decided it meant Snape had just used Legilimency to learn something unexpected. And at that moment, Harry thought that was all right.

“If you need anything to eat, you may ask Tidgy anytime. You’ve seen the kitchen, I expect, down the steps off the back hallway?”

Harry nodded. The elf had been busy working, so he had not spent much time there. He had mostly noted that it was nice and warm down there.

“You have no questions or concerns?”

Harry’s eyes went around the hall, over the beams on the ceiling, the iron railings. There were some rather dark books in the library that he’d wondered if he could read without getting into trouble. And there was one locked door on the first floor that seemed otherwise ordinary.

“Potter?”

Harry avoided looking at him. He started to speak, then stopped.

“Yes?” Snape’s impatient tone pinned Harry down between his instincts to avoid trouble at all costs in this new household and Snape’s annoyance with anyone who let weaker emotions rule him.

“Perhaps later, then,” Snape said, voice lilting. “Or shall I answer anyway the questions your eye movement gave away?” His foot tapped twice. 

Harry glanced down at Snape’s feet, then back up at his eyes, still giving away far too much. He could actually feel his thoughts slipping away like sand. Was there a point in saying anything?

“For lack of a better idea, I’m going to insist you ask. Aloud.” Snape crossed his arms and seemed to grow taller. “Ask. Harry.”

Feeling an impatience with himself equal to the one he heard in Snape’s voice, Harry said. “What’s in the upstairs room?”

“Storage.” Snape thought for a beat. “Also the remains of a few experiments that tend to cause some issues with the objects in there so I simply keep it locked, physically and magically to avoid any trouble. Most magical households have a room like that. This house lacks an attic, so it also serves as that. You can see it if you like.” He gestured in invitation. “Although we might have some clean up if we are unlucky. Tidgy won’t touch the room.”

Bolstered by the first question, Harry said, “There are some books in the library…that look interesting.”

“By interesting you mean gruesome, I assume. You may read any books in the house. The truly dangerous ones are in the locked room. I don’t recommend them, but you may peruse them if you wish. Let me know if you do.” He waited a bit. “Anything else?”

Harry shook his head.

Snape dropped his arms to his sides and his face shifted from stern to impersonal. “This isn’t a test, Harry. You can relax.” With that he went back to his desk in the drawing room.

Harry stretched his shoulders back and let out a huff. It certainly felt like a test.

The next few days in the house in Shrewsthorpe passed unremarkably, considering. Harry finally had his things arranged in his room. He read what he liked and wherever he liked. He practiced a few parchment spells on his letters without interference. Hedwig had adjusted to her surroundings and came back more quickly when he let her out to stretch her wings. When he awoke, the room itself ceased to surprise him, even if his circumstances still felt strange.

“Are you settling in all right?” Snape asked him one morning.

“Yes, sir,” Harry replied. It occurred to him that they didn’t talk very much, just sat in silence, though it wasn’t as awkward as it could have been. “Should we be having more conversation?” Harry asked.

Snape thought a moment. “If you wish to have one, simply start one.”

Harry smoothed the butter on his bread more than necessary. “I just wondered if it was too quiet.”

“There is no such thing,” Snape insisted. “Not after ten continuous months at Hogwarts.” He handed Harry the hazelnut butter. “Not to give you the idea that I am against a conversation now and then.”

“It is amazingly quiet here,” Harry observed. He bit into his bread and tried to think of something to talk about. Hedwig flew in at that moment and dropped a letter before heading off again. “I think she likes it here. She’s out a lot more.”

“The open fields and the grain storage have far more vermin for her to hunt than the dense forests around Hogsmeade,” Snape said.

“That is probably why she doesn’t insist on table scraps.” Harry turned his letter over. It was his annual Hogwarts letter. He tore it open and glanced past the usual welcoming paragraph to the supplies list. “I don’t suppose I can go to Diagon Alley?”

“You cannot be seen, Harry. Even the Floo Network is not considered safe for you—that is why we took the train.”

With movements of vague annoyance, Harry folded the letter and put it in his pocket.

Snape watched him and said, “Have patience. The Ministry is working hard to get them.”

Harry nodded and, with less appetite, went back to eating breakfast.

Later that afternoon, Harry had a reply for Hermione ready in an envelope, and no owl. He stood at his window and looked out at the grey sky and damp pavement outside. During the day, lots of autos and bikes and walkers went past. Harry’s attention was caught by a bright yellow slicker walking on their side of the road. The person threw back the hood of the coat, allowing wavy dark brown hair to fall behind her.

The girl looked to be his age with a pert nose and dark eyes. Harry watched her make her way up the road. As she came alongside the gate to their garden, she glanced up at the house and apparently saw Harry standing at the window because a flash of consternation crossed her brow. She put her head down and walked faster. Harry stepped back from the window. He understood how it felt to be watched and certainly didn’t want to bring that feeling on someone else.

Harry’s new routine became natural, although he found himself fidgeting fiercely during moments when he considered everything all at once. This often happened when he looked about his new room with all his wizarding things on full display in it. When he awoke that morning it happened again. Distracted by his movement, Hedwig fluffed herself and put her head back under her wing, apparently believing it too early to rise. Even though it was early, Harry felt almost too well rested. He hadn’t had a single dream of dark shadows since arriving. This made him hopeful that they were figments of his post-Dementor uneasiness, rather than actual visions. He was glad to be rid of them, whatever the reason. He put on his dressing gown, stretched, and headed downstairs.

Breakfasts still felt cramped in the closer space of the dining room in contrast to the high ceiling of the Great Hall. While Snape read the Prophet Harry looked about the room, trying to force everything to feel familiar, even the unusual objects on the mantel such as the slender, engraved silver vase and the blackened wooden box with little drawers on three sides. On the other wall, a windmill turned slowly in a dark landscape painting.

When he finished eating, Harry sat back and Tidgy came in just after to collect his plate. As the elf departed, he bowed deeply at Snape. Harry wished he wouldn’t do that, and suspected he wouldn’t ever be used to seeing it. Wishing he could go outside to look around, especially since it was a sunny morning, he propped his head on his hand and stared at the turning windmill.

Snape’s voice interrupted his somewhat melancholy musings. “Is everything all right?”

Harry straightened and clasped his hands before him. “Yeah. Just, uh, a little bored. If I use an Obsfucation Charm, can I go out for a bit on my broomstick?”

“It would be best if you did not. Such a charm will not fool the worst of those wishing to find you.” He spoke sternly but Harry didn’t feel it as correction, but as something else—protection. He gave up his imaginings of a quick flight of exploration. Thinking ahead to the long day inside, he must have sighed aloud because Snape said, “Perhaps I can show you a few spells?”

Harry brightened. “I’d like that.”

“Go and move the items in the hall aside to get them out of the way, if you would.”

Jumping up eagerly, Harry went to do this. The hall didn’t contain very much, just a padded bench that angled up at the ends, a tall oil lamp, a small tall table, and a large rug. Harry hovered all this aside beside the door to the drawing room. The resulting open space appeared perfect for dueling. Harry was pacing it off when Snape stepped in.

“Not quite large enough,” Snape said, sounding amused.

Harry found himself smiling. “What good spells do you know?”

Snape stopped in the center of the floor. “All kinds, I would think. What would you like to learn?”

Harry thought that over. “You know. Something I’ve always wanted explained, why can’t a wizard levitate himself? It’d be very useful. Professor Flitwick insisted it wouldn’t work on yourself, but why won’t it work on, say, my shoes, with me in them?”

Snape crossed his arms, looking smugly at Harry who was studying his footwear. “It isn’t simply that the spell will not work on the caster. It is more complicated than that.”

Harry wasn’t entirely listening. “When I hover something else and then step on it. The spell still collapses. But if someone else hovers it, well, someone like Hermione, lots of others can step on it.”

With a flick Snape hovered a small battered step stool from the kitchen and let it rest on the floor before Harry. “Levitation is a spell of gravity. It is deeply entwined with gravity. The caster must be rooted on the ground to successfully cast it. If you were to levitate that stool…” Harry did so, holding it a foot above the floor. Snape went on, “As soon as you step upon it, you are no longer rooted to gravity. You can not push against gravity to retain the hover. Do you understand?”

Harry put one foot up on the floating stool, it twisted sideways, mostly because he wasn’t maintaining the spell well while moving around. When he started to pick up his other foot, the stool sank in response. “Huh,” Harry muttered, backing away and letting the stool rest on the floor.

“Come over here and I’ll demonstrate it another way,” Snape suggested. “You clearly have the levitation charm mastered. Given that you had six years to do so…one would hope that you would.” He backed up a step. “In a moment I want you to try levitating it again. Wingardium Leviosa!”

Snape was pointing his wand at Harry, who drifted upward and couldn’t help trying to reach down with his toes, only to be lifted just out of reach. Harry glanced around, he wouldn’t mind being this tall, he thought. Snape said, “Go ahead and try to levitate it now.”

Harry twisted in the air to give it a go. The stool refused to budge, even on several tries, and indeed the spell didn’t feel right. The floor met his feet and the stool jumped into the air. “So you’re saying even if someone else levitates me, I still can’t make it work.”

“Correct.”

Harry rested the stool back on the floor with a thunk. “I understand.” He went to pick up the stool to take it back down to Tidgy. With it tucked under his arm, Harry asked, “So, what if I’m on an aeroplane and I’m trying to hover something on the same aeroplane?”

“I have to confess to never having been in such a contraption.” He sounded pleased about that.

“Oh. Neither have I…but I wouldn’t be on the ground in that case, so, would the spell work?”

Snape looked honestly uncertain. “I don’t know,” he answered reluctantly.

Harry started past with his burden. “That’s okay. I still understand why it doesn’t work normally.”

The silence of the house was most acute at night. The road, so close to the house as to present a hazard to traffic, carried few automobiles after dark and this particular night seemed to carry none at all. Harry listened to the uninterrupted rush of blood in his ears as he drifted off to sleep.

Harry awoke with a jolt a few hours after falling into hard sleep. He wasn’t certain what had awoken him, thought perhaps he had heard something. His heart raced as he listened, straining in the silence around him. He had experienced too many incidents of paranoia that had saved his life to fall back to sleep, even in a quiet house. He picked up his wand, slipped out of bed, and padded to the door. Silently, he pushed it open and stretched his hearing to listen. The clock downstairs ticked away into the silence.

Especially if you feel unsafe, played in Harry’s mind as he considered that he should just go back to bed. Not following instructions had led Harry to more pain than he cared to recall. Before he could change his mind, he stepped onto the balcony and along the wall to Snape’s door. He listened as he stood there…still no sounds. It occurred to him then that Tidgy might have been working on something. But Harry hadn’t heard him any other night.

Harry carefully turned the handle to the bedroom and stepped inside, taking the inside handle in his other grasp and easing it to close and relatch. Halfway across the floor he whispered, “Severus?”

The form on the bed started instantly. “Harry?”

“I heard something,” Harry whispered.

Snape tossed the covers aside and, with his wand in his hand from the nightstand, stepped over to him. “Stay here.”

Harry disobeyed and followed him to the door. Snape opened it and looked out. He tapped his wand on the doorframe. Faint blue sparkles spread along the wood down to the floor and, a moment later, out across the walls of the hall. As they framed the corridor leading to the back entryway, the sparkles dipped to red. Snape stepped back suddenly, pushing Harry back with his arm. They both stood there for a long moment, their breathing the only noise.

“How many?” Harry whispered very quietly.

“Several.” He pushed Harry back farther. “Stay here.”

“Not a chance. They don’t know I’m here—draw them out and I’ll hit them.” Harry spelled his hands and knees with a murmured Gecko charm and ducked past Snape, who, in the inky darkness, reached out for him too late. Before he could be grabbed again, Harry climbed up the wall and over the ceiling along one of the dark beams. He lowered himself quietly into the far corner of the opposite balcony. In the dim light he could see Snape’s form in the doorway, ducking down. This was a good setup—he could feel it.

Nothing happened for several breaths. Harry’s mind raced. If he were attacking, he would come up under a cloak. Harry whispered, “Accio cloak,” as he pointed at the steps. A grunt sounded from there and a struggle started with black limbs appearing and disappearing. Harry incanted a binding curse and a half-covered figure toppled down the stairs and lay still. Another figure moved across the floor and bent over the first. Harry, feeling less generous, fired a blasting curse this time.

This was a mistake because the blue line of the spell gave away his location. He leapt to his feet and, bent low, scuttled toward the other end of the balcony. A blast came up through the wood where he had been crouched, throwing wood chips and heat at his back. Harry stopped in the middle of the balcony, in case the other end was too obvious. His heart raced from the near miss.

Snape fired something from the doorway of his bedroom and an exchange of spells ensued. Now they would know that there were two of them, Harry thought with a frown. A curse hit Snape in the shoulder, spinning him back against the open door and into the room. “Severus,” Harry breathed. When Snape didn’t reappear in the doorway, Harry panicked. He spelled his hands, feet and knees again quickly and scurried up the wall and over the ceiling.

“What is this?” a deep voice asked from below. A spell struck Harry as he sped across, breaking the Gecko Charm. He fell away from the high ceiling and hung suspended. A twist of his body gave him a dim glimpse of Snape pointing his wand at him, presumably using a hover charm. Directly below him, a Death Eater raised his wand. He could see his teeth glinting in the spare light from the window as he took a breath to speak another curse.

Harry waved his wand to cancel out the hover charm and landed, relatively softly, on the pudgy man about to curse him. They both hit the floor. The dark wizard hissed and grabbed Harry by the collar and they both twisted and fought. Harry was less than half the man’s weight, so in a thrice, the death eater was on top, hand crushed over Harry’s mouth, arm cocked to punch him.

“Well, well, well,” a familiar voice said. Harry shifted his eyes over to Lucius Malfoy striding slowly over to them.

The first wizard, Harry assumed it must be Mulciber, released him with a hard shove against his face and chest. He crouched in front of Harry wearing a sadistic smirk that glittered in the light from the road outside.

“Imagine finding you here, Mr. Potter,” Malfoy said with a tone of anticipated pleasure. Harry could only perceive light-colored eyes surrounded by a halo of long hair. “Imagine myself of all the Dark Lord’s servants to be the one honored to do this!” He raised his wand and Harry saw the disk of green flash around Malfoy’s feet. It was too far away to reach in time, before it became a thing channeled through wizard and wand. The words were forming on Malfoy’s tongue. Harry shouted and grabbed Mulciber by the hair, desperately twisting them both over onto the floor with his much smaller self on the bottom. Green flashed everywhere around Harry, prickles of pain spiked along his arms where he clutched the man’s hair, his soft upper arm.

At the same time came Snape’s shout of “Expelliarmus!” followed by Malfoy cursing and more spells flying nearby.

“Harry?” Snape gasped from close by.

With a grunt, Harry pushed the limp weight of Mulciber off of him with ominously tingling hands. “Merlin, I hate that spell,” Harry muttered and he heard Snape exhale in relief. Harry felt around the floor for his wand. When he had it in hand, he stood up beside his guardian. “Did we get all of them?”

“Yes.” Snape had put a chain binding charm on Malfoy—a fancy one made of metallic squirming centipedes. The charm had knocked Malfoy back to sit against the wall. “Can you keep an eye on him while I summon assistance?” he asked Harry. With his wand free he waved the chandeliers up.

“Sure,” Harry replied and raised his wand to point it at the blond man. Snape stepped away quickly.

In an injured voice Malfoy said quietly, as his head lolled against the wall, “What are you doing here, Potter? We thought we’d have a little fun punishing our traitor…didn’t expect to find you. Really didn’t expect to find you. Couldn’t find you, in fact.”

“Shut up, Malfoy,” Harry said and rather enjoyed saying it.

In a taunting voice Malfoy said, “Wouldn’t have expected you to be anyone’s plaything.”

“What are you on about?”

Malfoy chuckled. “Of course, of course,” he said in a patronizing voice. “You are probably potioned to not remember. Pathetic, but it does have certain…interesting possibilities.”

“Shut up,” Harry repeated with more force.

Snape came back out of the library. “The ministry will be here shortly.” He raised his wand at Malfoy. “Check the one by the steps.”

“Which one?”

“The one that isn’t dead already.”

Harry, with a grimace, stepped over to the two forms on the floor at the bottom of the steps. The one tangled in the invisibility cloak lay with his head at an unhealthy angle. The other had a broken nose and was also in a chain binding. “Doesn’t look like he is going anywhere.”

“Find their wands if you can.”

Harry found one on the floor. The other may have been tangled in the dead man’s cloak. As he searched, he heard Malfoy taunting Snape. “Was he your reward for turning against our Lord?”

“You didn’t add a binding curse to his mouth?” Snape asked from across the room.

“I was finding his stupidity entertaining,” Harry replied as he tugged at the edge of the cloak where the man’s hand was trapped under his thigh. He found the wand there and, biting his lip, slid it out. He brought them both over.

Snape took them in hand. “I’m not taking any chances. Unlike you, Potter,” he snapped harshly. Harry hadn’t heard that tone in a long time and cringed from it.

The outside door opened and Tonks, Shacklebolt, and another wizard stepped out of the entryway, wands out. They relaxed as they took in the scene.

“Lucius Malfoy,” Shacklebolt said in his warm voice. “How very good to see you.”

Malfoy growled at him.

“One of these is dead…Rookwood it looks like,” Tonks said crouching next to the half-invisible Death Eater beside the last step.

The other Auror pointed at the struggling wizard chained beside the stairs. “I’ll take him and come back.”

Tonks stepped over to them. “Where is Pettigrew?” she asked Malfoy.

The blond man laughed a little crazily. “As if I would answer questions from a freak like you. Freaks like you.” He looked around at them all. “You are an insult to wizardry—you disgust me.”

Harry crouched before the other man. “Too bad you missed the show, Malfoy. You know, the one in the Entrance Hall at Hogwarts. Twenty-two Death Eaters and nineteen students aged thirteen to seventeen…guess who won?”

Malfoy’s eyes narrowed in fury. “Gloat while you can, Potter.”

“I will, thanks. I got what I wanted. Voldemort is dead.” Harry thought a moment. “That name doesn’t have any power anymore, does it. Vold-e-mort. Just doesn’t have the dark ring to it that it used to have. Sad, isn’t it?” he asked mockingly.

Snape stepped over and patted Harry’s shoulder. He looked up and Snape shook his head lightly. Harry took the hint and stood up and got out of the way. The Auror Harry didn’t know returned and Shacklebolt took Malfoy away. The relay of prisoners and bodies continued until it was just the two of them and the Aurors.

“Well, he made a lot of threats regarding Pettigrew. Could be empty but we’ll stand guard for the night and spell the place by the light of day,” Shacklebolt said.

They all followed Snape’s gesture for them to retire to the drawing room. Tidgy showed up with tea, shaking so the cups rattled. He apparently didn’t have enough magic to do more than hide during the attack. Harry took the tray before an accident happened and set it down, ignoring the dark look from Snape as he did so.

“You are in trouble, Potter,” Snape said.

“Yes, sir,” Harry said as he poured tea.

“I have to think of an appropriately severe punishment.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry repeated.

The Aurors looked between the two of them. “Kind of surprised to find you here, Harry,” Tonks said.

“I live here,” Harry said as he handed her a cup of tea on a saucer.

“You do?” she asked, confused. She looked to Snape for confirmation and received a raised brow in reply.

“It isn’t generally known,” Harry said, “but Severus adopted me.”

Tonks dropped her cup and saucer. The noise of it smashing grated on what was left of Harry’s nerves. The Auror cleaned it up with a sweep of her wand. “Adopted?” she choked. “You’re kidding, right?” She looked between them. Harry gave her a hard stare. “All right, that was the wrong thing to say.” She shook her head and breathed, “Wow.”

Harry sat down and poured himself some tea, wishing it were mulled mead.

“When did this happen?” she asked, her voice forced into something conversational.

“August second,” Harry said.

“Well, congratulations, Harry.” She said as she poured another cup for herself.

“Thank you,” Harry said, trying to sound equally conversational.

Tonks peered at Snape over the rim of her new teacup, then blinked rapidly in disbelief.

Shacklebolt leaned forward. “This is Tristan Rogan, by the way,” he said, indicating the other Auror. “I should have done introductions.”

They each shook hands with Rogan. “Thank you for getting rid of Voldemort, Mr. Potter,” Rogan said.

“No problem,” Harry quipped.

“Who killed who in there?” Shacklebolt asked.

“I chained up Lucius and the other one. Harry did the other two,” Snape stated.

“The two dead ones were Harry?” Tonks asked. She turned to him. “Getting a little rough, aren’t we? Don’t go for a Killing Curse as your first resort.”

“I didn’t,” Harry said defensively. “The one on the stairs I put a binding curse on and he fell, got tangled in the invisibility cloak as well. Must have broken his neck tumbling. Malfoy used a Killing Curse on me and I ducked under Mulciber to avoid it. My hands are still tingling,” he said, a little peeved, and held them up to look at them. They looked normal at least. “I would have blocked it, but I couldn’t reach his feet—my legs were trapped.”

“What?” Shacklebolt asked.

“The Killing Curse, when—” Harry stopped as he saw Snape shake his head. “Why can’t I say?”

“Ask Dumbledore. He didn’t tell the Ministry what happened—I assume he had his reasons.”

Harry rolled his eyes. Rogan said tiredly, “I thought this Order business was over.”

“It is,” Harry said. “Or if it isn’t, I wouldn’t know anyway.”

“It just sounded like you had a counter to the Avada Kedavra,” Shacklebolt said.

“I do,” Harry said with a challenging look at Snape. They all turned to him. “Well, I have something that worked once.”

“When?” Tonks asked.

“A few months ago.”

“I’d like to see it,” Shacklebolt said.

“And therein lies the problem,” Snape said dryly with an undertone of warning.

Harry wondered if Dumbledore had kept quiet to protect him from some kind of spell experimentation. Shacklebolt interrupted his thoughts, “We wouldn’t use it on him!”

“Then you cannot test it,” Snape countered.

“We’d still like to hear about it,” Tonks said.

The discussion went on through the night. Harry did explain how he’d countered the Killing Curse, even though Snape didn’t want him doing so. Harry was disappointed that they didn’t think much of his description of what he did. Darkly, he thought that, for anyone else, surviving it would have been impressive enough. For him they thought it rather unremarkable.

When the sun finally lit the room, Harry couldn’t keep his eyes open. More of the same tea he had consumed all night was not going to help. As badly as he wanted to watch the Aurors work their protective spells, Harry couldn’t keep his eyes open for more than the interior ones. He finally followed Snape’s repeated advice to go to bed.

By the time Snape woke him, the Aurors had left. Snape bent over him and shook his shoulder to rouse him. “Wake up, Potter. It is very late in the morning.”

Harry blinked at him. He had only slept fitfully. His hands still ached. He clenched and unclenched them to relieve it.

“Get up now,” Snape insisted, reminding Harry of his Aunt Petunia, which reminded Harry that he was due some kind of punishment. He sat up, rubbed his eyes and found his glasses. “The Aurors insist that Pettigrew cannot enter the house, nor even approach it now,” Snape said.

Harry’s stomach felt starkly empty and sour from the tea. “Do you have anything for a burning stomach?” Harry asked.

“Of course.” Snape departed and returned a minute later. He gave Harry a swallow of a purple, creamy potion in a teacup. It made his stomach feel better as soon as it slid down that far.

“Thanks,” Harry said as he handed the cup back. “It’s working already.” He tossed the covers aside and stretched to try to get his body moving.

“I will expect you downstairs shortly,” Snape said as he departed again.

Harry gathered clean clothes and a robe and went down to the bath beside the kitchen. When he came out, freshened and more awake, he found Snape in the drawing room, writing a letter.

“Sit down, Potter,” Snape said, indicating one of the chairs still around the small marble table from last night.

“Uh oh,” Harry said. At Snape’s questioning look, he explained, “You always use my last name that way when you are upset with me.” He turned one of the chairs to face the desk and sat down.

“I am.” Snape bent his head to the letter. Harry fidgeted as he waited. He wondered, if he complained about his aching hands, could he delay his punishment. His forearms ached too, now that he thought about it. He closed his eyes as he remembered that horrible green flashing. That reminded him of the memories of his mother screaming that the Dementors drew out of him. That made him feel slightly unwell and achy more places than his hands.

“Potter?”

“Yes.” Harry didn’t look up at him. He didn’t want to risk his current thoughts being snagged from him.

“You look as though you are punishing yourself,” Snape observed.

“Not intentionally,” Harry said, voice empty. “I’m just remembering all the times I’ve seen that awful green light.”

“That would be a form of self-torment, at the very least,” Snape pointed out. After a pause, he went on. “You disobeyed me, at a time when your safety, and more likely your life, was at risk. I will not tolerate that.”

“You wanted to take them all on alone?” Harry asked.

“I was in a good position to do so. As well, the house is spelled in ways you do not know. It was on my side as well, but not after you were mixed in with the others.”

“I didn’t realize that.”

“Why did you so unwisely try to cross back over?” Snape demanded.

“You were hit,” Harry said defensively.

“Not severely.”

“It looked it from where I was.”

Snape dropped his quill and crossed his arms. “Altruistic or not, it was a stupid thing to do. You had lost the advantage of stealth.”

“I wasn’t thinking. I admit that,” Harry said, chastened. He had panicked in a fundamental way he hadn’t in a long time.

“You need to control this hero complex of yours.” Snape said. Harry just frowned in reply. “I admit, I cannot determine a good way of punishing you for your disobedience. The normal things, bed without dinner, restricting you to your room, restricting your access to your friends, seem unduly cruel given your past treatment by your relatives.”

Snape leaned forward. “I also considered simply transfiguring all of your Gryffindor things into Slytherin ones, but after hearing you speaking to Malfoy last night, I feel that would be merely symbolic.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I ask you to tell me that you will not repeat what you did.”

“I can’t do that,” Harry said.

“No?” Snape half snarled.

“How can I let you face four Death Eaters alone? What if something happened to you? I’d end up having to deal with them anyway. Alone.” He drew in a breath past a tight chest. “I can’t lose anyone else,” he confessed with a catch in his voice. His eyes were suddenly burning and was loathe to dab at them and call attention to it.

“Harry,” Snape said. He stood up and came around the desk. After a moment’s deliberation, he touched Harry on the shoulder. “All right, you may help, should there be a next time, BUT only at my specific direction.”

Harry nodded, blinking to control the heat in his eyes. Snape stepped away, apparently dropping the issue.

That day letters came in from his friends redirected from the castle to home. He knew he should reply the same day, but he couldn’t think of anything to write about except what had happened the night before, and he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about that. Instead, he passed the time reading an account of taming wild dragons he had found on the miscellaneous shelf in the library, hoping it would give him something to talk about with Hagrid. Finally, dinner came around. Harry ate slowly to draw it out.

As Tidgy cleared the plates, Snape said, “Hopefully this evening will be quieter than the last. It was good that you woke me. I did not hear what you did, obviously, and your doing so made a significant difference in the outcome. Do not hesitate to wake me in the future, for anything that disturbs you.”

Harry nodded and finished his pumpkin juice. He wished the clock would move faster so he could reasonably go to sleep. He wished he had something meaningful to pass the time. “Do you have a copy of the text Greer is going to be using?”

“I do not know what text she intends to use. I have several seventh-year texts if you would like to read them.”

Harry stood up. “I would. I need something to do.”

Snape told him where to find them in the library and Harry curled up on the lounger and tried to focus on chapter one of each book. After two hours, Harry decided this was a good way to study. The important points were repeated in each book, so he didn’t have to do the work to figure out what they were on his own, which made studying a lot easier.

Finally it was ten o’clock. Harry put the books back where he had found them and said goodnight to Snape in the drawing room.

After the previous night, his body didn’t want to relax, even though his brain was exhausted. He didn’t have any potion here since he hadn’t needed any. If he had any left from Hogwarts he hadn’t seen it when he unpacked. Harry turned onto his side and forced the tension out of his neck.

With a groan Harry woke a third time from fitful sleep. Persistent shadows paced him through a long hall that vaguely resembled the one downstairs except miles long rather than thirty feet. Exhausted beyond reason, Harry slipped on his robe and slippers and went down the balcony. He paused outside Snape’s door and rocked from one foot to the other. By going in he was changing things. There was a clear dividing line here he would be crossing by going inside this door. This wasn’t the same as thinking something was wrong externally and raising an alarm. This was needing help for himself and asking for it from an adult trusted with his care. He wasn’t used to this at all and it made him wildly uneasy.

Deciding he needed the potion more than his pride, and knowing he could wipe out the frantic feeling by being brave, he knocked on the wood in front of him. After a moment, a voice told him to enter. Harry did so. The room’s darkness was nearly complete. He stepped in what he judged to be halfway. “I’m sorry, Severus, but I can’t sleep.”

He heard Snape sit up. The lamp flared to a pale glow. Snape was rubbing his eyes. “Come here,” he said. Harry stepped over as Snape stood up in the long gown he slept in. He used the bed for balance, making Harry realize how tired he must be as well.

“I’m sorry,” Harry repeated.

“Don’t be. Sit down, I’ll get you something.”

Harry sat on the edge of the bed and waited longer than it took for the stomach potion. Eventually, Snape came back with a teacup half-full of his usual sleeping potion. “I checked the spells. Everything is secure,” Snape said as he sat beside Harry. He rubbed his forehead as he held out the cup. Harry drank it down and handed it back. “I assume your nightmares have returned,” Snape said.

Harry hung his head. “Yes. But I think I’ve figured it out.”

“What is that?”

“Malfoy said they didn’t know where I was. Now they do. The dreams stopped when they didn’t.”

“Interesting theory,” Snape said doubtfully.

Harry shook his head. “Not a theory. I know that’s what the shadows are.” Reluctantly, he added groggily, “I know, because you’re one of them.”

Snape closed his eyes and inhaled. “I did not imagine…” he whispered.

Rambling, Harry explained, “When you wake me…in my dream there is a shadow very close, and then you wake me and you are right there.” He swayed as he gestured with his hand.

Snape put an arm behind Harry to lower him back to the bed. By the time he was horizontal, Harry was out. Snape studied his sleeping face before he said, “You cannot know how deeply sorry I am for that.” Then after a pause, “What have you done to me, Potter?” He freed his arm and sat up. He shook his head with a huff of self-disgust and pulled out his wand to hover the boy to his own bed.

When he had settled Harry in and covered him, he stared down at him by the warm lamplight. He had given the boy a double dose and did not expect he would wake up again. He left the lamp up a little, just in case.

Harry yawned widely and rubbed his disoriented head as he entered the dining room the next morning. As he sat down, he had to use his hands on the table for balance.

“I gave you quite a bit of the potion last night,” Snape said.

“Is that why I feel like this?” Harry asked, rubbing his eyes to coax them to stay open.

“Undoubtedly. It will wear off in a few hours,” Snape said conversationally as he read the Prophet.

Malfoy’s insinuations played through Harry’s mind but he dismissed them.

“Would you like this?” Snape asked as he held out the newspaper.

“Am I in it?”

“Remarkably…no.”

“Yeah, sure.” Harry accepted it and read the text of a speech given by Fudge where he took credit for his Aurors apprehending four of the remaining free Death Eaters. Harry shook his head, but felt relieved at the anonymity.

The next day, Snape said, “I need to go to a meeting at Hogwarts. I don’t want you left here alone. So you will accompany me and occupy yourself at the castle for a bit.”

“You said Pettigrew couldn’t get in.”

“Nevertheless…”

“You are worrying too much, sir,” Harry criticized as he put his quill down from taking notes from the Potions texts. Snape seemed to take affront at this. Harry went on, “You said, and the Aurors said, that the other two still free are not consequential and probably aren’t even with Pettigrew.”

Darkly, Snape said, “I think you want him to show up, Potter. So you can do him in.”

Harry looked down at his parchments. “Well, you said I couldn’t go out after him…”

“Revenge is not what you think it is.”

Harry didn’t look up at him. He pretended to go back to his notes.

With a dismissive tone, Snape said, “Very well, I will trust the Aurors’ magic and assume that if it is challenged you will call for help, NOT try to handle it yourself.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said, although he didn’t look up as he did so, afraid his lie would show for certain.

In a darker tone Snape said, “And if not, then you will suffer the consequences.” He stalked off with a swish of his robe.

As he heard the sound of the Floo powder canister scrapping on the mantel, Harry almost called him back. He had disappointed his new guardian and hated the inky feel of it. With a sigh, he pulled his wand from his pocket and placed it on the desk beside his parchment as he went back to his notes.

An hour and a half later, Snape returned. Harry hadn’t moved. “Good meeting, sir?”

“Good enough. No opportunities for revenge, I assume?”

“No,” Harry admitted, wishing this topic would get dropped.

Days later, Harry watched the yellow slicker go by again while he was looking for something in his trunk. He was careful this time to stay far enough from the glass so as to be invisible. The girl glanced up at his window and didn’t see him, apparently, because she continued by at the same pace. Harry wondered who she was. He envied her freedom to walk along the street. He slammed the trunk lid down hard in anger then sat on it until he had himself under control.

Pettigrew. Wormtail. He hated him now. Harry didn’t want him in Azkaban, he wanted him dead, preferably after a bit of pain and some of that pathetic sniveling fear of his. Realizing that everyone from Dumbledore to Sirius would be alarmed by his fantasy, he quit it and stood up.

Harry sat back on the lounger in the library and wrote to his friends after rereading their most recent letters. Snape sat at the very small table in the corner, taking notes out of a book almost too heavy for the table’s spindly legs. Harry reviewed the letters, folded them up and set them aside, not feeling energetic enough to fetch Hedwig from his room. His eyes weren’t focusing well. He rubbed them hard which made them ache more.

The clock read just after six. Harry wished it read a little later. For no particularly good reason, he felt like he had played back-to-back Quidditch matches, long ones. He slouched in his chair and mindlessly rearranged the piles of letters.

“It is dinner time, I believe,” Snape said easily. He stood and set aside the large book he had been reading.

Thinking of food made Harry woozy. “Uh, I think I’m not very hungry,” he said. He disinterestedly stacked the letters, debated pinning them to his writing board, then set a book on them as a weight. He rubbed his eyes again, more gently this time.

“You are certain?” Snape asked.

It made Harry’s stomach heave to even consider it. “Yeah.” He pushed himself to his feet using the lounger back. “I think I’ll just go up to my room.” The floor tilted a little, but he made it to the door. Snape followed close behind across the hall. At the bottom of the staircase, Harry grabbed the handrail because he feared he would need it to get himself up the first step. Focusing his eyes had grown more difficult as he walked, but he resisted rubbing the aching things yet again. Snape took hold of his left arm and turned him back. “Are you feeling unwell?” he demanded.

Harry recoiled from his tone and had to take a step backward up the stairs to keep from falling. “I’m all right,” he insisted. He tried unsuccessfully to straighten his back. “I’m tired. That’s all.” Even standing up a step, he was not up to his guardian’s height. Snape leaned closer and looked him over. He still had hold of Harry’s arm. “Really,” Harry insisted. “It’s nothing.” He dearly wanted to go to his room and lay down and not move anymore.

Snape’s eyes narrowed as he studied Harry. He tossed his hand free of his long sleeve and raised it to Harry’s forehead.

“It’s not—” Harry mumbled, just barely resisting pushing Snape’s hand away.

“You are feverish,” Snape stated. He released Harry’s arm with a push to urge him upstairs. “Go to your room, then.” He stepped away with a flare of his robe and headed down to the toilet beside the kitchen.

Anxious, Harry watched him disappear. He could only force himself to move by degrees. Finally, he turned to continue, an undefined ache of worry in his chest. At the top of the steps, Snape caught up to him.

“Come along,” he said, retaking his arm. “I found an antipyretic. It will make you feel better, at least.”

Harry was led to sit on the edge of his bed. He could not find the strength for anything, so he waited mutely. Snape poured a blob of thick dark liquid into a small glass of water and handed it to him. “Drink it,” he commanded.

Harry put it to his lips and forced himself to swallow past a wave of nausea. Between sips he watched Snape re-cork the bottle and set it on the bedside table along with a fresh jug of water and a cloth. Harry held the tainted water before his mouth and stared out at the main hall. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“You’re what?”

Harry’s lips moved mutely before he repeated, “I’m sorry.” He thought about drinking more of the diluted medicine, but he could not imagine swallowing around the anxiety tightening his throat. He held it out for Snape to take back.

“Finish it,” Snape said firmly. Harry tried to obey. His guardian paced away, rubbing the bridge of his nose. When Harry eventually set the empty glass aside, Snape asked, “Why are you apologizing?”

Harry thought that over and hesitated replying. He rubbed his eyes carefully and said in a quiet voice, “I don’t mean to be a problem.”

Snape froze with his hand pulling back his hair. “You aren’t. Have I given you that impression?”

Harry could not find a response. The question confused him. The hard tone and the words clattered together in his brain. “I just—” he stopped. He felt dizzy now and could not understand why Snape wasn’t angry with him, or was, but in some incomprehensible way.

“Lie down and rest. I’ll check on you in an hour or so.” When Harry did not comply immediately, Snape said, “Harry,” in a firm tone.

That jarred him into moving, like an automaton, to kick off his house shoes, pull off his glasses and lie on his side. The room did not cease to spin, it just did it sideways now, which was worse. Harry closed his eyes to block out the unstable view of his room.

Snape returned an hour later. With the heavy clouds, it was dark outside, so he turned up the bedside lamp. Harry lay in his day robe, curled on his side. A sheen of sweat coated the boy’s face and he appeared pale in the warm light. Snape pressed his hand to Harry’s damp forehead and found he was even warmer than before. Snape frowned, thinking that he had put far too much faith in the Febrimin.

“Harry,” he said, shaking one bony shoulder.

Harry made a small noise and rolled onto his back. One hand clawed weakly at his damp robe front. He cracked his eyes and squinted at Snape, brow furrowing.

“How are you feeling?” Snape asked. Eyes unnaturally bright, Harry blinked at him without replying. Snape straightened. “I’ll contact a Healer. You may have something more serious than an influenza. Mulciber would have been living in rough hiding and could have exposed you to any number of things when you two wrangled.”

Harry shook his head clumsily. “Doctors are expensive,” he mumbled.

“I would not summon you a doctor. A Healer would be much more effective.”

Harry’s eyes moved around the room, squinting hard. He then looked at Snape in confusion. After swallowing hard, Harry said, “Professor?” in a way that made Snape suspect he had lost track of things.

“Yes, definitely a Healer.” Snape stood quickly. “Do not move.”

Harry looked like he wanted to say something, but Snape did not give him the chance.

Standing before the hearth, Snape hesitated contacting St. Mungo’s, and considered instead contacting McGonagall and having her locate Madame Pomfrey. The high likelihood that they were both out of the country led him to request the hospital after he tossed in the powder.

The hospital greetingwitch insisted that someone would arrive in fifteen to twenty minutes. Snape straightened his tall frame and went back up to the boy’s room.

Harry was half sitting, leaning over to pour himself some water. Snape intervened, taking the jug from shaky hands. He filled the glass and held it out. Harry looked at him uncertainly before accepting it. Snape stood beside the bed as Harry thirstily drank it down, then took the glass back. After adjusting his glasses, Harry looked at each of the objects in the room with bloodstained eyes. Snape soaked the cloth in water from the jug and folded it in thirds. He held it in his hand. “Harry?” he prompted.

Clearly disoriented, Harry looked up at him. “Where?”

Calmly, Snape replied, “You are home.” When this only increased Harry’s agitation, Snape said, “It’s all right, Harry, you are ill and not yourself.” He held out the cold, damp cloth. “Put this on your forehead. It should make you feel better.”

Biting his lip, Harry accepted it and removed his glasses to press it over his eyes. Snape thought he could see Harry’s shoulders relax as the cold made itself felt. The sight again of Harry’s sweat-soaked robe sent Snape to the wardrobe for a set of pyjamas.

Setting them on the bed before Harry, just as he was readjusting his glasses, startled the boy. He looked sharply up at Snape.

“Harry,” Snape said, trying to reassure him. “You are feverish. Trust me for a short while until you feel better.”

Harry swallowed hard again and thought that over. It occurred to Snape that depending upon how disoriented Harry was, there may be no basis for trust. He hesitated while he considered how best to proceed. As he mulled over this dilemma, Harry felt his chest and reached for the clean clothes. Snape stepped back to give him a little space. He hoped the Healer wasn’t too long in coming.

Changed, Harry clumsily crawled under the duvet and dropped back onto his pillow. Snape returned to his side and rewetted the cloth.

“I don’t…” Harry began as Snape tugged off Harry’s glasses and draped the compress across his forehead. Snape chose to disregard Harry’s confusion this time.

“The Healer will be here in a matter of minutes. Rest.”

Harry fell silent. He reached up and adjusted the cloth so it wasn’t over his eyes, then let his arms fall, eyes glazed. Snape brought an old straight-backed chair from against the wall and placed it beside the bed.

“Doctors are expensive,” Harry said again, eyes now straining to focus on something in front of him. His hands reached out and swept the air as if expecting to touch something that wasn’t there.

“There is no use for a doctor,” Snape repeated, keenly watching Harry’s strange actions. “What do you see?”

Harry reached out again, concentrating harder on trying to touch something invisible. “Spiders.” He frowned, his dark brow creasing almost comically. “I don’t mean to cause trouble.” His shook his head as if confused. His cheeks had taken on a reddened sheen indicating the antipyretic had worn off completely.

Snape glanced at the ceiling, which may very well have spiders, but that wasn’t Harry’s focal distance. Harry dropped his arms with a sigh. “Where are the spiders?”

Snape leaned over to catch Harry’s gaze and whispered, “Legilimency.” He caught a vision of a bed in a cramped space, light leaking in only in streaks outlining a staircase from the underside. A woman’s shrill voice was scorning him for the inconvenience and expense he was causing everyone. Harry’s hallucinatory brain couldn’t manage anything more than a pathetic apology, which he muttered again.

Snape broke eye contact, reeling and nauseous from Harry’s ailing mind. It required many deep, cleansing breaths before he returned to himself.

Pushing the chair aside, Snape moved to sit on the bed. He took Harry’s arms in his hands and spoke his name. “You are not with the Dursleys anymore—you are with me.” When this seemed to cause more confusion, Snape released him and sat back with a huff. It was futile to explain. “Just be calm, Harry,” he said. “You aren’t in your cupboard.” A stab of something went through Snape as he said that, surprising and dismaying him.

Harry murmured, “You’re being nice to me.”

“Perhaps just accept it.” Snape heard himself snapping a bit, and took another deep breath.

Harry’s expression indicated this answer wasn’t acceptable. His mouth twisted and his eyes continued to move over something in the near distance that was not in the room. “Where’s Professor Dumbledore?”

“At Hogwarts I assume.”

“I want to see him.”

“I can bring him here after the Healer is gone. If you wish.”

Harry was breathing heavily. “I want to see him,” he repeated.

Snape wondered why Harry wanted to see the old wizard, since he had clearly been party to leaving the boy in a cupboard. Snape’s own loyalty to Dumbledore could be deemed paltry in comparison.

Snape picked up Harry’s wrist to check his pulse. Harry observed this, but left his arm limp as if he didn’t believe what he saw. His pulse was elevated as well as his temperature. With care, Snape placed Harry’s arm back on the duvet. “I sense you do not trust me at the moment.”

The wardrobe suddenly drew Harry’s attention away. He fixed his eyes on it for a minute. “I don’t know,” he answered breathlessly.

“I would give you some more potion to ease your symptoms but I don’t want to interfere with the Healer’s diagnosis.”

“Too expensive.”

“You keep saying that. It is nothing considering you are my responsibility.”

The look he got from Harry was not a happy one. Snape sat straighter and rubbed his knuckles over his chin. Harry’s instinctive distress was disturbing him more than he wished. “I will fetch Albus as soon as the Healer finishes. I promise.”

The sound of the door knocker rescued Snape.

A middle-aged wizard stood in the doorway. Snape barely heard his introduction of himself before he hurried him in and up the staircase. “He has been feverish almost two hours. I gave him an antipyretic to only minimal effect.” Snape forced himself to stop rambling.

The Healer stepped over to the bed, set his battered leather case on the floor, and sat on the edge. “Hello, son. Not feeling so well, I hear.”

Harry shook his head in agreement. “Who are you?” he breathed in a bit of a challenging tone.

“Healer Redletting.” To Snape he said reassuringly, “There is something virulent going around with so much travel now that school is out.” He pulled out his wand. “Open wide.”

Harry opened his mouth and was spelled in a way that made color radiate all around the inside of his mouth.

“Any trouble breathing?” he asked. When Harry didn’t reply, Redletting turned to Snape, who shook his head. He used a few more spells then sat back in thought. “I would have thought Bostick Influenza, but it doesn’t look like it.”

Snape found himself immensely disliking the man’s indecision. Harry fingered the compress on his forehead as though noticing it for the first time. “I knew…I knew they wanted revenge,” Harry stated knowingly.

“Did you?” Redletting said matter-of-factly before giving Snape a questioning look.

“He has been a little delirious,” Snape explained easily, although he hoped Harry did not feel the need to talk much.

“Apparently,” the Healer agreed. He removed two vials of silvery liquid from his bag. He uncorked one and used a spell to charm a drop of blood out of Harry’s finger without pricking his skin. The drop fell from Harry’s unmarred fingertip into the vial.

“He still wants to kill me,” Harry commented.

“Who does?” Redletting asked as he repeated this with the other vial.

“There isn’t anything else left,” Harry went on, ignoring the question.

Snape rubbed his chin and met the concerned, bordering on suspicious, gaze of the Healer. Redletting tightened the corks on the vials and shook them before holding them up to look through them at the lamplight.

“He killed mum and dad. He doesn’t care. Why not me?” Harry went on. Snape stepped around the bed to the other side as Harry said, “But he can’t if I kill him first.”

Redletting swallowed hard and gave Harry a disturbed look. He looked reluctantly up at Snape as if afraid he perhaps now knew too much. Snape sighed and reached over to pull the compress aside. He had to gesture with his head to get the wizard to look down at his patient.

“Yah!” the man said, startled.

His reaction startled Harry as well, making him roll away to escape. Snape sat down and rolled him back and held him down, wishing he could instill comfort, but knowing he could not.

“Professor?” Harry said in confusion.

“Great goblins,” Redletting blurted.

“That is why he speaks so,” Snape stated. He narrowed his eyes at the Healer. “Perhaps the Misthrapherian has finished,” he prompted.

“Huh? Oh.” Redletting held up the vials. “Ah, it is Bostick. Bad bad case of it.” He rummaged around in his bag as he said, “Raised Muggle, though, right? That lack of childhood exposure to Diabolavirus can make adult cases highly disagreeable.” He pulled out four bottles and poured some of each into the water glass.

“Here you are, Mr. Potter,” Redletting said as he handed it over.

Snape considered then abandoned his notion of assisting Harry with the cup. Harry sniffed it doubtfully before taking a sip.

“The Prophet has been complaining about not knowing where he is,” Redletting said.

Lowering his brow, Snape said, “You will not be saying, correct? As you heard, his life is in danger.”

Redletting sat straighter. “No, of course not.”

The Healer spoke nervously, but Snape decided he was telling the truth. He considered using a memory charm on the Healer but if he needed to contact him should Harry not recover, that would make things unnecessarily difficult.

Redletting indicated the bottles on the beside table. “Doses every four hours and in twelve to sixteen he should be completely recovered.”

Harry had finished the cup and held it out. “Good boy,” Redletting said as he accepted it. Harry’s eyes darkened and narrowed to such a degree with enmity that the Healer stood suddenly. “Well,” he muttered as he picked up his bag. “I’ll be going then.”

Snape followed him downstairs. In the entryway, Redletting paused and pulled a blank parchment pad from his pocket. He muttered a charm and the bill appeared on it. He tore off the top sheet and handed it over. Snape squinted at the illegible writing before pulling his coin purse from his cloak pocket. He handed over a galleon and four sickles.

“Do contact me if he isn’t himself by the afternoon. And if he worsens take him to St. Mungo’s immediately.” Redletting approached the hearth, turned and said, “And do tell him I was very honored to meet him.”

Snape nodded him out. Back upstairs Harry was sound asleep. Normal color had returned to his cheeks and the sheen on them had dried. More tension than Snape realized had built in him drained upon seeing this. He turned the lamp down and sat in the chair again, determined not to fall short on his care a second time.

Four hours later, Snape put down the book he held and reluctantly roused a heavily sleeping Harry. “How are you feeling?” Snape asked as he shifted to sit on the bed.

“Bit off,” Harry said hoarsely. He accepted the offered cup of medicine and took a gulp. “Throat’s sore.”

“Any confusion about where you are?”

Harry froze with the cup held against his bottom lip. His eyes went around the room as if doing inventory. “Er…” he answered into the cup. “Someone else was here…?”

Snape said, “A Healer. You worried him with your dark talk of revenge and killing, but I explained.”

“I what?” Harry frowned. Then as though upset he had been taken in, muttered, “Right.”

Snape considered not asking since Harry seemed disoriented still and possibly didn’t remember, but Snape had promised. “Shall I fetch Albus?”

He expected Harry, who seemed somewhat recovered, to shake his head, but Harry bit his lip instead. “Could you?”

Drawing in a deep breath, Snape stood. “Will you be all right alone for five minutes?”

“’Course.” His eyes were still red rimmed and he rubbed at them gingerly.

“I will return in five minutes then. Your wand is there.” He pointed at the side table.

The clocks in the Headmaster’s Tower were striking eleven when Snape stepped out of the hearth.

Dumbledore was reclining in the upper area of his office. The book he was holding nearly fell from his hands when he leaned over to look down. “Severus, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

“Your presence has been requested.”

Dumbledore lifted his glasses to peer down at Snape with his pale blue eyes. “Has it? May I ask why?”

“Harry has taken ill with influenza and is feeling uncertain about his situation.” The words seemed to be doing something sharp to Snape’s insides and a until now dormant part of his mind was mocking him for taking any kind of emotional risk, let alone this kind.

Dumbledore swung his leg to the floor and put the book aside. “Harry wishes to see me? And you?”

“You are asking if I wish to see you?”

“I am asking if you wish me to see Harry?”

A mobile on the desk chimed like an ice faery banging at a silver cage, a sound Snape knew because one of his schoolmates had kept one beside his bed one December. Until it had died. Only it had not. Snape had let it loose and used a collection of innards from the Potions classroom to recreate it in the bottom of the cage.

Snape composed his answer with some care. “I don’t want Harry to feel uneasy. I assume that he wishes to be reassured. That is all.”

Dumbledore slid his reading glasses back on. “Severus, I think you should handle this yourself.”

The room jumped into stark relief. “You aren’t coming?”

“You will not have me to help you much longer, Severus. I think you should work this out yourself, as best you can, and only if the situation becomes desperate should I intervene.”

“What shall I tell him? Shall I lie and say I did not find you?”

Dumbledore thought about this. “That should not be necessary, Severus. Tell him I think you are more than suited to the task.”

“He is feverish and does not trust me.”

Dumbledore picked up his book again. “Then the fever will pass and all will be well. You have quite a lot of experience with apprehensive school children. You are Head of Slytherin House after all.”

“I promised him.” Snape regretted saying that the moment it left his lips.

“You promised you would try. You cannot promise for me.” He put his feet back up and returned to reading. “You know I am right, Severus. And we both know you can handle this.”

“I thought we both knew Harry, but perhaps I was mistaken.”

“You are not going to bait me, Severus. Say hello to Harry for me.”

Harry shook himself awake again when his wand slipped from his fingers. He was remembering battles, here in this place, and thought he should have it in hand. The Floo Network roared downstairs and he pushed himself up a little better from what felt like a decrepit position. His arms were almost too rubbery to push against the soft bed. Fortunately, he didn’t need much strength to cast spells.

Snape knocked on the doorframe. He strode in with some authority, then stopped. “He refuses to come.”

“Dumbledore?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Harry looked at his wand, having forgotten that he held it. He reached out to put it on the bedside table. “Why?”

Snape leaned on the back of the chair beside the bed. “He insists I sort you out myself. If at all possible. I know I promised, but I did not imagine he would deny me.”

“That’s not your fault,” Harry said. He looked away from Snape’s gaze and stared at the lumps that were his feet under the duvet. “It’s all right.” Harry said, and hoped he sounded more truthful than he felt. In reality he felt undone, like he would cresting a high hill on a bicycle with no hands.

Silence fell until Snape said, “Can I implore you to sleep again? I expect after the next dose of medicine you will feel yourself.”

Harry looked around the bed, checking for what he did not know. With his glasses put aside, he pushed himself lower on the bed, pretending the movement was easy, and with effort curled up on his side. He could barely see because the covers were up at his brows, but he heard Snape take a seat and pick up his book.

Harry said, “You’re going to sit there?”

“Would you prefer I leave?”

Harry wondered more what he himself was doing there. Maybe it was just the fever but, really, very little made sense at the same time everything seemed unnaturally clear. He almost said he wanted to go home, but he did not know where that would be and that made his chest hurt so that he couldn’t breathe.

Snape’s hand brushed his hair and Harry jumped as if a spark had passed between them. He hadn’t expected to be touched and now alarm made his heart race.

“I apologize for that, Harry. I will leave you alone.” He stood. “Your wand is there if you need it.”

Harry awoke from a treacly dream of centaurs and shadows and snaking vines. The lamp was low but the halo on the wick glared into his eyes.

“Your medicine.”

It was Snape, which made the world reorganize into strange patterns out of a dream full of nothing sensical. Only because he was being urged to, Harry propped himself up on one elbow and reached for the glass. He was getting used to the taste of ink and ash and rotted blueberries and lemony dirt. When he smacked his mouth unpleasantly, a glass of water was pressed into his hand. Harry pushed it back at the giver and used both hands to sit up better. His glasses were put into his hands first, then the water when he could see again.

The water chilled Harry’s stomach. He gulped half of it down and sat with the glass and his hands pinned between his knees. Snape remained standing, bending over him. Harry looked up at him then away again, waiting for something, maybe for the medicine to work. He wasn’t being very brave, illness or not.

“You don’t want to sit?” Harry asked.

After a hesitation, Snape slid into the seat, adjusting his dressing gown as he did so.

Harry sniffled. At least his throat had stopped hurting.

Snape asked, “Feeling better?”

Harry nodded vaguely. He was wide awake now, dogged by the kind of cottony buzz in the brain that would accompany the utter stillness of three in the morning.

“You’ve been sleeping for quite some time. Do you want to talk?”

Harry thought it actually sounded like Snape wanted to talk. He drank the rest of the water and set the glass aside just to free up his hands. “If you want.”

“I am going to take a guess as to what is happening to you,” Snape began.

“I’m not certain what I’m doing here,” Harry interrupted to say.

“And that is certainly acceptable. I have moments when I wonder that as well.” His lips twitched into a tiny smile.

Harry turned to really look at him. Snape was unslept and unshaven, but his gaze was bizarrely easy going, completely lacking the cautious alarm it should have.

Snape said, “That is why there is a piece of paper as part of this.”

Harry’s insides twisted around. He almost repeated that he wanted to talk to Dumbledore, forgetting that he had already refused to come. Rubbing his eyes, Harry breathed in and out, hoping the medicine worked soon and everything would make sense.

Snape crossed his legs and sat back in the chair with his hands steepled. “You trusted me quite a bit to agree to this arrangement, but that trust was in contrast to our previous enmity. Only now do you realize it falls short. At least, your febrile imagination believes it does.”

“Maybe.” Hazy snippets of companionship at Hogwarts competed with instinctive ill ease. Harry bravely forced himself to feel secure here in this new room, in this new bed. He feared there was too much to lose if he couldn’t manage that. “Must be the fever that’s the problem. I’m pretty sure I can trust you.”

Snape raised his chin, taking on a haughty air. “There is trust and there is trust. There is trusting that I will do nothing untoward because it is not in my nature and there is trusting in the same only because Dumbledore would do something painful to me if I erred. I thought we operated in the realm of the first, but perhaps in your condition we have fallen into the second.”

Harry felt his shoulders stiffen. “I didn’t mean it that way. Asking for him.”

“Perhaps the medicine is working.”

Harry said, “It might be.” He put a hand to his own face and his temperature felt normal enough.

Snape smiled lightly.

“Has Dumbledore ever punished you for anything?” Harry asked. Hedwig’s cage shook at that moment as she fluffed herself. Her eyes winked then closed again.

“I’m not going to answer that.”

Feeling bolder, Harry added, “I’m just wondering because I’ve noticed it’s in your nature to be untoward sometimes.”

“When the situation warrants it, yes.”

“Or when you’re angry enough.”

“It has been known to happen,” Snape answered, unaffected. “A state I have seen you in as well.”

Harry looked away. He could feel he was making a face. “Yep.”

There was silence for a time until Snape said, “If you want Dumbledore here I will personally drag him here, foremost powerful wizard of our time or not.”

Harry imagined Dumbledore here, in this room, Snape slipping out to close the door to leave them alone. He felt unwell admitting defeat like that, being disloyal like that. The adoption made them a team with something to prove.

“I don’t want to see him,” Harry said.

Snape tipped his head to the side in acknowledgement.

Harry rubbed his neck, which was no longer aching, although his head felt heavy. “One more dose of medicine after this?”

“Yes.” Snape pulled his dressing gown sleeve out of the way and neatly lined the bottles up on the back edge of the nightstand.

“Then you won’t have to bother after that, because I’m certain I’ll be better.”

“Your repeated apologies for your illness are rather irksome.” Snape did sound angry. “I’m tempted to command you to stop, since nothing else is working.”

Harry twisted his fingers together in his lap.

Snape spoke sternly. “I am accustomed to it. As surprised as you may be to hear that. As Head of House I deal with quite a number of things, including sick children. This task is of no matter and I don’t want to hear it again.”

Harry ducked his head to bite down on an apology for that too.

“Harry?” The sternness was gone just like that.

Without looking up, Harry nodded.

“You really are no trouble.”

“Sounds boring. I can fix that,” Harry said.

“You must be feeling better. You sound like a Slytherin.”

Again, Harry’s head tried to fall to the side and he had to put his hand behind his neck to hold it up. “You’re saying I sound like a Slytherin when I’m at my best?”

“I’m not going to answer that. Give me your glasses so that you can sleep.”

Snape’s voice sounded level and calm, and even a touch pleased, which made Harry smile despite trying not to. Harry tugged his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, which didn’t ache anymore.

“Medicine’s definitely working,” Harry said as he shuffled his pillows down to a better spot for sleeping. His eyes were barely staying open. With a groan he sank into the pillow.

“You need normal sleep now that your fevered sleep is over,” Snape explained. “One does not count for the other.”

Harry groaned again in reply.

A long time passed as Harry drifted in a half sleep, still aware of the low lamp light. Eventually there came the sound of the chair being set against the wall, then the lamp went out, then nothing. In his mind’s eye, Harry tracked the shadow settling into the next room, close enough to call back, and that thought made the night’s embrace a welcome one.

Harry realized that the girl in the yellow slicker went by at three-forty every day. He started making a point of being at his window at that time. He only ever saw her go in one direction. As unproductive as it was, he spent time wondering if she was walking in a loop or just going back after dark when he rarely looked out. He looked for clues to whether she was a Muggle or a witch and couldn’t decide from what he saw. Weighing the two, he found reasons to wish for one or the other.

He considered sitting out in the garden at that time, but he wasn’t supposed to go out even that far. Frustrated, he started practicing Transfiguration spells using his Sneakascope, which quickly rendered it even more inoperable than it had been before.

Snape said, “I have another meeting this afternoon. Do you think you can manage to behave yourself for a few hours?”

“Yes,” Harry replied.

“You have been very quiet,” Snape observed.

“So have you,” Harry countered.

“True.”

“I thought you preferred that,” Harry reminded him, just to make conversation.

“In general, yes. Do not use that as a reason to be silent.” When Harry shrugged, Snape went on, “I noted this morning that we have only nine days remaining before I need to return for the school year. I will expect you to return with me at that time.” He said this in a tone that left no room for argument. “I will not have much time for you after that.”

Harry took a deep breath. He hadn’t told anyone what had happened and this wasn’t the kind of news he would usually keep from his best friends. When he did tell them, he would have to explain why he had waited so long, and that would mean revealing that hadn’t trusted them. That was assuming Ron hung around long enough to listen to any more after that.

“I’ll go back with you, sir,” Harry said. “I don’t have much desire to be around here for long alone.” As he said this he thought of the girl in the yellow slicker and wondered if that were really true.

As he departed, Snape repeated that Harry should call for help with the Floo at any sign of trouble. “Yes, yes,” Harry said, even if Pettigrew bows to the floor and begs me to kill him. I remember from last time.”

Alone in the house, Harry sat back on his bed with his wonderful lap desk. He dipped his quill and addressed a reply to Hermione’s last letter. Even though he hadn’t said anything in particular to her, because he kept thinking he should explain things in person, she commented about how happy he sounded. Harry smiled as he reread her letter again and thought about what to say in return that didn’t imply anything about his current living arrangement.

Halfway through his long reply, the door knocker clacked downstairs. This pulled Harry out of his composing. He imagined the girl in the yellow slicker standing at the door. He put his things aside, jumped off the bed and peered out the window. A tall man and a younger woman stood outside. Harry easily recognized the nose on the man. Although the slight greying around the temples was different. He rushed downstairs, stopping at the door to the kitchen. “Tidgy? Can you make tea, please?”

Tidgy’s eyes filled to near overflowing instantly. “Of course, Master Harry,” the elf said in near ecstasy.

Shaking his head in disgust, Harry went to the door and swung it open. The occupants of the garden turned to him and shifted from curious to rather surprised. “You must be Shazor Snape,” Harry said to the man, remembering the name from the lineage section of the adoption paperwork. The woman, from closer view, wasn’t as young as he had thought, but wore makeup as though she were.

“And you are…Harry Potter,” the man said as if questioning his own sanity. His voice wasn’t as low as Severus’ and his jaw line was rounder, but otherwise they were identical.

Harry stepped back. “Do you want to come in?”

“Is my son here?” Shazor asked warily, looking past Harry along the corridor behind him.

As casually as possible, Harry replied, “He had a meeting at Hogwarts. He should be back anytime.”

As they stepped into the main hall, Shazor looked up in alarm at the hole blasted through the balcony and the crackled burn marks on the walls. Harry realized only then how they must look. He didn’t even notice them anymore.

“I’m so pleased to meet you,” the woman said earnestly. Harry assumed this must be a second wife. It simply did not seem possible that she was Snape’s mum. “I’m Gretta, by the way.”

They shook hands and Harry led them into the drawing room. He gestured for them to sit and took a seat himself at the marble table. Gretta smiled at him again as though pleased just to be there with him. Shazor sat rigidly, looking critically around the room.

“How are you doing after that nasty fight with He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named?” Gretta asked him.

“I’m doing fine, ma’am. Thank you.”

“It is such a relief having him gone.” She spoke breathily. “So much trouble just a few bad wizards can create.”

Harry nodded in agreement.

Shazor said stiffly, “I am sure he does not wish to speak of it.”

“I am all right with speaking about it, sir,” Harry said in a friendly manner. Indeed, he had been spared this for quite a while.

“Such a nice young man you are, dear,” Gretta said affectionately as she patted him on the knee.

Tidgy came in with the tea, setting the tray on the table and bowing. “Thank you, Tidgy,” Harry said as he started to pour. Tidgy looked as though he might burst into tears. He bowed very low and rushed from the room. Harry steadfastly ignored the glares of complete shock he was receiving from the guests.

Everyone sipped their tea. After a polite pause Shazor said, “I can’t help wondering why you are here, Mr. Potter.”

Harry looked into his cup and considered which tactic to take. It was Severus’ place to explain things, he supposed, and he was really not certain what this man’s reaction might be. “I was bored of living at my school.” Thinking more explanation was in order, he added, “My headmaster didn’t think anyone would imagine I’d be here.”

“You are hiding?” he asked with an edge.

“Yes,” Harry admitted, “from several wizards who want revenge on me.”

Shazor arranged his robes and sat back down. “Perhaps given who you are, Mr. Potter, you can answer my questions.” At Harry’s shrug, Shazor pulled out a copy of the Prophet from a few days ago. “I am curious if my son is at risk.”

Harry accepted the paper and glanced at the headline: Ministry to seek out every last Death Eater and Associate of Voldemort. He handed it back. “Why would he be?” Harry said. “He—”

Shazor interrupted, “Perhaps you are not the right person to speak with.” He tucked the paper away with stiff motions.

Calmly, Harry said, “I know he used to be a Death Eater, but the Ministry knows that he has been helping Albus Dumbledore for twenty years or so.”

“He has?” Shazor asked. “How do you know that?”

“Because Dumbledore believes it,” Harry said simply. “There are only three Death Eaters left free.”

“Counting my son?”

Harry sat back with his cup. “I don’t count Professor Snape.”

Shazor relaxed marginally and then with a furrowed brow asked, “May I inquire what happened in the main hall?”

“The hole?” Harry thought a moment. “I’m not sure, but I think that was Lucius Malfoy.” He sipped his tea calmly.

“There was a fight here?”

“It mentions it in that article, I think,” Harry explained. “It just doesn’t say where it happened.”

Shazor took a biscuit from the open tin on the tray and examined it rather than eating it. “So you do not think there is any risk of the Ministry arresting my son?”

Harry took up a biscuit as well and munched on it. It was ginger flavored and very good, as if Tidgy were trying much harder. “The night of the attack, we sat around this table with Tonks, Rogan, and Shacklebolt until morning. They are Ministry Aurors,” Harry clarified. “They had lots of opportunity to take him away if they’d wanted. They don’t seem to have any interest in him. Quite the opposite. It was more like a reunion.”

Shazor took that in. Harry was just topping up their tea when the Floo flare sounded from the dining room. With some trepidation Harry held still as footsteps approached. Severus stopped in the doorway and took in the scene with surprise that fast converted to resignation. “You did not inform me that you were coming,” he criticized his father.

Everyone stood up in greeting. “I didn’t think it necessary,” Shazor said with an airy defensiveness.

Severus’ eyes darted from Harry to his father before he pulled over another chair and they all returned to sitting. Harry poured out another cup of tea and passed it over.

“So,” Severus stated levelly, “you have met Mr. Potter.”

“Rather unexpected person to have answer the door. I must say,” Shazor said. Severus raised a brow but didn’t reply. Shazor made a noise of discomfort. “For several reasons,” he hinted.

Harry looked between the two Snapes over the rim of his cup. “Is he referring to my dad?” he asked the younger one.

Severus sat back and crossed his arms challengingly. “I believe so.”

“Oh,” Harry stated casually. At Shazor’s look, Harry went on with a shrug, “I didn’t know him. Obviously.” Harry picked up the teapot and discovered it was empty. He stood up with it and hesitated at the visitors’ horrified expressions. Deciding to ignore them, he continued toward the kitchen.

“You have to forgive him,” Severus sneered lightly, “he was raised as a Muggle…a Muggle house-elf.”

Harry paused in the doorway to roll his eyes.

“I don’t know whether to be more appalled by the strange manners of the Hero of Wizardry or your abominable manners, Severus,” Shazor breathed.

When Harry’s footsteps faded across the Hall, Snape commented, “He needs to learn that he need not cater to the adults around him. It is unfortunately the way he was raised.”

After this formed a long break in the conversation, Severus asked, “May I ask what brought you here?”

Shazor pulled out the Prophet again and handed it over. “Mr. Potter has already attempted to assure me that you are not one of the aforementioned.”

Severus glanced at it and handed it back. “He is correct.”

Shazor sipped his tea for a minute and frowned. “You joined them willingly—do they not know that?” he asked testily.

At that moment Harry stepped in with fresh tea. Shazor looked up sharply at him. Snape commented, “Mr. Potter knows most everything—do not concern yourself about him. If the Ministry ever knew, it has been forgotten, either accidentally or willfully. Should you wish to go over and bring it up, they could very well take an interest, I am sure.”

“I have no intention of doing so, Severus,” he stated.

Harry set the teapot down. “Should I leave?” he asked Severus.

“It does not matter. Sit down.”

Shazor said in a voice that indicated his patience might be shallow, “I would like to speak with you alone. There are other matters to discuss.”

Severus refilled his own tea and his father’s and sat back with it in a forced casual attitude. “Most anything you need to discuss with me can be said in front of Harry. I have adopted him.”

Shazor choked on the sip he had just taken. “You are not truly telling me this.”

Gretta blinked her artificially long eyelashes at Harry and then smiled at him sweetly, clearly charmed by the notion.

“Harry?” Severus prompted.

It took a moment for Harry to realize that he wanted him to pull out the adoption parchment. He went over to the bureau and dug out the rolled, embossed application form. He handed it over to Severus, who handed it to his father.

As he unrolled it, Shazor asked, “Why?” in a disgruntled way.

Severus thought a moment. “I admit the reasons continue to change,” he said vaguely.

Harry paused beside his chair and stared at Severus. “Is that happening to you too, sir?” he asked in quiet surprise.

Shazor let the parchment roll itself up again. “I would have appreciated being consulted before you took such a step,” he said angrily. “As inheritor I would like to know he is worthy, even given who he is.”

Still with forced casualness, Severus said, “Harry, how long did it take you to learn the Columnar spell?”

“The one we did a few days ago?” Harry asked. “Uh, I don’t know.”

“Ten minutes? Five, perhaps?”

Harry shrugged. “Something like that. It wasn’t very hard.”

Shazor blinked at that. Gretta chimed in. She had taken hold of Shazor’s arm apparently to calm him. “One would expect his magic to be very good, considering.”

“Harry, in the bureau—” Severus stood suddenly. “Never mind. I will fetch it.” He pulled another sheet out of a drawer and handed it to his father.

Harry recognized it from the back. “You have a copy of my O.W.L.s?” A little miffed, he added, “I don’t plan to go on in Divination.”

“Clap trap anyway,” Shazor commented.

“Oh, Hon, that isn’t true,” Gretta insisted patting him on the arm.

Harry sighed and held his mouth closed.

“And what do you plan to do after your schooling, Mr. Potter?” Shazor asked, now looking calculating rather than upset.

“Depending on how my N.E.W.T.s go, I plan to apply to the Auror’s program.”

“My stars,” Gretta said, “haven’t you had enough of that?”

“At the moment I feel that way, but in a month I think I won’t,” Harry said.

Shazor handed back the O.W.L. results. “Marks are all well and good. Are you an organized person?”

“I’m getting better,” Harry admitted sheepishly.

“Well mannered? Polite?” Shazor went on. “Never mind, you were polite to the house-elf as I recall.” He shook his head. “At least he isn’t blond,” he said.

Flatly, Harry said, “Severus was debating between adopting me or Draco Malfoy, but I had paper and Malfoy had rock.” He took yet another biscuit and munched on it purely for the distraction.

Gretta patted Shazor’s arm. “He has your sense of humor,” she pointed out. She smiled at Harry with that ultra-affectionate look again. Her gaze shifted past him and she said, “My, what a lovely snake! Is that yours?”

Harry had his wand out before he’d turned around. Snape jumped up with his at ready as well, but Harry made it out the door of the drawing room first. “Nagini,” he whispered as he watched the great snake make her way around the edge of the wall from the far corner of the hall. A wet red trail smeared behind her. Harry stepped across the open space to intercept. Nagini changed course to follow.

“Potter!” Severus berated and aimed his wand.

“NO!” Harry shouted. “She’ll know where he is,” he snarled in a low voice. “He sent her because he couldn’t get past the barriers.”

“What is this?” Shazor asked from the drawing room doorway.

“Voldemort’s pet snake, Nagini,” Severus explained. “Pettigrew undoubtedly—”

The snake veered toward Snape’s voice. “This way,” Harry hissed at her. She turned again. “Where is your master?”

“I have not seen Master in a very long time.”

“Oh. Dear. Merlin,” Shazor exclaimed. “You cannot have adopted a Parselmouth,” he moaned.

“Where is Wormtail?” Harry demanded. Nagini had slowed but she still approached. Blood smeared her jaws.

“Potter,” Severus said threateningly, his wand still aimed at the snake.

“A minute more,” Harry half shouted. “Wormtail cannot speak to you thusly. I speak to you as your master did—I see your mind as your master did. Tell me.”

Nagini hesitated. She lifted her head up and investigated the air with her tongue. “Will you give me a warm place to sleep if I answer? It has been too cold for too long.”

“Light a fire, Severus,” Harry said, pointing at the hearth at the end of the hall. “Put the rug in front of it.”

With a questioning expression Severus stepped cautiously past Nagini’s bulky coil and ignited a fire in the grate. He dragged the rug from the center of the hall to the hearth, keeping a careful eye on the snake as he did so.

“There,” Harry said when it was set.

“Seven gardens south of this one and four east,” she hissed and slithered toward the fire. Harry repeated that aloud. Severus moved to the dining room, steering wide of the invader. Nagini turned herself into a great coil before the hearth and rested her head on herself. Her eyes sank to half closed and her tongue flicked less frequently as she basked in the heat.

Harry, fierce determination burning through him, headed toward the back door. Severus’ voice pulled him up short. “Harry,” he said sternly. Severus faltered as Nagini considered him as he passed by her then sped up to intercept Harry, who decided to ignore him.

Forced to stop because Severus’ much larger frame was in his path, Harry said in a low voice, “Get out of my way.”

“I have contacted the Ministry. The Aurors will attend to this immediately.”

“He’s mine,” Harry said. Pain and rage filled him at the thought of getting ahold of Pettigrew. “I let him go once…” His jaw hardened and he held his wand out as though he thought of using it right then.

“If the boy has valid revenge to take, let him go,” Shazor said.

Severus shot him a warning look before turning back to his charge. “Harry, I cannot stop you because I do not wish to fight you.” He huffed and lowered himself on one knee so Harry was looking down at him. This did capture Harry’s attention, making him lower his wand.

“If you do this thing, you will carve out a piece of yourself that you cannot ever get back. You have come so far, Harry.” Severus paused to swallow. “Far enough that I must implore you to let this go.” He reached out and grasped Harry’s upper arms as Harry reluctantly considered this, his expression varying between pained and determined. Severus went on, “You have your whole life ahead of you. You can choose, right now, to live it whole. But if you choose to take a few moments of gratification in revenge you will forever live it incomplete.”

Harry’s shoulders fell. “He betrayed my mum and dad,” he insisted in a dull voice. “He’s the reason I’ve been alone all this time.” A tear blinked out of his right eye.

“I realize that,” Severus said, sounding increasingly desperate. He stood up and in a smooth motion pulled Harry against himself. Harry rested his forehead against Severus’ chest and sniffled faintly. “I’m trying to do what is best for you, Harry,” Severus said quietly.

“Oh, dear,” Gretta wailed into a kerchief. “So touching.” She dabbed her eyes and nose and sniffed daintily.

Harry took a step back, released at that exact moment. Flushing, Harry breathed in and out, bringing himself under tenuous control. Shazor stared at his son as though he had never seen him before. Gretta sniffed again and gazed soulfully at them.

A knock sounded on the front door as it opened. Tonks rushed in. “Everything all right?” At Severus’ assurances, she went on. “Good tip. Where did you get it?”

“From the snake.” Snape indicated the large coil on the rug.

“Oh my,” Tonks breathed. Nagini raised her head and considered the Auror.

Harry froze. “Tidgy,” he breathed and started toward the rear doorway again this time to check the elf.

Severus grabbed his arm. “Ms. Tonks, please check the kitchen, through there.”

Angrily, Harry said, “What? You are going to protect me from everything?”

“Yes,” Severus said, as if that should be obvious.

Tonks re-emerged thirty seconds later. “I’m afraid your house-elf is dead. I’l have to call the photographer over from the other location.”

“What happened with Pettigrew? You got him, right?” Harry asked. He tried to toss off Severus’ grip and failed. He gave in with a huff and threw his arms down limply.

Tonks paused before them. “He seemed to think you’d be coming, Harry. Once he realized it was just us…he offed himself. Seemed pretty distraught that you hadn’t come.”

Harry jerked his arm again and this time Severus released it.

“You been hanging on to him all this time?” Tonks asked Severus in amusement.

“Trying.”

Tonks chuckled lightly and tapped Harry on the chin with her fist. “Good to know someone is looking out for you, Harry, even at the cost of peeving you off royally.” She leaned in close to his ear and whispered only for him, “Looks like you got yourself a real dad.” She stepped back with a devilish grin and looked over at Nagini, who appeared to have gone back to sleep. “What we are going to do with that, I don’t know.”

“She isn’t evil,” Harry said tiredly. “She’s just a snake.”

Tonks looked doubtful, then shrugged. “Maybe the zoo then. Unless you want her?”

“No!” Harry and Severus said together. Harry went on. “Give her a warm quiet place to sleep and she might be willing to answer any outstanding questions.”

“Gee, where would we find a Parselmouth to talk to her? Hmmm…”

Harry rolled his eyes.

When Tonks had departed, Shazor said bleakly as he shook his head, “A Parselmouth.” Even Gretta appeared wholly unsympathetic about that.

Harry shrugged at Snape helplessly. “I wasn’t born this way,” he insisted.

“You weren’t?” Severus asked in surprise.

“Dumbledore said I must have acquired Parseltongue along with this scar.”

“Did you? That is reassuring, Harry.”

“It is? Why?” Harry asked in disbelief. “You sound like Greer,” he added accusingly.

That night Harry tossed fitfully as visions of Pettigrew cornered and angry kept invading his thoughts, interspersed with Tidgy cornered by Nagini. When the bed tilted, he jerked in surprise.

“Difficulty sleeping?” Snape’s voice came from the darkness. The bedside lamp flared brighter, casting a halo of orange light around them. “Sit up.”

With a frown Harry obeyed. Snape pressed a cup into his hand. “I don’t want to need this all of the time,” Harry said.

“Firstly, it is a very mild potion. Secondly, I will not let that happen. You have had a stressful day. You need to sleep soundly to recover or this will only repeat itself tomorrow night.”

Harry fingered the cup in indecision. “It’s too sad about Tidgy.” 

“His magic wasn’t very strong. But I do regret his absence, and my inability to keep him safe.”

“What could you have done?”

“I don’t know, even now. One usually expects the house-elf to look after himself. Their magic is generally strong enough for that. I will do a better job protecting you if that is your concern.”

“It’s not.” And to prove that, Harry drank down the potion and handed it back. “Sorry about upsetting your father.”

Snape scoffed easily. “You have not seen him upset. And you are hardly to blame whether you naturally are a Parselmouth or acquired it.”

“He seems pretty hard to please,” Harry said.

“And I am not?” Snape asked as though insulted.

Harry huffed in humor at his tone. “I don’t know—maybe you are.” He rubbed his forehead and put his hands over his eyes. “I think the potion is working.” He lowered himself back down to his pillow and curled up on his side, welcoming the maw of sleep closing around him.

“Good night,” Snape said.

Harry merely murmured incoherently in response.

The next morning, Harry woke with the sun slicing between the curtains into his eyes. He padded downstairs in his dressing gown and slippers. The house was completely silent, reminding him with a twinge that Tidgy was gone. He stepped down the half flight of rough-hewn steps to the kitchen. Whatever blood there had been was completely cleaned up. With a sad sigh, Harry took out the pans and started breakfast, ducking and leaning over a lot in a room designed for an elf.

“Potter,” Snape said sharply. “What are you doing?”

Harry screwed the coffee pot together tightly and placed it on grate in the space made for it. “I assume that is a facetious question, sir,” he said as he wrapped the hot toast in a towel. “I really don’t mind and it seemed like the only way to get breakfast.”

Snape took the towel and placed it on the tray. “I suppose you are correct on that last count.” When the coffee boiled, he took that as well and carried it upstairs. In the dining room, he said, “We shall have to find another before the school year begins. It will not be easy on such short notice.”

Harry had a thought. “Do you mind if I look for one?”

Snape gave him a derisive look. “With your extensive house-elf connections?”

“Yes.”

Snape gestured with his hand that he was welcome to it. 

After breakfast, Harry owled Dobby and that afternoon the doorbell chimed. 

“Who is that, I wonder?” Snape muttered.

Harry jumped up. “I think it is the first house-elf applicant,” Harry said brightly, even more amused by Snape’s surprise. At the entry he waved in Dobby and a much dolled up Winky.

“See. Master Harry,” Dobby said to her reassuringly.

“I am wanting no pay,” she insisted.

“I figured that,” Harry said. As they entered the hall, Snape stepped over and looked over the two elves.

“Professor,” Dobby squeaked, bowing. Winky did the same, not looking nearly as hopeful.

“Potter, in here a moment,” Snape said. After he closed the drawing room door behind him, he said, “Crouch’s old house-elf?” Harry nodded. “Probably the least likely choice I would have considered. Isn’t she in the employ of Hogwarts?”

“They are willing to let her go. I checked that already.”

“You do work fast, Mr. Potter.”

“Hey, if you are going to yell at me every morning at breakf—”

“I did not yell at you.”

“Scold then,” Harry interjected. “Dobby vouches for her not being anything like him. She didn’t do well after Crouch gave her clothes but he thinks she just needs to be bound to a household again.”

“Most all of them do need to be. Ms. Granger’s efforts notwithstanding, house-elves are not natural. They have been distorted, like an exotic breed of dog, to serve wizard needs. Are you set on this elf?”

“No, she is just the first one I thought of when you said they were hard to find.”

When they stepped back into the hall, Dobby immediately ceased whispering to Winky and gave them a pleased look. Snape stepped over to them. “Tell me about your former master, Winky,” he said.

She looked a little fearful and began turning her bright white tea-towel around in her hands. Quietly, she said, “He was maybe not nice wizard, but I loyal to him. I not saying anything.”

“Look at me, Winky,” Snape said in a tone not to be disobeyed. Harry took an unconscious step backward and bit his lip. After a moment Snape said, “You will do.”

Winky looked very relieved and pathetically grateful while Dobby grinned toothily at Harry. “Dobby is going in that case,” Dobby said, “Will be seeing Master Harry soon, he is thinking, at Hogwarts.” At Harry’s nod of agreement, he snapped his fingers and disappeared.

“He is an odd one,” Snape commented. He turned his attention back to Winky. “You are prepared to be bound?” The elf nodded emphatically, keeping her eyes averted downward.

Harry stood to the side and watched, arms wrapped around himself. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like this.

Snape pulled his wand out of his pocket and held it out over Winky’s head. As she started to shift to her knees, he said, “Stand. I think Potter would prefer it.” His gaze slid over to Harry for an instant. Winky looked alarmed as she stood straight again. 

Snape incanted something long and Latin. A yellow glow formed around Winky’s small frame as he finished. She reached out her long hands as though a child looking for a sweet. Snape reached his hand out, palm down. Winky grasped it and kissed the back of it. At that moment, the glow flashed away.

“Potter?” Snape said, gesturing that he should take his place.

“I can’t do that,” Harry said.

“It is simpler if you do. You inherit her along with the house.” When Harry shook his head again, clearly uncomfortable, Snape said, “As you wish.” To Winky, he said, “You will give Master Harry the same obedience as myself.”

“Yes, Master,” she said stridently.

“There are no limits to your run of the house. Go.” He dismissed her.

She stepped across the Great Hall and down to the kitchen, peering in each room she passed.

Harry went up to his room. He badly needed a distraction after that, so he reread the last few letters from each of his friends. Then he took out his new Map and worked on adding color to it. Eventually his stomach distracted him. He hadn’t really had a good meal that day since at lunch he hadn’t wanted to incur Snape’s annoyance again and only had an apple from the fruit basket.

He wandered downstairs to the dining room. Snape was there, reading the post. Harry took a seat across from him, then jumped when dinner appeared on the table in a sparkle of magic, Hogwarts’ style. Harry, mouth watering, pulled over a plate with a pile of thin sliced roast beef surrounded by small potatoes. A bowl of fruit salad in some kind of creamy dressing also had appeared.

After waiting for Snape to serve himself, Harry started eating. The meat was really good. Harry ate what he had taken and took more.

“I will admit,” Snape said, “that you did very well choosing a house-elf.”

“It is pretty good,” Harry agreed, then felt a little guilty about Tidgy until Winky’s piled pudding distracted him from it.

 

That evening in the library, sleepy from eating too much and feeling unusually secure now that he wasn’t hunted, curiosity overcame Harry’s better sense. “Can I ask you something?” he said to Snape.

“Only if you do not insist upon an answer.”

“Is your mum still alive?”

Snape looked up from the ledger he was filling in. “Yes.”

When nothing else was forthcoming, Harry asked with a shrug, “Where does she live?”

“Quite a distance from here,” came the level reply that sounded unwelcoming of further inquiry.

Harry put his book aside and considered whether this was worth the struggle. He sighed lightly and asked, “Do you see her at all?”

“Not in ten years,” Snape said and this time gave the very distinct impression that the topic had grown unsavory.

Harry sat back and considered that. “I can’t imagine,” he commented.

Snape put his quill down and gave Harry a long look.

“Ron said he didn’t speak to his dad all Easter break. I can’t even imagine that,” Harry marveled. The very thought gave him a stab of jealousy that only faded reluctantly.

“You are thinking you would like to meet her, I assume,” Snape said evenly if not a touch darkly.

Harry shrugged. “I hadn’t thought of it until your dad showed up yesterday.”

Snape closed the ledger and pushed it aside. “She lives in an autonomous coven in the eastern part of the country.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Harry pointed out.

“It is a women-only community. A Muggle might call it a cooperative or even a cult, I suppose.”

After thinking that over, Harry said slowly, “That sorta implies that your dad didn’t treat her very well.” When Snape didn’t respond, Harry asked, “I’m out of line, aren’t I?”

“No. Not if he is not here.”

“So how long has your dad been remarried?” Harry asked, feeling emboldened.

“Almost ten years, to the extreme displeasure of my mother.” Snape sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. “My mother is not exactly pleased with me, either.”

“A son who’s a teacher doesn’t seem that bad,” Harry opined.

“I believe that she saw only malicious intent in that.”

Harry gave him a startled look. “Huh,” he said, then remembered that he himself had only seen malicious intent in Snape at one point, fairly recently even. After a long pause Harry said, “You really don’t think she’d like to see you again?”

“And I am accused of being blunt,” Snape said. “I really do not know,” he added with a hint of impatience.

“Ten years is a long time,” Harry observed.

“I suppose it is not unreasonable to write her,” Snape stated quietly.

“It is up to you, sir.”

“I think you are badly oversimplifying the situation, but perhaps that is to be expected in your case.” He sounded a little tired as he said this.

Harry got up from the lounger to depart for his room, partly because it was late and partly to give Snape a chance to write.

Snape’s voice halted him in the doorway. “Franklin is away on another errand. May I borrow your owl?”

Harry brought Hedwig downstairs and perched her on the back of Snape’s chair, where she proceeded to preen her wings. “Goodnight, sir,” Harry said as he stepped out again.

Snape pulled a sheet of correspondence parchment out of the bottom drawer of the desk. It had a pleasant faint blue sheen, rather than a yellowed one. Trying hard to hold Potter’s simple notion of familial loyalty in his mind rather than the memory of their previous string of difficult meetings, he wrote out the salutation in neat script.

Each line required lengthy deliberation, especially because he did not want it to seem as if it did. Eventually, he wrote:

I hope this letter finds you well and that you have made a home for yourself at the coven. I assume you have heard news of the Dark Lord’s final demise. This has freed me to consider the future more broadly than I have previously been able. At the beginning of August I adopted a son who, as I expect all orphans do, obsesses over issues of family. He is interested in meeting you, if you are amenable. I as well am curious how you are faring.

 

He read that over, surprised to find that he was truly curious how she was. Potter was correct, perhaps, that ten years was a long time. He signed with a standard closure imploring a reply, finding that easier than asking for one outright. By the time he had the letter sealed in an envelope and addressed, Hedwig had her head under her wing. She perked up immediately at the sound of her name and took the letter in her claw. Snape stood up, intending to open the window wider, but the white owl swooped cleanly through the narrow opening before he could reach it. He watched her ghostlike form flit away over the trees before turning back to the warm, lamplit room.

Hedwig returned at the end of lunch the next day, a huge, Hogwarts kind of midday meal that made Harry again eat more than he could really fit in his stomach. Snape took the letter from her and she flapped up to Harry’s shoulder and nipped his ear.

Harry turned to stare into her large eyes and gave her a strip of chicken. “Long flight, I guess.” She finished that piece and bobbed her head to request another. Harry fed her a choicer strip.

Snape stood with the letter in hand and quit the room. In the drawing room he closed the door and opened the envelope while sitting at the desk. The first thing he noticed was that the salutation was just his name.

It was rather surprising to find this marvelous white owl delivering a letter from you. First off, let me assure you that I have indeed made a home here at Dreveshire, odd for you to question that might not be true.

 

Snape flinched and put the letter down. He had forgotten how aggravating her willful penchant for misunderstanding could be. He rubbed his temple and continued.

I have to remind myself that eleven years is a long time and people can change in unlikely ways. Something has apparently changed with you—the Severus I knew would not have had the slightest inclination toward parenting. I suppose he is the child of an associate of yours, many of whom were killed recently, I am told. I am being advised by my Covenelder, against my instinct I might add, to give you another chance. One which you do not deserve but, in the interests of satisfying the curiosity of this boy, and my own, I will grant.

 

Old arguments and bitter feelings rose up in Snape’s mind much clearer now than they had yesterday when he agreed to pen his letter. They made him feel more angry than he had been in a very long time.

Harry sat alone at the table, feeling pensive. Hedwig sat on the chair back beside him, fluffing herself and preening occasionally. He was starting to regret his suggestion. The dinner plates disappeared. After a while, Winky appeared. She wore a different tea towel now, but still a very bright, clean one.

“Master Harry is liking pudding?” she asked.

“Is it chocolate?”

She thought a moment. “It could be if Master Harry wishes.”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

Winky returned with a large tray containing one small plate with a slice of chocolate cake. She placed this before Harry and snapped her fingers, sending the tray away somewhere. Her magic amazed him. She did much more than Tidgy ever did, without effort.

“Master is not being happy,” she said, clasping her hands before her and leaning toward him with her large blinking eyes.

“Huh?” Harry uttered. He wasn’t accustomed to getting concern from this quarter. Then with a chill, he realized that she was referring to Snape. Harry frowned and put his fork down, deeply regretting his interference.

“Winky can…calm Master, but does not know. Winky not instructed.”

Harry remembered now how she had kept the Death Eater Barty Junior under her power for years. “No, don’t do that. Master Severus wouldn’t want that.”

She frowned and dropped her eyes. “Is Master being violent when very angry? Winky is not allowing anyone to be hurt…”

“No,” Harry replied, his heart sinking. He hadn’t heard anything and wondered what she had seen. Maybe she just sensed things like that. He was starting to realize that he knew nothing about house-elves and maybe nothing about Snape. “It’s all right, Winky. I don’t think you need to do anything.”

She started to turn away. “Winky will return if needed, Master Harry.”

“Thank you, Winky,” Harry said with forced calm.

Harry poked his fork into his cake and made himself take a bite. The chocolate would make him feel better, he assumed. He did not feel he could move. If he went up to his room, Snape might think he had given up on him. Of course, Snape could not know what Winky just came and told him, either.

Harry was saved from making a decision by Snape’s return. As he took his seat, a fresh hot plate of food appeared before him. He stared at it a moment in a kind of surprised annoyance before he took up his fork.

“I’m sorry, sir. I shou—” Harry started to say.

Snape cut him off. “Don’t, Potter. You apologize too much. It is one of your more annoying habits.”

Harry felt like some kind of spell had passed through his flesh. He waited in stillness for what might come next.

Snape rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. “I apologize, Harry. I should not have said that, at least not in that manner.” His eyes roamed over the plate in front of him, unsettled.

“It’s all right, sir,” Harry insisted. Compared to things Snape had said in the past, that was nothing. But the meanings of things had changed. He had let them change, in fact. Harry longed to say something to undo everything, then wondered what it was about him that made him always wish for that. He took a small bite of cake just for an excuse to move.

“You are too concessionary,” Snape said in a rambling way. “You need not be so careful around me. I am concerned you do this because you fear that if you displease me you could be sent away.” In a harder tone, as though this were an old argument he wanted settled, Snape went on. “That won’t happen. You cannot be sent away.”

Searching for a response, Harry stared at his guardian with a pained expression. He had never seen this side of Snape before, had not even thought it existed. The letter had clearly undermined him. “I do appreciate that,” Harry finally said. “And at the risk of conceding, I can certainly get by without meeting your mum.”

Snape pushed his plate away. It disappeared an instant later. “She did agree to see us.”

Harry blinked at that. Clearly this wasn’t something he was going to understand anytime soon. “You told her about me?”

“I knew it was the only way to get her to even consider it.”

“Gee, Mum, Harry Potter and I would like to drop by…” Harry said flippantly.

Snape laughed strangely. “She does not know it is Harry Potter,” he said a little mischievously. “I did not feel I could use you in that way. If the mere fact of my adopting did not pique her curiosity…”

The landscape was becoming a little clearer now. Snape’s tone and mannerisms were giving Harry a sense of underlying damage that was usually kept well masked. Snape was remasking it even as he spoke. Harry hoped this meeting went well, or he was going to have one more thing to deeply regret.

Four days later, they took the Floo from the Shrewsthorpe train station to a pub in a very small village in the East Midlands countryside. They walked from the quiet pub—where no one had paid them any attention when they arrived in the hearth—down a narrow lane that once had been paved with river stone, but now was mostly dirt and dust. A mile along, a gate formed of an elaborate rose bush appeared in the stone wall along the road. Harry marveled at the way the rose wood locked around itself as it met in the middle and came back down the sides, blossoming rampantly.

“I believe they practice a bit of Druidic magic,” Snape said as Harry continued to admire it. He pulled a cord beside the gate and a rusty bell at the top rang dully.

They waited. Eventually, a bent-over old witch appeared beyond the flowered arch. She uttered a spell and gestured for them to enter. “We are here to see—”

“Anita, yes, yes,” the old woman interrupted. “This way,” she said pleasantly, gesturing with her long walking stick. She waited for them to pass, then muttered something at the rose gate. She smiled mildly at them and started to lead the way, then stopped with a startled expression. She stepped up to Harry and gazed quizzically at him.

“Hmm, no more poppy tea before noon, me thinks,” she muttered as she started up the brick path that meandered through a rampant garden. At the first low building, they entered. “Wait here, dears,” she said and went out the far door.

Harry wandered around the room. Books lined low, roughhewn shelves along two walls. Crowded paintings of widely varying skill hung above. The furniture was all composed of antler and bone with needlework pillows. The decor seemed the opposite of comfortable. He stepped back over to the window that looked out over the garden and the roses forming the entrance.

“Severus,” an unfamiliar voice said with mixed emotion. Harry turned slowly and watched as a rail-thin woman with a strong jaw line and cropped grey hair came in the door on the far side. The old woman who had met them at the gate stepped in before her as though on guard. Anita reached out and brushed Snape’s sleeve. “You have literally not changed at all,” she said as though accusing him of something. She collected herself. “Anastasia, this is my son, Severus.”

Snape shook the old witch’s hand. “I have heard quite a lot about you,” she said as though challenging him to try anything.

“Clearly,” Snape said dryly.

Anita took a deep breath and glanced around their side of the room. “Did you bring your son?” she asked.

Snape turned to Harry, gesturing with his arm, and Harry realized it must seem strange, him rooted to this spot way over here. Harry forced his feet to move. He carefully navigated around the prongs of the furniture as he went over to them.

“Ma’am,” Harry said in greeting when he reached them.

She was more than surprised when she recognized him. She appeared to fall into a trance for many breaths. “This is your son?” she breathed. She turned to Snape. “You adopted Harry Potter?”

Snape bowed his head, sending his hair forward. “Yes.”

She put her fingertips to her forehead in a very familiar gesture. “I can’t believe they allowed you to do that. I assumed you had adopted one of your fellow Death Eaters’ children.”

Harry searched in vain for a response since the adoption had taken a bit of arguing on that exact point. Left hanging by the silence, Anita said dazedly, “Well, have a seat.” She moved to one of the antler rocking chairs and gestured for them to take the couch. Snape and Harry sat there. The old witch sat to the side on a stool, her staff between her knees. Harry wondered if the whole thing wasn’t a wand of some kind and how that would work if it were. Their eyes met and, after a moment, she nodded. Harry was certain she was answering his unspoken question. Used to Legilimency, Harry nodded in return and looked back at Anita.

“I need a moment to take this in,” she said, staring at Harry perplexedly. She shook her head, took a deep breath and asked, “So, you are living in the house in Shrewsthorpe?”

Harry answered, “For a few more days until classes begin at Hogwarts.” He wasn’t feeling very generous toward her. He kept remembering what her letter had done to Snape.

She clasped and unclasped her hands as though distressed. “You wanted this?” she asked him.

“To visit? Yes.”

“I mean, to be adopted,” she clarified.

“Yes,” Harry replied evenly. “Very much so.”

She turned to Snape who gave her a look as though, you were saying? “You believe you can find atonement this way?” she asked him bluntly. Snape’s eyes narrowed.

Harry made a noise like a suppressed laugh. “You didn’t tell me your parents were so much alike,” he said.

“What?” Anita asked. Very sharply.

“Shazor accused him of adopting me to protect himself from the Ministry. Actually, I should say, congratulated. You accuse him of having some kind of internal retribution to pay. Neither of you assumes he has altruistic motives.” He could see she did not expect this much from him.

“You imagine he does?” she returned in a mocking tone.

Harry looked at her and thought, if you had seen him stopping me from going after Pettigrew, you wouldn’t doubt it. The old witch cleared her throat, attracting Anita’s attention. She gave Anita a solemn nod. Harry took a deep breath and Occluded his mind. He then intentionally waited for the old witch to look his way. She tilted her head to the side as if to say, ah, well.

“So, three weeks into this, you are still happy?” she asked Harry.

In a purely curious tone Harry said, “May I ask why you are asking me?”

A little uncomfortably, she replied, “Anastasia, my Covenelder, is helping me.”

“I cannot read either of them now. The boy is as good as the other is at hiding his mind once he realizes he needs to.”

Anita looked at Harry a little suspiciously. “He taught you that?”

“Yes.”

“You have something to hide?” Anita asked him.

Harry shrugged lightly. “I think you should trust people and what they tell you voluntarily. Everyone has things they would like to keep to themself. Even from a Covenelder living in the middle of nowhere.”

“Old wounds they would like to continue nursing, for example,” Anastasia said airily.

Harry pushed his glasses up and gave her a long look. She gave him an innocent one in return. “For example,” Harry acknowledged grudgingly.

“Anita,” Anastasia said, “I agree with the boy. You should trust first in this case. Severus could not have brought a more powerful icon of his true self or a better peacemaker. He has met you much farther than halfway.” She waited for Anita to respond. When a time passed, she said, “What is still bothering you?”

Anita’s words were barely audible. “I raised an awful, terrible, dark wizard.”

Harry glanced at Snape, who was staring at the floor before his mother’s chair.

“You would never believe I changed,” Snape said. “Twenty years have gone by and you still refuse.”

Her eyes went dark. “You were a monster—there was no path back for you.”

Harry bit his lip and waited for someone else to speak.

Anita took a deep, calming breath. “I fear now that you have fooled this boy,” she gestured to Harry.

In a level tone, as though he were being extra patient with a student, Snape said, “Even if you have no faith in me, you are seriously underestimating two people, Albus Dumbledore and Harry himself.” Snape stood up and looked back at Harry still on the couch. “Are you ready?” he asked factually.

“To leave?” Harry asked in surprise. “If you really want…” He studied Snape. Whatever had emerged to unhinge him was completely submerged again. Harry wouldn’t have known it was ever there, looking at him now.

Anita stood as well. “We prepared lunch for you,” she said a little strained. “Give us a chance to be decent hosts, at least.”

Snape hesitated several breaths before he bowed acceptance with great reluctance.

Anita led the way out the back to a stone paved area with a wooden table. Harry only now got glimpses of the other inhabitants, working in the gardens, weaving. He thought he heard a fire roaring hot nearby and imagined a kiln or a blacksmith. A wave of Anita’s wand set the table.

A little sheepishly, she said, “I assumed your son would be a little younger, so I invited two of the young girls who live here to join us. They are nine and eleven. I expect they will be thrilled to meet Harry.”

The old witch had stepped away. She returned accompanied by a woman with long blonde hair with two sun-bleached children in tow.

“Severus’ new son is a little older than I imagined, Caroline,” Anita apologized to the woman as they gathered at the table.

Harry held out his hand. Caroline accepted it and said, “Caroline. We only have one name here,” she explained.

“Harry Potter,” Harry said.

The two girls gasped and the woman froze halfway to sitting down. “My!” she said.

“Are you really?” one of the girls asked.

“All my life,” Harry returned.

“I want to sit next to Harry,” one of them insisted and immediately leapt around the table to squeeze between Snape and him. The other, upon seeing this, jumped up as well. “Me too!” She took the short end of the bench. Snape moved down to make more room for them all.

“Hello,” Harry said, feeling strange to be pressed between two glowing children with wide blue eyes of amazement.

“I’m Rattanita,” one of them said. “Call me Ratta.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Harry said lightly, making her giggle.

“I’m called Princess, but that isn’t my real name,” the other one ended in a whisper.

“You have to forgive them,” Caroline said. “They are very sociable, but we get very few visitors. Especially not ones that they already worship.”

“When are you coming out with a poster?” Princess demanded.

Harry gave her an alarmed look in return. “Never, if I have anything to say about it.” When she pouted, looking honestly crushed, Harry said, “You can always magically blow up the chocolate frog card.”

Princess leaned forward to look at her sister in excitement. “Good idea!”

“I didn’t really say that,” Harry said in dismay, taking off his glasses to rub his eyes.

Snape said, “Ah, it is good to see how well Potter has adjusted to his fame.”

Harry narrowed his eyes at him. “Don’t go there,” he said in mock threat.

Ratta grabbed his arm rather hard and said, “I can’t believe it! Harry Potter,” as she shook him.

“Girls,” Caroline admonished them. “Some decorum now, if you can manage.”

They released him and sat up straight, primly putting their serviettes in their laps. Harry decided he preferred them the other way.

Salad arrived with dark red tomatoes and crisp cucumbers. Then cold soup. Then roasted vegetable sandwiches. “You eat well here,” Harry said to the girls.

They shrugged. “What is your favorite food?” one of them asked.

“Chocolate cake,” Harry replied.

“Birthday cake?” the other asked for confirmation.

“Yep. The first one I ever had was the best one,” he said, falling into a mode of entertaining them. “Even though a giant had squashed it by carrying it in his pocket.”

“No!” Princess insisted. “Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not,” Harry said.

“How do you remember the first birthday cake you ever had?” Ratta asked in accusation.

“I was eleven. Your age.”

“You didn’t get one before that?” Ratta asked in horror.

“Not a one.”

“We’ll make you one!” They insisted.

“That’s okay, really. I had chocolate cake for pudding last night. Our house-elf makes it all the time,” Harry insisted, only then realizing the oddness of that.

“You still have that house-elf?” Anita asked Snape.

Snape shook his head. “A different one.”

“What happened to Tidgy?” Anita asked suspiciously.

When no one answered, one of the girls parroted while tugging on Harry’s arm, “What happened to him?”

Harry took a deep breath and, knowing the girls would disbelieve him, replied, “He was eaten by a snake. A really big one.”

Anita gave him a disbelieving look at the same time as the girls whined, “Nooooo, silly.”

“I can’t help it if you don’t believe me.”

Princess put her hands on her hips in mock disgust. “What happened to the snake?” she asked as though to test his story.

“I told it to go sleep by the hearth. Then the Ministry took it away.”

Princess eyed him strangely as though realizing he wasn’t playing the game properly. His tall tales were not supposed to be true.

“You told it to go sleep by the hearth?” Anita asked carefully.

Snape said quietly, “You have no sense of when to hide the truth, Potter.” The entire table had frozen, staring warily at Harry. To the table, Snape said, “You have to realize that he was raised as a Muggle. He doesn’t understand the implications of what he is admitting to.”

The girls leaned around Harry and whispered, then slid off the bench and scampered off. Harry felt a little alone on his end of the table now.

“More tea, anyone?” Anastasia brightly asked, her aged hand holding the pot up unsteadily in invitation.

The girls returned, giggling. Harry turned to them in surprise. Princess held up a green garter snake for his inspection.

“Girls,” Caroline said, although it didn’t have the sharp edge it could have.

“We want to see him talk to it,” Ratta insisted. “We’ve never seen anyone talk to a snake before.”

“Because only dark wizards can do that,” Caroline replied slowly, eyeing Harry.

“Mum, don’t be dumb! It’s Harry Potter.” She handed him the snake. It was all of two foot long and as green as grass. It asked to be put down.

“It wants to be left alone.” At their doubtful expressions, he insisted, “That’s what it just said.”

“Oh, you can’t really talk to snakes,” Princess said in disappointment. “I could have told you that.”

Harry sighed. “What do you want me to ask it?”

Caroline sat back with her tea. “Ask it if it ate Peralla’s Crickets. They all disappeared one day.

“Where were they?” Harry asked.

“In a little white box,” Ratta provided.

Harry asked the snake that. Everyone at the table stiffened as he did as though the seats had become electric. “Whoa,” Princess breathed. The snake nodded. “It did! Did you see that mum—it nodded!” she exclaimed. “You really can talk to snakes.” She took the garter back gently and set it down in a patch of tarragon nearby.

“You sound really strange when you do that,” Ratta said.

“I can’t hear it,” Harry said. “I just think I’m talking normally.” Snape gave him a curious look at that and Harry shrugged in return.

Ice cream was served. Harry savored every bite of each of four flavors, thinking with satisfaction that it was probably twice as good as anything Dudley ever ate in front of him. Princess curled up in Caroline’s lap across from him despite being far too big to do so easily. Caroline alternated bites between herself and her daughter. She set the spoon down to wipe her mouth, then ran her fingers through Princess’ hair before kissing her on the top of the head. Princess looked up and got a kiss on the forehead as well. Caroline picked up the spoon again.

Realizing that he was staring, Harry went back to his ice cream, feeling colder inside than the ice cream could account for.

Ratta came up to him and nudged him shyly. “Can you sign this?” she asked, holding his chocolate frog card.

“Oh, get mine too!” Princess said, sitting up suddenly, unbalancing her mother and herself.

“I got it,” Ratta insisted, pulling another roughed up card from her pocket.

Harry borrowed a quill and signed them both personally. With ginger motions they picked the cards up and carried them off, careful not to smudge the ink.

“Thank you,” Caroline said across from him. Harry shrugged that it was no big deal.

The girls returned and now sat more quietly beside him. “Did a giant really squash your birthday cake?” Princess asked.

“Not really,” Harry said. “He was only a half-giant.”

Princess punched him on the arm. “What other funny things have happened to you? Tell us something else.”

Harry gazed at her as though she were crazy. “How much time do you have?”

“Not that long,” Caroline replied for them.

“Awwww,” the girls complained. Princess grabbed his arm yet again. “Tell us something,” she pleaded.

“Uh, about what?”

After a moment’s deliberation, Ratta said, “The Tri-Wizard Tournament on the card. Tell us about that. How did you win it?”

“A dark wizard pretending to be a friendly wizard made sure I won it. I wouldn’t have otherwise.”

“Why did they put it down, then?” Ratta demanded, insulted.

“They didn’t ask me before they wrote that. Otherwise I’d have told them to take it off.”

“Did you get the bad wizard in the end?” Princess asked conspiratorially.

“No. The teachers did.” Harry remembered that terrible moment in Moody’s office when he realized the other wizard intended to kill him. He had already been shattered by Cedric’s death and his narrow escape from Voldemort. He had been helpless, in shock. His heart pumped at the memory even two years later.

“Girls,” Caroline said quietly. She gave them a palm down gesture with her hand, and they fell silent.

“I do hope you are helping this boy heal?” Anita demanded of Snape.

Taken aback, Snape didn’t answer immediately. Harry did. “He is,” he said quietly.

“More ice cream? Do you want more ice cream?” Princess tugged on Harry’s sleeve, looking concerned.

“Thanks,” Harry said with a smile that removed her strained look instantly.

They made their goodbyes soon after that, while there was still plenty of daylight left for the walk back to the pub. The train station was quiet as well when arrived there. Traffic on the road in the village was light and soon Harry relaxed as the door closed behind him inside their house.

“I’ll tell Winky that dinner can be late and light.”

“I suspect she already knows,” Harry said.

“She is unusually perceptive,” Snape agreed.

Post had arrived in their absence. Harry picked up two letters and took them up to his room to write replies. He wrote back to Hermione describing the two little girls without saying where he had met them. Neville had been helping him with the parchment spell, even going into the wizard library in London to look for books that might help.

After a small dinner, Harry wrote a long note discussing what he had learned since they had last corresponded and tried out some spells Neville suggested in his letter. He was running out of blank parchment. If he tore a blank sheet off of the writing tablet, it threatened to not give you another. And once a sheet had been enchanted, it never worked quite right for a new spell. He went downstairs and found Snape in the drawing room at the desk, as usual. When he looked up, Harry asked, “Do you have any parchment?”

Snape pulled open a drawer beside him. “It is here. Help yourself.”

Harry came over and pulled out five sheets before shutting the drawer again. He hesitated there. “The visit went all right.”

Snape made an ambivalent motion with his head. Harry could not see him well since he was bent over some kind of form and this made his hair fall over his face. “Sorry about the Parselmouth thing. It just isn’t important to me, so I can’t remember that other people care so much.”

Snape didn’t reply, so Harry stepped away. “Hey, can I go to Diagon Alley now and get my school stuff?”

“I thought we would do that on the way to Hogwarts.”

“Okay,” Harry agreed and realized that Snape was right, he was trying too hard to please him, but doing otherwise wasn’t imaginable.

After playing around with some new parchment spells in his room, Harry grew too tired to continue. He changed into his pyjamas, noting that they seemed too tight, and crawled into bed. He dropped off to sleep after a short while, undisturbed by dreams.

Something touching his hair woke him. Harry, lying on his stomach, turned his head to see what it was. A shadow loomed close in his mind, outlined by the dim light from the hall beyond in his real vision.

“I did not realize you would be so soundly asleep already,” Snape said apologetically.

“Long day,” Harry muttered.

The bed tilted slightly. “I realized something about you today, Harry.”

“So did I,” Harry murmured.

“What was that?”

“You are the only person who understands anything,” Harry said sleepily.

“Hm.”

A long silence ensued. Harry had to fight drifting off again. “Are you going to tell me?”

“I think not, upon further reflection.”

Harry frowned into his pillow. “You are just here to make me nuts?”

“No,” Snape countered softly. Harry started as something brushed his hair again. He opened his eyes to catch the dim silhouette of Snape’s hand. He turned his face into the pillow as he realized that Snape had caught him staring at Princess and her mother.

Snape’s voice said, “If you trust me enough to accept it, that is.”

Flushed with embarrassment, Harry burrowed down under the covers. A hand rested on his covered shoulder a long time before the bed tilted again and Snape departed. A warm anxiety had replaced the cold ache and Harry marveled at how much better that felt.

The morning of their return to Hogwarts, Harry packed his trunk and hovered it down to the main hall. He felt as though he had just arrived, and he wasn’t really ready to leave yet, but knowing that the house would be here waiting made him feel whole in a new way. As he looked around the hall, the sun cut through the clouds and in the small windows at the end. The damage was still present from the battle. Snape had decided that he would prefer the noisy repairs happen while they were absent, explained that they must be done manually so they could fully hold protective magic.

Harry stepped into the dining room and took a seat at the empty table. Tea came after a few minutes. Harry poured some for himself and sipped it, mostly to have something to do.

Snape finally came down as well. “Ready to leave it would appear?” he asked.

Plates of beans and toast arrived. Harry nodded. “Packed, anyway,” he heard himself say.

Snape looked up at him with a strange expression. Harry returned to his breakfast without clarifying. They both ate quickly and the plates vanished immediately after. Snape gulped down an extra cup of tea before he stood up.

A small trunk sat beside Harry’s in the hall. Snape stood beside his own, thoughtful. “Not that it is impossible or even difficult to return, but I dislike needing to do so,” he explained “I believe that is everything, though.” He looked Harry over. “We shall stop in Diagon Alley first, so we’ll take the Floo, Minerva has had the Great Hall hooked in for the remainder of the summer and perhaps somewhat into the school year for staff use, given the lowered risk.”

He hovered both trunks to the dining room hearth. As their things settled back onto the floor he said, “Do you have your list for school?”

Harry pulled it from his pocket and waved it before restowing it. Snape started to reach toward the canister of Floo powder, than stopped. “I perhaps should ask if you need money for your supplies,” he said.

“No,” Harry said, a little clipped.

“Hm,” Snape said as he took down the canister. “May I ask what source of funds you are using?”

“There is still some money left in my mum and dad’s vault,” Harry replied, hoping the topic would be dropped. Talking about it reminded him of living with the Dursleys. Maybe it was just the awkwardness. “It is enough to get through school,” Harry said. “But, I don’t know how much an apprenticeship costs.”

Snape raised a brow. “For you, I would expect, nothing.” Harry growled lightly at that. Snape held the canister out to him. As Harry took a handful, Snape said, “You will let me know if you need anything?”

“Sure,” Harry replied curtly. Snape gestured for him to go first into the Floo. Harry hovered his trunk into the hearth and stood behind it as he tossed the powder down beside his feet.

The sun shone over Diagon Alley as they stepped out into it from the Apothecary’s whose Floo they had used. “I have to go up to Gringott’s first,” Harry said, gesturing at the grand building at the next intersection.

“Be back here in ninety minutes,” Snape said.

Harry headed off, halting the activities of everyone in the street with his mere presence. He smiled faintly at everyone he passed and kept going, even when suddenly befuddled people failed to move out of the way.

The Goblins earned his undying respect by not giving him the slightest consideration for being who he was and insisting on inspecting his key and himself suspiciously. Inside his vault, after filling his sack with a variety of coinage, Harry did a quick count, stacking as he went: 400 some galleons and change remained. It didn’t sound that bad, and the teetering piles still looked large, but he needed to find out exactly how much an apprenticeship cost. He only knew that the good ones were considered expensive.

Back out on the street, a few wizards and witches he didn’t know greeted him as though they did. “I have to get books for school,” he explained as he escaped.

Inside the bookstore, a familiar voice cried, “Harry!” and Hermione came up and gave him a hug then looked at him critically. “I think you’ve grown three inches. You’re taller than me.”

Harry stared at her in alarm, suspicion building in his mind as he thought about all the potions he had drunk in the last month. “It’s good to see you,” Harry said honestly.

“Bet you are happy to get out,” she said. She leaned to the side and looked out the window of the shop. Harry glanced that way to find it full of people looking in, some with hands pressed to the glass to shade their view.

“In one sense,” Harry said in a pained voice.

“Well, let’s get our books and get an ice cream. Ron and Ginny aren’t getting supplies until later, they’re still both in Romania.”

As they collected their assigned texts, Harry kept thinking of ways of explaining his new situation. Every time he opened his mouth to try, someone interrupted, shaking his hand or even hugging him. They all seemed very happy. He imagined her reaction, how it wasn’t the right place for it, and sighed quietly as he gave up.

At Fortescue’s they sat at the outside table digging holes into large sundaes. Hermione sat straight and said, “Hello, Professor,” to someone behind Harry. Harry started and almost pulled out his pocket watch before he thought better of it. He turned his head to look instead, meeting Snape’s oh-so-level gaze. Harry couldn’t decide quite what to do.

“Mr. Potter,” Snape greeted him with a knowing look that to someone less informed would simply appear annoyed.

“Have a seat, sir,” Harry invited, indicating one of the three empty chairs.

Hermione nearly choked, but covered it quickly.

“Ms. Granger?” Snape asked.

Unable to swallow right away, she gestured it was okay, then shot a shocked glance at Harry, who felt a bit twisted up inside.

Snape took a seat, crossed his arms and considered them. “Get all of your schoolbooks, Potter?” he asked.

Harry, while relieved that Snape was willing to play this game while he hesitated, felt very badly about it. “Yes, sir.”

Snape had reverted smoothly to his old slightly sneering self. “Do you have other things to get before we return to Hogwarts?”

“A few things.” This time Harry did pull out his watch. “I still have forty-five minutes, Professor.”

“But you are eating ice cream,” Snape pointed out as though that didn’t make any sense.

“I am,” Harry said a little defiantly. “It is slow going doing shopping. I needed an ice cream.”

“Perhaps if you didn’t invite your fan club, it would go faster,” Snape remarked. Witches and wizards had started to gather in the road near them, whispering excitedly, tugging on each others’ sleeves.

Harry’s brow furrowed. “Next time I’ll remember not to.”

“I didn’t mean to get you in trouble, Harry,” Hermione said. “I assumed you were here alone.” She stood up. “I’ll help you finish getting things. I’m going to Flourish and Blotts. Do you need quills and parchment?”

Harry nodded. “I have to get some things for Hedwig.” He took a last bite of his ice cream. It had melted mostly anyway. “Do we get Hogsmeade weekends this year?” Harry asked Snape.

“I believe the headmaster is considering doubling them, in fact.”

“Well, then I can skip the sweet shop.” Harry stood as well.

“Out of hero-worshiping chocolate frogs already?” Snape said.

Harry gave him a narrow look, again hearing the strange duality in Snape’s tone. “No. I just like to have a good stash of things at the beginning of the year. I never know when the staff will decide I have to be a prisoner,” he said, easily finding just the right amount of pique.

“Where shall I meet you?” Hermione asked as she organized her things in a businesslike manner.

“In front of the Apothecary’s,” Harry replied.

“See you then. Nice to see you, Professor.” She choked out and left quickly.

“You’d best get going, Harry,” Snape said when she was out of hearing.

Harry averted his gaze by looking around for Eeylop’s, remembering it was behind him. “Can you hold onto this?” he asked, indicating his heavy bag of books.

Snape gave him a very dubious look but then relented immediately. “Yes.”

After Harry had purchased a new perch and water holder for Hedwig’s cage, as well as more waterproof, high-grip broom polish at the shop across from Eeylop’s, he met Hermione before the brick wall leading to the Leaky Cauldron. As they waited for Snape, she said, “You’ve clearly been hanging out with the teachers way too long.”

Harry sighed, feeling trapped by the momentum of his situation. “I didn’t have much choice.”

“Now that they’ve caught everyone that matters, you could go to the Burrow,” she pointed out. “Ron and Ginny wouldn’t be there but Mr. And Mrs. Weasley would be.”

“Huh,” Harry muttered. That hadn’t even occurred to him. He had been thinking ahead to a quiet week before classes started, although he would like to see the Weasley parents. Snape arriving saved him from having to voice his indecision.

Hermione immediately noticed that their teacher was carrying Harry’s books. Harry took them back with a thanks, even though he had to hold too much in each hand to do it. He made his goodbyes to his friend, then he and Snape stepped into the shop just as a small crowd of surprised witches began to form at the nearby brick wall, blocking the archway open which made it ripple in annoyance.

Harry’s trunk and cage with Hedwig still rested behind the counter beside the hearth. Snape thanked Jiggers for holding it all for him. The man just waved him off. Harry thought they must know each other well.

In the Great Hall, Harry dragged his trunk out of the hearth. The hall was empty except for Snape, who arrived behind him. “Can you handle that alone?” he asked.

“Yep. I can hover it to the tower. But I have a question for you,” Harry said stridently, catching Snape’s full attention. Harry held out his arm. The sleeve didn’t make it to his wrist, clearly too short. “Have you been giving me growth potion?”

“No, do you want some?” Snape replied evenly.

Harry stared at him as though not believing him.

“Really, Potter. You can be six and a half feet by Christmas should you so desire. How tall would you like to be?”

“Not that tall,” Harry retorted. “I just thought…” He scratched his head.

“I would not give you such a significant potion without telling you,” Snape insisted. “I did not realize this was such a sensitive topic or I would have offered some.”

“I don’t want to cheat,” Harry said stiffly.

“As you wish. Anything else you would like to accuse me of? I need to take care of some things before a staff meeting.”

“No. Sorry, sir.”

Harry settled into his dormitory. It didn’t feel as closed in as it had before. The prospect of the empty beds soon filling with his friends made it much less so. Upon closing his trunk lid, he realized that it was lunch time and headed excitedly down to the Great Hall.

Several of the teachers were there and greeted him warmly. Snape and Dumbledore were absent so Harry sat across from Hagrid, who gave him a wink. “Good ter see yer, Harry. Hope yeh had a good time away.”

Harry nodded and served himself chips, not bothering to converse much because he was too hungry to.

After lunch, Harry followed Hagrid down to his cabin, happy to just be able to wander outside. “Anything happen while I was away?”

“I’ was vera quiet, Harry. Everyone left.” Hagrid commented.

“Everyone?”

“Pretty much. Professor Sprout was around fer a few days. I helped her with a coupla things. Filch o’ course, was here. Eager teh get away they all were.”

“I can imagine,” Harry commented to himself as Hagrid watered his garden from a large can. “What is that?” Harry asked about several long rows of stalks.

“Thassa…blue corn,” Hagrid said a little slowly. Harry recognized that tone and wondered what blue wombats ate. At least it wasn’t a blue dragon, or a blue sea monster, or some large, hungry, dangerous blue thing. “So where’d they hide yer, Harry? Now tha’ you can say, I suspect.”

Harry blinked at him. Was it possible Dumbledore hadn’t told anyone? “I was with Severus,” Harry said.

“Really?” Hagrid asked in surprise. “No one’d suspect tha’, I s’pose.”

“That’s what he thought. No one would suspect he adopted me either.”

Hagrid laughed and patted Harry on the back as he put the large red can back under the water spout. In the cabin Hagrid made tea and they sat down around the crate he was using as a table. “Ah,” the half-giant said in pleasure as he took a sip. He looked suddenly at Harry. “Now wait a second here…”

“He did, really,” Harry said, enjoying the warmth of the cup in his hands even in the warm summer weather.

“Well, tha’s a surprise. Glad to hear it though. Ya’ deserve a family, Harry. Though I am a bit…uh, b’fuddled by your choice…”

“I think it was a good one,” Harry said defensively.

Hagrid patted his knee. “Tha’s all that matters.”

Harry’s face twisted as he said, “I, uh, haven’t figured out how to tell Ron and Hermione, so can you not discuss it in front of them until I do?”

“’Course, my boy. O’ course.”

By dinner all of the teachers had arrived and were gossiping when Harry came into the Great Hall. He felt a more than a little out of place as he approached the end of the Hufflepuff table where they’d gathered, as usual. Dumbledore gestured that he should come down beside him where there was an empty seat across from Snape. Relaxing, Harry took the offered place and returned Snape’s formal greeting.

Dumbledore stiffly patted Harry hard on the arm and said, “And how are you doing, my boy?”

“Good, sir,” Harry replied sincerely, although he felt odd about being the only student present, more so than he had at the beginning of summer. The teachers were talking vigorously amongst themselves as though at a party. They all sounded very happy. As he scanned them, Sprout gave him a nice smile, McGonagall a wink. His last year here, Harry considered with mixed emotion.

His eyes strayed to Snape, who was holding his sleeve back as he reached for his goblet. Unusual, countering tensions pulled at Harry as their gazes met, as though he could clearly hold in his mind, for the first time, all of the conflicting things he felt about Snape and being at Hogwarts. Dumbledore’s pale gaze graced him knowingly, making his face heat up. Harry turned to his mutton and potatoes and ignored them all in favor of eating.

The last week of summer holiday rushed past. Harry, thinking ahead with obsessive concern to his N.E.W.T.s, read and took notes on the first three chapters of all his books. He wrote to Ron back and forth. Ron was traveling around a lot visiting relatives before returning and Harry had to change owls each letter because they had travelled too far to be willing to go again immediately. Everyone, it seemed, was enjoying the freedom to move about safely.

The night before the students returned, Snape suggested eating dinner in his office instead of with the staff.

“I feel I have been somewhat derelict with you,” he said as Harry sat down across from him.

“You warned me you were going to be busy,” Harry said as he uncovered his tray. Half a roast duck, jacket potato, and string beans were on his plate. “Looks good.”

Snape said, “I am quite certain they are having chicken in the Great Hall.”

“I got the trays from Dobby, remember,” Harry said slyly.

As they ate, Snape asked, “Are you all ready for classes? I probably should have asked you that sooner.”

“Yes, I am,” Harry assured him. “I know…not really like me.”

They had a quiet evening of small talk that lasted until late into the evening. “I am perhaps leaving too much for tomorrow,” Snape eventually said. “But we have not had much time this week.”

“It’s only going to get busier, isn’t it?” Harry asked.

“For at least the first few weeks. I will make time for you if you need me, but you will have to let me know,” Snape said with a hint of firmness.

“I understand, sir.”

Snape banished the trays with a wave of his wand. “You should probably get a good night’s sleep as tomorrow you traditionally do not, correct?”

“Usually not. Especially not the night after you threatened to expel me,” Harry said, teasing.

“You deserved to be,” Snape stated unapologetically. “That Muggle-visible stunt you and Weasley pulled.”

Harry stood and put the visitor’s chair back were it belonged. “Fortunately, it wasn’t up to you.”

With a raised brow Snape acknowledged, “Yes. Fortunately.” With a nod he sent Harry away.

“Sit here, Harry!” Colin Creevey urged from farther down when Harry and his friends slowed to sit somewhere midway down the table for the welcoming feast. Harry shrugged and continued down to where the ends of the tables were left empty for the new house members. As Harry put his leg over the bench, Colin said conspiratorially, “You should welcome the new students to the house, Harry. Make a good impression for Gryffindor.”

“Oh,” Harry said ambivalently.

“Good idea,” Ron interjected in agreement. “Make the others jealous.”

Harry rolled his eyes and watched as the sorting hat was brought out and placed on a stool. The First Years shuffled slowly into the hall, tightly packed in a group as though for mutual protection. McGonagall shepherded the alarmingly small children along up to the front, where she explained the procedure to them. The hat had a shorter poem this year. It was back to its old self, it seemed, now that things had calmed down. A few new students swallowed hard and peered uncomfortably at the old thing.

“Jona Albert,” McGonagall read off. A sandy-haired boy took a deep breath and went up to the hat.

“Gryffindor!” the hat exclaimed before he could even rest it on his head. The boy jumped and dropped the hat on the floor but recovered it quickly and smoothly to its perch. He looked up at the cheering table on his left side and walked briskly over. Colin shook his hand vigorously as the boy sat down beside him. Jona grinned happily at Colin, looked across at Harry and froze in place.

“Hi,” Harry said and smiled in welcome. A Hufflepuff was sorted out as they sat looking at one another. Harry reached across the table Shaking visibly, Jona accepted his handshake limply. “Harry Potter,” Harry said by way of introduction.

“Uh huh,” Jona muttered.

“This was not a good idea, Colin,” Harry said. Beside Harry, Hermione waved and said hello to Jona, trying to distract the boy.

Another student was sorted into Gryffindor, a girl with auburn pigtails high on her head. She fairly bounced over to the table and sat beside Jona. “Hi, I’m Maybella,” she said perkily and waved back at Hermione.

Jona elbowed her and whispered, “Thot’s Harry Potter,” as he pointed across the table.

Maybella’s mouth fell agape. “Hi,” Harry tried again. The girl actually looked horrified. “I really am harmless,” Harry assured them.

The table fast filled up and the sorting was finished. The new Gryffindors sat chatting shyly, eating cakes and drinking pumpkin juice. New students at the other tables would occasionally stand up on their bench to get a look at Harry. He ignored them, although he did wave at Malfoy as he walked between the tables, garnering a seething look in return.

Harry eventually managed to get a few words out of Jona after much effort. “You killed Voldemort?” Jona asked in a small, disbelieving voice. The entire end of the table fell silent.

“Yes,” Harry said. Ten sets of awestruck eyes stared unblinking at him.

“In the castle here, right?” A girl two down on the bench asked.

“Right out there,” Harry pointed out the main doors to the Hall. “You walked past the spot.”

“Hey, are they putting a plaque in that spot?” Ron asked excitedly.

“Merlin, I hope not,” Harry returned.

“You should have seen it,” Colin said in a low voice. “Harry hit him with a Killing Curse and he flickered green and just crumpled!”

Harry looked down at his hands. “Not something you want to do to someone unless you absolutely have to.”

Colin banked his excitement. “Well, of course. And you did something to him before that. He wasn’t fighting back.”

“What did you do?” The pigtailed girl asked in a whisper.

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” Harry said to her, as if that were the end of it.

“Awwww,” many of the new students and some of the older ones complained.

Harry yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Pass the pumpkin juice, Hermione.”

“You aren’t going to say?” someone exclaimed.

Harry drank half of his juice and looked at their eager faces. He had to be honest with himself and admit that he didn’t like remembering. It made him raw all over again to do so. “I attacked him with my mind,” Harry said. “I didn’t use a spell, until the end.”

“Whoa,” someone whispered low and long.

“How did you get into his head?” Jona asked in horror, although he seemed to be coming out of his shell.

Harry, feeling a little annoyed with their worshipfulness, said darkly, “I always had been. He was always putting visions in my head, especially while I was sleeping. I turned it around on him that day—went after him.” He glanced around to survey the effects of that statement. Many of the students appeared to have stopped breathing as they stared at him.

“Didn’t they try to stop that from happening?” Colin asked him. This was news to him as well.

Hermione cut in. “Occlumency lessons. Poor Harry.” She shook her head.

“They did help in the end,” Harry pointed out and stifled yet another yawn.

Someone leaned in behind him suddenly. “Not sleeping well, Harry?” Snape asked in his ear.

Harry looked up at him and gestured with his finger for him to come close again. “I was up late making a welcome banner for the common room,” Harry explained.

Snape straightened and looked at him closely as if assessing the truth of that. Harry shrugged. The professor’s gaze then flickered over the First Years with a look of dark disdain. “Ten new Gryffindors. Just what we need,” he sneered in high sarcasm and, with a final glare at them, stalked off.

“Who was that?” Maybella asked in concern.

Harry suppressed his grin. “Professor Snape,” he replied, “the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.”

“What!” Ron exploded, then put his head in his hands. “Oh no! He isn’t teaching Potions anymore. And I wanted to take Defense.”

“Is that Greer up there?” Hermione asked.

Harry looked where she pointed. “Yes.”

“Any good?”

“I got off on the wrong foot with her, but she seems okay.”

“The text didn’t look that tough.”

The Gryffindor First Years were tracking Snape as he glided out of the hall. “We have to take Defense, right?” someone asked.

“Yes, it is required for first through fifth,” Harry replied. “You don’t need to worry. The Defense teachers always try to kill me, not anyone else. I’m hopeful this year though.” He shrugged, enjoying their confused horror.

Ron stood up as well. “I’m not,” he whined. “Maybe I can drop out now.” Hermione slugged him on the arm. “Professor Snape isn’t that bad,” she said, making Harry feel better.

“I still remember his comment about your teeth,” Ron pointed out.

“Well, there is that.”

“See you all around,” Harry said to the First Years with a little wave, smiling through his frown.

Out in the Entrance Hall Hermione asked, “What did Professor Snape want anyway?”

Harry waved her off. “We’ve had an ongoing conversation about something.”

“You are having regular conversations with Snape?” Ron asked, sounding sickened.

“Yes,” Harry said flatly. “Try hanging around here for the summer. I needed someone to talk to.”

“Stay with us!” Ron said shrilly.

“I wanted to,” Harry snapped, remembering the beginning of the summer when that sounded like heaven. Someone was tugging on his sleeve, but he was feeling too angry at Ron to pay attention to it. “I had four Death Eaters and Voldemort’s pet snake to deal with as it was. You really wanted me to put your family at risk?” he asked hotly. Ron didn’t immediately find a reply. Harry looked down at Maybella’s strained expression as she stood clutching his sleeve. “Sorry, Maybella,” he said. “We shouldn’t be arguing here.”

“You didn’t tell us about the Death Eaters,” Ron accused him.

“I wasn’t supposed to,” Harry replied in defeat, tapping himself on the head with his fist.

“So those Death Eaters the Ministry touted capturing. You did that?”

“Not alone,” Harry said and too late realized his mistake.

“Who helped you?”

Harry hesitated, an ache forming in his chest. “Tonks and some other Ministry Aurors showed up,” he hedged and felt very bad for it for many reasons. Maybella released his sleeve, so Harry looked down at her and loosely grasped her shoulder as she started to step back, apparently overwhelmed by his tirade. “Did you want something?” he asked her gently.

After a long pause, she asked, “Where?”

Harry blinked at her. “Oh, you mean Voldemort. Not the four Death Eaters.” Harry stepped over to the spot and pointed at the stone floor. “Right here, I think. It was morning, which makes the hall look a little different.” He glanced over at her and the other fifty students piled in the doorways watching.

“There were a lot of Death Eaters here too,” Ron supplied.

“True. Ron was right in front,” Harry said to Maybella. “He and Hermione.” The students’ heads all turned. “So, Ron, how many Death Eaters were there?”

“I didn’t want to count.”

“Twenty-two,” Hermione said.

“Gloating, Potter?” Malfoy said as he pushed his way out the door and stepped over. He was a good five inches taller than Harry now.

“You better believe it,” Harry said. The students chuckled.

“Just you wait, Potter,” Malfoy said in a low voice.

“That’s exactly what your father said. Right after I put a binding curse on him so the Ministry could haul him back to Azkaban.”

Malfoy took a step back and sneered harder. “You better be ready to duel in class tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, I am,” Harry said with a sly smile.

Malfoy lost his. “My father said you were playing at something. We’ll see how long that lasts now that I’m back.”

Harry had to work hard not to burst out laughing. He shook his head as he stepped away and his friends followed. “See you in class,” he said sweetly to Malfoy. He gave the other gaping students a smile before turning to walk up the stairs.

Ron had to be dragged to Defense class the next morning. He hunched far down in his seat between Harry and Hermione. Snape strolled in on the hour and looked them all over. “Well, some of you that I had thought I was well rid of,” he stared pointedly at Ron and then Neville, “I seem to have back again. A side-effect I had not considered, I admit, when I asked to teach this subject.” He picked up the class list and glanced at it. “Well, one cannot have everything,” he breathed.

He tossed the list aside on the front table and unrolled another parchment. “As all but the least astute of you know, this is Defense Against the Dark Arts. It is optional. If you do not intend to work hard, you should not be here right now. This class is for those who intend to take the Defense N.E.W.T. at the end of this year. I will expect everyone to do extraordinarily well on it should they stay.”

His eyes took in the silent room again before he looked over the other parchment. “These. Are. Notes left by your previous instructor, Mr. Grey. He felt obliged to…warn, I suppose one could say, the incoming teacher about certain students.” Reading now, Snape went on, “Mr. Weasley, he states, is the most accident-prone student he has ever taught. Ms. Patil cannot demonstrate a spell without giggling first. Mr. Potter, he writes…” Snape glanced up at this point with a scolding look. “Is arrogant, presumptuous to the point of distraction, and apparently feels he should be teaching the class.”

Harry winced a little, but held Snape’s gaze. When Snape started rolling up the parchment, Harry raised his hand.

With a raised chin Snape prompted, “Yes, Mr. Potter?”

“There are no notes about…students from any of the other houses?” He had almost said Slytherins, but then thought better.

While continuing to roll the parchment tightly, Snape replied, “I believe it says Ms. Abbot shows promise, but she is unable to focus.”

Hannah, who had been gazing out the window at the clouds, snapped her head around at that, eliciting a chuckle from the class.

“Other questions, Mr. Potter?” Snape asked with an unusual underlying tone. No one else seemed to hear it.

Ron raised his hand. When Snape’s questioning look turned his way, he said, “Professor Grey didn’t like Harry and me. His comments are unfair.”

“He wasn’t as bad as some of the others,” Hermione countered. “He didn’t try to kill Harry, for example.”

“Yes, he did,” Ron retorted. Harry slapped him on the arm to shut him up.

Snape stepped to the edge of the platform. “Explain that, Mr. Weasley,” he snapped.

Ron’s mouth fell open and he hesitated with a drawn-out, “Aaaah…”

With a frown and a huff Harry bailed his friend out. “He got really angry one day and challenged me to a duel. Which we had, just inside the Forbidden Forest. I don’t think he was trying to really do me in though. The spell Ron is thinking of was just some kind of variant of a Blasting Curse that I ducked.”

“Yeah, but the tree behind you just exploded!” Ron insisted and then slapped himself on the forehead and muttered, “Shit.”

With another dirty look at his friend, Harry went on. “Basically, I beat him easily after his first offensive spell and he left it go after that.”

Snape looked dangerous. “I presume that you didn’t inform anyone else of this, Mr. Potter?”

“No, sir,” he admitted quietly.

“Stupid boy,” Snape muttered and went back to the table, where he put the comment parchment back down, crumpled from his hand gripping it.

“I’d think you’d be happy to hear that, sir,” Ron said accusingly.

“Ron,” Harry said in a low tone as he grabbed his friend’s sleeve. Snape was giving Ron a dangerously grim look, making Harry’s heart race a little. “You are not starting out the term well at all here.” Ron pulled his arm out of reach and refused to look at his friend. Harry sat back with a sigh and crossed his arms.

“Stay after, Mr. Potter,” Snape said as he flipped through his copy of the textbook.

“Yes, sir.”

Snape smoothly moved on, “I will assume you have all read chapter one. Who can tell me the six crippling curses?”

At the end of class, Harry hung back. Hermione dragged Ron out before he could try to stay after as well. Malfoy stalled too but a glare from the teacher sent him out.

When they were alone, Snape said, “Mr. Weasley needs to learn to think before he speaks.”

“Tell me about it. He has the First Years terrified of me.”

“That isn’t far from awestruck, in any event,” Snape said as he stepped off the platform and over to Harry.

Harry met his gaze before dropping his again. He felt worse about not telling his friends the truth. He waited for Snape to say something about that. Instead, his teacher, after a long pause, said, “I am going to report the incident, so expect to get called to the headmaster’s office to explain it.”

“You think it’s worth bothering Dumbledore for?” Harry said. “Grey isn’t teaching here anymore.”

“It will undoubtedly be Professor McGonagall who questions you. This is for you to know, only, for the moment, but you are going to be assigned a new Head of House, probably at the end of the month. McGonagall is taking over more of the headmaster duties and does not have time for both.”

At Harry’s down expression, Snape said, “It is inevitable, I am afraid.”

Harry swallowed hard. “Do you think it’s all right if I go up and visit Dumbledore sometimes?”

“I am quite certain that he would rather welcome that,” Snape said. “The password is Roverandom.” Snape stepped back to the front table. “Do you need a note for your next class?”

Harry hoisted his book bag. “No. It’s Transfiguration.” He gave Snape a sly smile and departed.

“Sorry, Professor,” Harry said as he stepped into the Transfiguration classroom in the middle of the roll call. “Professor Snape kept me after.”

McGonagall lowered her parchment and studied him over her glasses. “I am going to assume your are not in trouble already…a new record?”

Harry paused in setting his bag down on the floor under the table. “Uh…” At McGonagall’s disapproving look, Harry explained, “It is for something that happened last year.” He glared at Ron. “Something someone should have kept their mouth shut about. I’ve been informed, ma’am, that I will be explaining it to you at some point.”

“In my copious spare time, Mr. Potter,” she breathed.

“It wasn’t Harry’s fault,” Ron muttered.

“Ron,” Harry and Hermione said in unison. “You’ve helped too much already today,” Harry finished softly.

At the end of Transfiguration, McGonagall stepped over to Harry as they collected up the crickets they had been transforming into crockery. “Stay after, Mr. Potter. I would rather miss lunch then add anything to my schedule at this point.”

“Yes, Professor,” Harry said.

The door fell closed behind the last student. Harry hefted his bag onto the table and left it there. McGonagall was urging the crickets into a large, screened-in cage full of grass clippings and a ragged and skeletal potted fern. He helped her empty out the boxes, sometimes having to prod the clingy black insects from the inside of the lid.

“I have to admit, Harry, that I haven’t managed to locate the right paperwork to record Severus’ conflict of interest, shall we say. Nor have I had to time to determine which policy applies to punishment.” She shut the cage and hovered it to the top shelf. “If he sent you to me, he presumably doesn’t want to punish you for it himself—”

“You misunderstand, ma’am. He just said he wanted it reported.”

She stopped straightening things up and asked, “Wanted what reported?”

Harry swallowed hard and said, “Professor Grey’s attempt on my life, ma’am.”

McGonagall’s eyes lifted to the ceiling. “You had to have a full set, didn’t you, Harry?”

“I personally don’t count the incident with Remus Lupin,” Harry said defensively as he crossed his arms.

“Everyone else does,” she said. “So what happened?”

Harry summarized the events, pointing out that Ron thought the spell more violent than he did.

“What night was this? Do you remember the date?”

“I could figure it out from my study notes, I remember what he was trying to teach that week.”

“Figure it out. Write out what happened. Sign it. Have Ron read it and sign it. Give that to me. It would help me a lot.” She picked up her books from the front desk. “I admit it is much simpler now that he isn’t here to be kicked out. If you can at all help it, don’t get into a duel with another teacher for at least the next few months,” she said stridently.

Harry followed her toward the door. “What about Severus?”

She put her hand on the door handle and gave him a soft grin. “You are on your own there, Mr. Potter.”

“I am all right with that, Professor.” Harry grinned back.

Potions with Greer wasn’t the same as with Snape. She lectured more slowly as though they weren’t very intelligent, leaving them rushed to brew before the end of the class, unless it was double-Potions. Hermione didn’t seem to like or dislike Greer, which was okay with Harry. The other students, except the Slytherins, made a show of making her feel welcome, giving her little presents for the first week. While Harry thought it inexplicable, it did have the advantage of improving her mood.

She hadn’t lost her impression that he was a little dim. Even by the end of the first week, she still seemed surprised when he turned in a successful potion at the end of class. Harry found this more annoying than it really deserved.

“Greer’s okay,” Hermione commented on the way out of class.

“She thinks I’m an idiot,” Harry griped.

“Well, you do keep exceeding her expectations at least,” she replied brightly.

“Yeah. Great.”

Harry enjoyed Defense the way Snape taught it. He seemed less concerned with their safety than previous teachers, or maybe it was just that they were Seventh Years now and expected to figure things out and control what they were doing. This meant they were allowed to try rather loud, bright, dangerous spells on occasion, sometimes even on each other. The added benefit of this was that Hermione didn’t dominate the way she did in most other classes, since she didn’t necessarily want to make as much noise as was required by a particular spell. He and Neville and most of the other boys found the noise half of the fun of things and shouted the spells energetically. Most, but not all, of the girls remained more demur and staid as they practiced and demonstrated. Harry thought they were probably learning better spell control than the boys were.

“Like this,” Neville said to Justin while drawing a tiny rapid corkscrew in the air with his wand. A trail of shiny gold bled off from it and hovered. Snape was working with two of the other Hufflepuffs and Parkinson in the front, and had been for almost ten minutes. He glanced their way and then disregarded them.

Justin tried it a few times but he only got a gold sparkle or two. Hermione gave them a chastising look. “At least work on one of the spells from class, Harry,” she whispered.

Neville answered before Harry had a chance, “This one is good for an ice curse, which is coming up after this.”

“Is it?” Hermione asked with interest and leaned in to join them a bit, as did Ron.

From the front of the room, Snape cleared his throat. They all sat straight in their seats and waited more patiently for their fellow students to manage the assigned spells.

Finally the Hufflepuffs returned to their seats, looking worn by the extra effort they had been put to. Snape surveyed them before announcing, “Mr. Longbottom wishes to demonstrate a few counters to the next curse, I believe.”

Ron swallowed a smile as Neville slunk out of his seat and up to the platform opposite the teacher. Unlike in D.A., he stood a little slump-shouldered, but he had his wand up and ready.

Snape, looking unforgiving, said, “Mr. Longbottom will be demonstrating an Ororbis, correct?”

Neville nodded, obviously concentrating hard, but quickly adding, “Yes, sir.”

Snape sent an ice curse his way after a “Ready?” Neville’s arm was a blur as he drew a fast expanding spiral of gold ribbon in the air before him. As the curse arrived, tiny ice chips rained down onto the floor, not reaching him. The charm was strong enough that it hovered many seconds after the attack.

Snape waited for it to fade before saying, “And the heating charm from the assigned reading?”

“Yes, sir.”

When Snape cast at him, Neville performed both the heating charm on himself followed quickly by a fireball spell, which went off like a photographer’s flash. Snape lowered his wand. “Timing is usually considered too sensitive to use that counter against an ice curse,” he stated, apparently for the edification of the room. “Mr. Longbottom, however, managed to get the timing precisely correct, as surprising as that is. Although it did not leave him time for much of a heating charm as a backup. Take your seat,” he ordered Neville.

Neville lowered his wand and jumped off the platform. Harry could tell by Snape’s expression that his fellow student had earned a little of his grudging respect, but he doubted Neville realized this. Neville took his seat with a great sigh of relief.

As Harry left class, he glanced back to nod a goodbye and noticed Malfoy standing beside Snape’s desk with his book open as though to ask a question. His chin-length blond hair hung forward to frame his light eyes as he gave Harry a sly grin. Harry rolled his eyes in return and closed the door behind him.

“Ms. Granger, may I speak to you a moment?” Professor Greer asked as the students filed out at the end of class.

“Yes, ma’am.” Hermione waved Harry and Dean on and stepped to the front of the room.

“You are a very intelligent young lady, Ms. Granger. May I ask what career you plan to follow upon finishing school?”

“I haven’t decided, Professor, something in Muggle relations. I’m looking for something outside the Ministry if I can find it.”

“Why is that, dear?”

“They were too slow to admit that Voldemort was back. I haven’t forgiven them for that.”

“Dear me, you are a strident one, aren’t you?” As she spoke, she arranged the potions turned in by the students into a locked drawer of her desk. “You have been here for six years. Perhaps you can answer a few questions that have been bothering me?” Greer said this in an extra-friendly voice.

“I can try, ma’am.”

“The students seem very pleased to not have Professor Snape.”

Hermione frowned inwardly and hesitated. “He wasn’t the nicest Potions teacher, Professor. The Slytherins aren’t happy he’s gone. That’s why there are only two in the seventh-year class.”

“You have him for Defense though, still?”

“Yes, ma’am. I think he is happier teaching that.” Hermione shifted her book bag, wondering if she was out of line. Snape’s demeanor had improved, although she felt uneasy about voicing guesses as to why.

“Hm,” Greer muttered thoughtfully. “I’ve heard a few jokes about Parselmouths in this class, which is unexpected.” She hesitated, her voice sounding forced steady. “I realize it is a bit unthinkable, but is there someone in this school who speaks Parseltongue?”

Hermione laughed lightly. “Yes, of course.” She didn’t notice Greer’s alarm at this. “Harry Potter does. Everyone knows that.”

Greer’s expression went flat. Slowly, she said, “Really? That is very interesting. Thank you, dear. That is all.”

Hermione smiled helpfully and exited, failing to understand the quirky, dark, false smile the teacher responded with.

Saturday was the first chance Harry had to make his way to the second floor outside of class time. Snape was in his office marking essays. He greeted Harry relatively warmly, for Snape. Harry took a seat opposite the desk. “It will take me another hour to finish these,” Snape said.

“That’s okay,” Harry said. He pulled out his Transfiguration essay and worked on that.

Finally, Snape rolled the essays up into bundles by class and tied them. “How was your first week of seventh year?”

Harry finished the sentence he was writing out as he replied, “Fine.” He put his parchment and textbooks away. “The First Years are still terrified of me. And some of the other students as well who should know better. I’m not used to that yet and I can’t figure out how to get past it with them.”

“Does it matter?”

“It bothers me. I’m not scary or dangerous. They press themselves against the wall to let me pass in the corridor like I’m going to explode or go on a spelling spree. Ron just thinks it’s funny.” Harry waited for him to ask if he had told Ron and Hermione anything, which he hadn’t. Why the opportunity never seemed to arrive, he wasn’t certain. His dreading the moment of revelation might have something to do with it.

Instead, Snape opined levelly, “Give them time. They read those newspapers that you pass off as rubbish. People adore heroes and are slow to give them up.”

They had tea and talked for an hour, until Harry noticed the clock. “I have D.A.” He stood up.

“You are still holding that?” Snape asked in real surprise.

Harry pulled the Galleon from his pocket to check that he remembered the date and time correctly.

“What is that?” Snape asked.

Harry held the coin out. “Hermione created those for our meetings. The date and time are coded in the serial number with a Protean charm. We had to do that to avoid Umbridge.”

Snape handed it back. “Bright girl.”

“Too clever for her own good,” Harry quipped.

“One wonders what she sees in Mr. Weasley,” Snape commented idly as he placed the rolled essays into his satchel.

Harry hadn’t thought about it like that. He shrugged. “They’ve always liked each other.”

“Hm.”

“Gotta run.” At the door, he stopped. “Do you have time tomorrow?”

“Some. I will be brewing a few potions in the dungeon in the morning. Most weekends in fact.”

“I’ll try to come down,” Harry said brightly.

Sunday morning, Harry helped out in the dungeon for a little while, until Greer started hovering annoyingly. Harry begged off, not wanting to make trouble for Snape. As he headed back up the staircase, he realized that he was free to visit Dumbledore.

After the turning staircase bore him up to the office door, Harry knocked with an anticipation that made him realize he should have remembered to visit sooner. Dumbledore stood looking out the window behind the desk, his hands clasped behind his back. “Hello Harry,” he said, even before he turned.

“Good morning, sir,” Harry replied brightly. On the desk a model of the solar system was rotating and catching the light from the window each time around.

“Is there something on your mind, my boy, or are you just visiting?”

Harry took his eyes from the blue and green hollow orb with one white moon that represented the earth. “Just visiting.”

“Please. Have a seat.” Dumbledore invited him around the desk and conjured a pair of overstuffed chairs in a bright flowery pattern. From their seats they had a nice view of the lawn, part of the pitch and a vast expanse of forested hills. “You are doing very well, I hear.”

“We’ve barely had any assignments,” Harry pointed out.

“I don’t mean in your school works,” Dumbledore replied gently.

“Oh.” He took a deep breath. “I guess I am. Good to be able to go out if I want. No one seems to think Avery or Jugson is any threat.”

“The Ministry believes they will remain in hiding for a long while or leave the country. They were both considered by the Aurors and Professor Snape to be a bit of a drag, in fact, on Voldemort’s organization.”

Harry remembered seeing Voldemort brutally punish Avery in the graveyard. He had been a simpering wimp. Maybe Voldemort had kept him around just to take his anger out on. Harry fidgeted with his feet as a cloud moved over the sun. He thought about his inability to tell his friends about his new situation and fidgeted again.

“Something else is bothering you. Can I help?” Dumbledore asked.

Harry pulled his eyes from the view and looked at the headmaster. From this close distance, he looked much older than Harry remembered. It made Harry ache uneasily. He dropped his gaze and admitted, “I haven’t told Ron and Hermione about being adopted.”

“Hm.” Dumbledore sat back and steepled his fingers. “Would you like a butterbeer? I think I would.” He conjured two bottles and handed one over.

Harry sipped his: it was icy cold which was refreshing before the sun-soaked window.

“I assume you believe that they will disapprove,” Dumbledore said.

Harry nodded and felt the persistent knot in his stomach tightening up. He drank more butterbeer, but it didn’t loosen.

Dumbledore said gently, “In your place, I’d give them a chance. But then again, you know them better than I do. A true friend feels obliged to share his thoughts but in the end he, or she, should support you. I do believe they both are true friends to you.”

Harry’s stomach loosened a little.

A silence fell. Dumbledore finally interrupted it. “Quidditch starts soon. A full season for your last year. No Voldemort. No Dementors.”

“I’m looking forward to it, sir,” Harry said, more upbeat and glowing a little in anticipation.

Tuesday Potions gave Harry more of a flashback than he ever expected to get. As they took notes on the lecture, Greer called on him. She had a smile on her face that made him wonder with a jolt if she were actually Umbridge using a Polyjuice potion. It was a Nagini kind of smile.

“Tell me, Mr. Potter, what kind of caustic is shared by Beetlejubs and Bezoars?”

Harry blinked at her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hermione move in a way that made him think she didn’t know the answer either.

“Mr. Potter?” the teacher prompted with a acidic sweetness.

The question did remind him of something. Something from one of the other texts he had read the first few chapters of over the summer. He racked his memory. “Uh, Clian…Clyentate?” That wasn’t quite right.

“Wrong, Mr. Potter,” she announced airily, enormously pleased. Harry glanced at the other Gryffindors. All of them shrugged that they didn’t know, making Harry feel better.

Greer spent an inordinate amount of time hovering around his cauldron while they brewed. This didn’t bother Harry much. She couldn’t touch Snape for intimidation. He acted surprised to find her there when she finally did critique their potions.

“Perfect potion, Ms. Granger. Too much heat when you added the fly’s legs, Potter. You will get marked lower for that,” she said this happily as she strode on to the next bench, where the students suddenly stood straighter.

Harry glanced into Hermione’s cauldron, then into his. They didn’t look the least bit different. He shook his head.

At the end of class, Greer handed out essay assignments. This in itself was a little odd. She did it as they walked out the door. “Due Friday,” she said pleasantly. “That will leave your weekend free…” Several students actually thanked her for that.

Harry accepted his parchment slip and jammed it into his bag. Hermione read hers aloud as they walked, “Describe the uses of the seven kinds of bezoar-based potions. Doesn’t sound too bad.” She tucked it away in her book which she held in her hand since it didn’t look like it would fit in her bag.

As they mounted the stairs to the ground floor, Harry looked around for a place to pull her aside. His secret was starting to tangle his insides and looking at her calm visage as she thought ahead to the rest of the day, reassured him that, she of all people, would understand. As they approached the Entrance Hall, he espied the staff lounge as Professor Vector stepped out of it. It looked empty and, although the door had closed, he knew the password.

Harry gave a tug on Hermione’s arm. She turned to him with a questioning expression. “Um, there is something—” Harry started to say. His expression must have looked pained because her brow furrowed in concern.

“Hey there,” Ginny said, stepping over to them.

Harry looked over at her and at Ron ambling up behind his sister.

“Uh…” Hermione said.

“Lunch time,” Harry announced, stepping through them all to lead the way. The thought of Ron finding out produced a cold fear in Harry of being trapped. He was grateful that Hermione was clever enough not to prompt him more as they walked to their table.

As they sat at lunch, Hermione sent Harry questioning looks. He gave her small wry smiles in return. Ron asked her to read his essay for History and she occupied her self with that as she ate. Well, it’s like this, he imagined himself saying to her. Professor Snape, well, adopted me. It sounded odd, even to him, especially there in the Great Hall filled with his loudly chattering peers. Six years of history complicated things incredibly.

Harry ate a nice crispy panini as he watched his two friends. They were sitting very close together. They had leaned in over the essay so they were touching all along their sides. It occurred to Harry with a twinge that Hermione’s loyalty was almost certainly not first to him no matter the topic. And probably not Ron’s anymore either. He turned to the head table. Snape’s eyes narrowed for a half-second, a sign Harry knew that meant he was curious or even concerned. Harry managed a light smile for him before returning to his lunch.

After Care of Magical Creatures that afternoon, Harry went up to the second floor. Snape stood in the sitting room of his suite reading intently from a large book when Harry entered. Harry closed the door to the office and waited for Snape to put down the hand he had raised for silence. Snape’s lips moved as he recited something from the text, making Harry curious. At the end of the page, he put his hand down and looked up in question.

“This is quick,” Harry assured him, glancing upside-down at the detailed page of curse applications Snape had open. “Do you have those other seventh-year Potions texts?”

Snape’s brow went up. He pointed to a bookshelf in the corner of his personal bookshelves. Harry went over and crouched to look on the bottom shelf, the only shelf that held books with textbook-like bindings. “What is this other one?” Harry asked of a strangely tall and narrow, thick volume titled Potions Compendym.

“You may borrow that as well, should you wish to. May I ask why you feel you need them?”

Harry sighed. “Greer asked me today what caustic Beetlejubs and Bezoars have in common. I almost remembered,” he said in frustration. “It was in this one.” He set the books on the corner of the desk and pulled out a blue-covered one. He flipped it open. “Catalyndate. I was close.”

“It was not in your regular reading, I assume.”

“No. It was not.” Harry opened his bag to fit the books in. He pulled out the parchment slip with his essay assignment to keep it from getting crumpled. He glanced at it and froze with a growl. It was a different topic than Hermione’s—a much harder one.

“Something the matter?” Snape asked mildly as he flipped through the volume in front of him.

“Yes, but I’ll handle it.” He pocketed the parchment and loaded the books into his bag. “I’ll take this one too,” he said and pulled the compendium from the shelf. It barely fit in lying sideways on top. He shook his head, thinking that the assignment was due on Friday to make it hard for him to get help. As he reached the door, he said, “I’ll have to see you later, sir. I have a lot to do.”

Harry worked every spare minute on his Potions essay, neglecting his other class assignments. On Thursday night as they sat studying, he asked Hermione, “Can you read over my essay for tomorrow?”

Hermione wiped her fingers from the biscuit she had been eating and accepted his rolled parchment. “This is long, Harry,” she observed as she unfurled the top of it. After she read the first part, she said, “What is this?”

Harry, holding out his assignment slip, said, “I received a different assignment than everyone else.”

In disbelief Hermione looked at his slip. “Compare and contrast the three major brewing techniques of heat-simmer, brew-ferment, and flash. Include detailed cases where one is superior to another and explain why. Harry this is nuts. This isn’t even a N.E.W.T. essay. No wonder you’ve had all of those other books out.”

“Snape loaned them to me.”

“He did?” she asked in surprise. “Didn’t he insist you tell him why you needed them?” She picked up the compendium. “Wow, this is hard to find. I’m surprised he trusted you with it.”

Harry blinked at that series of confused assertions. He couldn’t imagine Snape withholding books from him, of all things. “I didn’t tell him why. I didn’t want to sound like I was whining about another teacher.” This at least was the truth. “Can you read it over?”

“I am not going to be much help, I don’t think, but I’ll try.” She read the first part of it. “Did you discuss crystallization differences?”

“No, I forgot about that.” Harry made a note to himself on one of the many parchments he had been recording his readings on. “See, you’re helping already.”

“Harry, why didn’t you complain in class yesterday?”

“She was waiting for me to. Like I’d give her the satisfaction.”

“She shouldn’t have done this. And you’re too accustomed to hating the Potions teacher, that’s for certain,” she commented as she read. “Boy, this is long.” She unfurled it all the way. “You have declared war right back, I see.”

Harry grinned.

In Potions the next day, Harry actually went so far as to use one of his old Occlusion exercises to keep his expression even as he fished out his essay and handed it forward. The student in front of him, Justin, weighed it in his hand and gave him a questioning glance. Harry just shrugged as though it were nothing. Surreptitiously, he watched as Greer glanced at a few of the essays as they came to the front, including his. But her reaction was to smile a bit more to herself, which confused him.

Deathly tired of the subject of Potions, but having no choice, Harry took out his quill and began taking notes.

After Potions they had no afternoon classes that day, so they went out on the lawn and relaxed in the sunshine.

“Greer didn’t say anything,” Hermione said in disbelief.

“You turned in that monster essay and she didn’t make anything of it?” Ron asked.

Harry shrugged. “I have no idea what she is up to. Even Snape never stooped that low. Exactly.”

Hermione said, “No, he just didn’t mark your potions at all sometimes. Dropped them on the floor, for example.”

“Actually, he said he did mark them,” Harry said.

“When did he say that?” she asked.

“Over the summer I got mad and accused him of it in front of McGonagall. It was pretty funny the way she laid into him.” Harry didn’t explain that Snape had gone on to point out a bit angrily that Harry should have realized a show was being put on for Malfoy, Nott, and company.

“Wow,” Ron said. “Wish I’d been there to see that.”

It was a Hogsmeade weekend. Harry had a sense that Ron and Hermione wanted to spend time together, alone. He sent them on without him, saying he wanted to work on D.A. spells while it was quiet. In reality it was a good opportunity to spend time with his guardian without an excuse. Last weekend, he had told his friends he had been with Dumbledore longer than he really had.

Snape wasn’t in his office. Harry went down to the dungeon and found him in the corridor, ferrying extra cauldrons from the classroom. “Are you here to help?” his guardian asked.

“If you want help.”

“Yes, of course.” He walked Harry patiently through the currently brewing potions and the instructions for each, which were placed beneath them on the shelf. “If you will handle these four for the next fifteen minutes, I will start another one.” He set the two empty cauldrons up on stands as Harry quickly reviewed the instructions for the ones he had been assigned. The next twenty minutes was a blur of hurried stirring and ingredient adding.

“Holding it together there, Harry?” Snape asked at one point.

“Yes, Severus, I am,” Harry said, a little put out at being doubted. He stirred two cauldrons at once before turning the burner up on one of them, wishing for a third hand, then wondering if there were a spell for one.

Once the other two cauldrons were simmering, Snape checked Harry’s work. He made an ingredient adjustment on one of them and then nodded. “They can simmer now. Thank you for assisting,” Snape said as he closed the lids on the prepped ingredient jars and put them away in a small cabinet.

“If it is the only way to spend time with you…” Harry said as he read through the corresponding discussion for one of the potions.

“It isn’t the only way. Shall we go up to my rooms and have lunch in?”

Harry put the book back on the shelf. “I’d like that.”

Hermione and Ron returned just before curfew, smiling and laughing. Harry forced down his feeling of being left out as he met them in the Entrance Hall. “Hey, Harry, ” Ron called and waved, his cheeks a little red from the sun.

“We just ate,” Hermione explained when Harry gestured for them to go into the Hall.

“All right,” Harry managed levelly.

“We could do second pudding,” Ron suggested.

“No. We couldn’t,” Hermione corrected him.

“See you later,” Harry said and joined the stream of students going in. He sat with Ginny, Neville, and Colin.

As the plates of food appeared, Justin stopped beside them and said, “Hermione told us Greer gave you an essay assignment ten times harder than the rest of us and that was why she handed them out rather than just telling us the topic.”

“Looks that way. I did finish it,” Harry said with a grin.

“That’s not right. You should have complained,” he said, sounding like he was willing to take on some of the unfairness of it.

“I’m sure that’s what she wanted me to do,” Harry said. Justin shrugged and stepped over to the next table. Harry took a glance at the head table, Greer had her eyes narrowed at him all right. “I don’t know what her problem is, but I’m not giving in,” he said quietly.

Pointing at him with her fork, Ginny said, “Harry, I think you like being persecuted.”

Harry’s lips cocked sideways. “I did have fun working on that essay even though it was wicked hard.”

“Where are Ron and Hermione?” Ginny asked.

In a high pitched mimic of Hermione, Harry said, “We ate already in Hogsmeade and we’re soooo tired.”

Ginny laughed. “Oh yeah. I can see that. Getting serious, those two.”

“That’s why I split them up when we were fighting in the final battle,” Neville said in a falsely stern voice. “I thought, if they are side-by-side they might forget we’re fighting Voldemort.”

They all laughed.

When he finished his plate, and before he stood to leave, Harry took another peek at the head table—this time to look for Snape. Even through the hair that had fallen over his face, he could see Snape’s brows go up. Harry gave him a small smile. If he had glanced at Greer, he would have seen her eyes narrowing more at him.

Tuesday in Potions, Harry waited impatiently for his essay to be returned. Greer strode back to the front of the room without handing it back, even after everyone else got theirs. Hermione gave him a wide-eyed look. He raised his hand.

“Yes, Mr. Potter?” she drawled.

“I didn’t get my essay back, Professor,” Harry pointed out in the nicest voice he could manage.

“See me after class, Mr. Potter,” she said in a cold tone he didn’t recognize.

Harry made it through class and brewing, but just barely. Greer seemed downright predatory today as she stalked around the room. She was too chubby to slither the way Snape used to, but she still managed. Her long orange fingernails tapped on the bench tops as she circled. At Harry’s table, they all made faces of dismay at each other when her back was turned.

Finally the bell rang and everyone packed up and departed for lunch. Harry packed his book bag and left it on the bench.

“You wanted to see me, Professor?” Harry asked. She hadn’t looked up at him so he had been forced to walk up to her desk.

“Do you know the penalty for cheating in this school, Mr. Potter?”

Harry shrugged. “How does that matter, ma’am?”

Anger came through now. She had his essay in her hand, crumpled a bit. “Excessive assistance constitutes cheating, Mr. Potter,” she announced in a victorious tone.

“I didn’t get any help with that,” Harry argued, pointing at the parchment.

“Don’t lie to me. I can see right through you, my boy.”

“Right.” Harry said as he thought, you haven’t seen anything about seeing through people.

“Who helped you with this?” she demanded. “Or need I ask?”

“No one helped me with it,” Harry repeated.

She huffed. “We’ll see about that.” She came around her desk and headed for the door. “Follow me,” she ordered.

“Where are we going?”

“To see the headmaster. There are some other things he should be made aware of as well, I should think.” She sounded righteous, much like Aunt Petunia often did.

Harry, thinking of Dumbledore not needing an interruption of his quiet contemplation, said, “I don’t think it is worth bothering the headmaster for, ma’am. How about Professor McGonagall? She’s the deputy headmistress.”

They were going along the ground floor corridor now. “And your Head of House,” Greer countered smartly.

“She has always been very impartial.”

Even though his legs didn’t look any shorter than hers, Harry had to half-jog to keep up. She didn’t respond to his assertion. Harry was out of breath when they made it to the far side of the second floor. She gave the password and the gargoyle leapt aside. Harry protested again, “I really don’t think—”

She grabbed the collar of his robe and dragged him into the turning staircase. Harry was too startled to do more than regain his balance. Same as with Mulciber, she had him beat easily if he couldn’t use magic. At the top, Greer barely waited for an invitation to her knock before opening the door. She pulled Harry in behind her, only letting go when they stood before the headmaster’s desk.

Dumbledore glanced calmly up at them. He sat writing a letter with his glasses perched on his nose.

“Headmaster Dumbledore,” Greer began pompously, “I have a number of problems with this student to discuss with you.”

Dumbledore peered at Harry as the latter straightened his robes from having his collar twisted. “Good morning, Harry,” Dumbledore intoned.

“Good morning, Albus,” Harry greeted him back. Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled at that. Greer seemed rather startled by it, to Harry’s no small satisfaction.

“Now, Gertie, what is your concern?” Dumbledore asked as he put his quill aside, blotted, and rolled up the letter.

“First off, I must say this boy is treated far too casually and leniently by your staff.”

Dumbledore slipped his spectacles off and folded them slowly. “Well, you will have to forgive us for that, as we are very appreciative of having Voldemort gone.” She sniffed a bit doubtfully, making Dumbledore elaborate, “If you had been one of the ones who were duped completely and drawn away from the school just when the students needed us the most, and upon realizing this, imagined the absolute worst, only to return to find Mr. Potter here standing over Voldemort’s remains and the rest of his club students incarcerating his followers. We perhaps have gone a little soft on him. If we start to forget, we only need consider that the alternative outcome would have been utterly tragic.” He gave Harry an affectionate glance before he sat straighter and went on, “Nevertheless, if there is a problem to be addressed and it is within our power, we will by all means do so.” He favored her with a questioning expression.

Greer geared up her anger again as she pulled out Harry’s essay. “Mr. Potter is receiving undue assistance on his assignments.”

“I did not!”

“Harry,” Dumbledore said in a firm tone. “You will get your turn.”

Harry bit his lips as Greer went on. “I do not like my students receiving assistance on assignments that are used to determine a final grade. I have the records of his previous grades in Potions, they are marginal at best. It is not possible that he is capable of the work he is turning in as his own, yet he persists in lying about getting help. I am especially disappointed that it is presumably another staff member who is giving him said assistance.”

She held out the essay, but Dumbledore waved it off.

Greer continued in a lower tone, “As well, I have observed what I believe to be an inappropriate relationship involving Mr. Potter and a member of your staff, which I am certain is outside the bounds of school regulations.”

Harry stared at her now, trying to catch up. He was starting to suspect that she wasn’t after him, but Snape. Dumbledore’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts. “Harry, do you have a response to that?”

Harry mentally backed up. “I haven’t had any more assistance on my assignments than normal. Hermione reads my essays over when she has time and notes things she thinks are wrong. She doesn’t say how to fix it, though, so I don’t consider it cheating and neither have any of the other teachers. I haven’t had any help from a teacher with any of my Potions essays.”

“Potter, you can’t honestly expect me to believe you wrote this!” she held the essay out to him.

“I did,” Harry insisted. “As to Professor Greer’s second allegation, I’m not sure what she’s referring to.”

“Your marks took a very interesting turn upward the last two months of the previous year, Mr. Potter.”

“I was studying harder.”

“Don’t play coy with me.” Her voice dropped even lower, unimaginably low, as she pointed at the door with his rolled up essay. “I saw you in my office last Saturday. I’m certain you didn’t know I was there.” Harry shook his head and thought fiercely back to the weekend brewing session while she leered happily at his discomfort.

“Harry?” Dumbledore prompted.

“I honestly don’t know what she is referring to, sir. I spent twenty minutes or so helping Professor Snape with some potions.”

“Potter,” she said as though he assumed she was stupid. “He had his hand on your back as he explained the potions to you, and he stood much closer than would ever be appropriate. In my experience, anyway.”

Harry gave her a studious look. He was a little embarrassed, mostly because he knew Snape would not want Dumbledore to hear this.

Dumbledore stood up and paced slowly behind his desk, rocking side to side more than walking, as though his joints were stiff. “Professor, if you will allow me to address these issues in the order of their seriousness.”

She became all prim again. “Of course, Headmaster.”

Dumbledore looked up at the ceiling as he spoke. “When I hired you to teach Potions, we both agreed that since you had not taught in seven years, and not so many classes at once, that it would be best if you were not also burdened with the duties of Potions Master.”

Flustered, Greer stammered, “Yes Professor Dumbledore, but—”

Dumbledore held up his hand to forestall her. Harry grinned and ducked his head. He really did love Dumbledore.

“If you have changed your mind or are feeling as though your territory is being invaded, you should have come to me to re-negotiate.”

“That…doesn’t have anything to do with this,” she insisted, gesturing at Harry with the parchment essay.

“Ah, but it does, I believe,” he countered kindly.

Greer’s mouth twisted to the side as she took that in.

“Harry, perhaps you should explain…” Dumbledore was giving him a look that Harry read as, see what happens when you keep things to yourself?

Harry sighed and said, “Professor Snape is my d— guardian.” Dumbledore gave him a sharp, amused look at that. “He adopted me,” Harry added, a little rattled by his near slip.

After a long stare Greer breathed, “You aren’t for real.”

“I witnessed the papers myself,” the headmaster supplied. “Was there anything in what you saw that exceeded the bounds of a parent-child relationship?”

Harry rolled his eyes uneasily. Greer muttered in barely audible speech, “No, not at all.”

Dumbledore retook his seat. “As to the allegations of cheating, I suggest you ask Professor Snape how much, if any, help he provided on the assignment. Good day, Professor,” he said dismissively. With a smile he said more brightly, “Good day, Harry.”

At the bottom of the tower, Greer thrust the rolled parchment at him. “Get it signed off by Professor Snape that you didn’t receive any help. Then I’ll mark it.” She stalked off.

Harry used a flattening charm on his essay to take out the worst of the wrinkles, then re-rolled it carefully. His bag was still in the dungeon. He would have to retrieve it before lunch ended. He went around the corner just in case Snape was in his office. He wasn’t but the Defense classroom door was open. A peek inside verified that Snape was cleaning up from the previous class. Bits of wood disappeared from the floor with a Banishing Charm as Harry stepped in and closed the door.

“Harry,” Snape greeted him when he looked up.

“I need to have you sign something,” Harry said. “And to warn you that Greer has it in for you.”

“I am already aware of that,” Snape commented easily as Harry stepped over to him.

“Did you know she was in her office last Saturday?” Harry asked. Snape shook his head with a thoughtful expression. He took the parchment Harry held out as he explained in annoyance, “She insists that you sign that you didn’t help with it. Otherwise she won’t mark it.” Harry watched in mild trepidation as Snape’s eyes scanned the first section of the essay. “She dragged me up to Dumbledore’s office just now to accuse me of cheating,” he said to fill the ongoing silence. When Snape went on reading, Harry, with growing concern, insisted, “You don’t need to mark it too—just sign it.”

“You did a fine job on this,” Snape said. “Greer gives remarkably difficult essay assignments and could not have given you much time to finish this as it is only the third week of classes.” He carried the essay, while still reading, over to the desk to pull out a quill. “Reyfrem is not a reagent,” he said.

Harry glanced over his shoulder. “I said that wrong. I was pretty tired when I wrote that part.”

“The entire class must be tired.”

“No one else got that assignment,” Harry said. “Everyone else had: ‘describe the seven kinds of bezoar-based potions’.”

Snape looked up at that with an intense expression. “And you didn’t complain?”

“I thought she was trying to get to me. I would have if I’d known she was trying to get to you, by giving me an assignment she was certain you’d have to help with.”

Snape quickly read over the rest of it. He pulled out his wand and obliterated the erroneous line. “Rewrite that and I’ll sign it,” he said, pushing the parchment over to Harry.

Harry laughed and shook his head. He crouched so he could write normally in the blank space and repaired the miswritten section. “I’m only doing this because I did know better, just didn’t write it out very well.”

“Of course, Harry,” Snape stated patronizingly. He took the parchment back and added a line across the entire bottom edge of Harry’s text and wrote just below it, No assistance provided, with his signature. As Harry rolled it up again, Snape said, “If I were you, I would insist it count as the mid-term.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. I am impressed, Harry. Makes me think I didn’t challenge you enough.”

“Oh, you did,” Harry strongly insisted, garnering a small smile from his guardian.

Essay in hand, Harry went back to the dungeon to collect his bag. The classroom was empty. He knocked on the office door and was told to enter.

“My assignment, Professor,” Harry said. He brought it up to the desk and set it there. She kept writing in her log book with her quill, her grey roots showing in her thin scalp. She waved him off without looking up. Harry turned and started back to the door. Peeved at her silent dismissal of things, he turned at the door and said, “Professor, if you think you know how to see through people, you should look up Legilimency in the library next time you’re there.”

She gave him a withering look. “Did I ask for your advice, Mr. Potter? I am quite certain I did not.”

“I’ll keep the second part of it to myself then, ma’am, which was listing the staff who know it. It is no matter to me. Good day, Professor,” Harry finished in a calm, level voice that he thought even Dumbledore would be proud of.

Breakfast was Harry’s favorite meal, usually. This particular morning, however, it wasn’t going as well. There was a lot more whispering and glances his way than normal. Much more. Students were passing around copies of what looked like the Prophet, and reading avidly. Harry tried not to look too alarmed by this as he reached for the honey.

Hermione was eating calmly and reading her own copy with her normal consumed expression. Harry resisted the powerful urge to jerk it out of her hands. Torturous, long minutes passed as he tried to eat, tried to listen to the whispering, and waited for the paper.

Justin swept in behind and hit him on the shoulder. “Hey, Harry,” he said meaningfully.

“Huh?” Harry asked him.

“You don’t have to explain,” Justin said in a false sympathy as he stepped to his table. Harry resisted glancing at the head table, but just barely.

Luna stopped by next. “Really,” she said, sounding disappointed in him.

“What?” Harry asked her. His uneven heartbeat was struggling with the notion that the reactions were just a little off from what he feared.

“Oh, this,” Hermione said, grabbing Harry’s attention. He swallowed and waited as she read something on the back page. She shook her head in confusion and with a dubious look, handed the paper over to Harry.

This reporter is hearing rumors that a certain wizard hero is in a family way. More to follow when verification can be obtained.

It was Skeeter’s gossip column on the back page. “Family way?” Harry asked aloud, not sure whether to laugh or cry. Everyone around him broke out laughing.

“Who’s the lucky girl, Harry?” Ginny asked suggestively, then flickered her eyelashes at him. They all giggled again.

“No one,” Harry snapped, tossing the paper back on the table. “Argh,” he breathed. Even Hermione could not resist laughing. Harry shook his head and finally managed to eat some of his cold breakfast. Skeeter was getting close though. He really didn’t know how much longer he had to work things out his own way, whatever that way was.

After Herbology that afternoon, Harry watched Ron’s and Hermione’s backs as they disappeared into the rose garden, engrossed in conversation. This left Harry free to visit his guardian. He had a question about his Potions reading as well that he would much rather ask of Snape.

In the second floor corridor, Harry waited outside the office door because Malfoy was inside. He looked to be having something explained to him, but it wasn’t something out of their class textbook.

“I expect to finish this one next week,” Malfoy was saying in his Best Boy voice. “Which one should I order to read next? This book refers to another by Brutus Brindlestiff. Do you know of it?”

Shit, Harry thought, what is Snape teaching him? He had a flash of the future: him as an Auror facing off with a Malfoy armed with spells Snape had taught him. While he waited, Harry’s shoulder tired, so he set his bag down beside the door. Malfoy noticed this and gave him that sly smile again. Harry leaned against the doorframe and waited patiently. Snape suggested a different book and gave Malfoy a slip with an address from which to obtain it.

The boy slunk over to Harry. “Need extra help, Potter?” Malfoy asked snidely.

“No,” Harry replied in an almost friendly tone, refusing to be baited. They passed close in the doorway.

“Come in, Mr. Potter,” Snape said as he arranged a small stack of parchments on his desk. He glanced up at Malfoy and added, “and close the door.”

Harry froze at that and at the dark look Malfoy was now giving him. The scene Greer had caused in the headmaster’s office played through his mind. “Uh…” he started. Malfoy actually looked furious now as he glanced between them. Harry held the door open and said to the Slytherin boy. “What do you want, Malfoy?”

Malfoy’s pale eyes looked him over in silent, disapproving appraisal.

Harry stepped closer to him and dove in. “How about the truth?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Snape’s head come up sharply. He glanced that way. “Trust me,” Harry explained.

Snape rested his chin on the back of his fingers and considered them both. “Mr. Malfoy does know how to keep things to himself,” Snape stated in a oddly mild tone, leading Harry to wonder what he had on Malfoy. “Sit down, Harry. Mr. Malfoy, step in and close the door.”

After Harry took a seat, Snape sighed and considered him in consternation a moment. Harry gave him a shrug. “Potter has apparently seen something here that I did not,” Snape said. “Perhaps because you have been competing only against yourself, Mr. Malfoy, even though you did not recognize it. To save you further effort and…” Here he looked over at Harry in question. “…to address something Mr. Potter is concerned about, I should tell you that I have adopted Mr. Potter.”

Malfoy’s mouth fell open. “What?” he finally breathed after long seconds of empty expression. He spun on his heel and paced a bit, actually whimpering once as he turned. After a few times across the floor he stepped over to Harry. “No wonder I couldn’t bait you at all. It was taking all the fun out of it, frankly.”

Harry chuckled silently and grinned at the other boy. Malfoy made a noise of despair and put his hand over his eyes a bit theatrically, although Harry expected he meant it. Finally he put his arm down and said to his teacher, “Is that all, sir?” in a rather worn tone.

Snape, fighting a grin, replied, “Yes, Mr. Malfoy.”

At the door Malfoy stopped. “I couldn’t tell the House that, sir. I’m not that cruel,” he said before he left.

When the door closed, Snape gave Harry, who was still trying not to laugh, a questioning look. “I assume there was reason for that.”

“There was,” Harry insisted. “Haven’t you noticed Greer is off your back?”

Snape raised a brow. “I did.”

Harry sighed. “Let’s just say that when she dragged me up to Dumbledore, she was pretty certain she had you fired.” He watched Snape take that in before he added, “I really didn’t feel like going through that again.” Harry smiled again and quipped happily, “It is fun to beat Malfoy at anything, though. And to make him miserable.”

“Was there something specific you wanted?” Snape asked slowly with a hint of dismay. “Or are you just visiting?”

Harry reached for his bag. “I did have a Potions question, if you don’t mind. But it’s mostly a visit.”

Snape accepted Harry’s notes with a long exhale that implied he was trying hard to be tolerant. Harry laughed lightly, not buying it.

“We have been given permission to do a few offensive spells,” Snape said at the beginning of lecture. “Potter, come up here.”

Harry, feeling a little trepidation, went up to the platform. As he faced his teacher, he had to remind himself that Snape was not going to do anything untoward.

“The first spell we are going to do today is the Mutushorum or Freezing Spell.”

Harry growled lightly in disapproval of being part of the demonstration, causing many of the students to laugh.

“The canceling incantation for this is Locoinitio,” Snape went on.

Hermione raised her hand. “Why is this a restricted spell?”

“Because if incanted with too much force it can cause damage by temporarily inhibiting breathing or even cardio function.”

Hermione slowly put her hand down. “Oh.” She glanced worriedly at Harry and sat back slowly in her chair.

“I would not be teaching you this spell if I didn’t think all of you capable of controlling the force of your spells,” Snape went on. He turned to Harry. “Are you ready, Potter?”

“No,” Harry said, causing more chuckling.

“I suspect your ego can handle it,” Snape said with a hint of derision.

Harry glanced at the ceiling. Snape raised his wand and paused just a moment before casting the spell. Without any forethought, Harry raised his wand as well. The Mutushorum scattered away. Snape crossed his arms and gave him a disapproving look.

“What was that?” Snape asked snidely.

“A Chrysanthemum Block?” Harry replied sheepishly.

“Are you asking me or telling me?” Snape demanded.

“Telling you, sir. I can’t just stand here and be hit,” Harry complained. Someone snorted.

“Give me your wand,” Snape said. When Harry gave him an appalled look. The teacher stepped over to him. “Potter,” he said threateningly.

Harry closed his eyes and held out his wand. Snape took it and pocketed it before stepping back to his previous spot. Harry rocked uneasily. Snape dropped his wand hand and said with some disgust, “Potter, if I had designs on harming you, I have certainly had ample opportunity to do so…unobserved.”

Harry gave him a dark look, but forced himself to relax. Snape aimed his wand and cast the spell at him. As promised, Harry couldn’t move. Snape came over to him, lecturing as he went, “We can see that he is still breathing. And blinking, you will note.”

Harry thrashed in his mind, trying to get free. His limbs refused to budge and straining made no difference, at all.

Snape went on, “Cast properly, no autonomous function should be disturbed.” He put a hand on Harry’s shoulder and pushed him backward. He tipped up like a statue. “Usually the target will fall over, but Mr. Potter was well balanced.” He pulled Harry back level, squeezing his shoulder before he released it.

“This is not an Imperio, although one could bring about the state you are seeing with a command under an Imperius Curse.” He paced back away. Harry really hoped this would be over soon. “The spell will wear off on its own in an hour or so. But it can be canceled anytime with Locoinitio.” Snape spelled him as he spoke. Harry hit the floor on his hands and knees, startled.

Snape said levelly, “Then there is that. The victim eventually relaxes since their voluntary muscles are not functional.” He watched Harry get to his feet slowly. “Ego still intact?” Snape asked him.

“Yes, sir,” Harry said evenly. “Can I have my wand back?”

Snape held it out, handle first. Harry came over and retrieved it before returning to his seat. He slouched back in his desk chair, feeling grumpy. Hermione shot him a sympathetic look.

“Everyone pair up. Be extremely careful trying out the spell, won’t you?”

Classes wound on. Ron stopped complaining as much about the long periods Harry and Hermione insisted they spend on assignments. Harry suspected that Ron’s first set of marks were more worrisome than usual. Ron fidgeted a lot as he worked though, annoying Harry who also would rather be doing loads of other things.

“Can we take a break?” Ron asked late one evening.

“Sure,” Hermione said. She put her things away with a sigh, indicating that she too was tired of studying.

“Should we go for a walk?” Ron asked.

Hermione stretched her neck. “Sounds good.”

They dropped their stuff in their respective dormitories and ducked out through the portrait hole. The corridors were quiet and dim, their footsteps loud and scuffing as they walked and shared minor gossip. As they turned a corner, they heard a gasp and quick footsteps padding one way, then another, so they cam toward them. Dennis Creevey came around the corner and stopped short upon seeing them. “Filch!” he gasped in horror.

Harry saw what had him panicked: the statue of Roland the Rider now sat upon something more like a possum or some member of the stoat family, rather than the usual armored steed. “Dennis, what are you doing?” Ron asked in his prefect voice.

“It was just a joke,” Dennis insisted in a frightened voice. “But I can’t get it to undo.”

Uneven footsteps sounded around the corner along with the malevolent voice of Filch. “I’ll get you this time you little scoundrel. Hang ya’ by your little toes I will…’til they pull out their boney little sockets.”

Dennis moved to hide behind them, which was relatively easy for Dennis.

Harry waved him away. “Go on,” he hissed. Dennis gave him a fawningly grateful look and ran off.

“I wouldn’t have done that,” Ron said. “He needs to learn not to be stupid.”

“Look who’s talking,” Hermione hissed.

Filch was upon them. Angry spittle flew at them as he gestured at the statue. “This is the last straw.”

“Sir,” Ron said, “we just found the statue like this. We don’t know who did it.”

“I’ve taken more than enough from the lot o’ you,” he said, bloodshot eyes roving over them. “Ya’ tryin’ to tell me it’s someone else. Who else is in this corridor, eh?”

“Look, we’re both prefects, and she’s head girl,” Ron insisted, gesturing at their badges. “If we knew who did it, we’d tell you.”

“I knows troublemakers when I see ’em and this one’s been sticking in my craw for a long time now.” He came right up to Harry as he spoke. He dropped his cat on the floor and grabbed the collar of Harry’s robe and dragged him down by the neck. Harry, thinking that this was happening far too often, struggled a bit but was outweighed as usual as he was dragged off.

Filch let out a stream of invectives as he towed Harry down to his office. “Restrictions, my arse,” he mumbled. “Treats ’em like a bunch a pansies, they does. Branding was the way in my day I’ll tell yer. Students alwa’s remember then nots to repeat the offense.” He tossed Harry bodily into his office. Harry, a little rattled, properly sat up in the visitor’s seat he had half-fallen over.

“Really, sir,” Ron said, stepping into the doorway. “Harry didn’t do anything.”

Filch ignored Ron. “It’s just occurring to me, Potter, that with the headmaster feeling less than his usual self and you having no parents to squawk, that there is no s’nificant limit to your punishment.” He grinned a yellow, toothy grin. With sadistic pleasure he said, “Well, now, yes, that does seem to be the case, doesn’t it?”

“Didn’t you hear? I got adopted over the summer.” Harry said, rubbing his neck where his collar had cut into it.

“Nice try, Harry,” Ron quipped. To Hermione, he said, “Maybe you should go get McGonagall.”

She looked from Ron to Harry with a bit of a helpless frown. “I will if we really need to. She isn’t usually very helpful in these situations.” She fingered her wand pocket, face furrowed.

“Let’s see now,” Filch murmured to himself. “If this is your seventh offense that means we can use the hot irons.” He chuckled and pulled out a long file drawer. “Tenth, we can turn the flesh eatin’ slugs on ya’. We must be at least up to that, Mr. Potter, hadn’t we? Works slow, they does. Nice and slow.” He chuckled again, showing half rotted teeth.

Harry swallowed hard despite himself and wondered, not for the first time, why Dumbledore kept Filch around. With long fingers that emerged from holes in his straggly grey gloves, Filch opened Harry’s file and frowned at the top sheet. Harry recognized it from the back as a smaller copy of the application to the Wizard Family Council. The caretaker pulled it out and studied it intently, his hand shaking as he held it up. With a violent motion he stuffed it back into the file and slapped it shut, making everyone jump.

“Let’s go up and see him then, eh?” he threatened, then said thoughtfully, “I trust he can dole out punishment—at least as well as I. Maybe better!”

With extra forced confidence Harry asked, “Whom do you think he’ll believe—you or me? Whom do you think he’ll be more angry with?”

Filch growled low and long, sounding like a cat would. He slapped the file into the drawer and closed it with a boom. “Get outa my sight. I catch you agin’ I don’t care who your dad is, you understand me?”

Harry jumped to his feet and led the way out the door, forced to part his friends who were standing, befuddled, in the doorway.

Two corridors and several staircases later, Hermione caught up with him. “Uh, Harry?” Harry, with intense trepidation, slowed so they could come abreast. “What was that?” she asked carefully.

Harry stopped, breathing deeply from more than the fast walking. “It’s what I said. I was adopted.”

They both gaped at him. “You didn’t tell us?” Hermione sputtered in disbelief.

“I didn’t think you’d understand,” Harry admitted. If anything, this made them gape more. Scrambling for a decent excuse, he said, “I’m seventeen, I assumed you would wonder what my problem was.”

“Harry,” Hermione said sharply. “We would never do that. I still need my parents, Ron still needs his, even though he fights with them half the time.”

“’Scuse me?” Ron said.

“Why would we think that?” Hermione asked. She sounded hurt.

“I…” Harry started then stopped. He felt really awful. “I just didn’t think you’d understand,” he repeated miserably. He started walking slowly down the empty corridor away from them. They immediately came beside him again.

“I wish you’d trusted us, but we’re really happy for you, Harry,” she insisted. “You’ve been through so much. You really need someone besides us. Really. If you thought we’d feel put out.”

“It isn’t that,” Harry said quietly. “It’s just…” He stopped and grimaced.

“What’s the problem?” Ron asked. “It isn’t like you’ve been adopted by Snape or something.”

Harry turned on him, his green eyes intense.

“Ron,” Hermione said in a warning tone, putting a hand out to hold him back.

“You didn’t?” Ron’s face went through a painful series of expressions. “You didn’t!” he blurted in horror

Figures at the end of the corridor by the staircases stopped at the sound of Ron’s voice. Hermione pushed Harry and Ron forward, hard. In rapid speech she said, “The Room of Requirement is just around the corner. Hold it in until we get there.”

The door to the room closed behind them and Ron was on Harry. “What the hell!?” he demanded. His voice died out quickly, sucked in by the padded walls and floor.

Harry just stared at him, leaning toward his friend challengingly even though he was having to look up an awful lot. Hermione took Ron’s arm. “Back off, Ron. You’re making a huge mistake.”

Ron shook her off. “That’s sick,” he said to Harry, spittle flying. “What the eff is wrong with you?”

A long pause ensued. Hermione took Ron’s arm more gently this time and gave Harry a pained look.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Harry said quietly, fiercely.

Hermione huffed in frustration. “Tell us what happened,” she suggested helpfully.

“What do you mean?” Harry asked.

“Well…it is a bit of a surprise,” she said.

Harry’s shoulders slumped. “You can’t understand. You have parents you’ve had all your life. You can’t possibly understand.”

“Let’s start with the basics,” Hermione said slowly, gesturing for them to calm down. “When did this happen?”

“August second. Severus put—”

“’Severus’, listen to you!” Ron exploded.

Harry fell back into a brooding silence where he glared at Ron.

“Ron, so help me. Shut up.” Hermione said. “You aren’t helping.”

“Helping?” Ron asked with a false laugh. “Aren’t you listening. He’s telling us he’s been adopted by Snape, the greasiest git in the wizarding world.”

A shell closed around Harry at that, isolating him from Ron and letting him see his old friend in a way he hadn’t before, as cruel and shallow. Hermione frowned as she watched this. “Harry, please,” she said, grabbing his arm instead of Ron’s. “You must admit that four, five months ago, this would have seemed very disturbing, even to you.”

Harry dropped his gaze. Of course he could remember that. “Yes.”

“All right then,” she said, strain easing from her voice. “So you understand where Ron is right now. Tell us what happened,” she pleaded. Harry’s face went pained as he tried to sort out a story for them. “You spent the summer here…” Hermione prompted.

“It started before that,” Harry said in a defeated voice. “The day Goyle and Crabbe grabbed me. Tortured me. I know it’ll be hard for you to believe, but Snape took care of me that night when we couldn’t return right away. No one has ever done that for me.” Harry turned sideways to them, shedding Hermione’s grip on him. “I didn’t like that exposed feeling afterwards. He was always so cruel before. I was terrified he was going to cut me down again and know really how to do it this time. But he never did. Instead, the night before the Quidditch match, when McGonagall turned Neville and me away, he asked me what I was dreaming, gave me a potion to sleep, even told me what was going on. He was the only one who bloody cared! The rest of them mean well enough but were too wrapped up in not feeling helpless or outrightly frightened to give me, really me, a few seconds of consideration.”

Harry paced around the soft floor of the plain, padded room. More reluctantly, he went on, “When I lost Sirius, I lost the only person I could ever turn to. I didn’t think I’d have another chance to have someone like that again. Dumbledore suggested it to Snape and a month later, he asked me.” He looked at each of them, pleading for understanding. “I’d spent half the summer around him at that point, helping brew potions for the stocks, helping him prep for Defense class.”

Harry swallowed hard and ignored Ron’s disgusted expression. “I said ‘yes’. It’s signed and filed with the Wizard Family Council. I spent the rest of the summer at our house in Shrewsthorpe.” Ron face became comically disgusted. Harry stepped right up to him. “You don’t know what it’s like to have no place to call home. You with your quaint wizard house and property large enough to play Quidditch on it.”

“You can’t be jealous of me?” Ron sputtered.

“Why not?” Harry shouted back at him, old pain finally finding an open outlet.

Ron gaped at him as though Harry had completely lost it. “You’re a nutter,” he said, not in a teasing way. “What are you saying, anyway? You went home with him?”

“Yes. He’s my guardian,” Harry insisted in the clipped words.

Ron spasmed. “I can’t take it,” he said. “You don’t let him touch you, do you?” he asked in horror.

Harry stared at him with absolutely no expression, then turned away and walked to the door.

“Harry,” Hermione said, intercepting him. “Just give him a chance to get used to the idea…”

“What? You expect me to spend time thinking about that?” Ron sputtered in complete disbelief.

Harry opened the door and stepped through it. The corridor was even darker than before, revealing only faint outlines of door frames and columns. And completely deserted. He strode to the staircases and stopped when he got there. The dormitory was not an escape, but he was in no mood to talk to Snape, either. He headed for the headmaster’s office instead. He had to talk to someone.

The lamps in the high headmaster’s tower were supplemented by candles, creating a cradle of light around the desk and nearby shelves. The mood of it calmed Harry just on its own. Dumbledore relaxed in a lounger, writing in a large book. “Come in, Harry,” he said welcomingly.

Harry shut the door quietly and stepped up to the desk. He couldn’t figure out what to say.

“What is it, my dear boy?” Dumbledore asked. He set the book aside and stood up. “Have a seat,” he insisted as he came around to the other side of the desk. Harry, his eyes heated now, took a seat in the visitor’s chair after Dumbledore waved it into an overstuffed armchair. “What is it?” Dumbledore asked again.

“I told Ron and Hermione,” Harry said quietly. Then after a pause. “Ron went berserk.” That knowledge felt like one of the torn strands of the Dementor’s web.

Dumbledore leaned back against the desk and clasped his hands before him. “Hmmm,” he murmured.

“I suppose I knew I’d be choosing between them,” Harry said. “He refuses to understand.”

“You may just need to give him time to absorb the idea,” Dumbledore suggested.

Harry scoffed.

“You couldn’t keep it secret forever.”

“No. And I felt badly about doing that at all, anyway. It wasn’t fair to Severus.”

“Give it a little time, Harry,” the headmaster stated sagely. “I still believe Mr. Weasley is a true friend to you.”

Harry frowned and thought, not anymore. He stood up. “Thank you, sir. I needed someone to talk to before I go and share a dormitory room with him.”

“Do you regret the adoption?” Dumbledore asked.

“No.”

“Then the rest was inevitable. Accept that and move on. Do not apologize for taking what you truly need. You have given everyone else too much to even consider it. This is your time now.”

Harry considered the old wizard for half a minute. This was a different attitude than he was used to from him. “Yes, sir. I’m realizing that.”

“Good luck, Harry.”

By the time Harry returned to the dormitory, Ron’s drapes were closed. Harry changed and crawled into his own bed and closed his own drapes. He lay awake for quite a while until he relented and used a small sip of potion to knock himself out.

The next morning, Ron changed in silence and left quickly. Neville watched him stalk from the room. “What’s up with him?” he asked Harry.

“We had a fight last night,” Harry said.

“What about?” Dean asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t feel like losing any more friends right now,” Harry said as he pulled on his shoes.

“Harry,” Neville chastised him. “You can’t lose friends that easily.”

“It took five minutes to lose him,” Harry pointed out. He thrust his robe over his head and jerked it straight in anger.

At breakfast Hermione separated them on the bench. As everyone settled in, Dumbledore stood and announced that the Head of Gryffindor house was being reassigned to Professor Sinistra. He smiled broadly as he said this, as though it was the best thing that could have befallen the school. Harry’s heart sank a little more as he heard it.

“What’s that about, then?” Parvati asked the table in general.

Harry replied quietly, “McGonagall is too busy with her Deputy Headmistress duties to be our Head of House anymore.” He and Hermione shared a look of understanding which was interrupted by breakfast appearing.

As he ate, Ron didn’t look as though he had relented at all. Ginny prodded him, sensing his mood. “Ask Harry what’s wrong,” he finally snapped at her. Ginny gave Harry a questioning look, to which he dropped his gaze to his plate.

“Disgusting,” Ron muttered a few minutes later.

Harry put his fork down and walked away. It wasn’t until he was at the door to the hall that he realized Ginny had followed him. She took the door from him and closed it behind her. A few students sitting on the marble staircase gave them a curious look. Harry met her gaze before turning and heading up. Ginny followed him, eventually pulling him into the empty Transfiguration classroom. “What happened with Ron?” she asked bluntly.

Harry ran his fingers over the worn, carved surface of the desk beside him. “I told Ron and Hermione something I should have told them sooner, but I was afraid they were going to react the way Ron did,” he confessed.

Ginny stared at him. “He gets unthinkingly vicious when he’s really upset. Charlie’s like that too.” She stepped a little closer. “I don’t suppose you’d tell me?”

Harry looked away.

“I promise not to behave like Ron.” When he didn’t respond, she said. “You have me really curious. Can I guess?”

“You are not going to guess this,” Harry said, glancing around the classroom. The mice were skittering around in their cage.

“You’re gay?”

Harry shook his head. “No.”

“Yeah, too obvious, and I would expect better from Ron, but then again, maybe not.”

“I have to get my books for class,” Harry pointed out, voice flat. He turned to the door.

She grabbed his arm. “Look, I owe you a lot. You’ve never given me a chance to make it up to you. I can help with Ron, especially if he is in the wrong, but frankly, even if you are.”

Harry stared into her bright eyes. He knew the knot in his middle would loosen if he told her. “Professor Snape adopted me.”

Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open as she read his face avidly as though looking for the truth in that. “Wow.” She exhaled hard and tilted her head to the side comically. “All right, that is really weird. Just as well I didn’t keep guessing. Can I ask why?”

“Because he wanted to,” Harry stated as though it were obvious. “I spent part of the summer at his house…met his parents.”

“We are talking about the same Snape…the teacher here?”

“Ginny…”

“Just checking. I thought you hated him, is all.” She finally released his arm and rubbed her cheeks in thought. “Are you happy with it?”

“Very.”

“Well, wow. What else matters?” she said, clearly to herself. “You’re much less moody now than you were at the end of last year. And frankly, he’s a lot less nasty. I guess it works both ways.” She glanced at the clock. “Going to take me a while to get over the idea, but I’ll do the best I can with Ron.”

“Thanks.”

As she reached the door, she said, “And I’ll leave it to you to tell anyone else, because absolutely no one would believe me anyway. Who else does know…and actually believes it?”

“McGonagall signed the papers as did Dumbledore. Hagrid knows. Ron and Hermione. Greer.” He skipped mentioning Malfoy.

“Thanks for trusting me,” Ginny said as she pulled the door open on the busy corridor.

“Thanks for believing I know what I’m doing.”

The next evening, Ginny sat with Colin and Margory working on assignments.

“Do you understand this section of the text?” Margory asked the two of them. She turned her book around and pointed.

Ginny took it and read it through. “I thought it meant a Binding Charm wasn’t like other object-producing spells because the bindings are not really physical.”

“That can’t be right, though,” Colin said. “It says at the beginning of the chapter that they are all examples of the Grafting class of spell, which are all physical.”

Margory frowned at her essay. “I don’t know how to write this out to dodge the issue and this is due tomorrow.”

“Why don’t we just go ask,” Ginny said. “I need a break anyway.”

“You mean as in, just go ask Professor Snape?” Colin suggested in horror.

“He is the teacher,” Ginny said.

“You go ask him, then,” Margory said.

“Watch my stuff.”

As Ginny stepped out of the library, Colin jumped up. “I’d better go with her. What if she never comes back?” With a hiss, Margory collected her things together as well and asked Dennis to watch it all.

Ginny looked at them both in surprise as they caught up to her. She walked with her textbook in her hand with her finger marking the page.

As she knocked on the Defense office door, she had to remind herself that this was Harry’s dad to keep from leaving, or at least backing up to the middle of the corridor. The door swung open suddenly. “Ms. Weasley?” Snape greeted her, sort of.

“We have a question about the reading, sir,” she said, proud of how casual it came out.

With the usual doomful curl of his hand, he gestured for them to enter. Colin jumped when the door boomed closed behind them. Ginny held out the book to the right page and pointed. She explained their confusion as he read it through.

He handed the book back and said, “Technically it isn’t a Grafting spell. The book is incorrect.” He glanced over them. “Any other issues?”

“Ron,” Ginny replied, meeting the teacher’s gaze steadily.

Snape tilted his head and considered her a long moment. “Yes, well, that is unfortunate.”

“I’m trying to work on him, but…” Ginny said, then shrugged in frustration.

“I do appreciate that, Ms. Weasley.” He gestured with his hand toward the door. “But I believe you have essays to finish?”

On the way to the staircases, Colin said, “That was really strange. He was almost nice. What were you two on about anyway?”

“I expect everyone will know soon enough. I said I wouldn’t say.”

Margory frowned at her. “And who is your best friend?” she teased in annoyance.

“Severus,” Dumbledore’s voice came from the back of his office.

“You asked to see me?” Snape said as he stepped in. He could see the robed figure through the graceful limbs of a delicately balanced mobile on the desk. He stepped around to where the headmaster sat by the tall windows. A wren alighted on the sill before being caught by the wind and flitting away again.

A large diary sat in Dumbledore’s lap and he held a white quill in his age-spotted hand. “This will be short, I know you have things to do,” he said.

Snape locked his hands behind his back. “It is no matter, Albus.”

“Harry was here a while ago,” Dumbledore said slowly. “I wanted to tell you how very impressed I am with you. He seems very healed, especially given the rift currently separating him and Mr. Weasley.”

Snape didn’t reply, just stared out at the evening sky and the dark forest.

Dumbledore shook his head, shifting his beard. “This was a task I feared greatly to leave undone, was certain I could not address it myself in my remaining time, and had no expectation, no matter how optimistic, that I would see it so well in hand. It eases my heart immeasurably to see Harry’s forgiveness. Even after lo these many years. It amazes me how calm and understanding humans become when their pain has been removed.”

He sighed and shuffled the things before him as though just remembering them. “Most of his anger was perfectly justified. We expected far too much from him in some instances and far too little in the rest.”

With slow movements, Dumbledore opened the wide cover of the diary and pulled out the chocolate frog card he was using as a page marker. “Look at him,” he said, holding it up for Snape. “The eyes of someone older even than myself.” He took the card back and held it up before himself. “But the Harry who visited not an hour ago had the eyes of a seventeen-year-old, as he should. You are to be commended for that.”

Snape still didn’t respond, even after a long silence.

“I think you were the best choice, Severus. You take nothing for granted, and I suspect neither does Harry. It makes for a good match.”

After a time Snape straightened and spoke, “My mother accused me of looking for atonement, my father of attempting to protect myself from the Ministry. Harry laughed at both of them.” He paused to consider his words. “I earned his faith somehow. I do not know quite how.”

“Harry is capable of fierce loyalty. Craves giving it, in fact. You earned it by being on his side when it mattered the most, and remaining there when you did not have to.”

“He accuses me of understanding him too well.”

“There is great power in that as well.” Dumbledore tucked the card back away and sighed. “I feared we had sacrificed his future for our own, but I see that has not come to pass. Thank you, Severus,” he said.

Snape bowed and, after a lengthy hesitation, departed.

With some practice, Harry managed a distant calm around Ron. He was generally polite to his friend and pretended the single syllable responses he received in return were sufficient. This seemed to ease the strain on Hermione a lot.

Ginny made a point of being extra nice when she was around, in fact, seemed to enjoy showing up her brother. “It’s his choice,” she would say when he was being difficult. Or, “He doesn’t go around mocking dad, does he?”

After D.A. one evening, Harry trapped Ron after everyone else departed. Ron seemed surprised to find the two of them alone. “I just have to say a few things,” Harry said.

“Yeah?” Ron retorted.

“For the first time in my life, I feel whole. Don’t try to cheat me out of that.”

Ron looked very taken aback. “I don’t—”

“And don’t make me choose between you and him. You aren’t going to like my choice, as hard as it is to say that.”

“I keep thinking you’re under an Imperius Curse. I even went and looked up how to tell.”

“So, am I?” Harry asked sarcastically.

“No. Doesn’t seem like it,” Ron conceded. “It still makes me nauseous to talk about this.” He really did look unwell.

“Then we won’t. I don’t need to.” With that, Harry left him standing alone in the Room of Requirement.

“Mr. Potter, come with me, please,” Professor McGonagall said the next Saturday morning as they sat working in the Library, rushing to finish things before Quidditch practice.

Harry closed his books and left them with Hermione. McGonagall’s perturbed expression reminded him of the one she had the night Ron and he flew the Ford Anglia to school. Musing about why he might be in trouble that deep, Harry followed in silence up to the headmaster’s office.

Pomfrey sat whispering with Sprout in the main part of the office. McGonagall led Harry past them into a side room. Harry stopped in the doorway of a bedroom he had never seen before. Dumbledore lay upon the bed, clothed in a bright blue dressing gown, covers pulled up to his waist.

“Harry,” he said with affection and patted the bed beside him. Harry, stunned and pained to find his headmaster bedridden, moved to his side. Dumbledore grasped Harry’s arm above the elbow. “My dear boy,” he said with emotion.

“How are you, sir?” Harry asked.

Dumbledore smiled kindly. “I have been better,” he replied amiably. “And how are you?” he asked pointedly.

“Pretty good, sir,” Harry admitted.

“Quidditch is going well, I assume?”

“Very good.” Harry then added in a burst of honesty, “Especially since Malfoy is too big to play Seeker, and he didn’t make the team in any other position.” McGonagall, standing by the door, rubbed her brow and appeared disapproving.

“Ah, not too much joy at another’s expense, my boy.”

“They’ll have the last laugh, I think,” Harry said. “If he didn’t make at least Beater, they must be pretty good this year.”

“It does all seem to even out in the end, Harry.” Dumbledore lifted a gnarled hand and pushed his student’s hair back, thumb brushing his distinct scar. “So good to be done with all that,” the old wizard intoned. His intense blue eyes peered into Harry’s. “So good,” he repeated softly.

“Yes, sir.”

Dumbledore put his hand behind Harry’s head and pulled him forward against his chest. “I am so very proud of you,” Dumbledore said. Harry gave in and rested his cheek and arm on the old wizard’s broad chest in something of a hug.

“Minerva,” Dumbledore said evenly. Harry would have sat up so as not to be talked over if a hand hadn’t been holding his head down. Professor McGonagall’s hem came into view as she stepped forward. “Take care of the school,” Dumbledore intoned.

Harry took a sharp breath and held it. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself not to make a sound. If he made any sound, it would only be a scream of denial. He heard McGonagall say, “Of course, Albus,” in a wavering voice. Hearing that only made it worse, forcing a tear out Harry’s eye. He held perfectly still. It seemed incredibly important to do so.

No one moved for long moments. Harry heard someone sniffle from the doorway. McGonagall went into motion then, taking Harry’s shoulders and pulling him to his feet. Harry held his eyes closed, trying desperately for control. She held him loosely, put her hand on the back of his head so his forehead rested on her shoulder.

“Pomona, get Severus, will you?” Her voice was back to normal. “Get everyone else for that matter.”

Short minutes later, Snape stepped through the unusually open headmaster’s office door. Sinistra, Flitwick, Vector and Pomfrey stood in the doorway to the bedroom. When he reached them, one glance at Dumbledore’s peaceful visage told him everything, and he shook his head. McGonagall gestured for him to come over to her side. Potter was clearly on the brink.

“The rest are on their way,” Sprout said as she came in behind him.

Snape stepped around the bed and turned his charge to him by the shoulders. Harry sniffled, eyes clenched shut. “Harry,” Snape said. He glanced down at the old headmaster and put an arm around the boy to ease him away. Harry bunched the front of Snape’s robe in one fist and held fast, head ducked down awkwardly.

“Let’s go into the other room,” Snape said gently.

As they stepped around the bed, Snape raised his gaze to the astounded ones of his colleagues. He graced each of them individually with a dark challenging glare in return. They watched with wide eyes from the bedroom doorway as Snape led Harry to a spot before the headmaster’s desk, kept one arm around him. Harry let his forehead rest on Snape’s shoulder. His shoulders heaved silently with bottled up grief.

“Come now,” Snape cajoled, “I don’t think Albus wanted anyone to react this way, least of all you.”

McGonagall stepped through the startled throng blocking the door, still paying little attention to the deceased. “Called him up here, in fact,” she pointed out.

She and Snape’s eyes locked. “Quite an honor, Harry,” Snape said. “Greatest wizard of our time wants you beside him—” He stopped and rubbed his forehead with his free hand. More evenly he asked McGonagall, “You have notified the Ministry?”

“Not yet.” She sighed and stepped over to the hearth.

Snape patted Harry on the back and waited for him to pull himself together. His brow furrowed as he saw a disconnected pair of shoes coming up the now fixed staircase. A gasp sounded and two sheepish faces appeared above an invisibility cloak.

“So it’s true then?” Hermione asked. Ron beside her looked like he deeply regretted his current location. His Adam’s apple bounced as he swallowed hard.

“Yes,” Snape replied as though challenging them to say anything more.

McGonagall returned to the front of the office, giving the two on the steps a disapproving glare. “Fudge and his retinue are on their way, so if you don’t want to be on the front page of the Prophet, I’d take him down.”

Harry lifted his head and gave his friends a pained look and sniffled. Snape looked him over and steered him by the arm. “Come on, Harry, you are a front page image to die for at the moment. Let’s get you out of harm’s way.” He untangled Harry from his robe and gave him a push to get moving. A quick toss of his arm got Ron and Hermione moving as well.

At the bottom of the stairs, Harry took two steps with his friends then hesitated. He looked from them to Snape with a beaten expression. Snape stepped back over and said, “It is up to you.”

Harry peered at Hermione, looking for understanding, but finding only confusion, before turning and walking the other way. Ron choked in shock. Hermione had to give him a tug on the arm to make him follow her.

Halfway down the corridor, Harry asked his guardian, “You don’t mind?”

“Of course not.”

In the Gryffindor tower Ron was still aghast. “Ron. Chill,” Hermione insisted.

“I can’t believe it,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Did you find out what’s going on?” someone asked.

“Dumbledore died,” Hermione said quietly.

General exclamations of denial and unhappiness went up. Students were called out of the dormitories and told as well. The common room became crowded.

“Ron’s taking it pretty hard,” Dean said, even though this own eyes had grown red-rimmed.

“That isn’t what’s bothering him,” Hermione said with a disgusted shake of her head.

“What is?” Dean asked.

“Harry,” Ron seethed, “went off with his dad rather than coming to the tower.”

“What?” several people chorused.

“Too embarrassed to tell anyone,” Ron said mockingly to Hermione.

Ginny stepped out of the crowd and said, incensed, “Ron, you can be so miserable!”

“That’s the best you can do?” Ron retorted.

“He’s your best friend. At least try to be understanding,” Ginny argued in a low voice.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Dean said, stepping between the three of them. “Let’s back up to the ‘dad’ part.”

“Harry was adopted by Snape,” Ron explained.

“Ron, what have you been drinking, mate?”

Ron put his hands on his hips. “You think I’d make that up?”

“It’s true,” Ginny confirmed.

The entire room fell into an odd silence until Neville stepped over and said, “That’s what you two have been fighting about?”

“It disgusts me. I can’t take it,” Ron stated sullenly.

Neville’s eyes narrowed, giving his usually friendly round face a menacing edge. He closed the rest of the space between them. “Harry found a father and all you can do is give him hell about it?” he asked, incredulous.

“It’s Snape!”

“That’s not your problem!” Neville shouted at him, surprising Ron and everyone else. “Ginny’s right, you…you are a miserable friend.”

The portrait hole opened at that moment and Professor McGonagall ducked to come in. The room erupted at her arrival.

“Dear me. Everyone calm down,” she admonished them.

“Is it true?” Colin asked in dismay. “Professor Snape adopted Harry?”

McGonagall checked her reaction. “I had thought the topic would be the headmaster, but I see, as usual, that I am mistaken. The answer is ‘yes’. And that is the end of that for the moment.” She composed herself, giving Ron and Hermione stern looks as she did so. With a deep breath, she said, “I am here with solemn news. We have lost Headmaster Dumbledore.”

Most everyone dropped their eyes, even though this wasn’t news.

“He will be sorely missed by all, I am sure. There will be a memorial tomorrow. The time will be announced at breakfast.”

Dennis raised his hand. McGonagall composed herself again and said, “Yes, Mr. Creevey?”

“What were his last words, Professor?” he asked curiously.

“Last words?” she echoed.

“Yes, ma’am,” Dennis insisted solemnly. “Someone always records the last words of great wizards and witches. For example, Gretta Gobstobber’s were, ‘May there always be time for the growing of poppies and marigolds.’” After a pause, he added, “Marvin the Magnificent's were, ‘Bloody, where did I drop my wand this time?’”

Half the students ducked their heads, this time to laugh. Even McGonagall smiled with crinkled eyes. “Ten points, Mr. Creevey, for making me laugh when I dearly need to.” She cleared her throat and looked around the ceiling in thought. “Let’s see. He told Potter that he was very proud of him.” Everyone shuffled a little where they stood. “He told me to take care of the school. And that was it.”

She took another deep breath. “And on that note. I expect the prefects to take up the slack for the rest of the day. The staff are very chaotic at the moment.” She picked out the relevant students with her eyes before she departed.

Harry refilled his teacup and leaned back on the couch in the sitting room of Snape’s suite. “I miss him already,” he said, thinking painfully that at dinner the center seat at the head table would be empty. He watched as Snape stared into his own cup. “Thanks for letting me come down here. I can’t take a crowd right now.”

“I prefer this to the alternatives as well.” He stood up and paced over to the window. “The Ministry and the press are here in force,” he observed.

“Did you lock the office door?”

Snape gave him a small smile. “Yes.” Then after a pause: “Though I should not shirk my duties for long. Leaving my colleagues so startled was probably not wise.”

“What are you talking about?” Harry asked.

“You were otherwise distracted by internal matters in the headmaster’s office, but we were the main attraction. Alarming really, given that the foremost wizard of our time had, moments before, passed on.”

“You never told any of the other teachers?” Harry asked in surprise.

“It is none of their concern,” Snape said, as though that were obvious.

They fell silent for a time. A breeze blew in the open window, upsetting the papers on the desk. Harry fiddled with his cold teacup. “I feel bad that I feel so…liberated.” Snape turned to him with an intense expression. Harry explained, “The two wizards who were running my life are both gone.”

“The two most powerful wizards in the world, no less,” Snape drawled, “of the century, perhaps, even.” He paced across the floor and passed his eyes over the bookshelf on that side. He shook his head. “We are far too similar, you and I, for being so utterly different.”

“Too many powerful wizards mucking about,” Harry quipped sadly.

“That is what powerful wizards do, Harry,” he said a little snidely. “Or they avoid mucking until the very last moment and only do it so no one else knows it is them and no one has the slightest clue what is going on.”

“You’re just trying to make me feel better, aren’t you?”

Snape returned to the table and topped up his tea. “I am trying to make myself feel better.” He drank down the cup as though wishing it contained something stronger and considered Harry. “And I suppose your little friends have gone up to the tower and told everyone.”

“I expect,” Harry said with a shrug. “If I’d thought of that…but I should have said something sooner anyway. I was being very unfair to you.”

“Unfair to me?” Snape asked, mystified. “Believe me, Harry, I was quite content to keep my personal business, private.”

“I was afraid you’d think I was embarrassed or something,” Harry explained carefully. “I wasn’t. I just knew I’d lose Ron’s friendship,” he said sadly. He considered Snape’s angular features and rough hair. “It does ruin your reputation, doesn’t it?” Harry asked with a crooked grin.

Snape frowned at him. “Indeed,” he said grimly, making Harry smile more. “A Gryffindor, no less,” he went on in a disgusted tone.

Harry stared at the far wall and chewed his lip sadly. “I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t have you right now,” he said quietly.

Snape came over and sat beside him. “I do believe this is one of the moments Albus had in mind when he made his suggestion to me.”

Harry shook his head. “Mucking about as usual.” Harry unwrapped a sweet from a bowl on the tray and popped it in his mouth. “Did you know this was coming? Did he warn anyone?”

“I should have known. He made his peace with me the other day. But he has always been exceedingly old and he would initiate little conversations like that periodically, so I thought nothing much of it.”

“He didn’t say anything surprising?”

“No. In retrospect I am surprised by what he left out. So much fraught history there and the conversation was entirely about you,” Snape added in his most disgusted tone.

Harry laughed lightly and scrubbed his face with his hands to shake his seesawing emotions. Every time he thought about never seeing Dumbledore again his chest ached horribly. This mood overcame him again and he stared at the floor without seeing it.

After long minutes of silence, Snape said, “I should go.”

Harry hoisted himself to his feet off the low couch. “Facing the Gryffindor tower will take my mind off Dumbledore for a while,” he said bleakly.

At the door, Snape said, “Come and find me if you need to. Do not hesitate.”

Silence fell over the crowded Gryffindor common room when Harry stepped in. He gave the room an uncertain smile, wondering what they were all thinking.

“Hey, Harry,” Neville said, breaking the stillness.

“Neville,” Harry returned as though they were having an ordinary conversation.

Dennis chimed in, “Does this mean Professor Snape doesn’t hate Gryffindors anymore?”

“I doubt it,” Harry replied dryly.

“He has been nicer in general, for Snape,” Ginny pointed out.

Harry wanted to head for his dormitory room, but he had to get through this. He took the empty seat by the fire across from Lavender. She stared at him as though he had turned into a Dementor. Hermione came over and sat on the arm of the chair and crossed her arms.

“I’m happy for you, Harry. Everyone else should be too,” she said while scanning the room. A few murmurs of assent followed this. She gave Ron, moping by the staircase, an especially long look.

“It’s all right, Hermione.” Harry sat back casually. “I’m happy. I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

“Good for you,” Hermione said. She patted his leg as she stood up. She stalked over to Ron to glare at him from closer range. Ron finally escaped up the stairs and disappeared.

Harry’s shoulders fell as he watched this from the corner of his eye. Eventually everyone went back to their quiet conversations. The ones around Harry sounded like they may actually be about Dumbledore.

Severus Snape arrived to an unwelcome attentive audience in the staff lounge, where McGonagall was preparing to speak to the press gathered in the Great Hall. He gave each stunned gaze an extra malevolent one in return.

“Wha’s the matter here?” Hagrid said from his seat by the window.

McGonagall looked up from her notes and shook her head wryly.

Sprout, standing at the half-giant’s shoulder, said in a low voice, “We are a little surprised to discover Severus has adopted Potter.”

“Ach, is tha’ all?” He waved a great hand in dismissal. “Harry told me tha’ ages ago. Doesna make no difference, ’cepting to Harry o’ course.”

The staff shifted uncomfortably but didn’t argue.

McGonagall held out a parchment to Snape. “Read this over. Tell me if you see anything glaringly wrong or omitted.”

It was a list of Dumbledore’s accomplishments. Snape was stunned to find nothing on it that really held any meaning right then. “I don’t think I am the right person to go over this.” He started to hand it back.

McGonagall’s head jerked up. “That boy has made you soft,” she scoffed and snapped her fingers near his nose. “Get it together! I expect to rely on you.”

Chastened, Snape took the parchment and a quill and sat down at the table to make revisions.

That night Harry couldn’t sleep. With a sigh he sat up in the darkness. He had lain awake for hours without feeling any more likely to sleep. The drawer of his nightstand held a half-full potion bottle, but he resisted using it. It felt disrespectful, somehow.

Silently, he pulled the drapes apart, put his legs over the edge of the bed and sat in thought. He noticed it then as he grew more alert: the castle did not feel right. Harry pulled down his dressing gown from the hook, wrapped up in it, and quietly left the dormitory. On the stairs he realized he had forgotten his slippers. He decided it wasn’t too cold and continued down to the common room. The silence felt oppressive, the castle too still as though it were holding its breath, waiting for something. He didn’t have to be alone, he considered, as he eyed the soot-blackened, cold hearth.

In the corridor Harry stepped lightly, his bare feet slapping the worn stone floor. The sound kept him company as he headed to the staircases. Something definitely was different. He stopped at the top of the first staircase and took a deep breath, expecting to smell something of the change. His hand rubbed the top of the banister as though trying to awaken a spell in it, or a djinni.

The thought that Dumbledore’s magic was that strong, that Harry could sense its loss, alarmed him, made him long for reassurance. He went down five long staircases. Even the portraits along the way seemed a little duller, less interested in what was happening out in the world.

At Snape’s door Harry hesitated because he thought harder about it being three in the morning. But the thought of walking back through the castle’s empty corridors made him knock. The door opened after a brief wait. Snape gestured gallantly for him to enter. He still wore his robes from earlier in the day.

“You haven’t slept?” Harry asked as he entered the dim office. Snape shook his head and led the way through to his suite. Harry dropped onto the couch with a sigh. A lamp on the desk flared higher as Snape adjusted it. He didn’t immediately turn back. Harry watched his stooped back as he fiddled with the guard on the lamp. He was surprised Snape didn’t burn himself as he rotated the glass collar by the top edge.

“Does the castle feel different to you?” Harry asked, curious.

“Yes.”

Harry wrapped his arms around himself and sat back. The two of them could have been alone in the castle for all the sense of life Harry now had of his surroundings. Finally, Snape turned his head to consider him. He pushed the lamp farther onto the small desk and came over and sat beside him.

“I wish he hadn’t gone,” Harry said, blinking back a sudden dampness in his eyes.

Clasping his hands together tightly, Snape said, “His certainty that Riddle would rise, and return, was the only reason he was still with us.”

“Still,” Harry said. “I don’t know if I like it here anymore,” he said with a shiver, rubbing his arms.

“I think you will grow accustomed to it,” he said. Snape sat back as well and after a moment’s hesitation, put an arm behind Harry, who leaned closer and rested his head on his shoulder.

Silent minutes later, Harry was asleep. Snape was grateful that they were in a comfortable position, because he didn’t feel he could move. He listened to Harry’s steady breathing for a while and wondered if Harry’s sense of the changes in the castle were the same as his own random bouts of rampant uneasiness.

Harry shifted in his sleep and curled up his legs. For the first time Snape noticed that his charge was barefoot. Had Harry been awake, he’d have rebuked him for it. As it was, he merely tightened his arm around him.

The Memorial service in the Great Hall was a staid affair. The students were in rows on the right side and the guests were arrayed on the left. The walls were lined, three-deep, with standing visitors. McGonagall made a long speech which Harry couldn’t concentrate on, nor remember, as though it were in a different language. He felt worse today than he had the day before. A reporter, with a photographer in tow, slunk closer to the front along the center aisle to get a picture. Harry could see him scanning the students’ faces as he went. Harry carefully kept Ron’s taller frame beside him between himself and the stranger. Hermione had selected these seats in the middle for exactly this reason. Dean stood on Harry’s other side in case someone came up the right aisle, although now it was too crowded for that to happen.

The speeches concluded. It required a full minute of silence for Harry to realize they had. A student a few rows ahead was sniffling repeatedly. At some signal Harry couldn’t see, the crowd began to disperse. The four of them stayed put until most all the students had left. Harry could now fully see the stone platform at the front. Dumbledore was in the same sky-blue robe he had worn during the welcoming feast. The sight of his peaceful face and long beard laying across his chest was too much. Harry’s eyes started to burn.

Grappling for control, he turned away from the sight. Dean took this as a cue to move and led the way out of their row. Harry followed close behind, eyes closed more than open. At the doors out of the hall, Dean stopped suddenly and Harry ran into his back. His friend’s arm came around and pushed him against the wall behind the open door. Ron shuffled backwards, pinning them in .

Dean knocked Ron on the arm, and Ron inched forward to peek out. “They look like they’re waiting. I assume for Harry.”

When Harry didn’t respond, Dean said. “All right there?”

“No,” Harry replied thickly. He brushed his face with his sleeve surreptitiously. Hermione was close beside him then, patting his arm. With enormous force of will, Harry won the battle with himself. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. He was pinned bodily between Dean and Hermione. Out in the Entrance Hall he could hear Skeeter asking about him.

“Do you have something you can say?” Hermione asked.

Harry snorted. “No.” After a beat he said as though quoting, “We’ll all miss him.”

“Good as it gets,” Dean quipped. “Shall we go? Or we can wait ’em out. Your choice.”

Harry leaned against the stone wall beside him and rotated to face Hermione. The Hall behind her was empty except for the platform and Dumbledore’s still, supine figure. A chill ran over Harry’s limbs.

Someone stepped sharply in the far set of doors. It was Snape. He glanced sideways at them before turning smartly around and shrugging melodramatically to someone beyond in the adjoining hall. He pulled out his wand and sliced the air with it as he stepped back out. All six doors swung closed with a boom!

Harry breathed out in relief. He stepped forward to sit backwards on the last bench on that side. Resting his head on his hands, he said, “I’m sorry. I just can’t take it all today. I just want to be left the eff alone.” When his friends shifted a bit, he added quickly, “Not by you. By them.” He gestured at the closed doors. “I can stand to give a piece of myself away if people are worried about Voldemort being gone, but what I’m feeling now is no one’s business.” He sat back. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to rant.”

“Losing him is hard, but it had to happen sometime,” Hermione said sitting beside him.

Harry’s brow furrowed. “It happened when he wanted it to,” he said sharply. “He wanted to go.” At her doubtful look, he went on. “You think I can’t tell the difference between alive and dead? One moment he’s talking to me and McGonagall and the next poof! He’s gone like a snuffed candle.” Breathing hard, Harry looked away from their stunned faces. Angry now, rather than hurt, he stood up. “It sounds quiet out there.”

Dean went to the center doors and peered between them. “No. Still crowded.”

Harry huffed and paced, sparing a glance for the blue figure lying at the front of the room after few passes.

The center doors opened. McGonagall leaned in and said, “The press have been convinced to give up.”

“Good,” Harry breathed and stalked around her to leave.

She gave his friends a questioning glance. “A little moody,” Ron commented as he followed Hermione out. “Ma’am,” Dean said as he passed. “Mr. Thomas,” she replied before pulling the door closed behind them all.

Classes resumed on Monday. Harry found himself resisting heading down to Defense class. He stalled until the last moment and made it just as Snape stepped upon the platform at the front.

“We had a rather distracting weekend, but I still expect all of you to perform the assigned spells today.” Snape glanced at Harry as he took a seat. The other students studiously avoided glancing at the straggler.

In pairs they were called up to demonstrate a Ferrus counter curse. When Ron and Hermione stepped up, Snape said, “Perhaps you should wait for the next demonstration, Ms. Granger.”

“Why?” Ron asked sharply.

“I would presume, or hope, Mr. Weasley,” Snape sneered, “that you would prefer to aim dangerous spells at a different classmate.” Several students giggled at that. Ron turned bright red and waited as Neville changed places with an also blushing Hermione.

Ron, feeling vexed, threw a very hard blasting curse at Neville, who countered it easily. They reversed and Ron countered the carefully controlled spell Neville sent his way.

“As usual Mr. Longbottom,” Snape said, “nicely done.” When Neville stood stunned, staring at the teacher, Snape said in a tone of thin patience, “You may return to your seat, Longbottom.”

Neville blinked and shuffled off in a hurry. He sat at his desk and stared ahead while the next pair went ahead. Eventually he leaned over to Harry and whispered, “What did you do to him, then?”

Harry shook his head. “Nothing,” he insisted.

“No,” Neville insisted. “Somethin’.”

Harry watched Snape working with Padma on the spell. “He likes teaching this better,” he said, mostly because he knew Snape wouldn’t want anyone to suspect him of softening up.

Harry made it through the next two days without dwelling excessively on Dumbledore’s memory. He was feeling set free, and the more time passed, the stronger that feeling became. Even the emptiness of the castle began to seem more like new potential.

It was easier to visit with Snape now that everyone knew. Or had heard but didn’t believe, as he found out one day when Pansy Parkinson came to ask for help while Harry was there working on his Potions essay.

“You don’t really think you can hang out here, do you?” she sneered at Harry.

Snape’s gaze as he accepted the rewritten essay she handed over went positively dangerous. She backed up and looked nervous a moment before asking in an almost elf-like voice, “You aren’t saying it’s true, are you, sir?”

“Yes, Ms. Parkinson. It is.”

Her whole body drooped in a positively tragic way. Her eyes slid over to Harry and looked him over with rancid distaste before she drooped still more. She sighed deeply. “My essay, sir. I’m turning it back in,” she said sadly and dutifully before shuffling out the door and closing it softly. Harry actually wished she had slammed it.

Harry thought that over, feeling an odd tugging of sympathy. “You do tend to look out for them…more than the average Head of House,” Harry opined.

Snape stared at the closed door. “And I don’t intend to change that,” he said thoughtfully. He remained thoughtful a while before returning to marking assignment. Harry took his leave soon after, not really in the mood to ruin more Slytherin egos, although he wasn’t sure why he cared.

Chapter 23 and a Half - Getting Detention

After Dumbledore’s death, the castle continued to feel emptier than it should have given how many students and staff dwelt within its walls. The late autumn sunlight leeched through the dusty windows with decreasing vigor. The wind inspired even colder drafts to chase around the dreary corners of the castle’s rooms. And Filch’s squint had taken on an even more malevolent glimmer.

Late in the evening, Harry sat with his friends in the library, his many thick textbooks stacked around him. It should not have felt drafty there, especially with how adamant Madam Pince always was about keeping the door closed, but Harry felt chilled nevertheless. He vigorously rubbed his arms and wished he had worn his cloak. His movements attracted Ron’s attention. Ron started to say something as though everything was normal, but choked it off and ducked back to his notes with a furrowed red brow.

Harry swallowed a sigh and resisted rolling his eyes because Hermione was watching him over a book entitled Advanced Art of the Arithmancer. Harry repeated to himself that he did not care how appalled Ron was at Harry’s new family situation. Being from such a huge family, Ron could not possibly understand and Harry felt no need to work for his friend’s approval. Quite the opposite.

Harry sighed without intending to and went back to looking up what methods of transfiguration were easier on objects composed of cells. He did not remember reading anything about that in the latest assigned chapter and hoped it did not come up on an examination or quiz because none of it made sense to him. So little of Transfiguration made sense this year that asking Hermione for help only made Harry’s head hurt. He wished he had Astronomy calculations to do instead, a true measure of his frustration.

The other students trickled out and with the additional lamps snuffed the library grew almost too dim to read in.

Ron, without preamble, stood up and said, “I’m going to bed. You boring bookworms can stay and rewrite every last essay you’ve ever written, but I’m tired of this. And just tired.”

“Ron…” Hermione began, then glanced at the time while Ron made his escape. The door to the library closed and Harry watched Ron’s distorted shape move along the glass windows.

“I hadn’t realized how late it is,” Hermione said, stacking her things together. Her face showed the kind of stress it usually only did around exam time. “He’ll come around, Harry,” she said.

Harry shrugged. He turned back to his essay and said, “I still have to work out a few more things on my Transfiguration assignment.”

She shyly offered, “Want me to help?”

“You mean the way you help Ron, usually? No. That won’t help me, really. I care about my NEWT scores. Ron doesn’t.”

“Right.” Hermione packed up her things to depart. “Don’t be too much longer. It’s almost curfew.”

“I don’t care,” Harry said. And meant it.

With her bag weighing her down crooked, she moved the chairs back under the table. “Well, they probably won’t do anything to you anyway if they catch you out.”

The door clicked closed behind her more quietly than it had behind Ron. Minutes later, it clicked open again. At first, Harry did not see anything, and assumed it was the wind, but then he heard scuffling.

Harry leaned forward to see better and noticed two small figures in hooded cloaks creeping in the door: the Creevey brothers. It had to be. Harry put down his quill and watched them slink their way over to the gate leading to the Restricted Section. Harry crossed his arms. One of them reached up to open the latch, and they slipped inside. Colin pulled a little folding step ladder out from under his cloak and leaned it against the gate. When he turned to oh so carefully close the latch, he finally saw Harry sitting there, watching him, and he sucked in a yelp.

Dennis merely shushed his brother as he moved farther inside, holding his lamp up high to light the plaques on the ends of the shelves.

Harry and Colin stared at each other until Harry shook his head and went back to his assignment. He could hear Colin’s sigh of relief as he and his brother moved out of view. The rustling of large lambskin pages issued forth forming a backdrop to the brothers’ whispering.

In his determination to defeat his complete lack of understanding of Chapter 5 of McGonagall’s assigned textbook, Harry nearly forgot their presence. He worried acutely that Chapters 6 through 26 would bring on serious hurt if he did not. If he slacked on Transfiguration this early in the year, he might as well quit now and find something better suited to him than being an Auror, like bartender at the Hog’s Head, or hazardous pet groomer.

Half an hour later, about the time Harry decided to give up, the door to the library swung open again and Harry was reminded of the clandestine operations only by the hurried shuttering of the lamp light in the Restricted Section. Madam Pince, wearing a frilly dressing gown, shuffled inside in her slippers, which were trying to fall off her feet. Harry looked up at her and she squinted back at him, nose forward like a blind vulture. She gave up recognizing him and patted her pockets to retrieve her glasses.

“Ah, Mr. Potter.” She looked around the room, adjusting her glasses and making a face like they were the wrong pair. “One of my new alarm devices woke me up.” She sniffled. “It is after curfew, my boy.”

“Is it?” Harry said. He wasn’t certain why he found this limit interesting to push, but he did. For one thing he didn’t have to worry any longer about facing Dumbledore’s disappointment regarding anything he did wrong.

Harry stood and collected his papers up, taking his time and rearranging them several times. “I’ll go up to the tower then.”

Pince was still squinting around the room, her eyes enlarged by her thick glasses. “You’re alone? Your friends have all left?”

“Yes,” Harry said, feeling secure in that lie which was the truth if applied only to the second question.

“Do close up when you are done,” she lectured him and after bundling her frilly edges together better, shuffled out, heels half off her footwear.

Harry waited a full minute, while slowly packing things into his book bag. “You’d best go when I do,” he said to no one in particular.

The hooded figures crept into view. Small already, they were startlingly reduced by their crouching. Colin stuck his nose through the slats of the gate and whispered, “We still haven’t found what we need.”

“The alarm will know you are still here,” Harry said. “I expect.”

“What alarm?”

Harry looked around but saw nothing. Unlike much of the school, the library was well dusted so he could not use that to figure out what had been added recently. “I don’t know what’s detecting that someone is in here. It might be a spell. It might be a Sneakoscope. I don’t know.”

The brothers came through the gate, one toting the lamp, the other the step ladder. These were both stashed away under cloaks that must magically alter to hide what one was carrying because their forms remained unnaturally small.

“What are you looking for, anyway?” Harry asked.

The brothers glanced at each other and did not answer right away. Colin finally said, “Some stuff.”

“Just some stuff?”

The brothers glanced meaningfully at each other again. “We don’t want to tell you,” Colin explained.

Taken aback by this, Harry said, “Why not?”

The brothers stared at him. Dennis blurted, “Because you’ll tell Professor Snape,” in a tone that conveyed that he believed Harry thick.

Colin elbowed his brother, and said, “You’re a bit tight with the staff now, you must admit, Harry.”

“You think I can’t be trusted?” Harry asked, stunned. When the boys shrugged helplessly, Harry argued, “I didn’t tell Madame Pince you were here.”

“That’s different.”

“Right.” Harry opened the door to the corridor and looked both ways. “Come on,” he said, letting his annoyance bleed into his tone.

Harry led the way back to the tower, always waving the all-clear at each turn, although the small students in their dark cloaks barely needed the assistance. They could hide in the shadows of doorways or furniture without much trouble.

The common room was empty as well. Harry, still irritated, made his way to the dormitory stairs without saying good night.

Before he reached the first landing a small voice said, “You really won’t tell?”

Harry turned back. Colin pushed his hood back and said, “Because we need your help if we can’t get into the library.” Dennis tugged on his brother’s sleeve and they whispered together, arguing. “If you could talk to Ha- Ha- Hagrid for us, we wouldn’t need to do research.”

“I don’t know why you are scared of Hagrid,” Harry said, glaring down at them, arms crossed.

Dennis whispered something to his brother that sounded like he looks like a teacher and Colin said, “Are you still a Gryffindor, or not?”

“I’m still staying here in this Tower, you’ll notice. Never mind,” Harry said, getting more than annoyed now, and this whole thing wasn’t worth getting angry over, really. He stomped up to bed.

Harry pondered his Transfiguration assignment during breakfast since he would not have another chance to look at it before turning it in. The light of day only made the print easier to read, not much else. Shaking his head, he put it away and ate breakfast, feeling desultory.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help you with that?” Hermione asked from across the table.

Ron answered before Harry could. “Harry can get as much help as he likes. Anytime.”

Harry felt like telling him to stuff it, but it would not be a good way to start the day.

Defense class was mostly discussion, so Harry did not get a much-needed outlet for his bottled up emotion, like he had hoped. He had picked a seat in the very back of the room, and Ron, surprisingly, had dragged Hermione to the very front, where she usually wanted to sit. Neville sat beside Harry with an uncertain smile.

Harry did not raise his hand for any of the questions he knew, which was most of them. Every question that went by ground on him that this was so easy but that he might still not be allowed into the Auror’s program. Snape’s gaze paused on him every time it went around the room. By the end of the lesson, Harry did not have to see it. He could sense it. But he did not feel like talking, so he slipped out with the mass of students when the bell sounded.

Harry could not escape his guardian for long. Snape entered the Great Hall at dinner time through the door near the Gryffindor table and paused behind him. He put a sharp pair of fingers on Harry’s shoulder and said, “My office. Directly after dinner,” before gliding away toward the Head Table.

Harry looked back in time to see the Creevey brothers as well as Ron looking away from him.

Chocolate-stained dessert dishes littered the table. They got up to leave. Ron put his arm around Hermione and walked her off to the largest of the hearths, which was burning high to combat the autumn chill. Harry had eaten his chocolate raspberry bomb as slowly as possible, which was a kind of torment in itself. Snape had already departed along with the rest of the teachers. Ginny and her girlfriends sat with their heads bent together over a magazine, whispering avidly. Harry had no excuse to remain any longer, unless he wished to share in the latest news about sparkling hair charms.

Snape’s office door stood open, which was unusual. Harry stepped inside and left it open, leaving Snape to wave it closed.

“Is there some problem?” Snape asked as Harry contemplated sitting at the desk in the middle of the floor, the one students wrote lines at during detention.

Harry scratched his cheek. Without looking up, he replied, “Same ones as usual.”

“Why don’t you take a seat and reiterate them for me.”

Despite the gentle tone, Harry felt uncooperative. “I have assignments due tomorrow, Severus.”

Snape appeared to make a decision. “As you wish.” When Harry put his hand on the door, Snape added, “Do remember I am here if you change your mind.”

“Mr. Potter, are you assisting Mr. Thomas with his assignment?” Greer asked the next morning during Potions.

Harry had been, but the Slytherins and the Hufflepuffs always did that.

“I am quite certain I did not make this a group assignment. You get a zero for today.”

Harry stared at the ceiling and put a hand on Hermione to quiet her before she too lost her mark for the day. He scooped up his backpack from the floor, intending to leave, but Greer said, “You may come to the front and prep the juncus belticus for everyone’s potion. It is the last ingredient today.”

Harry breathed out through his nose and dropped his bag so it smacked the floor. Malfoy smirked at him as Harry sat at the bench near the front and picked up a small knife. To him a knife still felt at least as dangerous as a wand. He ran the edge over a stone, stalling before picking up a handful of dried rushes and chopping them neatly, at a perfect 45 degree angle, just to take away Greer’s right to criticize him yet again.

At lunch Harry pondered the color of his finger tips.

“That stuff stains,” Hermione said.

“Got a Potion for it?” Harry asked. “The neutralizer didn’t work.”

“Not on me,” Hermione apologized. “Greer probably did that to avoid staining her own hands for the inspection.”

“What inspection?”

Hermione shoveled her lunch into her mouth faster than normal. “The Ministry is inspecting the school on Saturday. It’s supposed to be a secret, but it was in the Prophet this morning. Of course.” She stood and collected up her bag. “I have to make a stop in the library for my Arithmancy assignment. I’ll see you later.”

Harry gave her a stained wave goodbye and returned to his lunch. His other table companions sat silently, blinking up at him. Harry turned to Dennis Creevey beside him and said, “What do you want to ask Hagrid?”

Dennis’ mouth stretched into a broad grin.

Harry had Care of Magical Creatures that afternoon. They stood in the cool air while Hagrid explained about Ogregnomes, which as far as Harry could tell from the lecture were simply exceptionally ugly gnomes. His thoughts were echoed by Hermione who, when Hagrid opened the box, leaned over to Ron and asked, “Doesn’t that look like an ordinary gnome to you?”

The potato-nosed little man in the box shook his fist at them and tried to spit on Lavender who had leaned in too close, especially considering the kinds of things Hagrid often had in boxes.

Ron whispered, “He’s a better than average looking one, really.”

After class, Harry waited behind while the rest of his school mates tromped back to the castle. Hagrid looked up and grinned. “Want to help me a bit, Harry?”

“Sure, Hagrid,” Harry said. He felt a little bad about using Hagrid, so he thought he should make it up to him ahead of time.

He helped carry things back to the shed at the edge of the pumpkin patch while listening to Hagrid’s litany about missing Dumbledore.

“He was great man, Dumbledore was,” Hagrid repeated with a snort into the checkered tablecloth he was using as a handkerchief. “School won’t be ter same w’out ’im.”

“No, it won’t,” Harry agreed. Thinking that, for one thing, the Creevey brothers were going to be much more trouble.

The shed door banged closed. “I have some other things to ’tend to, if’n yer want to help?” He sounded hopeful.

“Sure, Hagrid,” Harry repeated.

Harry found himself in the school rowboat, in charge of a heavy sack of rusty metal tools. Each pull on the oars by Hagrid sent them skimming half the length of a Quidditch pitch. Worried they may lose the tools overboard, Harry tied the sack around the seat. The castle receded behind them and the air grew green and chilly.

Harry needed to work his question into the conversation, and to do that he was going to need to make conversation, even on a difficult topic. “Hagrid, you remember that Ron and I followed the spiders out of the castle that one time? When the Basilisk was scaring them off. I mean, you were…er…off in Azkaban, but do you remember telling us to do that?”

Hagrid was looking around the lake’s glassy surface, letting them drift across what appeared to be the sky. “Huh? Oh, yeah.”

“I was wondering, you know, what should we have done to keep the spiders in check? You know, to keep them from attacking us.”

Hagrid hauled on the oars again. Harry’s upper body dipped backward and forward with the force of the motion. “Well, you shouldn’t walk all the way into ter lair, you know.”

“Right,” Harry said. “Probably the wisest plan.”

“Bring an offerin’ of some kind. That always makes ’em happy. And less hungry.”

“Okay…” Harry had insisted the Creevey brothers not give him details, so he could pretend to know nothing later. In retrospect he wondered if that was the best plan. He imagined his wee schoolmates, incased in rope-thick sticky webbing, suspended from a tall tree in the darkest part of the forest, stored there to be sucked dry at a more convenient time. The Creevey brothers insisted they knew what they were doing.

Harry sighed and tried to banish his fearful imaginings by remembering how boxed in he had felt by the same rules when he was their year.

“Would something like a…bubble gum hex work, maybe?” Harry mused aloud.

Hagrid peered down into the water. “Better to feed them treacle tarts tainted with Drowsing Draught, that way they can’t bite you while they are getting sleepy.” The ripples from the boat were the only disturbance on the vast water. A hawk circled above the nearby cliff, never needing to flap to stay there. Harry’s thoughts had settled into a nice relaxed meditation, lulled by the serenity around them, when without warning the world rushed up around them accompanied by a shower of bitterly cold water.

“Ah, there yer are,” Hagrid said happily.

Harry had jumped forward to his knees, arms stretched across the gunwales, in a desperate bid to keep them from capsizing. The Giant Squid slid around the boat, keeping its exposed eye aimed at Hagrid.

“Harry, hand me— What’re yer doing down there?”

Harry rocked back to the bench. His knees were soaked, as was one of his shoes. He had to prop his feet on the sides of the hull to keep them out of the sloshing water they had taken on. Hagrid had a great hand out. Harry righted the tool sack, which made a wet metallic rattle.

“Hand me the big pick outta there, Harry. And ter file.”

Harry rummaged around inside the sack, pulling out one thing after another. Until Hagrid said, “That one’ll do. And the file there.”

“Open wide then,” Hagrid said to the squid. The giant eye slipped backward under the silky water then rose up in a brief shower, which cleared to reveal a massive white beak, surrounded by hooked tentacles.

Harry gaped at this nightmarish vision, stunned, not even shifting his weight when Hagrid stood up in the rowboat to use the file to smooth a jagged edge Harry would not have ever noticed was there. The smell was something unreal, like muddy rancid fish oil. Harry pulled his robes up over his nose and sat waiting to exchange tools. The reflection of the sky came right across through the boat it had so much water in it.

“That’ll do it.” Hagrid handed the tools back, and Harry cinched the sack closed.

“Now look at all the water in ter boat,” Hagrid complained to the squid.

Harry barely grabbed hold of his seat in time. The boat rose up out of the water then rotated neatly sideways. Harry clung to the seat by his hooked elbow, hand locked to his wrist, legs dangling while the water escaped over the side. When the last of the water dripped free, the squid gave them a little shake for good measure and set them gently back down.

Harry re-took his seat, and met the squid’s eye as it sank away under the surface.

“All right then. No trouble at all,” Hagrid happily pronounced, as he grabbed up the oars.

Harry cleared his throat, relaxed marginally back on his seat. “Right.”

Harry tried an unsuccessful drying charm several times as he sloshed his way up the lawn. He gave a cough and mounted the front steps, wondering what he had been thinking. The Creevey brothers were waiting inside. They peered at him eagerly as he closed the door and blinked to force his eyes to adjust.

“’ello, Harry,” Dennis said hopefully.

Harry coughed again and stomped by them, his robes leaving a streak on the floor. “I’m going to the tower,” he announced.

Showered and changed, Harry barely made it back down to the Great Hall before food arrived for dinner. His stomach gave a great rumble like the growl of one of Hagrid’s pets.

Across from him, Ginny asked, “How are things with you, Harry?”

Something about the forced innocence in her tone made Harry consider her. Colin Creevey sat beside her, leaning in to listen to Harry’s answer. Harry glanced between them, wondering if she was in on whatever they were planning. It made him feel more secure to imagine that.

Ginny smiled broadly, as if reading his thoughts.

“Later,” he said to her. He gave another faint cough and tapped his pumpkin juice with his wand to make it steaming hot.

In the Gryffindor Tower common room, Harry settled in with his books, determined to keep up with his readings for the week, even as impossible as that seemed.

Ginny settled into the chair beside him, and proceeded to flip through her Defense textbook too fast to be reading it. Hermione and Ron sat on the battered couch, also working quietly. Ginny held out her book to Harry and said, “Can I ask you about something?”

A note was stuck inside her book, it said: what did Hagrid say?

Harry took the book and slipped the note out. She leaned in close over the book, close enough he could smell the shampoo she used. Muttering, he said, “Drowsing Draught laced Treacle Tarts.” Then he proceeded to explain some meaningless detail about the diagram in the book, even though he knew she did not need it. Across from him Hermione winked. Harry expected she was not in on whatever was being planned, but was instead lobbying for Ginny.

Ginny made a doubtful noise and sat back with her book. She sent Harry a dubious glare, to which he could only shrug faintly in response. He bunched up the note and tossed it onto the nearby roaring hearth.

Harry’s belief that he was catching up with his NEWT subjects, at least enough to get through them, was knocked back by the pop quiz McGonagall handed out at the start of class the next day. Unlike those of his other teachers, her quizzes did not leave open the option of simply regurgitating his notes or the textbook. The questions were things like, compare these two methods, or summarize this theory, and explain how it is useful. Hermione bent to aggressively scratch out her usual long answers. Ron sat beside her with one tense hand lodged firmly in his hair. Others around the room fidgeted uncomfortably, so at least Harry was in good company. He filled in something for the last question, based on Hermione’s last attempt at explaining it more clearly just last week. Then he re-read the first question and closed his eyes while pondering whether it was more embarrassing to leave it blank or fill it in with something hopelessly confused.

As he sat there, a guess came to mind. It drifted into his thoughts the way a cold draft comes around a room. Shrugging that at least it sounded well thought out, he wrote it down. It was not a complete answer, but it put something in that blank spot. He was just attempting to do the same for either of the other two blank questions when time was called and he had to give up.

Watching McGonagall marking the quizzes out of the corner of his eye meant that Harry also did not do well on that day’s practical exercise. He tried not to care what she thought but could not manage it. Her disappointment loomed painfully.

Snape caught Harry in the corridor that Friday, just as he was on his way back to the tower with his friends for butterbeers and some games. Ron and Ginny were just loudly insisting that all assigned books be banned from the common room that evening when Snape stepped out of his classroom and gestured for Harry to enter.

Harry’s friends went on without him, promising to keep a butterbeer warm for him.

“Sit,” Snape commanded and returned to cleaning up from spell exercises. Harry slid into a desk in the front and propped his hands under his chin.

“Did you do your readings for your courses this week?” Snape asked as he folded a practice dummy into a wardrobe and had to lock the door with a spell to keep it inside, stacked as it was on top of many other things.

“Yes,” Harry insisted, defensive immediately.

Snape went on as if Harry had not answered. “I thought nothing of your silence in my classes this week, until Minerva commented that you did rather poorly on a quiz yesterday.”

Heat filled Harry, squirming as it made its way around his insides. “Care to quiz me now on your readings?” he snapped.

Snape stared at him for confirmation, then returned to his task of straightening his notes. “If you fall behind in any NEWT subject this early—”

“I KNOW that,” Harry interrupted, fully angry now.

Snape put his things down. “I don’t appreciate that tone, Harry.”

Harry stood up. “Then why are we talking?” he asked. He felt odd saying it and stranger still, relieved to have said it.

“You were not dismissed,” Snape stated softly, the tone that signaled he was halfway to trying menacing as a tactic.

With a show of obedience, Harry swung back into the desk and sat in it crooked, feet wide.

Snape stepped around the front of his work table and crossed his arms. “If you are having difficulty in any subject, you should ask for help.”

Harry, finding freedom in his anger, gave no ground. “Sure.”

Snape’s eyes narrowed and Harry Occluded his thoughts, relaxing easily into the needed emotional isolation. Snape shook his head and returned to finishing up. “We will talk more this weekend, after you have calmed down. Clearly it is going to be unproductive to talk more now.”

Harry levered himself out of the low desk. “You aren’t going to have much time this weekend what with the inspection and all.”

Snape raised a brow. “I will find some.”

Harry departed Snape’s office and in the common room gratefully settled into a game of wizard chess with Dean. At one point in the evening, he noted that certain of his classmates were missing, but not imagining it had any significance, he forgot again.

Harry’s stomach, fed too many sweets and butterbeers the night before, woke him early, demanding something more substantive. He found Ron washing up in the boys’ toilet. They glanced at each other warily in the mirror. Generally Hermione was there as a buffer, and without her they had nothing but hurtful words hanging between them. Harry finished up quickly and started down for the Great Hall.

In the Entrance Hall, the main doors stood open and an entourage of well-dressed witches and wizards migrated inside, greeting McGonagall and Snape. Harry spotted Fudge and his usual assistants, and now could pick up his pompously annoying voice over the murmur of the small crowd. Harry made his way slowly down the Grand Staircase. The doors to the Great Hall stood closed as everyone watched the arrivals mingle.

Harry stopped by the stairs leading down to the kitchens. Hannah Abbot and Susan Bones were just coming up from their chambers, but slowed at the top of the stairs when they saw the unexpected guests. Harry stepped aside to let them pass. As he turned he spotted the Creevey brothers, clumped in the corner by the main doors. One was biting his lip and the other watched the visitors with a hungry avidness. Harry stared at them, finding much about this scene to be worrisome.

“So much for a quiet Saturday,” Susan complained in her friend’s ear. “My aunt told me that she thought an inspection a complete waste of the Minister’s time, that he was simply avoiding more difficult things that need addressing.”

Fudge and his retinue moved toward the doors to the Great Hall. The doors creaked open, revealing it to be unusually dark inside. Harry squinted across the Entrance Hall, trying to see why it might be dark just over there when the morning light was flowing in the main doors with such abandon. Ron, complaining about needing breakfast, tugged open the doors on the right. Harry heard a giggle and glanced toward the stairs where Ginny was biting her lip.

“Oh no,” Harry mouthed, and charged forward toward Ron’s retreating back, wand out.

Ron screamed. A spider the size of a pillow dangled before him, legs grasping, maw open. Harry hit it with a Blasting Curse that sent it into the rafters. In the middle of the Great Hall, Minister Fudge’s retinue had surrounded him, wands out, trying to target the scurrying spiders slashing out at their legs. Giant webs filled the ceiling. Harry grabbed Ron by the collar and dragged him, stumbling, out of the hall. Ron did not assist much. He was whimpering loudly, holding his hands over his head. Hermione, wand out and tracking everything, met them halfway and accelerated the retreat. The doors slammed closed behind them. Harry released Ron and let Hermione take him to sit on the stairs until his shakes subsided.

Feeling less generous toward Fudge and Percy, and the others, Harry did not charge back inside. He backed up to the stairs and stood beside Hermione. Professor Sprout, hair askew, swept through the Entrance Hall and shooed them all either up or down the stairs.

“To your common rooms, go!” she commanded. “Prefects, you are to hold your students there until instructed otherwise.” She came over to Harry and his friends. “Unless he is hurt, get him up and out of here.”

“I hate spiders,” Ron squeaked into his arms.

“They are no one’s favorite, Mr. Weasley,” Sprout said before turning back to the Great Hall.

Harry assisted Ron in standing up, then let go because Ron tugged at his hold. Harry waited to follow, letting the pair go up the stairs ahead of him. When he started up, something took hold of his robes and pulled, hard.

Hermione glanced back in surprise, but her expression fell calm as she looked over his shoulder, making Harry put his wand back away rather than striking out.

“Mr. Potter,” Snape said, voice vibrating with underlying fury like Harry had heard only once or twice before. “In here,” he said. And, using Harry’s robes, gave him a toss toward the Staff Room.

Harry checked the Entrance Hall for any of his classmates but it had been cleared. He opened the door and went inside, leaving it open. Snape stepped in and pushed the door closed behind him. His gaze held all the soft warmth of obsidian. Harry’s heart rate went up as he tried to think a few steps ahead of where he was.

“Sit. Down.”

Harry didn’t hesitate this time, taking one of the chairs around the long table.

“What do you know about this?” Snape asked.

Harry shrugged.

Snape came around his chair and grabbed hold of the shoulder of Harry’s robes and pushed him back in his chair. “You know something,” he said, voice silky. Harry thought then that it reminded him of the blade of a Muggle surgical instrument being wielded. He did not give Harry a chance to think before adding, “I happened to be looking at you. You knew what was happening before it was clear to anyone else.”

Harry blinked. “I…I guess,” he admitted.

Snape still had a hold of his robes. “This inspection is of utmost importance to this school,” he said. “I don’t know what childish motivation possessed you, but I assure you, you will be punished well enough that any future thoughts in this direction will fill you with sufficient aversion to put better sense in your head.”

Harry stared at Snape, trying to Occlude his mind. But Snape had transformed into a stranger, and that was making his thoughts circle crazily. “I didn’t do this,” Harry said.

Snape released his robes. “But you knew.”

“Well…” Harry said, tugging the kink out of his robes. “Sort of.”

Snape leaned closer. “I don’t know what kind of an answer you believe that to be.”

Harry finally found some emotional grounding and sat forward. “I found out some information for someone. I did not know what they were going to do with it. Or when they were going to do it.”

Snape studied Harry’s eyes, getting nothing, Harry hoped. “That is all?” he asked, mocking in his doubt.

“Yes.”

“And to whom did you give this information? This…harmless information that led you to no suspicion about how it may be used, yet the Great Hall of this school is now a Giant Spider colony?”

Harry’s Occlusion held. He felt good about that and about the notion of being obstinate. “I’m not going to say.”

Snape did not react to this, just stared him down. “Then you will be punished as if it is entirely your doing, or until the perpetrators are found.” He stood straight, giving Harry time to absorb that.

Harry huffed. This, at least, he was familiar with. “Fine,” he said.

Snape moved to the door, turning back one last time. His veneer had cracked, and his eyes flickered with uncertainty. In the next instant, he was gone through the door.

Not wanting to encounter any other teachers, Harry glanced out the door before exiting. Crates of spiders were being carted out the main doors, directed by Hagrid, taking all of everyone’s attention.

“Careful there, don’t want any more o’ them getting hurt than already have.”

“Hagrid,” McGonagall threatened. “I would just as soon flatten every last one of them.”

“Aw, yer don’t really mean that…” And the main doors boomed closed.

Harry snuck away in that opening, halted at the top of the stairs by a hiss. He found the Creevey brothers hiding behind a curtain.

“Harry!” Colin whispered. “What’d’ya think?”

“I think you shouldn’t be caught here,” Harry said, and stalked off.

Harry slipped into the common room, which was packed with students gossiping excitedly.

“Did you see the look on Fudge’s face?” Dean was saying. “Oh, if I live to be two hundred, I will relish that ’til the end.”

Hermione slipped over to Harry to whisper, “Did you happen to see Dennis and Colin?”

Harry nodded. They must have slipped in behind him, because they were now standing in the dim corner by the portrait hole. Harry pointed.

“Oh,” Hermione blurted, checking them off on her list.

Harry went up to his bed, not in the mood for celebration. He dropped down on top of the duvet without even removing his shoes, and drifted there, listening to his stomach rumble in complaint.

Dean came up a while later. “They are serving breakfast now,” he said to Harry.

Harry followed him down. The Great Hall had completely returned to normal. Fudge and his retinue were installed at the end of the now crowded Head Table, chatting. Between bites Fudge stopped to survey the room with his beady eyes, accusation in every twitch of his gaze.

Snape came down off the dais and said to Harry, “You are in detention for the rest of the day. Do not leave the hall until you are told you may do so.”

Everyone at their end of the table stopped eating and stared, except the Creevey brothers and Ginny who blinked in a slightly different kind of surprise.

Hermione leaned forward and whispered, “Harry, did you do it?”

Harry ignored her and watched Snape returning to his seat. McGonagall asked Snape something as he sat down. Snape, his gaze stabbing over to Harry, replied, “He knows more than he will let on, so he is being punished until he relents.”

McGonagall’s lips replied, “Ah.”

After breakfast, Harry sat in his seat while everyone departed around him or took out their books to study. Many students stopped by to congratulate Harry, or simply pat him on the back. News of his punishment had spread fully around the school just in one breakfast, and that was the same as proof of guilt, or award of success, depending upon the viewpoint.

“The Weasley Twins would be proud,” Jack Sloper said. “Don’t you think, Ginny?” he prompted one of the handful still clustered around Harry.

Ginny nodded slowly, eyes wide.

Hermione had her Astronomy essay out in front of her, she kept shooting Harry questioning looks, which Harry studiously ignored.

Snape slipped up behind Hermione, and jerked his head indicating Harry should follow him. Harry stood up and obeyed.

Snape strode purposefully, saying nothing. He led the way not up the central staircases but around to Filch’s office. In response to Harry’s noise of surprise, he said, “Detention with me would not be much of a punishment, so you will spend it with Mr. Filch.” With that, he strode off, leaving Harry standing there, forced to knock.

Filch was ranting already when he swung the door open. “Bloody mongrel students,” he grumbled. “What is it?” he snarled, spittle flying in Harry’s face.

“I’m to serve detention with you.”

Filch considered this. Harry hoped he was not sharp enough to make the connection between his detention and this morning’s events. “Hm,” Filch muttered, lips twitching into a distorted mockery of a smile. “Are you then?”

Harry’s day of labor started out all right. He polished doorknobs. This left him in plain sight where everyone could stop by and praise his brilliance at pranks. He had no response to this outside of a shrug, which rather than put off his new found fandom, only seemed to increase it due to his modest attitude. Malfoy mocked him for a while, but Harry sent him off by pointing out how very happy giant spiders would be living in the Slytherin dungeon.

Harry did not get lunch. He finished the second floor and returned to Filch’s office, expecting a break.

“Finished?”

“What? With every single knob? No.”

“Then get back to it, boy!”

Harry stared at him. When he did not move right away, Filch said with queer innocence, “We can go to Professor Snape’s office instead, if you prefer?”

Defeated by that, Harry said, “All right.” And took up fresh rags and a new tin of polish before heading out again.

His knees protested acutely each time he crouched to work on a keyhole. His stomach complained bitterly about being empty too long. His mind filled with visions of Ron eating a second helping of everything that morning, and this made his mouth water uncontrollably.

Harry most likely had missed any number of knobs, but a quick circling of the first floor didn’t reveal any still tarnished, so he returned to Filch’s office and declared the task finished. He did not expect a break this time, and just as well. Filch opened a window and held his hand out. “A nice cold rain. Perfect.”

Harry was sent up to the roof. To weed the gutters. At least the open air cleared the noxious polish scent out of his nose. Harry, wand in hand in case he needed to spell an emergency Tethering Charm, crawled along the edge of the tiles and fished out the small trees and soupy rot that had collected there. He had been forbidden to use a broom and the Gecko Charm behaved unpredictably on the wet tiles so he moved with care, a few feet at a time. He had decided against ruining his Quidditch gloves, so he needed to stop frequently to respell his bare hands with a warming charm, which if nothing else was forcing him to greatly improve his left-handed spell casting.

The shifting clouds kept him company. He paused often to gaze out over the forest, listening with interest to the sounds that shifted as the afternoon wore out and the evening came on. Different creatures grew active, then quiet again in overlapping waves, serenading him.

A tile broke free when Harry pushed off near a dormer and he bumped and slipped down to catch a hand and a foot in the gutter. He should have cast the tether. His wand was still gripped in his right hand, but he had been too tired to react except in a wholly Muggle way. Something about the endless remedial tasks put him firmly back in that mindset.

The ground, and the tall wall leading down to it teetered below him, drawing him downward. Knuckles bruised and throbbing, he cautiously pushed himself back onto the solid roof edge, afraid the groaning metal of the gutter may decide to not hold his weight if he shifted too suddenly. Too bad he couldn’t fly without a broomstick, his tired brain thought.

On aching muscles he crab-crawled a few feet higher so he could safely put his wand away and duck out of the wind. He then wrapped his hands inside his clothes under his armpits to try to ease the bitter sting from rasping them over the tiles when he slipped. He sat hunched that way for many minutes.

“Harry,” a familiar voice called down from the small landing at the tower door that led to the roof. It was Hermione.

Harry rolled on his side and crawled up to her.

“I brought you some cauldron cakes.”

“Oh,” Harry said with a tinge of ecstasy. He cleaned his hands with a spell and accepted the pile she held out.

While he gobbled down the first one, she said, “Harry, the students responsible should be doing their own punishment. There is no way you were that involved. I’ve been around you too many hours of the day for you to have worked it in. Unless you sneaked a Time Turner from somewhere.”

Harry opened the second cauldron cake, swallowing hard. “And if I did, I would not use it to waste my time on luring giant spiders to the Great Hall.”

“Exactly,” she said, sounding strained. “Harry, you should say.”

“I’m not telling on my friends,” Harry said.

“They should tell, then.”

“They’ll probably get expelled,” Harry pointed out, suddenly thinking of this. “They can’t expel me. Even if they really think I did it.”

“True.” A light mist beat at them, carried on a gust. “You should quit for the night. It’s getting late.”

“Filch will just make me do something else.” Harry said. “At least the view is nice out here. Thanks for the cakes.”

He climbed back onto the roof. She said, “I’ll save you some dinner.”

“Thanks.”

The rain came down full force as Harry tried to finish that wing. And the wind rose, fortunately battered him upward as it tried to skirt the castle, rather than threatening to batter sideways off the roof. He sensed someone watching, and wondered if Hermione had really departed. He glanced around but he did not see her, and the tower door was closed tight.

The rainwater slid over the tiles in a film, filling the gutters, which backed up against the muck collected in them. Each handful he lifted out caused the water to surge around to fill the new gap. Eventually, the remaining chunk broke free and began washing away down the pipe at the end.

Satisfied, Harry crept gingerly on abused limbs back to the landing. It was farther away than it looked and he had to stop and rest once to make it. The clouds pressed down on him as he went, lashing at the hills around him, tossing dead leaves along with the rain. At the tower, he shook himself off and located many screaming muscles just by tugging open the door. Inside it quickly grew steamy from his breath and the rain he brought in with him. He tried to dry himself with a few spells, but this only worked marginally. He longed for a hot shower and dry clothes but instead marched to Filch’s office, where Filch took great pleasure in Harry’s state.

“I’m told you’re done for the day. Immediately after breakfast tomorrow, you be back here. Or else.”

Harry was too tired to care about tomorrow. He trudged to the Gryffindor Tower, showered and fell into bed, ignoring everyone in the common room, even though every single one of them gave him their full attention as he stumbled through.

Neville, smelling strangely of beef stew, roused him. “Hermione asked me to bring you this.”

“Dinner,” Harry breathed. “I slept through it. Didn’t I?” His neck screamed at him as he sat up.

Neville handed him the tray and stood beside the bed. “Seems like you are taking the fall for someone else.”

Harry was too busy eating to reply. His resistance had turned into a battle on a completely different front, one he was unclear on, but that did not make him slacken his will.

The next morning Harry again reported to Filch. This time he was assigned to scrape and touch up the enamel on the carriages. They were parked in a long shed that still gave off an odor of horse manure, even though there were presumably no horses and had not been for years. At least he found a stool to sit on so he did not have to crouch. And his friends must not have known where he had gone to because no one brought him lunch. He had kept a few rolls in his pocket from breakfast, pressed around rashers of bacon, but they did not suffice.

Exhausted, fingers battered, Harry quit when he heard the bell for dinner. He set the paint and tools inside Filch’s door and walked off while the man chuckled. “If I had my way…” he began, but Harry closed the door before hearing the details. He could make them up himself, really.

Harry stopped to clean up, so he arrived for dinner when desserts were served. Hermione had a plate for him set aside. She quickly set it in front of him and reheated it. Then touched her face strangely. “You have paint…” she said.

Harry rubbed his cheek where she indicated. “Least of my troubles.”

Harry ignored the Head Table and focused on eating. The more sensible part of his brain had broken into a mantra about how his assignments were sitting unfinished, but his body screamed for sleep, or a long hot bath, or a long sleep in a long hot bath. Or a drowning; that would have been acceptable too, according to some subset of his joints and muscles.

Harry ignored his Defense essay on the grounds that Snape could not have expected him to find the time to do it. He worked on his Herbology one instead, slept half the night on it, in fact.

During Defense the next day he sat lethargically in the back, when he was called on, he tossed out an answer that may have been correct. He was too exhausted to make up a fake one, even though he would have preferred to have answered incorrectly. Snape wanted to demonstrate a Counter for a Hair Growing Hex, and he called Harry up to do that.

Harry wanted to refuse. He wanted to sit there and sulk, but he could not, so he stood up. He was very long in doing so, creating an uncomfortable silence in the room.

Harry did as he was instructed and nothing more. Normally he would have helped his classmates, especially when it would have been easier than facing their wayward spells, but he stood there, dealing with the rogue magic instead.

Harry was not released back to his seat but remained there on the platform throughout the spell demonstrations, playing target. When the bell rang, he looked up for permission to go, but Snape shook his head and said quietly, “Stay.”

Harry stood there. Unmoving, his aches transformed into a throbbing numbness that pulled his thoughts to a blessed standstill.

Snape’s voice broke him out of it. “I forgot what a penchant you have for self-abuse.”

Harry stared at him. Not quite understanding. Some response was expected. “So?”

“You did not turn in an essay, I noticed.”

Harry was just generating a withering look, when Snape turned away and added, “I’ll assume you were otherwise engaged. But do not make a habit of it.”

“It’s sort of difficult to write an essay on the roof of the school in the middle of a rainstorm. On a sunny day, maybe.” He jested, but it brought a bright sting to his heart. “I’m going to be late for Transfiguration. Not that I have my essay for that class either.”

Snape paced around. Many small footsteps sounded outside the door. Snape waved a charm at it to lock it and said, “You are not going to say whom you helped, are you?”

“If I ever was, I’m certainly not going to now,” Harry said, happy with how solid that sounded. Every bit of ground he established between them felt like safety. Partly as a trial of that unexpected effect, he emotionally stepped back again and said, “So, if you wish me to continue and graduate with honors from the Dursley School of Remedial Manual Labor, that’s your choice.”

Snape studied him before saying, “I expect discipline from you, Harry. Maturity. Some leeway has been provided for you. Quite a bit in fact, but there are limits. They exist for a reason.”

“You would think better of me if I told on my friends?” Harry asked. He had broken free of something and now felt heedless, uncertain where the boundaries were. “Loyalty means that little to you?”

Snape’s head came around with a jerk. He pointed a finger at Harry. “Do not lecture me about loyalty, Potter.” Snape immediately pulled back from his angry expression, physically put his shoulders back. He rubbed his face and paced, breathing audibly. “Get out of here. I need to figure out what to do with you, and I regret there isn’t time right now to do that.”

Harry collected his things, also feeling regret as well as freedom in equal doses. He parted the students waiting to get into the Defense classroom and walked slowly to his next class, stalling, because this late it did not matter how much later he became. The freedom did not feel like the good kind. It felt like the freedom to forget to use a Tether Charm and then subsequently fall off the roof of the school.

During lunch, while Harry tried in vain to do his Astronomy reading, Hermione asked, “Do you have detention again tonight?”

Harry shrugged. He had not thought to ask. Ginny bit her lips and leaned close. “I’m going to confess, Harry. This even—”

“Don’t bother,” Harry hissed, keeping his head down so only she could hear.

“Why not?” she asked, going from sympathetic to angry with two words.

“Because it’s not about that anymore,” Harry said.

“What’s it about?”

“I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes. He could care less about the celestial bodies making up Centaurus A. He had something far more important to work out, but did not know where to start.

That evening, Snape came to the common room, stopping everything everyone was doing. Students shoved things away that were perfectly allowed.

“Do I have detention?” Harry asked as he followed him into the corridor. He had waited to ask because he saw Ginny appearing to work up her courage and he did not want to give her a chance.

“Of a sort. Follow me.”

Assignments had only felt like torture to his distracted mind, so Harry felt relieved at abandoning them. Snape led him to the gargoyles and up to the Headmistress’ Tower. The late evening sky dominated the room, setting all the metal and glass in the room aflame. Harry took the indicated seat and waited while McGonagall finished something up.

“Harry,” she said politely as she slipped a letter into an envelope and sealed it. When it was neatly arranged with some others she steepled her fingers and said, “Severus informs me you had a very tiny hand in what happened this weekend.”

Harry shrugged. He planned on doing a lot of that this meeting and figured he might as well start early.

She smiled faintly, like she had him figured out. He let himself slouch more, which his tired body preferred anyhow. McGonagall said, “I’m quite surprised your friends—presumably they are your friends—have sat idly by and let you serve out such grueling detentions.”

“So I was bait,” Harry said.

“In a sense,” she replied pleasantly.

Harry looked to his guardian to see his response. His eyes remained fixed on the rug. Harry said, “I told my friends not to say anything.”

“You what?” Snape said, like a whip crack.

Harry turned to him more fully, “You think I want all that suffering of mine to go to waste? I don’t know what you plan to do to my friends. Why shouldn’t I take the punishment? You can’t expel me.”

Snape rolled his eyes, inspiring Harry to add, “You are the one who always insists I should use my influence more.”

“That is not at all what I meant, and you know it, Potter.”

Harry leaned toward him. “How am I supposed to know what you meant…I don’t speak Slytherin.”

McGonagall held up her hand. “Stop!” She sat back, making her chair creak. “Harry, you can go.”

Harry’s shoulders fell. He was just getting going. Head down, he stalked out.

After the door thudded closed, McGonagall turned to Snape and said, “I did not realize how thoroughly you had lost his good will, Severus. I apologize.”

“Why are you apologizing? His actions merited punishment.”

She shook her head and studied her fingers. “You are losing far more than is acceptable under the circumstances. In the annals of Hogwarts history this is a minor affair, really.”

Snape stared at her. “The Minister of Magic, on an annual inspection, was set upon by a horde of giant spiders in the Great Hall and you label it a minor affair.”

She gestured gallantly at the door Harry had exited through. “Harry himself fought a basilisk within these walls. He fought Voldemort, several times. Shall I go on?”

Snape looked away with a huff that sounded grudging.

McGonagall said, “I cannot bear to see you lose your adopted son over this, Severus. The matter is closed. Why don’t you focus on repairing the damage and consider Harry’s rather exemplary work this weekend as more than sufficient pay back to the school. It sounds to me from the scant facts we have that he was merely too trusting at best and too mischievous at worst. Either way he does not deserve to lose his first ever family over it.” Her voice fell stern at the end, commanding even.

“I am out of my depths,” Snape said after a beat.

“Severus, if you managed to find middle ground with Harry before there must be copious amounts of it there.” She pushed forward and adjusted her glasses on her nose. “Don’t let his will harden, however, he’s got rather too much of that going.”

Tuesday, Harry scrambled to finish assignments during breakfast and lunch, but could not quite manage. A renewed energy, or even panic, had set in. If he was on his own, he had to get into the Auror’s program, and he was feeling very much on his own. Maybe he preferred that after all, he thought as he thumbed the index of his Herbology book looking for slime molds that may glow when cut or crushed.

During dinner Snape stopped behind him. “You have detention this evening. My office.”

Harry rubbed his forehead, feeling overwhelmed on more fronts than he thought possible. Snape added, “Bring your schoolworks with you.”

“At least it’s not roof repair,” Hermione said.

Snape’s office had more than the usual number of lamps burning in it, lending the room a cheery appearance. Harry took the desk, finding all kinds of biting nasty things on his tongue, ready to escape.

“What do you have due tomorrow?” Snape asked, voice neutral.

Harry shrugged, but then gathered his thoughts. “Your readings. Transfiguration.”

“Why don’t we start with Minerva’s assignment.”

“We?” Harry echoed. “Suddenly you care how I do?”

Snape did not respond to this, simply waited for Harry to pull out his things. He held his hand out for the book. “What chapter are you on?”

“Five.“

Snape paged through that one. “And your assignment?”

“Summarize the chapter. Answer some questions.”

Snape handed the book back. “Have you read it?”

“I somehow haven’t worked it into my chores,” Harry said, voice still trying to carry an edge, still trying to cut.

“Read it aloud then,” Snape said.

“Right now? Bother you with it? You don’t have anything better to be doing?”

Snape stared him down, but not as a challenge, as something else. “No. Go ahead.”

Harry shook his head, feeling disgusted, but he opened the book to the start of the chapter. “You do this to your House students, draw them in, then cut them down, then draw them in again?”

“We are not discussing my House students. We are discussing Advanced Transfiguration.”

Harry felt like he was fighting against ice. He could get no purchase and the ice did not care. Jaw muscles tight, Harry began to read.

When he finished, voice hoarse, Snape asked him questions, forcing him to reframe what he read and tie it into previous chapters. As Harry composed his essay aloud before writing each line with a hard stroke of his pen that tore at the parchment, he grew more obstinate, angry even. Snape’s careful patience was irritating him more than he thought possible.

It was with extreme relief that Harry wrote out the last line of the essay. Before Snape could suggest it, Harry said, “I don’t need your help with my Defense essay.” This came out stronger than he intended, and Snape’s chin came up, then his head cocked.

“No, I don’t imagine you do.” He said mildly. He looked up at the clock and said, “A little early to be released from detention. Why don’t you tell me what else is going on with you.”

“Like what?” Harry asked. Clipping his words.

“Such as, you must be somewhat stressed about your sub par performance in Transfiguration, since it has such bearing on your future plans.”

Harry pressed his lips together. “I’ll get through it. Even without your help, I can get through it. I don’t need your help. I don’t want your help.”

Snape nodded sagely, like he had confirmed something. “Work on your other subjects, on your own, for another half hour and then you may go.”

The next day, the weather turned warm, a last echo of summer. The sun contended with only a handful of puffy clouds. Harry and his friends took their sandwiches out on the lawn at lunch time, then dallied out there, enjoying the air.

A cloaked figure stepped by them, stopped and turned. “Potter,” Snape said. When Harry raised his head, Snape said, “Follow me.”

With a half huff, half sigh, Harry pushed to his feet and followed down the slope, glancing back at his friends whose expressions of concern remained discernible from rather far away. Snape crossed the lawn to the lake edge and made his way over a soggy boardwalk through the reeds that led to a trail. Harry followed several paces behind, happy enough to stretch his still-complaining limbs with some easy exercise.

The well worn trail led away from the lake through tall trees, then back again to the precipitous edge, then down into a swampy area. Harry followed, losing himself in the walk and forgetting his troubles. Snape strode on, his broad cloak flapping as he walked. Harry had to jog up a steep slope to avoid falling farther behind. At the top of the rise, he stopped to catch his breath and looked back. The school sat like a fortress at the edge of the lake, distant. Harry had never come this far before on foot.

The path thinned, becoming less a trail than just beaten down brush. Then it disappeared all together. Still Snape walked on. Harry jogged again, thinking to ask how far they were going, then he remembered he was trying to be difficult and continued to follow in silence.

At a gentle rise backdropped by massive trees, Snape came to a stop. A stone bench sat at the apex of the hill, just at the lakeside. He waved a spell to clean off the surface and sat down, gesturing for Harry to do the same.

Harry’s legs were tired, so rather than make an excuse for not complying he sat down as well, not quite on the far end, which was crumbling.

Sets of ripples rolled across the lake, interspersed with spans of glassy water where the sky and the far trees were perfectly reflected. It occurred to Harry that afternoon classes must have long since started, that Snape was missing his teaching and Harry his Herbology lesson. The view was too lovely to mention that, not that there was any chance Snape was unaware.

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry noticed Snape observing him. He met his eyes like meeting a challenge, then glanced away again.

“I’m still not telling you,” Harry finally said, just to say something.

“Minerva has closed the issue.”

“She has?”

Snape nodded.

“Oh.” Harry did not know where to go after that.

“Telling you last night seemed meaningless given that you were being obstinate entirely for your own reasons,” Snape said. “Reasons I was slow grasping.” He leaned forward, touching his fingertips together experimentally. “I warned Albus that I was not good at this. But nevertheless…here we are.”

Harry searched through the last few days trying to grab hold of his anger again. Snape spoke into these thoughts saying, “I want you to repeat something you said to me yesterday.”

Harry waited, but Snape did not say more. “What?”

With unusual patience, Snape said, “I want you to tell me you don’t want or need my help.”

Harry stared at Snape’s angular profile, wondering what he was thinking with that. But just imagining repeating it emptied him of defiance. He remained silent, his dry tongue stuck firmly to the roof of his mouth.

Snape turned to him, eyes darker than normal compared to the bright daylight. “You do not wish to say it?”

Harry held still, watching him, wary now. “I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you?” Snape shifted closer on the bench. “I do not intend to unhinge you, Harry. I am simply trying to ensure that I understand what is happening with you. I let my own anger blind me earlier to any kind of apprehension of your deeper state of mind.”

Harry waited, curious but also anxious about what Snape may say next.

“You’ve been pushing me away,” Snape stated, eyes fixed with interest on the far shore of the lake. “I initially thought you were merely reacting to your punishment, and perhaps it germinated from that, but I think you found some advantage to the distance and began working to maintain it. You deserved to be punished, but I should have found some other means of doing so given how very capable you are of falling into a quiet state of persecuted suffering.”

Harry frowned, insulted and therefore free to talk. “I didn’t think you cared. Around here, you like punishing people, and you’ve never cared before.”

Snape turned to him, eyes intense. “There are many ways of caring about and for someone, Harry. Even I, of all people, realize that. You made an unwise decision regarding irresponsible classmates. Then you refused to make amends for it directly. Letting you get by without any censure would be irresponsible and uncaring.” He contemplated his knitted fingers. “You assume, also, I suspect now, that I was not keeping an eye on you. Did you really think that?”

Under the bench, Harry’s feet twisted around of their own accord. “But you left me out there…”

“You think it was easy to do so?”

Harry could not hold Snape’s gaze. He looked away and gave a falsely casual shrug. “I just assumed you didn’t care that much.”

Snape grasped Harry’s arm, then released it immediately to put his arm around Harry’s back.

“I insisted Mr. Filch assign you something safer the second day.”

“More boring,” Harry complained, finding his footing again by doing so.

Snape took his hand back. “Well, we can’t have that…”

“You couldn’t just treat me as an adult?” Harry snapped. “Letting me be treated like a First or Second Year, or like a Muggle?”

Snape took a deep breath. Harry could see his chest filling, shoulders shifting back. “You need to act like an adult if you wish to be treated as one. But I think you are doing it again. I see it easily now. I could not see it before and I let you put far too much distance between us before Minerva intervened.” Voice soft as ever, but with no threat, Snape asked, “Are you aware that you are doing that?”

Harry worked his mouth. “A bit,” he said, not comfortable discussing this. He looked away, watching burgeoning ripples traverse the lake, sending V shapes racing to opposite shores: the Giant Squid swimming laps.

“But you keep at it,” Snape said. Then fell silent.

The gap opened and Harry felt compelled to fill it. “I…it feels, I don’t know,” he complained, getting defensive.

Snape’s brows were angled back when he faced him again. “It feels what?” When Harry did not respond, Snape said, “I could be mistaken. It is certainly likely for me to be… I’m hoping to draw the answer out of you in case I am wrong, rather than forcing an explanation upon you. But it occurred to me only after you departed yesterday evening that on the heels of Dumbledore passing on you may have been reminded too fiercely of having father figures dying and leaving you to your own devices.”

Harry took a deep breath. “Maybe,” he said, mouth wet now. And the wind was making his eyes sting all of a sudden.

“Yes, I do think that is it, and I do apologize for not seeing it sooner. Punishing you is fraught enough with other pitfalls. My actions sent you off on a mission of independence, willingly taking on others’ burdens as you are wont to do. Instead of reassuring you, I kept feeding you perfectly valid excuses to push harder.”

Harry found that word insulting. “How were you going to reassure me,” he said, nearly mocking and not sure why.

Snape stiffened and faced him on the bench. “I don’t know. Apparently I still have not.”

Harry clenched his jaw and looked away. “Dumbledore didn’t have to go. He could have stayed for the rest of the school year. He could have given me some warning…”

“I half agree with you, Harry. He was certainly physically capable of remaining, albeit at a reduced quality of life. It was his failing health that motivated him to suggesting I adopt you. You were the most significant thing he would leave unfinished, and he told me he was determined not to let you be sacrificed to the larger cause he had guided you through.” Snape breathed in and out. “On the other hand, it was beyond his time to move on. The wizarding world needed to learn to live without him. That I agree with.”

“Because you’re a cold hearted bastard,” Harry said.

Snape, brow high, peered at him in surprise. “Are you still trying to push me away?”

“I don’t know.” Harry searched his face, needing a response that gave him something to react to. Snape’s calm made him a bit crazy. He blurted, “Are you going to avoid dying on me? Ever?”

Snape studied him slowly before shaking his head. “I can’t assure you of that, Harry. I’ve seen too much death to make such an empty promise.”

Harry looked away like he had been slapped and gazed fiercely out over the lake, eyes burning again.

Snape knitted his hands in his lap and cast his gaze out to match Harry’s. “I can assure you that I will guard myself better than I ever would for my own good. That I will fight to remain here for you with every bit of strength I have.”

Harry blinked rapidly. He was clinging to the words he was hearing and he did not even want to listen to them. “What if that’s not good enough?” he retorted, angry at nothing in particular and everything in the world, both at the same time.

Snape held up his hands spread out in supplication, even though his voice grew harder. “That is all I can offer. I refuse to be dishonest enough to promise more than that. You deserve more respect than that. And if such a promise is insufficient to reassure you, and you believe it best to live with more distance between us, than I shall be here in whatever capacity you will accept me at. I made promises, and I shall keep them by whatever means you will allow.”

Harry turned away to swipe at his right eye, then pushed his hair back to try to hide that he did.

Looking for something to say, Harry said, “Dumbledore trusted you, that I understand, but he thought you could be some kind of substitute for him?” This came out accusing to his own ears and he wondered why he had said it that way.

Before Harry could apologize, Snape calmly crossed his arms and said, “Now there is an assertion.”

Harry burst out in a weak laugh. His mind was on overdrive, trying to find some place to rest. “What if I don’t get into the Auror’s program?”

Snape sat straighter. “Um…” After a pause, he said, “You do, sometimes, need to let your influence get you things, Harry.”

“I don’t want it to get me that.”

Snape held up his hand. “Right. You’ve said that. Admirable. In that case you will have to think of something else. The year has barely begun. Do not despair yet. Despair is the coward’s way out, and it is not an option that one is ever limited from pursuing at a later date.”

Harry chuckled and sighed. He held his head for a time before looking out at the lake again. “I thought once Voldemort was gone, things would be easier. But now I have to figure out what I want. I didn’t ever get much of a chance to do that before. I suppose I’m not use to it.”

Snape sat forward, matching Harry’s posture, which let their gazes meet. “Things are easier, Harry. You are making them more difficult than necessary. I am not helping much by catering to your wounds rather than helping you heal them.”

Harry wanted to deny that, but couldn’t open his mouth.

“Yes, no one likes to be discussed in that manner, but we have had too much miscommunication the last few days to worry about such niceties.”

Snape sat back and pondered the scenery, looking relaxed. Harry said, “You’re missing your classes.”

“Yes. No matter.”

“No matter? Have you ever missed a class before?”

“I am still learning to balance my myriad responsibilities, but you are far more important than the rest of them, Harry. Something else I’ll try harder to keep in mind, lest it slips again.” After a beat, he added, “You are especially more important than the third year Hufflepuffs.”

While Harry smiled weakly, Snape put a hand on his shoulder, then brushed Harry’s fringe back lightly. It was a casual, familiar motion that implied a different past, but seemed to make that alternative past come to life.

“Are you all right, now, Harry?” Snape asked.

Harry shrugged, feeling lightheaded more than anything else.

“Your favorite answer lately. Shall I simply grow accustomed to it, or can I convince you to elaborate?”

Harry scratched at his nose with his sleeve. The passing sunlight was nicely heating his dark uniform. “It’s true I don’t always want to need you as much as I do. It’s…” He fell away, not wanting to give voice to what rose up in him like a Dementor, pricking his insides with icy spikes.

“…Frightening?” Snape completed for him. “So much so that it seems appealing to instead have nothing at all to lose?” When Harry did not reply, Snape said, “I do understand this, Harry. We found middle ground on precisely this kind of similarity. And you will grow out of needing any kind of father at all soon enough.”

Harry stared at him. “All this talk of promises…you almost make it sound like you prefer I don’t grow out of it.”

Snape sucked in his lips before saying, “I certainly do not prefer that. But I also am in no hurry to be anything less to you, surprising as that is. This is a process. One I’m only getting a hold of slowly. With a bit of improved effort on my part I hope to be more to you while there is still time. Even though that time will be short.”

“You’re only telling me that because of the trouble we just had.” But Snape’s words did make Harry feel better, in large part because he knew how hard they were for Snape to say, and that made them truer.

“Ah, we’ve moved to the past tense,” Snape observed. “I am pleased to hear that.”

A large cloud slid over the sun, rendering half the lake into a cold slate slab. Harry tugged his robes tighter at the neck. “I don’t really want things to change with us,” he said. “But I wish I understood better why Dumbledore left, especially without explaining much.” He tossed his hands helplessly. “I’m glad I have you to count on. You think I’m making things harder for myself, but…I just wish…I don’t know…maybe I just wish that I didn’t feel like I could lose everything.” Just voicing that made Harry’s heart slip downward in his chest.

The lower edge of the approaching cloud hung with blurry tatters of rain. Snape stood, gesturing that Harry should lead the way back.

“We won’t make it,” Harry said, glancing repeatedly at the sky.

Snape took hold of his shoulder to come alongside him. “Trust in something other than yourself, Harry, sometimes. Believe me when I tell you I am very much aware of how difficult that is to do. But do try.”

They started walking, with Harry finding the groove of bent grass that marked their journey here and following it back. At the bottom of the hill, the breeze fell off and the air grew warmer. Harry glimpsed something out on the lake, but when he stopped to find it, it was lost in a shimmer of sunlight on the water. It slid into view a minute later.

It was Hagrid and his rowboat, and he was heading straight for them. Harry hunted for a good spot for the boat to come ashore where they could board it without getting wet. He found an area where large flat rocks had long ago fallen off the cliff into the water, forming a natural quay. Harry stepped out onto it and held his hand to his eyes to watch Hagrid’s approach. The ripples fanned out from the oars in surges, slapping on the rocky shore before the boat made it half way to them.

Snape stepped up close beside Harry and in a low voice, as though worried Hagrid could somehow overhear from out on the lake, he said, “I am a survivor, Harry. I have survived to this point against terrible odds and I intend to live on much longer now that they are vastly improved.” His hand rested on Harry’s back. “If it is humanly possible, trust that I will be here for you.”

Harry’s eyes burned again. The creak of the oars grew musical as the boat approached.

“I’m going to hold you to that,” Harry said, mouth thick with emotion.

Snape put his hand on the back of Harry’s head and pulled it down to his shoulder, holding him that way against his sun-warmed robes. Harry closed his eyes and listened to the rhythmic thunk of the oars, smelled the living green of the lake water.

Harry was released and he raised his head to see Hagrid waving from the boat. The half giant cupped his hands and called out, “Would yer like a ride?”

Harry nodded, then worried it may not be visible at that distance, waved his hand over his head.

Harry thought of a use for the secret passage. It came to him in the shower that morning as though it were something he had thought of previously and simply forgotten. Grinning, he dressed and got ready for class. Even the prospect of Potions did not diminish his newfound buoyant mood.

At breakfast as the post owls arrived, Pig dropped a letter in Harry’s lap and zipped around Ron’s head a few times until the redhead waved his hand to chase him away as though the small owl were a fly. Harry avoided looking up at Ron as he noticed the return address of the Burrow. As he was opening it, another owl, this one small and dark, dropped another one beside Harry’s breakfast plate. It was from Lupin. After a moment of indecision Harry continued to open the one from Mrs. Weasley.

Dearest Harry,

I do hope you are coping well with the loss of dear Albus. It has been rather glum here at the Burrow since the memorial, I’ll confess, and I do apologize for not finding you afterwards, but it was too crowded to, apparently. We were both concerned that he meant too much to you to take his passing in stride. Ginny owled us with assurances that you are taking it well enough and with the news that you have acquired an adoptive father. I must admit, I felt I needed to confirm this with Prof. McGonagall, given our children’s penchant for practical jokes. Minerva explained that you had not informed anyone of this, which worried me until Ginny explained your apparent reasons.

My dear Harry, I do apologize for the abominable behavior of my youngest son. Would it not have embarrassed you as well, I’d have sent him a howler straight off. Rest assured he has received a sharp missive instead with strict instructions to straighten up.

Harry casually lowered the letter and let his eyes move over the table. Ron was eating with his usual gusto although his eyes looked a little empty as they stared at a spot just above his plate. With a small frown Harry returned to the letter. He sort of wished Mrs. Weasley had let Ron work it out on his own.

I must admit to being surprised by who has taken you on, but I know the choice of accepting was certainly yours alone to make and that no one forced you to make it. Although Minerva tells us that it was Albus’ intent that Severus should do this, I cannot help but imagine what your father, your birth father, that is, would think.

 

Harry sighed and took a drink of pumpkin juice. His plate had gone cold. He nibbled on some toast as he went back to the letter and avoided Hermione’s gaze, which seemed to be trying to catch his. He reread that last line and thought that his father wasn’t exactly here to complain.

Well, Arthur informs me I should not have written that last part, but I feel it needs saying.

 

Harry grinned at the notion of them fighting over the letter, even as he felt a twinge at her desire to speak for his parents.

You were viewed as Albus’ protégé, you know.

 

That startled him. He couldn’t imagine living up to that and willed her to be mistaken.

Ginny believes you still wish to keep the adoption quiet despite your schoolmates knowing. I expect that given your age, fewer in the wizarding world will take an interest than you expect.

 

Harry hoped that was true. The rest of the letter was wishes that he be happy. He folded it and put it in his pocket. Breakfast was winding down. He stashed Lupin’s away as well and stood up with his friends.

During Transfiguration, Harry considered that McGonagall seemed to be taking Dumbledore’s death rather well, or she was simply too used to functioning normally no matter what else was happening. She had her usual patient smile fixed on her lips as she circled the room, helping students with a three-stage transfiguration. They were supposed to change an onyx crystal into a tulip, which qualified it as a metatranscendant transformation as the two were opposite classes of object. This class had become a bit of a letdown each Monday after the ease and fun of Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Harry watched with interest as McGonagall helped Justin. The Hufflepuff could not do the spell either and Harry was hoping to pick something up before she came around to their table. Beside him, Hermione was trying to figure out how to get a yellow tulip with a red center, rather than just a yellow or just a red one. It was getting harder to not have her success pile onto his own frustration. Worse yet, this was making him understand Ron better.

Ron was still transfiguring the onyx crystal into quartz. Harry had that down at least. Getting the quartz to make it to thistle was proving beyond him. He got something that looked like a glass pine cone tinged green instead. It was pretty, but far from correct.

Justin finally managed the spell, but Harry could not discern exactly how from the other side of the room. Harry tried it again himself, thinking, as he had been instructed, of the natural growth angles of quartz and the branching of the thistle plant. McGonagall had left him with the impression that she thought this an easy step. He thought hard about long spines as he incanted the first two spells. The resulting very spindly pine cone actually collapsed in a shower of quartz needles. Harry could hear the Slytherins laughing at him. He banished the mess and took another crystal from the box provided to each table. He had not failed to notice that McGonagall always stocked their table well.

“Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said as she strode up to them, “that didn’t sound very promising.”

“No, Professor,” Harry agreed. His newest onyx crystal sat before him, looking innocent. When he looked up at the teacher for any advice, he found her eyes tinged with something like regret. He lowered his wand to his lap and slouched a bit. Transfigurations seemed unimportant all of a sudden.

“You are having trouble with the second step, correct?” she asked. At Harry’s nod, she gestured elegantly at the sample. “Study the thistle a bit more.”

Harry did so. It sat in a pot on the table in the middle of the room, looking dangerously beautiful and fragile.

McGonagall gave him a moment to consider it before saying, “It is alive, Harry. You must make it not only a shape transformation in step two, but also a protasmic one. Neither is really hard but both are necessary. Try it again.”

As Harry stared at the chunk of smooth, dark rock before him, he remembered that Transfiguration was Dumbledore’s subject as well. Harry regretted that he had never had a class with him, although it was just as well he couldn’t see his current slow performance. He cast the two spells, the first now quite rote. Before him was…something. It was kind of a plant and it was kind of green. The weight of the long quartz needles on its leaves was making it droop as he studied it.

“Closer,” McGonagall said helpfully. “I think.”

Harry was starting to dislike tulips rather a lot. Ron finally got a quartz crystal, to grand congratulations from Hermione, who was now trying for a purple tulip.

After classes, Harry finally had a chance to open his other letter when he let his friends go on ahead to the tower without him. He stood in a window looking out on a cloudy day and opened it. It was much shorter than Mrs. Weasley’s.

Dear Harry, A great deal of news about you in the last week. Unfortunate that you didn’t feel you could share your new home circumstances, but far be it from me to fault others for keeping secrets. I have been assured that Severus is treating you well, as odd as that notion is. It leads me to believe he must have been under far too much strain these many years. Trust that I and many others share your grief about Dumbledore. He truly had an impact on us all. Please owl if you need to speak of anything at all. -Remus.

 

Harry folded the letter and put it with Mrs. Weasley’s. Something that had been on his mind for a while came to the fore. He headed to the staircases with purpose.

“Professor?” Harry said as he pushed open the door to the headmistress’s office. It had been left ajar, which would have been unusual before.

McGonagall sat at her desk, concentrating hard on the parchments before her. “Yes, Mr. Potter,” she said in a flat tone.

“This is very quick, Professor,” Harry said apologetically. “I was just wondering when Severus’ birthday is.”

McGonagall raised her eyes at that and grinned a little mischievously. She pulled out a file drawer and flipped through it and parted one of the files to peer at it without pulling it out. “November the twentieth,” she replied with a small crooked grin.

“Thank you, Professor.”

“You are quite welcome, Harry,” she said in a much more amiable tone.

Harry grinned to himself as he left her office and went straight to the kitchens to get what he needed for his prank. He needed a large cork and just the right size jar. Dobby turned out to be a great help, patiently bringing him one empty jar after another until he found one that made exactly the right noise when the cork was pulled. It was a small jar too, which was even better. Contemplating a bit of truly harmless trouble made him feel better than he had in a very long time. He was just a little bothered that he didn’t have Ron in on it, although he imagined he was going to enjoy it.

Late that evening, Snape looked up from the book he was studying when McGonagall entered his office. She had an odd look upon her face, as though reminded of something of that evoked mixed emotion.

“Among Albus’ things I found a collection of these,” she said, holding out a small sealed envelope.

Snape accepted it and examined it. The parchment looked aged, yellowed, especially around the gum seal. His first name was written in Dumbledore’s hand on the front in ink faded to brown. Snape made a noise of conflicting interest.

“You probably won’t be able to open it,” McGonagall commented.

With a doubtful look, Snape tried to slip his thumbnail under the seal—it steadfastly refused to budge or even tear a little.

“Pomona’s and Hagrid’s are that way as well. Mine was open when I found it. Most everyone’s opened when I handed them out. Just as well to put off reading it,” she opined.

He studied the ordinary but unopenable seal again. “Powerful wizards mucking about,” he breathed, annoyed. At McGonagall’s dubious look, he explained, “Potter’s words.”

“Ah. I always thought not much was getting past him.” She adjusted her robes and turned to leave. “There was no letter for him, by the way.”

“Good.”

As students settled in for Defense on Friday, a note was passed surreptitiously. It read, Do not react. Act normal. Used to this sort of thing, they followed it immediately, maybe too much.

Snape took roll call visually, his brow furrowing momentarily as he noticed Harry’s absence. He scratched his brow and started the lecture, determined to give his charge no extra consideration.

“Today we will continue with cutting spells,” he said. As he gave them an overview of what they would cover that day, he noticed that they all seemed somewhat extra attentive, almost innocently so. He shook that off and described the advanced narrow burning spell.

If Snape had turned around, he would have noticed one of the wooden panels behind him swing open. He almost certainly would have seen Harry step silently out from behind it and close it, tapping it once with his wand very lightly. The class obediently kept their eyes on the teacher as Harry pulled the small jar from his pocket and pulled the cork.

A loud pop! made Snape turn around. Harry stood behind him, hands in his pockets, looking inordinately pleased with himself. A few students giggled.

“Potter,” Snape said with his old sneer. “You do not expect me to believe that you have managed to Apparate inside the castle. Or Apparate at all for that matter, since I know for a fact you are not licensed to do so.”

Harry gave him a shrug and stepped around him. “Sorry I’m late, sir,” he said.

Snape looked around behind him, then back at Harry, who was very much Occluding his mind, but made up for it with a very sweet expression of innocence. The class grinned as one now, even Malfoy and the other Slytherins.

“I am sorely tempted to take ten points from Gryffindor for your intentional disruption of class,” Snape said in harder tone.

Neville piped up, “It would be worth it, sir.”

Snape closed his eyes a long moment then managed to glare at the boy. “Ten points from Gryffindor then and stay after class, Mr. Potter.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said easily.

At the end of what felt like an extra long class Harry did as he was told and hung beside his desk as the room emptied. He received a lot of winks and waves as his fellow students departed. Snape stepped down and over to him. He sighed in dismay and said, “You did not really Apparate, did you, Harry?”

Harry grinned widely. “You really think I could manage that?” he asked, flattered.

Snape glanced around the platform with narrowed eyes before turning back to him. “I am finding myself conditioned to not underestimate you.”

Harry still smiled. “I didn’t Apparate,” he reassured him.

“Good,” Snape said. “Things would have become very complicated had you done so.”

Harry took the bottle and cork out of his pocket and held them up. He then laughed. “The look you gave me was pretty funny,” he said. He set his noisemakers down and reached in his bag for a copy of his Map. He held it out for Snape. It was blank so he tapped it with his wand. The seven floors, the towers and the dungeons appeared. “And don’t tell any students, I showed you this part,” Harry said as he incanted, “Passages,” while tapping the parchment again.

Snape’s eyes narrowed as he looked the page over. “This reminds me of something,” he breathed.

Nervously, Harry said, “Really?”

Snape gave him an intent look and held the parchment out.

“You can keep it,” Harry offered.

“Does it do anything else?” Snape asked. When Harry shook his head, he added, “Pity. I presume you still have the original?” Harry looked away, reluctant to answer. Snape dropped his arm, making the parchment flutter. “Potter, I have no intention of taking it away from you. I suspect you have very few things that belonged to your father.”

Harry relaxed in what felt like overdone relief. “I still have it,” he admitted. “I’ve been trying to figure out how it works, without much luck. Even with some help from Remus.” He shrugged. “I don’t have time to work on it with classes now. Speaking of which, I’m going to get detention from McGonagall for being late again.” He hurriedly packed up his things and slung his bag over his shoulder.

As he motioned a casual goodbye, Snape asked, “You really expect Minerva will do that?”

Harry breathed deeply. “We’ll see.”

Harry didn’t get detention, but he received a very stern talking to in front of the class when he arrived. By the time he walked in the story of his prank had been told and McGonagall was ready for him.

When the admonishment concluded and McGonagall returned to the lesson with a disappointed huff, Neville raised his hand and said, “If you’d seen the look on Professor Snape’s face, Professor, you’d think it worth it.”

She glared at him and said, “Yes, well, I didn’t have the luxury of that, so it does not count in Mr. Potter’s favor.” She turned to stalk to the front of the room and murmured, “Next time, Potter, be sure to invite a few more bystanders.”

Harry shared a look of relieved amusement with his friends.

The weather turned colder, but that didn’t dissuade them from heading into Hogsmeade on Saturday. The crowd in the Three Broomsticks was thinner than the previous visit. Harry and his companions sat at a table by the side wall and Madame Rosmerta brought them a round of butterbeers immediately.

“We get such great service with you here, Harry,” Hermione said. Ron looked like he might be in agreement, but he didn’t speak. Harry shook his head in dismay at both Rosmerta and Ron. They held up their mugs in a silent toast to Dumbledore before sipping the sweet liquid.

“What is this?” Hermione asked the table in general. At their questioning looks, she nodded at a table near the window.

Harry turned and espied an ordinary witch in mauve robes sitting with a man whose back was to them. “That’s Professor Snape, isn’t it?” Hermione asked. Harry squinted and nodded that it probably was. “Who’s the woman?” his friend asked. Harry just shrugged. “Huh,” Hermione huffed suggestively. “Hasn’t said anything?” she went on.

“Why would he?” Harry returned. As they chatted and drank a second round, Hermione’s notion began to gnaw at Harry strangely. He shook it off several times, but his gaze seemed to end up over at the other table without his will.

While the students were gathering for D.A., Harry stood reading sections of the Dragon Lair Book of Dangerous Spells. Neville came over and tipped the front edge down to glance at the page he was on.

“Finding anything good?” Neville asked. “Where’d you get that anyway? The library doesn’t have a copy.”

“Snape,” Harry replied, lost in the description of something called the Cuisinart Spell. It sounded like the kind of thing that would kill a giant spider, if not at least cut its legs off. One would have to be very careful with it, though. Very careful.

“Gosh,” Neville said, reading over Harry’s shoulder now. “Professor Snape really loaned you this, or he just failed to notice you removing it from his shelf?”

Harry laughed lightly. “He really loaned it to me. Just warned me I was personally responsible for anything anyone did with anything they learned here.”

“Still,” Neville said, reaching out and turning the page to read more of the next spell, the Nostrafresca. “Aye!” he said and dropped the page back down. The woodcut illustration was rather gruesome. “Don’t teach anyone that one.”

Harry closed the book, still smiling at Neville’s antics. He put it back in his bag by the wall where Ron, Ginny and Hermione were standing.

“Something wrong, Neville?” Hermione asked.

“Just imagining being turned inside out by my nostrils,” Neville said with a wince. “So nothing is really wrong.”

More students wandered in, Fourth Years, chatting boisterously. Harry still wasn’t accustomed to the fun feeling most members brought to the meetings now. It used to be so strained, almost to the breaking point, with everyone in a near panic that if they didn’t get each spell right, they might not survive.

“Are we going to do any curse detection?” Ernie asked as he, Owen, and Laura wandered over to the four of them.

“I’ll add it to the list,” Hermione said, reaching for her bag, “if it isn’t already on it.”

“My parents owled to say they were thinking of getting rid of an old trunk in the attic that belonged to my great aunt. She always warned us the thing was full of stink cursing, eyeball eating, slime producing objects. As kids we never believed her, but she’s gone now and we kinda want to look through it.”

Harry, sympathetic to this, said, “Star it on the list. It sounds less dangerous than some of the other suggestions.”

“Today we are doing more blocking, though, right?” Ginny asked. “I always get paired with Striver Bletchley during Defense class and I’m tired of landing on my bum.”

“Want me to complain for you?” Harry asked.

“Oh!” Ginny said brightly. “You could do that, couldn’t you? You don’t think Professor would just instead pair me with someone worse, like Mortimer Montague?”

Harry thought that over. “I really don’t know,” he replied. “It would depend on how I asked, I suppose.”

“Maybe not bother,” Ginny said warily. “Just help me out so I can kick anyone’s arse, please.”

Harry grinned. “Sure thing.” He turned to the room, which had about thirty students in it, and got everyone’s attention to start.

Harry spent the week racking his brain for a present idea. He had asked for the date with less than three weeks to spare, making him very glad that he had not put it off any longer. No good ideas came to mind, though. He finally broke down and went down to Hagrid’s cabin to ask his advice.

“Tea,” Hagrid said with authority. “Drinks a lo’ of it, doesn’e?” he added at Harry’s doubtful expression.

“Doesn’t seem very creative or unusual,” Harry commented, as he petted a bright young Fawkes who sat on his perch beside the hearth.

“Don’ try so hard. Trust me. Tha’ll only go wrong in the end. And HOW,” Hagrid said with embarrassment. Harry wondered what brought on that flush of dismay, but held his questions when Hagrid muttered a bit about people who really didn’t want an exotic pet even though they said they might…several times, and how could one not take that as a hint.

The weekend arrived. As Harry sat in the Three Broomsticks, mulling over his dilemma, Hermione nudged him and pointed at the door. Snape and the same woman entered and sat at a table in the corner. Snape seemed too preoccupied to take in the occupants of the room, which wasn’t like him.

“I have to run an errand,” Harry said suddenly, feeling an urgent need to get cracking on the present.

They waved him off, whispering between themselves. Harry pulled his cloak over his shoulders and walked down to the teashop.

As he turned off High Street, he encountered an eager face. Harry wondered why Skeeter seemed to be waiting for him. He shook off his suspicion and gave her a flat hello as he stepped by. She beat him to the shop and put her foot at the edge of the door to hold it closed.

“You are a tough one to get at when you are in school, you know that? I am looking forward to you finishing, just so I can get access to you.”

“What do you want, Ms. Skeeter?” Harry asked, continuing to stare through the glass into the shop.

“A moment of your time,” she said as though it were the easiest thing in the world.

Harry sighed, “What do I get out of it?” When she hesitated replying, he added, “More stupid entries in the Rumors column?”

“I admit, the Dumbledore retrospectives have distracted me from tracking more of that rumor down.” She did make that sound like a confession. Biting her lip, she went on, “How about doing something for me for old-times sake?”

Harry gave her a very doubtful look, then glanced up and down the street to see if anyone was approaching. He released the door handle and stepped around the side of the shop where the wall overlooked nothing but a sheep field back-dropped by the Forest in the distance.

“Look,” Harry said as he crossed his arms and leaned against the peeling paint of the siding, “I’m continually reminded how much I’m owed by everyone. I’ve never called anyone on that, but I’m doing it now. Leave it be.”

“Why? The public deserves to know,” she said, sounding over-rehearsed.

“I don’t ask for much. Actually,” he said, leaning closer to her, “I haven’t asked for anything. All I want is to be left to myself. The public deserves to know that Voldemort is really gone and I’d spend hours helping you convey that. But my life is mine.”

She adjusted her heavy bag on her shoulder. “You wouldn’t believe the rumors flying about you right now: You’re secretly married. You keep illegal pet dragons. You have pregnant girlfriends. Sometimes all of the above in odd combinations.”

Harry shook his head. “Why does anyone care?” he grumbled.

“Their own lives aren’t interesting enough to hold their attention, I guess. Now you may argue that if they paid more attention to their own lives, rather than yours, that their lives might become more interesting.” She shrugged. “It’s the easiest thing to sell papers, so I’m not complaining.” While she studied him, she took out a cigarette and put it between her lips. At his dismayed look, she said, “Yeah, I know. I’m supposed to smoke a pipe like a proper witch. I hear it all the time.”

Harry didn’t know how to tell her that wasn’t at all what he was thinking.

Talking around the cigarette, she said, “Look, I know a nice scoop is staring me in the face, but I can’t get anyone at the Ministry to talk. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She took two long drags, then stamped out the cigarette on the cold ground. “Am I right?”

“Probably,” Harry admitted.

“Help me and I’ll drop it.”

Harry closed his eyes. “What do you want?” he asked warily.

“Dumbledore’s last words. Were you there?”

“Take care of the school,” Harry replied, seeing no harm in that.

Deep in thought, Skeeter took out her pad and a normal quill. “I didn’t buy that from your new headmistress. Serves me right.” She didn’t write anything down, just considered him. Eventually, she asked, “Are you worried about Jugson and Avery? No one else seems to be. I thought Fudge declared victory a little early.”

Harry watched a flock of small birds circle and dive over the field. “I watched Voldemort torture Avery for being disloyal. I don’t think he ever did anything he wasn’t forced to. Jugson I don’t know as much about. I do trust some of the Aurors and they seem to think they are unlikely to come out of hiding.” He shrugged. He no longer had dreams, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “I feel safe,” he added instead.

She made a few short notes. It made Harry wonder if he should be authorized to speak with her. He could mess up a lot of people should he choose to.

She put her pad back away. “I’m thinking that I’d prefer to hold this over you. I’ll keep things quiet, if you answer my questions.”

Harry felt the blanket of blackmail descending. “If that’s what it takes,” he heard himself say.

“So tell me what it is I’m keeping quiet about,” she said as her quill went into her bag and she buckled it.

Harry grinned lightly. “I was adopted.”

Her face twisted and immediately untwisted. “You’re joking.” She laughed, sounding regretful. “Figures. Got a few owls from some old friends saying just that. But it sounded like a diversion, Mr. Seventeen-Year-Old.”

Harry shrugged, feeling sweetly like he had won this round even though it felt an unstable victory.

Skeeter stepped away, shaking her head. Harry followed her to the road and watched her stride slowly to the next street. As he entered Puddifoots, a bell chimed somewhere in the back.

After a long discussion with the teashop proprietress that almost qualified as an educational seminar about rare teas, he ordered a canister of high-altitude Himalayan first flush. Grateful to have that out of the way, but still feeling like he was failing in this task, he went back out to the road. Ron and Hermione were standing outside the Three Broomsticks. Harry caught up to them and they headed toward the castle together.

“They were looking pretty chummy in there,” Hermione teased Harry as they left High Street and headed on the path to school.

“What?” Harry said defensively. He shrugged his cloaked shoulders to indicate he didn’t care, but part of him thought he should have come up with a better present.

Harry arrived early for D.A. to set up some things. He wanted to try a few spells that countered potions, but making his fellow students drink stuff that would make them ill smacked of Fred and George so he wanted to be prepared. The lonely walk through the castle had not felt as uneasy this evening, for which he was grateful. He wondered idly as he set his bag inside whether the castle was adjusting to Dumbledore’s absence or he was.

He glanced around the avocado tile floors and walls. The Room was apparently a little confused about what he wanted. He stepped back out and in a few times, thinking differently about what his real needs were for this session.

“Having fun?” a voice sneered from the shadow of a doorway across the corridor. Draco Malfoy stepped forward into the light of a flickering wall lamp. His face looked its usual condescending.

“Yes, actually,” Harry replied easily. “What is it to you, anyway?”

In a mocking singsong, Malfoy said, “Ah, the famous Harry Potter, playing musical doors.”

Harry shrugged but didn’t open the door again. “Something you want?”

Malfoy pulled his wand out. “Yes, there is.” Harry didn’t move, just glanced at the wand as though it were harmless. “Don’t taunt me, Potter,” Malfoy threatened. “Get yours out.”

“What, you want to duel?” Harry asked in properly sneering disbelief.

Malfoy smiled with pleasure. “Yes,” he drawled.

“Come on in then,” Harry said easily and opened the door. Inside was now a regulation dueling platform. The walls were solid granite all around with no windows.

Malfoy stepped in suspiciously although he let his wand fall. “This is a bloody interesting room, isn’t it?”

As they stepped over to the platform, Harry said, “You must be bored now that you’ve lost your junior Death Eater status. How is your dad, anyway?”

Malfoy’s lips crooked as he huffed. “He chose a losing side,” he commented quietly then smiled a bit more.

Harry stood with his wand out at his side. “You’ve been getting along better than I’d imagined,” he commented, “given how much has changed.”

“I discovered that power vacuums are made to be filled,” the blond young man replied as he raised his wand to ready. Harry matched him. “You are clearly too stupid to do so,” Malfoy went on.

Harry went on mockingly, “I’d have thought you’d miss running around in a dark robe with a mask, dodging in and out of shadows like a cockroach.”

Malfoy’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know how someone as pathetic as you brought down such a great wizard—”

“Don’t worry,” Harry cut him off. “The same thing wouldn’t work on you—you actually have feelings.”

This caught Malfoy off guard and he blinked a moment as he took it in. Then he scoffed, “You’ve been hanging around Snape too long.” With no warning other than the movement of his arm, he fired a blasting curse at Harry who blocked it and sent one back that Malfoy also blocked.

“He’s been teaching me on the side,” Malfoy said maliciously. “Far as I can tell, you only have him for class.” He fired a Figuresempre and got one in return, both of which were blocked easily.

Harry was starting to enjoy this. His heart was pumping nicely rather than panicky and his mind was clearly focused. “I finished seventh-year Defense in one afternoon,” Harry pointed out and cast an unfocused Cutting Curse at the other boy. It wouldn’t have done more than given him a red streak on his skin, but Malfoy ducked and did what Harry’d hoped he would, he got angry and incanted something nasty back. Harry blocked the Hatchet Curse and the following narrow Cutting Curse that would have done real damage.

“Can we do this every week?” Harry asked hopefully as he stepped forward into position after getting knocked back.

Malfoy growled and incanted something Harry didn’t recognize. Harry put up a Titan Block since it was usually a good bet. Part of the spell bounced off, but the air sizzled with red tendrils after the block dissolved. Two of them struck Harry on the arm and chest before he could roll out of the way. From a kneeling position, he sent a very hard Figuresempre back again, knocking Malfoy back, almost off the platform.

Harry’s arm and chest burned as he stood up, wondering fiercely what had hit him.

The door opened at that moment and the two of them froze. Neville and Dean stepped in and looked between them. “Drat,” Neville said, “What are we missing?”

Harry laughed despite the sharp streaks of pain. He didn’t lower his wand. “Draw for now?” Harry asked the other.

Malfoy lowered his wand. “I don’t want an audience,” he said in a spoiled voice and jumped off the platform. After he had stalked out of the room, Harry unhooked his robe and unbuttoned his shirt to look at the damage. Nasty red snaking streaks were on his chest and upper arm.

“What is that?” Dean asked.

Harry winced and headed for the door. “Look up a spell with the incantation Aduroreptum for me, will you?” he said as he left for the Hospital Wing. “Thanks,” he breathed as he closed the door.

Pomfrey was her usual unsympathetic toward him. “And what were you doing, young man?” she challenged him when he showed her the strange welts.

“Practicing spells,” Harry said as though it were obvious and completely normal.

She went to the supplies and brought back a tin of salve. “Try that one.”

Harry rubbed a little on and sighed at the instant relief.

She put her hands on her hips and stared at him. “Do recall that I have someone to report you to now.”

“You may do so, Madam,” Harry said easily. He was feeling cocky after holding up so well against Malfoy in an all-out duel. He grinned widely as he said, “He’d have to take points from Slytherin, so he probably wouldn’t want to hear the whole story.”

McGonagall gave them Hogsmeade privileges again the next weekend. Harry suspected she was trying to balance out losing Dumbledore. The opportunity worked well for Harry, otherwise he would have had to owl for the package from the shop and although it was a short flight, Hedwig wouldn’t like the trip if it was heavy. Hermione and Ron skipped going down because it was very windy. Harry enjoyed the solitary walk down the path to town. Only a few other students were ahead of or behind him and they were a distance away. As he walked, all he heard was the crunch of his boots on the snow and the creak of the thin ice bordering edge of the water. He slowed his pace, despite the biting wind, just to take it in longer.

At the teashop he pulled open the door and pulled off his hat and mittens. As he stepped up to the counter, he heard a gasp from near the window, followed by whispering. Harry stuffed his mittens into his cloak pocket and turned toward the sound. He recognized the violet-robed woman after a moment’s consideration. She was leaning over, talking excitedly to Snape who gave Harry a positively disgusted look.

The shopkeeper came out of the back and, when he saw him, set Harry’s package on the counter in a fancy bag with pink yarn for handles. Harry forced his smile down and put some coins on the counter and took up the bag. When he stepped back toward the door, the woman gave him such a bright look, he almost couldn’t hold back on his grin.

“Sir,” Harry said to Snape.

“Potter,” Snape replied flatly.

“You know him?” the woman asked Snape in delighted surprise, severely testing Harry’s control.

Snape hesitated just an instant. “He is a student at Hogwarts,” he explained with a hint of short patience.

“Ma’am,” Harry said.

She put out her hand. “Candide Breakstone,” she said.

Harry took her hand. “Harry Potter.”

“Wow,” she said gleefully. “You are.”

Harry couldn’t risk a glance at Snape, or he knew he would lose it.

“You must have things to be doing, Mr. Potter?” Snape asked impatiently.

Harry, feeling free since Snape had started the game this time, said conversationally, “Not really, sir.” He turned back to the bright-eyed woman just as she finished giving Snape a critical look. “So, what do you do?” Harry asked her.

“I’m an accountant. It is the end of the fiscal calendar year this month, so I spend all of my time with my firm’s clients here in Hogsmeade.”

Harry blinked at her before saying, “That’s nice,” as levelly as possible.

“Oh!” she said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a white mug. “Would you mind terribly?” she asked Harry, pleading and holding it out.

Harry accepted it and looked it over. It was some kind of a commemorative mug celebrating the Year of the Dark Lorde’s Demyse. It had a fake seal format to it and lots of gold accent. “Yee,” Harry uttered in dismay.

“Yes, it is rather horrid. I know,” she admitted. “But my boss gave them to all of us. If you signed it, he would be livid with jealousy.”

Harry swallowed hard, mostly because it was his fault this particular encounter had gone this far, and gave her a pleasant smile. He took a quill out of his bag and used the marker pen charm on it. Snape had taken the mug to look at it with an appalled expression. Harry took it back a little impatiently and signed it To Candide, from your friend, Harry Potter. He then sealed the fresh ink with a Permanent Charm.

“You have a spell for every possible autographing circumstance?” Snape asked him in his most snide tone.

“I do try, sir,” Harry said sweetly as he handed the mug over to Candide. She looked at it with a glowing smile before stashing it in her bag. “Thank you,” she said honestly.

“No problem. Nice to have met you.” Harry said. He picked up his package from the floor and said, “Professor,” to Snape in his most formal tone, tapping his heels together.

Later that evening back at the castle, Harry stopped by Snape’s office. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your date,” he said as he stepped in.

Snape gave him a dark look. “I don’t know if one would call it that,” he said as he flipped through a large book on his desk.

Harry waited an appropriate amount of time before saying, “Candy the accountant?”

Snape’s eyes came back up to him. He gave him a slit-eyed glare and said, “Go away, Potter, before I say something I’ll regret.”

Harry frowned a bit and departed in a hard silence.

In the common room most of his friends were enjoying themselves with games or talk. Harry, not feeling sociable, collected his books and took them to the library, which was almost empty. He worked on Potions since he was in a bad mood already anyway and could use sharp phrasing in his essay as an outlet for it.

Harry’s dark mood didn’t abate much by Monday. He was quiet in Defense class, which attracted a few long looks from Snape, especially when Harry couldn’t find any patience for his spelling partner, Lavender.

Snape stepped over and reviewed the Quiescent spell with her. Harry kept his eyes averted, watching Ron and Hermione practice making each other swoon onto large cushions. He rolled his eyes at the appropriateness of that, and waited for the chance to practice more. Finally, when Lavender was ready to try it again, Harry paid attention. Fortunately she still didn’t have it right, and all he received was a dull buzzing in his ears.

Thursday was Snape’s birthday. Harry’s annoyed mood had lightened a bit, but not enough to make him relish the notion of giving a gift to him. He borrowed wrapping paper from another student in the House and wrapped the cylindrical tin when everyone went to breakfast. He dropped it into his bag, thinking that an opportunity would arise to hand it over. He put it off until after the last class of the day. This was usually a good time to catch any teacher in their office, since they were often taking care of things before heading down to dinner.

Snape’s door was closed. Harry knocked on it just in case, but there was no answer. Sighing, mostly because this meant he was going to have to work himself up to this again, he stepped away.

After dinner he came straight back. The door was open this time and Snape was filing things when Harry knocked on the doorframe. This was going to cost him some pride—he could feel it.

“Harry,” Snape said evenly. It was the usual greeting, but Harry felt he could have used a tad more encouragement.

Harry checked the hallway and seeing it empty, stepped farther in, unbuckling his bag as he walked. He set it on the visitor’s chair and took out the lime-green wrapped present. As he placed the package on the desk, he said evenly, “Happy birthday, sir.”

Snape put down the parchment he had in his hand and gave Harry and the gift a stunned look. Holding that gaze cost Harry more pride than he had feared. He hefted his bag and stepped out while he still had a little of it left.

Snape sat in the teashop alone the next Saturday. It occurred to him now that it was the gift Potter was picking up when he had encountered him here. The boy had done a good job of not giving that away.

The proprietress brought him more hot water, turning his thoughts to the time. Candide had made it sound very doubtful that she would make it. But she had done that the weekend before as well. He did believe that she worked every day, including weekends, as the end of November grew closer, but he couldn’t help but suspect that he had botched it somehow. Though tempted to blame the incident with Potter, since she had been mildly upset by his treatment of the boy, it had begun before that. The week before, when her friend had joined them briefly in the Three Broomsticks. After that Candide had insisted on meeting elsewhere with a tone that said, “if at all”.

The door opening interrupted his musings. “Hope you weren’t waiting too long,” Candide greeted him as she stepped over. She set her packages on the floor, took the seat across the small table, and pulled over a cup and poured for herself. Her eyes were much more distracted than usual. He resisted the strong temptation to Legilimize her.

After a long sip she tossed off her cloak and let it fall over the back of her chair. “I don’t think we should meet anymore,” she stated simply.

“May I ask why?” Snape heard himself say.

She shrugged. “You can ask.”

“Your friend Roberta didn’t like me, I assume.”

“She knows you better than I,” Candide said. “She was three years behind you at Hogwarts, but I don’t think you recognized her.”

Snape shook his head.

“Anyway,” Candide murmured, picking at her nails nervously.

“I certainly enjoy having tea with you,” Snape said.

Her eyes darted around the room. “You are interesting to talk to. Most people aren’t, really.”

Snape raised both brows. This was one of the more endearing things she had ever said.

A shadow moved outside the shop window. Snape rapped on the glass, startling Candide. “If you do not wish to have tea with me anymore, or mead, that is your choice,” Snape said to her with a tone of finality.

The shadow outside hesitated then stepped up to the door and opened it. Harry shut the door behind him against the cold wind. “Sir?” he asked.

“Come over here, Harry,” Snape invited.

Harry pulled his hat off and stashed it in his pocket. His cheeks were red from the wind and he was breathing as though he had been walking quickly. He loosened his cloak and coat collar. “Hello again,” he said to the woman. She smiled and returned his greeting.

Snape stood up and took his own cloak down from the hat rack behind him. Harry watched this in confusion. “I’ll head back to the castle with you,” Snape explained to him.

“Okay,” Harry said easily.

“Thank you for the birthday present, by the way. Well chosen.”

Harry smiled at that, forgetting everything he had felt in between. “You’re welcome, sir,” he said brightly.

“It was your birthday?” Candide asked.

Harry rapidly glanced between them, trying to figure out the situation. Snape turned to her, his hair falling into his face as he looked down to get his gloves out of his pockets. He nodded faintly as if it were no matter. He tugged his gloves on, one after the other. “You were not introduced properly last time,” he said as he pulled his cloak around his shoulders. “Harry, this is Candide Breakstone. Candide, this is my son, Harry.”

Harry gave her a normal smile, thinking that Snape must have some reason for going straight at the jugular. Her expression was rather shocked. Her startled eyes gravitated to Harry who gave her a small nod. Snape had been plotting an exit—Harry could go for that. “I have a D.A. meeting to prepare for,” he said to Snape. It was true, inasmuch as it was always true. “Nice meeting you again,” he said to Candide.

On the way down the road, Harry said, “So she broke it off, eh?”

“Yes,” Snape answered in a low tone.

“I don’t know,” Harry said, trying for a teasing voice. “She failed the Harry test.”

“Very true. I would not have imagined such mindlessly adoring behavior from her.”

“I am sorry,” Harry said, minutes later, as they stepped along the path beside the lake. It was true. As odd as the notion had made him feel, he could see the other side of it easily now.

“It wasn’t her—it was her friend,” Snape complained. Something in his tone made Harry think this brought back bad memories, so he let the whole thing drop rather than risk sending Snape into a funk.

The next morning an owl dropped a letter in front of Harry. He opened it, surprised to find it was from Candide.

Was Severus serious? You nodded, but I simply cannot imagine. Please reply to the address below.

 

The address at the bottom was an in the care of one of the businesses in Hogsmeade.

“Interesting letter?” Hermione asked as Harry stared at it.

“Merlin, don’t ask. Can I borrow a quill?” Harry wrote a reply on the back, explaining that yes, Severus had adopted him and should she care to, she could look up the filing with the Wizard Family Council. As to their odd behavior the first time around, that was a little game they played since the adoption wasn’t general public knowledge. He signed it and folded it to take it to the owlery after breakfast. He gave the quill back and poked at his food again.

Later, as he handed the letter to Hedwig, he realized he was most likely reopening this thing between his guardian and this woman. He would have to try to hold onto the mindset from the day before when he had felt regret as they were walking back to the castle. It wasn’t going to be easy. He could feel it slipping away, even as Hedwig sailed out one of the upper openings.

Harry didn’t want to be seen has having intervened, so when he went down to visit with Snape that evening, he left the topic well alone. He had brought all of his books and assignments to work on. Usually he selected just one to bring in case Snape was busy. This time he found himself settling in for a long evening.

Around the end of the second hour, Harry looked up to find Snape considering him in silence. “Would you like some tea?” his guardian finally asked.

Harry, having much more to finish that evening, said, “Sure.” As tea was being made, he returned to his efforts at describing the origin of wizard community law in the five-hundreds. At least Binns seemed to have realized that something other than Giant wars and Goblin rebellions had happened in the past, though Harry wished it were something more interesting.

Snape set a cup of tea before Harry, who raised it to his nose and hesitated. It smelled of sunshine and fresh herb. Distracted from his reading he took a sip. It wasn’t anything like any tea he had had before. It was earth and enchanted green leaves with a bit of toasted something at the end. He blinked into his cup. “Is this the stuff I got you?” he asked.

Snape sat back, holding his cup with his fingertips. He looked amused. “You didn’t try it first?”

“I got talked into it. It was a special order.” Harry took another sip and marveled all over again. “Wow.” He felt better, realizing that he had managed all right on the gift after all.

Harry made his way to Snape’s rooms more often that week, even though he really didn’t have time. Instead of being there, he should have been finishing research for assignments before Quidditch practice or practicing spells for D.A.

Snape didn’t comment or make an indication that he noticed Harry’s change in visiting habits. Twice, Harry opened his mouth to ask if anything had happened with Candide, but cut himself off at the last instant. The second time he had to scramble for another topic. “Big match this weekend,” Harry said. This at least was true: It was Gryffindor against Slytherin.

“And you are expecting to win?” Snape asked.

“I actually don’t know,” he admitted. They had secretly watched the Slytherins practicing and they had appeared intense and disciplined in a wholly new way. Only Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw had played so far, so no one had seen Snape’s house on the pitch. “Your new Seeker is awfully small,” Harry commented thinking of the white-haired girl with nearly matching skin and grey eyes he had seen practicing and since then, noticed in the hallway. Ron had thought her name was Suze Zepher.

“Seekers are supposed to be,” Snape stated rather pointedly.

“You think I’m too tall?”

“You are certainly getting there. But far be it for anyone to suggest you leave the position.” When Harry gave him a dark look, he went on, “Did anyone try out against you?”

“No. That rarely happens though.”

“Not on the Slytherin team. Positions are always in jeopardy,” Snape stated.

“No wonder they all look so intent,” Harry mused.

“I would expect.”

“They don’t look like they are having fun, though,” Harry said as he collected up his books. He needed to get to a meeting.

“Winning is its own reward,” Snape observed.

“It would have to be,” Harry quipped as he went to the door. “Later, sir,” he said as he departed.

The weather turned warmer for the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match. As the team stood waiting to fly out, Harry noticed for the first time that he was taller than one Chaser and the same height as one of the Beaters. He mulled on this unexpected observation as Ron gave them a little pep talk just before flying out. Ron clenched his fist and pounded the air a lot as he urged them on. Harry considered commenting that they all wanted to win as much as Ron, and that he didn’t need to worry about that, but held back.

Finally the door fell open. It felt good to float out over the green expanse. He felt lighter as the memory of the match of last year dimmed, overlaid by the here and now. He appraised Suze, the opposing Seeker, as they waited for Madam Hooch to release the balls. The Slytherin stands were chanting her name in long reverberating calls of suuuuuuuuz that at first sounded like jeering boos.

Hooch gave them a long talking to, giving Harry time to notice that the girl was actually smaller than her broom, which had no label. Harry feared, with a bit of a jolt, that meant it was a custom one. A sinking feeling tried to take hold of Harry’s stomach. No Dementors this time, he reminded himself to help get back in eager game mode.

Madam Hooch’s whistle blew just as the sun cut through the clouds. As Harry turned to take up his circling position, he saw Suze squint her very pale eyes in the bright light. With any luck, the Snitch would stay high, Harry thought.

Slytherin scored first, on their first possession. Harry could read Ron’s lips as he swore and paced between the posts. Suze dove suddenly. Harry, used to being faked out by Malfoy, turned and dove mildly to check if she was serious. When she continued to dive, the crowd began to rise. Harry pushed his speed up a notch. Suze pulled up a few feet from the ground and soared along at ground level, turning suddenly at the far wall and heading straight up. Her broom didn’t seem to believe it had a rider aboard, the way it maneuvered.

Harry forced himself to ignore her and returned to scanning where he normally found the Snitch: above the stands on the periphery. Suze came around beside him and slowed to pace him. The Slytherin stands cheered another goal. Harry ducked to circle lower and when she matched, with a floating ease, ducked again. She sped up then. Harry let her sail ahead and bend around the turn in the pitch. He regained a little altitude and continued looking for the Snitch as the opposition scored yet another goal.

Suze lapped him, coming up close beside on the outside. Harry hoped that she cut off part of the loop, otherwise her broom was faster than he had imagined a broom could be. She sloth-rolled gracefully beneath him to pace on the inside. The crowd murmured at that provocative maneuver. Harry dove suddenly to test her. She matched him so easily it might have appeared to the crowd that they moved as one. Harry re-gripped his broom, feeling moisture between his palms and the straps of his wrist guards.

Every move he made, she matched without appearing to even try. Harry flew in a wider loop and sped up, barely skimming the fabric covering the stands, watching intently for his target and trying to pretend he didn’t have a shadow.

Someone shouted and one of the Slytherin Beaters came at them, swinging hard at a Bludger. Harry’s first thought was to wonder why he was aiming at his own teammate, since Suze was directly in the path of it. His hesitation at this confusion cost him. She curved easily out of the way and the ball careened into Harry’s chest, knocking him back into the fabric of the stands. His shoulder took the brunt of the collision with the wood of the staircase behind the bright cloth, and he ducked his head to try to protect it. Instinctively, he held onto the broom as he fell, bouncing off the tower once, and just righting his flight as he struck the dirt track around the pitch. The crowd made a noise of dismay; he was heartened to hear.

Harry slowly stood himself up off the ground and took a deep breath. No sharp pains resulted from this, so, a little unsteady, he hovered his broomstick. The students in the stands above him were cheering down at him, all Ravenclaws. He gave them a small wave as he kicked off. Ginny swooped low to check on him. He waved her off as well.

More determined now, Harry scanned the pitch. The Slytherin Seeker was circling high, looking about herself with a cold assurance. Harry turned to pace beneath her, feeling she was a little high. She dropped smoothly beside him, giving him a surprised look. Harry wiped his forehead and blood came away on his fingers. He didn’t feel any pain, so he wiped his hand on his cloak and ignored it, and her.

Gryffindor finally managed to score but it was answered within a minute. Harry shook his head and avoided checking on Ron, assuming Ginny would do that. He fell into a mode of cold concentration after that, distracted only by having to wipe away the blood that seeped into his right eye.

They circled slowly until the sun streamed out of the clouds again. Harry tail-turned and angled up at it, accelerating at the limit of his broom. Suze apparently felt she had no choice but to follow. Harry angled steeper and sideways a few times to mimic the way he would have to chase a Snitch. Behind him, he could hear her thick cloak flapping as she trailed close. Without warning, Harry tail-turned again back to level and cut into a tight spiral. He would have cleared her, but she panic-dodged to avoid a collision anyway. They were dizzyingly high, the world rendered in miniature, although the fall from here was hardly more dangerous from one at the height of the stands.

Harry spiraled downward a few turns before kicking violently out of it and plummeting level. Suze flew nearby, indecisive about following. Back at the level of the flags, Harry turned out in a broad, banked circle. She had decided to follow. Harry swerved, using the flag as a pick and forcing her to fly wider. He turned to maximize this advantage and used the next tower again as a pick. She stayed directly behind him after that, so close that he suspected her of holding his bristles. A glance back, as he wiped his face on his sleeve, showed her hands firmly on her own black broom handle. His brow stung fiercely from being rubbed on the gritty fabric of his sleeve, making him look around harder for the Snitch to end the match as soon as possible.

The crowd cheered but Harry didn’t spare any attention for it to find out who had scored. The larger of the two green-clad Beaters loomed up around the next tower. Harry swerved hard and a Bludger struck him on the leg from behind. He had been flying at top speed making the next tower loom fast, requiring him to pull up sharply to avoid it. He clipped the Hogwarts flag on the top of it, sending it end over end to the ground.

Suze was no longer behind him. Harry turned and immediately had to duck a Bludger as he looked for her. She circled broadly, intently looking about for the Snitch. He sped up, then slowed as the Slytherin Beaters rose to block his path. The crowd booed something. Harry leaned back and reversed before dropping into a plummet when the Beaters started forward. He was too close to the ground for this maneuver, but he didn’t care. His padded knees bounced on the grass as he recovered from the drop and looped under the overgrown Slytherins who couldn’t move as agilely.

Harry came up behind Suze, breaking hard to match her. Her white hair was coming loose from its tie, and it flapped madly when she turned suddenly. He followed, forced to grip his broom as hard as he could to stay on it. The wind whipped his clothes as she sped up and he matched again, although it took two breaths for him to gain the same speed. He pulled up very close, this time on the inside, limiting where she could turn. He shifted his weight back on his broom, knowing she would slow down to cut away from him. When she shifted her forward grip, he started breaking, matching her perfectly and leaving her no place to go except to fly farther out of the pitch area. She did so, looping tight considering their speed. Harry cut her off again, anticipating correctly that she would drop lower to avoid him.

Around the pitch they flew in their crazed dance, chased by the green-clad Beaters. Harry barely had any attention for seeking for the Snitch since it took everything he had to stay ahead of her and avoid getting bludgeoned. It required every available ounce of preemptive strategy and hard-won instinct to maintain close proximity to her feather-light form and advanced broom.

She finally slowed down a bit. Harry was out of breath but didn’t dare reveal it. Lack of air made him dizzy, made the flat of the earth tilt like a funhouse. His hands ached as well, and he stretched his hands out one at a time to speed them recovering. He swallowed hard and took a long slow breath to relieve his screaming lungs.

Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a golden flutter. Relieved more than excited, he didn’t turn his head. Instead, he swerved the other way across the pitch, away from it, toward the Beaters who had returned to harassing the Gryffindor Chasers, who were scoring easily without their interference.

As Harry hoped and expected, one of them noticed him hanging there and redirected a Bludger his way. This gave Harry the perfect excuse to turn back when he swerved to avoid it. Suze, directly behind him, swerved the other way to avoid clipping him. Harry’s heart leapt—she was now heading in completely the opposite direction from the Snitch. He kicked his broom down fast and headed directly at it, finding it easily against the green grass behind it. His head swam with the acceleration.

The Snitch dodged upward as he closed on it, which forced him to break hard and lift, making him dizzier. One hand slipped free of the broom, too tired to hold on. He reached out with it and rolled upside down to stay with his target. The fluttering wings brushed his fingers as something collided with his right side. With no thoughts except for the Snitch, he tugged the broom to meet the collision full on and strained his arm at the shoulder. His hand closed over the struggling thing as another padded arm bumped his with a snapping motion. Harry marveled that Suze could have made it all the way across the pitch that fast.

A roar went through the crowd as the end of the game was announced. Harry, knocked off balance by Suze pulling away suddenly, swung bodily, struggled to right himself over his broom. His vision tunneled down. He curled around himself to recover, but instead, blacked out completely.

For an instant, Harry imagined he was flying, which didn’t alarm him too much. The blackness of his vision did more so. But that was wiped from his mind by his impact with the flat grass of the pitch.

Indistinct voices and running feet roused Harry. A high-pitched, elf-like voice nearby said plaintively, “I’m sorry, Professor. I should have had him beat.”

“You got it!” Ron cried, accompanied by a ceasing charge of pounding footsteps.

Harry opened his eyes. The sun behind Ron was an glowing disk painted behind a drifting cloud. As he looked up at his friend, Harry considered with thoughts the speed of treacle that it used to be much easier to breathe. More faces were appearing in his narrow vision, including Snape’s, much closer.

“Potter,” he said with an ambiguous tone as he crouched and put a hand on Harry’s arm. The wraithlike Slytherin Seeker stood beside Snape, looking glum.

Harry wondered what made him think it was worth it. “Sorry for ruining your game, sir,” Harry said.

“He’s delirious!” Ron shouted. “Quick, get him to Madam Pomfrey.”

Harry found the strength to hold the Snitch up in Ron’s direction, its wings batted at the sides of his hand. Ron took it from him with a wide smile. “Oh, well, that’s all right then,” he said.

Darkness took Harry at that moment with a last fleeting thought that, if he wanted to stay aware, he was going to have to breathe more, despite the invisible troll that was apparently standing on his chest.

Harry woke up in the hospital wing. He felt around for his glasses on the side table and put them on. A basket of chocolate frogs was there as well as some jars of sweets. He wondered how long he’d been out.

“And how are you feeling, Mr. Potter?” Madam Pomfrey asked. She stood at the foot of his bed, hands on her hips, looking very unsympathetic despite her words.

Harry touched the bandage on his forehead. “Not bad, Madam, thank you.”

“You had quite a gash there. It was still bleeding when they floated you in,” she admonished him.

“I couldn’t feel it,” Harry said.

She humpfed, rolled her eyes, and stalked off, muttering something about it not mattering if the Dark Lord was gone as long as there was still Quidditch.

The door to the wing opened and Hermione and Ron stepped in together. When they saw he was awake they rushed over. “Feeling better?” Hermione asked.

“Yeah. Have a frog,” he said. Ron accepted one without meeting his eyes.

“Did Madam Pomfrey tell anyone you were awake?” Hermione asked.

Harry shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“Professor Snape wanted to be told.” She pulled out her wand and put down the half-eaten frog. Talking around the chocolate, she said, “Let me see if I can do this.” She closed her eyes and said, “Flickerus Pravda Snape.” She pointed the wand at the wall in the direction of the rest of the castle. A silver bird shot out of it and disappeared through the stone. At Harry’s impressed look, she said, “It only seems to work about half the time. I wasn’t going to show it off until I had it down better.”

Pomfrey stepped over to them. “Can Harry leave soon?” Hermione asked her.

“A double dose of blood replenisher requires a six-hour stay,” she stated, leaving no room for argument. After straightening the covers with sharp movements, she stepped away again.

“Too bad,” Hermione said. “You’ll miss dinner.” She took another bite of frog.

Harry pushed himself up a little straighter. His body complained in many, many places as he did so, making him glad he didn’t have to move until at least late in the evening. He reached for a frog as well and unwrapped it slowly.

The door to the wing opened and Snape stepped in. Harry rubbed his eyes to try to perk himself up some and set his uneaten sweet on the nightstand where it shuffled around in a circle before solidifying. Snape’s expression as he approached wasn’t interpretable. Ron reflexively stepped aside to get out of his way, although he didn’t need to move all the way to the end of the bed, which he did. Ron put his hands in his pockets and looked away.

Harry turned from him to Snape, who stood beside the bed with his arms crossed. “Feeling better, I presume?” he asked. Snape’s eyes flickered over to Ron, who studiously stared down the wing toward Pomfrey’s office.

Harry began to have a sinking feeling that something had happened after he had passed out. “Yes, sir,” Harry said. His shoulder throbbed at that moment and it occurred to him that winning wasn’t necessarily fun after all.

“Ms. Zepher is considering resigning as Seeker.”

“She shouldn’t,” Harry said stridently.

“Yes,” Snape said. “I tried to explain that she lost not a battle of skill but one of will, of which she has far less experience than yourself. Perhaps you would speak with her, should you see her.”

“Sure,” Harry said, disregarding the startled look of dismay this caused on Ron’s face.

Snape uncrossed his arms. “Should you need anything, Harry…” he said then looked between them. “I don’t know who sent the bird.”

Harry pointed at Hermione. “Hm,” Snape said and turned to her. “Dumbledore would be most pleased to see his spell being replicated by a student. You need to temper your power, though, it burned out very fast after it arrived.”

She brightened at that and fell thoughtful. “I’ll show Harry,” she said.

Snape nodded at her and departed with a swish of his cloak. Ron relaxed, sighing with relief when the door closed.

Hermione sat on the edge of the bed and taught Harry the silver bird spell. She then asked Ron to stand outside in the hallway to signal if he had received one because getting it to go through a wall was the hardest part. When their friend was out of hearing range, Hermione said, “Ron lost it with Professor Snape after you passed out. It was ugly. He’s lucky he didn’t get turned into a newt or get a lifetime’s detention or something. Give it a try,” she said.

Harry, distracted by her story, couldn’t generate anything. She started from the beginning, explaining the spell all over again, sending a bird through the wall to Ron, who waved in the window of the door that he got it. Harry put aside his questions and nearly panicked concern, and incanted the spell. A silver arrow that bounced off the wall was all he managed. He tried several more times, doing no better.

“Finish the story. Pomfrey will have let me go before I get this right.”

Hermione sent another one, apparently to keep Ron occupied rather than to demonstrate. “It was really unfortunate, too, because it was clear to everyone else that Professor was really worried about you.” She sighed, her eyes unfocused as she said, “Professor Snape put Ron in his place so forcefully that some of the Slytherins are demanding a new Head of House.”

“What?” Harry asked. He tried the spell again. The silver arrow left a burn mark on the wall this time. “Why?”

“He made it a little too clear, although he didn’t say it outright, that you were all that mattered,” Hermione said cautiously.

Harry gave her a doubtful look then felt chagrined. He tried the spell again, this time it was a bird, but it spiraled away out the window. Ron opened the door and watched it leave. “I don’t think I’m going to get it,” Harry said to him.

“I can’t either,” Ron commented, “so that makes me feel better.”

Harry intentionally didn’t react to Ron’s talking to him, although he and Hermione shared a very fleeting look of understanding as Ron sighed and fidgeted a bit.

Harry saw Suze the next day, sitting in the Great Hall after lunch. She was with a small group of younger Slytherins whom Harry didn’t know. The rest of the Slytherin table was empty. Harry waved his friends off and stepped over there. The group looked up in surprise at his approach.

“Can I talk to you?” he asked Suze.

She blinked her pale flat eyes at him and shrugged one shoulder. “I’ll see you ’round,” she said to her friends as she slid off the bench.

She followed Harry to the front of the room to the bench below the tall window off the end of the head table. She reluctantly, it seemed, sat beside him and didn’t meet his eyes.

“Professor Snape mentioned that you were considering leaving the team,” Harry said. She clasped her hands together and didn’t respond. “Don’t do that. If we played ten matches, you’d win the next nine, I’m certain,” Harry said with painful honesty.

She looked up, her white brow furrowed. Harry wondered if she were part something other than human, or just lacked color. “What year are you?” he asked.

“Third,” she said.

“You have all those years of Quidditch ahead,” Harry said, sounding a little jealous, which at one level he was. “You’re very good now. Even just another year is going to make you completely unbeatable.” He could see the impact of his words in her eyes. It made him nervous to think he had that much sway.

Her eyes moved over him at that. “You think I am good enough to play?” she asked slowly.

“Are you kidding? You are the optimal seeker and you have a killer broom. You just need a little more playing experience. Some things you can’t pick up on the practice pitch. Don’t quit because you lost to me,” Harry insisted. “I’d feel really awful if you did that.”

She appeared astonished by this.

“I gave that match everything I had and it was essentially a tie. And you didn’t end up in the hospital wing overnight, so in essence, you won.” When she didn’t reply, he went on, “Learning to lose and keep going is an essential skill in everything—you’ll set a bad precedent for yourself if you give up this easily now.”

“I let my team down,” she said quietly. “Everyone else was playing really well.”

“Hey, they want to put up another Seeker against you, let them try. I can’t imagine they have another one better than you.”

She went thoughtful at that. “Hmmmm,” she breathed in a light sing song.

Harry stood up and Suze nodded a goodbye. She looked like she was going to sit there for a while longer, thinking.

“Are you brewing in the dungeon today?” Harry asked his guardian the next Sunday as he stood just inside the office door.

“No,” Snape replied, “the stocks are set until next term.”

“Oh,” Harry said, a little disappointed. He wandered around the office a bit, pulling down a book about the history of Dementors.

A knock sounded on the door and Malfoy stepped in. “Professor, I have—” he stopped upon seeing Harry. “Figures you’d be here.” To Snape he said, “I have my extra credit essay,” he said, handing over a scroll. “For what it’s worth,” he added darkly.

Snape unrolled it and glanced at it. “If it makes you feel any better, Mr. Malfoy, I will inform you that I am grading Mr. Potter twice as hard as yourself, or any of the other students.”

“What?” Harry blurted. Snape did not even bother looking up, just went about filing the essay in a drawer.

Malfoy laughed at Harry, got control of himself, and then laughed again as he departed. The laughter echoed in the hallway. Harry shoved the book he held back onto the shelf. Dully, he said, “I’d better get back to revising.”

Harry sat in the common room reading his Potions notes. He was bored with it, with all studying, really. His eyes kept getting dragged back to the flames in the hearth which, despite being pretty ordinary, were much more interesting than bone growth potions.

Hermione dropped into the chair across from him. “You aren’t waiting until the last minute again, are you?”

“What?” Harry asked her.

She gave him a disapproving look, not unlike the one usually reserved for Ron. “The Christmas Ball, Harry,” she said as though he were a little slow.

“Headmistress just announced it two days ago. I have two weeks,” Harry retorted. At her raised brow, he frowned. “Okay, I get your point.”

More quietly, she said, “Whom are you going to ask?”

Harry laughed painfully. “I have no idea.”

“Whom would you like to?”

“Tonks,” Harry returned without thinking.

Hermione took that in. “Really?” At Harry’s shrug, she said, “She’s a little old for you. She must be twenty-three, twenty-four.”

“I wasn’t serious about inviting her—you just asked me who I’d like to ask,” Harry retorted.

“Oh,” Hermione murmured, looking a bit parental in her judgement now.

Harry frowned more deeply. “I hate these things,” he said darkly, accepting the truth of it as he did so. At her sad look, he explained, “There isn’t a girl in this school I can connect with.”

“That’s not true, Harry,” she said, sounding a little offended. “I understand you.” After a pause she added, “Ginny does too.”

“She’s going with Dean.”

Very quietly, Hermione said, “I think she’d rather go with you.”

“I’m not getting into that,” Harry stated firmly.

Hermione sat back, “Let’s see. Seventh-year girls,” she murmured as she tapped her finger on the chair arm. She mumbled off a few names thoughtfully. Eventually she frowned. “How about Sixth Years?” At Harry’s shrug, she thought some more. “Mirna isn’t too bad. A Ravenclaw. And she just broke up with someone she was really close with for three years…so she is…probably not the best bet.”

Harry stepped into Snape’s office and dropped into the visitor’s chair with a huff. “Can I borrow Candy for the ball?” he asked in frustration.

Snape eyed him oddly. “You cannot be sincere about that request.”

“McGonagall insists I have a partner, if not a date.” More angrily, Harry said, “This Ball is apparently a bit of a P.R. thing. The press has been invited as well to show, quote, how much things have returned to normal here.”

“Harry,” Snape said sharply. “You are not being singled out and used, as you seem to be implying.” Harry looked away at that, still fuming. Snape said stiffly, “Step out into the hallway there.” He gestured with his hand. “And ask the next girl who comes along. She will most certainly say, ‘yes’.”

Harry dropped his gaze to the floor and flushed.

“What is the problem?” Snape asked harshly.

“I don’t know,” Harry mumbled.

“It is one ball, Potter. Not a commitment. Just a party. I think you are taking it far too seriously. You are the single most famous individual in this school. Half the girls who already have dates would drop them if asked to go by you.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Harry snapped. He wondered fleetingly what Cho was doing now. Her last letter was months ago, she was probably busy. Harry asked, “You don’t think McGonagall is using me?”

“I should hope not. And if you feel that to be true, you should most definitely discuss it with her, as I am certain she would not want you believing that.” Snape sounded as though his anger had solidified somehow.

Feeling worse than he did before coming in, Harry stood up to stalk out.

“Harry,” Snape said in a less harsh tone. “I don’t mean to be…unsympathetic to what you clearly believe is a dilemma, but you are making much too much of this.” At Harry’s frown, he went on. “Pick a girl. Ask her. And you will be finished with it. There are literally hundreds of girls in this school, surely one of them will suffice for one evening.”

Harry could hear in his tone that Snape truly was unsympathetic, but Harry wasn’t looking for sympathy, he didn’t think, just a way out. With a frown at the heat of anger that still burned in his chest, Harry departed.

Harry studied in the library, in the far corner, mostly to avoid Hermione and anyone else who might see fit to remind him he needed a date. He had ten days. That was plenty of time. The previous night he had considered owling Cho, but upon reviewing her last two letters, decided that she had dropped hints of an engagement that he had not picked up on before. He had also looked for Mirna at dinner last night and thought she looked down and teary-eyed, which reminded him of Cho in a bad way.

The whole thing made him angry with McGonagall again. He found himself wanting somehow to get even.

Harry sat with his back to the corner, blocked in nicely by shelving and a plant. He was feeling sullen toward Snape and McGonagall, and maybe even Hermione and Ron. His Transfiguration text was not holding his attention. Even his usual method of forcing his attention on a subject, that of imagining himself needing some skill or knowledge as an Auror, wasn’t working.

A group of students went by, talking in low tones about Quidditch. Harry recognized one of the tall, bulky Slytherin Beaters over the low shelf in front of him. Wereporridge was his name. Harry wondered that he could actually read. Then he heard a familiar bird-like voice, lilting a bit so as to not sound too loud in the library.

Harry’s brow went up as the seed of an idea germinated. What if their little Gryffindor hero took a Slytherin to the ball? he wondered. Snape had said, ask anyone. And she most likely wasn’t going already since Third Years couldn’t unless invited by an older student. The group sat down at a table, talking over a book. Harry tried to hear what they were saying, but couldn’t.

Thinking that he would love to get this over with, Harry stood up and went over to them. Wereporridge gave him a challenging look.

“Can I talk to you for just a moment?” Harry asked Suze.

Wereporridge stood up at that. “What about?” he asked Harry as he towered over him.

“I suppose if I told you it wasn’t any of your business, you probably wouldn’t go for that?”

“You would suppose correctly,” the other boy replied.

Harry glanced at the other three. They looked a little alarmed by their fellow’s behavior. If he were actually going to take her to the ball, he would have to be willing to have them know it.

“I want to ask Suze to the ball,” Harry explained to Wereporridge.

“You what?” One of the others blurted.

Wereporridge pushed his finger painfully into Harry’s chest. “Why in the world would she go with a loser Gryffindor?” Harry glanced at Suze—she looked stunned and not much else. Wereporridge went on, shoving Harry with his hand now. “We don’t mix with non-Slytherins, get away.”

Peeved a little, Harry said, “I am the adopted son of your Head of House, you know.”

Wereporridge blinked at that and looked a little concerned as he considered it. Harry ignored him and turned back to Suze.

“Uh,” Harry said, suddenly not sure the best way to proceed. “Think about it, I guess,” he said to her still-stunned gaze. “Let me know.”

As he walked back to his corner and picked up his books, he could hear their table whispering avidly. On his way out, he gave Suze a casual smile. At the door to the library he considered going back to the common room. At least if Hermione asked him if he had asked anyone, he could say he had.

In the corridor Suze caught up with him. “You weren’t just teasing in there?” she asked.

“No. Why would I do that?”

“It wasn’t just some Gryffindor practical joke?”

Harry stared at her pale eyes, thinking that Snape had no clue how hard this was. His other backup plan, of pretending to invite someone from outside the school and then falling deathly ill the night of the ball from a potion he could cook up, was seeming better all the time.

“No,” Harry replied, a little frustrated. Feeling like he should explain, he said, “I thought we’d have something to talk about. I discovered at the last ball, that matters more than I expected it to.” It occurred to Harry then that she hadn’t been in school during the Tri-Wizard Tournament. That, Merlin forbid, she might have learned he won it from a chocolate frog card.

He shrugged. “I really am asking you. And it is up to you. It’s just for the ball, just to have a partner. Nothing more.”

Her eyes darted around the walls. As though thinking aloud, she said, “I don’t get to go otherwise and it sounds like fun.” She put her pale hands on her hips. “Why are you inviting me?” she asked curiously.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Harry said. “I have to invite someone. You’re the first person I’ve asked because you are the first person who came to mind who isn’t already dating someone, or who wouldn’t be too giggly or teary to spend an evening with.”

She studied him long time. “You are really Professor Snape’s son?”

“Yes.”

“That is so odd,” she breathed dramatically. “All right—”

Harry held up his hand and interrupted her. “I feel compelled to warn you,” he said. “The press are going to be there, since this ball is partly a show for the outside world.” Her eyes narrowed at that. “So if you don’t like that kind of attention, you aren’t going to like going.”

“Clearly, you do,” she observed sarcastically.

Harry laughed. “I hate this whole thing. I’m trying to make the best of it,” he rambled.

“You are telling me that the press are going to be taking pictures at the ball and that my mum and dad might pick up the Prophet at breakfast and see the two of us on the front page?” A strange crooked smile had formed on her face.

“If you view it that way, then you can probably survive the evening.”

“Survive? Sounds like actual fun,” she said earnestly.

“Oh, good,” Harry breathed in relief. “Professor Snape thought I was pathetic for having such a difficult time finding a date. He was kind of angry even, although I shouldn’t have asked to borrow his girlfriend.”

“You what!” she blurted in shock.

“That probably was a mistake,” Harry confirmed thoughtfully.

Suze doubled over laughing, then made herself stop with effort and dabbed her eyes, still chuckling occasionally. “I’ll see you the night of the ball, then.”

“I’ll meet in you in the Entrance Hall at the bottom of the staircase,” Harry said.

“’Til then,” she said with an unfading smile.

Hermione actually held off on saying anything until four days before the ball. She wouldn’t have needed to say anything if she had been able to correctly interpret the odd looks the Slytherins were always giving Harry as he and his friends went about their classes.

Examinations were starting in two days and he was panicking over his new understanding of the higher standard he had been put under in most of his subjects. He was buried in a textbook when she came over and leaned on the arms of the chair and put her nose close to his.

“I have a date,” Harry said to her, cutting off her question.

“Who?” she asked, sounding like she might not believe him. Harry noticed others nearby stopping to listen to the answer.

“See. You can’t even think of anyone to guess. And everyone thinks this is easy.” He turned back to his book. “You’ll see. No one you know.”

“Someone outside the school?”

“No. We have a lot in common. She thinks posing for the press will be fun, so I think I’ll actually survive the evening.”

Hermione breathed out loudly. “Well, that’s good. Glad to hear it. I’m curious as Crookshanks, but I deserve the torture of not knowing, I think.” She went back to bending heads over a large parchment with Ron and Neville.

Hermione wasn’t the only one checking up on Harry. McGonagall called him up to her office the night before examinations started. When he opened the door, she immediately put down her quill and closed the large book she had been writing in.

“Mr. Potter, come in,” she invited.

Harry closed the door and stood before the desk. The room didn’t look that different since she had taken over from Dumbledore. There were still a few of those mysterious balanced contraptions around, but the biggest difference was the shelves were cleared and held just a few rows of books and some glass sculptures.

“Did you find a partner for the ball?” she asked.

“Yes,” Harry replied flatly.

“Good,” she smiled. “Now you are going to be opening the ball—”

“Just me and my date?” Harry blurted.

She gave him a disapproving look. “You and the Head Boy and Girl. So three couples. We are opening with a waltz,” she started, looking like maybe she was already at the ball in her mind. At Harry’s alarmed expression, she returned to the present and said. “You don’t know how to dance, do you, Harry?”

“No, Professor,” Harry admitted, expecting her to change her mind about the whole plan.

She stood up. “You need to learn then,” she said resolutely.

Harry dropped his head and said with the barest hint of a whine, “And I thought I was past all the things I was going to have to get over at this school.”

When he looked up, she appeared displeased. “This is one of the normal teenage things, Mr. Potter, getting over the awkwardness of asking a pretty girl to dance and then managing a reasonable facsimile of actually dancing with her. Lifelong torment by a powerful dark wizard bent on killing you is not a normal teenage thing to have to get over. You should be basking in this opportunity to be a normal young man for once.”

She pulled out her wand and tapped the sculpture of a swan behind her. It began spinning and playing a song like a music box, although it sounded much better than a Muggle one. When she stepped around the desk and stood before him, Harry gave in, mostly because he was afraid he had offended her, which he really hadn’t meant to do.

She took his hands, placed them, and then counted to the music. On the third round of counting, she stepped backward, pulling him with her. After four bars he finally had a vague hang of it. After ten he thought it was actually pretty easy. They began turning as the music continued. “Around the dance floor counter clockwise. Got it?”

Harry nodded, forcing himself to not look at his feet.

“You’re a natural, Harry,” she said. Then she laughed lightly at his expression of disbelief. She released him and stepped back to the swan. “One more. My favorite is swing.”

End of term examinations left Harry a wreck, but he was hopeful that he had done all right even with the impossibility of learning everything expected of him. Everyone else—even Hermione—seemed strung out, so at least he was in good company.

The evening of the ball was the evening before everyone left for holiday. After his last examination, he pulled out his dress robes and took them to Hermione for a quick flattening charm, which she did before handing them back.

“I’d tell you to do it yourself, but you look so pathetic,” she said. “I hope your date realizes how determined you are to not have a good time,” she said evenly.

“I told her I hated the whole notion of it, so ‘yes’,” Harry replied in a put-off tone.

“My stars,” Hermione said. “You aren’t taking a Slytherin are you?” she teased him.

Harry gave her a sly grin.

“Ah,” she breathed in audibly. “Harry!” She hit him on the arm. “No wonder no one knows who it is. I can’t believe you.”

“Hey, it wasn’t easy. I had to argue that I was an honorary Slytherin because of Severus to even get a chance to ask.”

“I can imagine. They are pretty insular when it comes to dating. And everything else.” She held the robes up against him. “Put those on and come back down,” she commanded him. Others were congregating in the common room as well, getting hair styled and exchanging jewelry and scarves.

Harry slipped back up to the dormitory and changed. When he came back down, she looked him over appraisingly, tugging on the shoulders and the cuffs. “Okay. Just fits. You look good. Although…you might try to do something with your hair,” she said critically.

“I was,” Harry retorted, a little offended.

He went back up to the dormitory for his kit. He espied his watch on the side table and slipped it into his pocket. In the toilet it was crowded with boys all trying to improve their appearance. Harry wetted his hair down and combed it repeatedly until it dried. It looked a little better as a result. He combed it carefully one more time when he got a chance at the mirror.

“Why are you always hiding your scar under your fringe?” Dean asked him from the next sink over.

Harry stared at his friend in the mirror. “’Cause I don’t like to see it, so I don’t expect anyone else to,” Harry replied. He combed his hair apart, revealing it completely. “It’s the first thing everyone looks at when they meet me, like there’s no more to me than that.” He squinted and leaned into the mirror, rubbing the jagged scar with his finger. Mystified, he whispered, “I think it’s faded a bit.”

Half the boys in the room stopped what they were doing and turned to him.

“Do you think so?” Harry asked Dean, leaning toward his friend.

“Maybe,” Dean answered. “It looks flatter, maybe. Not so carved into your skin like it used to. Though I have to admit, I don’t pay that much attention to it.”

As Harry turned back to the mirror to comb his fringe forward again, Dean said, “Who are you going with tonight?”

“You’ll see,” Harry said airily, glad to have something else to think about.

Right on time, Harry reached the top of the staircase. On the walk to the Entrance Hall, he had passed many transformed female classmates and had really started to wonder, and worry a bit, what Suze was going to look like.

His date for the evening stood by the curl in the railing at the bottom of the staircase, looking pretty much herself except for the stylish slate grey robes she wore that made her skin look warmer than normal. She had a sparkling and coiling tie loose in her long white hair.

As Harry considered the crowd from his high perch, he noticed Professor Snape eyeing Suze and starting through the crowd toward her. Harry hesitated, curious. Snape asked her something and she gestured as she replied. Harry headed down to them, thinking Snape might be challenging her being there as a Third Year.

“Severus,” Harry said in greeting. “Suze.” He offered her his arm. As he did so he received such a priceless look of surprise from Snape, he almost broke out laughing. “I’ll see you inside, sir,” Harry said evenly with a broad grin.

The Great Hall was laid out with round tables each with a floating horizontal wreath full of candles. Harry led Suze to the center of the floor where they stopped to admire the decorations. Monstrous pine trees sparkled from each corner, fairies flickering among their branches, carrying little colored lanterns.

McGonagall stepped up to them. “Mr. Potter,” she said. Her eyes flicked down to Suze. “Ms. Zepher,” she said without missing a beat. Harry was a little disappointed in her reaction. “You are at the head table there,” she pointed at the large oval table at the front of the hall where the platform normally sat but had been removed.

As the headmistress stepped away, Suze said, “Cool.”

Harry turned to her and gauged that she was taller than his shoulder, which was higher than he remembered. “Did you use a height charm or potion or something?” Harry asked.

She pulled at the knee of her robe and stuck out her left foot to reveal matching glittery shoes with thick, thick soles—at least five inches thick, shiny clear bricks, basically. They must be heavy.

“You are walking really well in those,” Harry said. “But you didn’t have to wear them.” When she looked up at him curiously, he went on, “It will make it easier to dance, but you shouldn’t worry about being yourself.”

She blinked at that, apparently trying to take it in. Harry shrugged and led the way to the head table where Hermione and Ron were already standing, watching them in surprise. Ron gaped at them, but Hermione held out her hand to Suze and introduced herself. Hermione was dressed in blazing red with long red gloves that stretched above her elbows.

“That’s a shy outfit,” Harry said.

Ron gave him a look of dismay and quickly looked away to avoid having it be seen by their mutual friend.

“I’ve decided red is my favorite color,” Hermione said happily.

Justin and Lavender stepped over. “Is she with you?” Justin asked of Suze. At Harry’s nod, he asked, “Aren’t you the Slytherin Seeker?”

“Yes,” Suze replied in a voice that said, if you are making something of it, be prepared.

“Oh,” Justin said, glancing oddly at Harry who smiled sweetly in return.

They moved behind their table as the hall began to fill. The headmistress and the four Heads of House also joined the head table. Harry took a seat near the middle, was actually herded there by the headmistress. As he held the chair out for Suze, he received another narrow look from Snape. Ignoring it, Harry sat down and watched the amassed students arranging their seating.

Finally, when everyone was in place and the sound of movement quieted, Professor McGonagall leaned over to the students at the table and said, “Everyone ready?” At the resulting general nodding and shrugging, she stood up and clinked her goblet for attention.

“Welcome. I hope everyone enjoys this evening as much as I intend to. After the feast there will be a quintet providing music for dancing. I do hope you all have a wonderful holiday and return to us whole and safe in the new year. But for now, let’s eat.”

Harry picked up the menu on his plate and said, “Duck.” A plate of duck, potatoes and little carrots materialized before him.

Suze shifted in her seat and peered at the menu before ordering lamb. When it arrived, Harry gave her a smile, which he was glad to see made her relax.

During the long dinner, Harry lost his date to Ron when his friend asked Suze which Quidditch team she followed and she replied Falmouth. What ensued was a frighteningly detailed discussion of defense tactics. Harry shared an amusingly dismayed look with Hermione over their dates’ bent heads and gesturing fingers.

Harry turned instead to the headmistress who looked as though she was enjoying her job of presiding. “Professor,” Harry said.

“Mr. Potter,” she returned. “Having a good time?”

“Mostly it’s been dinner,” Harry pointed out as a Prophet photographer moved in and took a few photographs. Harry ignored him.

“Ah, just wait,” she said. “I love balls. The music. The movement of the couples on the floor.”

“I got that sense, Professor,” Harry said in a slightly suffering tone.

She looked out over the murmuring crowd and sighed. “I think I’m going to miss you when you are gone, Harry.”

Harry wondered at that comment, since he was trying to be a bit difficult. “I’m not going far.”

Her lips twitched. “I suppose that’s true.”

Harry turned back to Suze. She said, “I’m sorry, I should be talking to you, not your friend.”

“That’s okay. Catching the headmistress after…” Harry leaned forward to peek into McGonagall’s goblet. “…a bit of mead is always an interesting experience.”

Suze giggled, but not in an annoying way. Their plates vanished and the lights dimmed except for the fairy lights that hung in a square around the area designated for dancing.

McGonagall stood and made a sweeping motion of her arm. The students at the head table stood as well when they noticed. “Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said, inviting him to lead. Snape gave them a dark look as they collected themselves. Harry held his arm out to Suze, who accepted it with high decorum. He gave Snape a look back that he hoped conveyed you said to ask anyone. The look he received in answer he could have interpreted as don’t try anything, but Harry couldn’t imagine that was what it meant.

They stepped off the platform, passing the quintet of string musicians who now sat on a platform beside the dance floor. As he watched Ron positioning his arms with Hermione, he wondered where they had learned to dance.

“I hope you can dance,” Harry said. “I just learned two days ago.”

“My mum sent me to ballet for five years. Thought it would make me grow taller,” she replied.

The music started and Harry managed to remember the correct foot to start with. After that it flowed smoothly.

“You’re not bad,” she said.

Harry watched the photographer as he crouched to take a photo of Justin and Lavender. “I hate to admit it, but the headmistress had to teach me,” Harry confessed.

Suze’s eyes glittered in amusement. The photographer came over to them. Harry danced without turning until he finished. Suze smiled nicely for each shot. In comparison, Harry wondered if he would look glum.

At the end of the first piece, McGonagall swept past. “Careful, my boy, you look like you might be having fun.”

“So what are you doing after Hogwarts?” Suze asked when the headmistress was out of range.

“I’m going to try to get into the Auror’s program,” Harry said. “If that doesn’t work, I’m not sure.” The next song started up and more couples came onto the floor. “How about you?”

“Me?” she asked in surprise. “I’d love to play Quidditch. My mum is an actuary, and my dad is a spell developer. They aren’t so keen on sports as a profession.”

“Your dad’s a what?” Harry asked. “I’ve never heard of that. Who does he work for?”

“A publisher of spell books called Yuring Press. The second largest. He also does research to figure out old spells that have been forgotten. He goes to estate sales of old families and looks for forgotten books or even notebooks and diaries. He found two rare books at the Black estate, for example. Kept him busy for over a year.”

Harry stopped dead at that.

“What is it?” she asked in alarm.

Harry shook his head and found the pace of the song again with his feet. “Nothing. Just remembering. That’s not usually a good thing for me,” he quipped darkly.

As Suze glanced over her shoulder at the head table, she asked in concern, “Do you think Professor Snape is upset with me?”

“No, why would he be?”

“I’m worried about that look he gave us earlier,” she said. She really did sound worried, making Harry realize that even a student with two normal parents could crave approval from another adult.

“That look was for me only. Trust me,” he said reassuringly.

After that song, they sat back at the head table. The teachers were there, talking amongst themselves. Rita Skeeter stepped over and crouched between Harry’s and Suze’s chairs. “Hello, Harry,” she said in a falsely friendly tone.

“Ms. Skeeter.”

“And who is your lovely date?”

“This is Suze Zepher,” Harry said, and spelled her name out. Suze held out her hand to Skeeter, who shook it by the fingertips while appraising the girl. “Suze is Seeker on the Slytherin team. She is going to be a professional Quidditch player,” Harry provided. Skeeter grudgingly released her quill to jot that down. “Maybe ask her who she is hoping to play for,” Harry said levelly. Suze’s eyes went wide.

“What do I get in return?” Skeeter asked quietly, glancing at the teachers who were keeping a casual-appearing eye on the proceedings. She watched Harry think that over. “Do you have anything right now I might want?” she asked a little snidely.

“Lots. Nothing I want to give up. Give me a topic.”

“The last set of D.E. that were caught. That seemed fishy. The releases and interviews from the Ministry didn’t jib.”

“I’ll anonymously confirm that was fishy,” Harry returned quietly.

“Off the record?” she prompted.

“I don’t want you to print the truth,” Harry stated calmly.

“So much for inheriting Dumbledore’s mantle,” she said sarcastically.

“I wouldn’t want it anyway,” Harry came back.

“So of the five, three were killed. Tell me how.”

Harry turned a bit so he was facing her better in case the teachers could read lips. “Rookwood fell down the stairs after a binding curse and broke his neck. Mulciber got in the way of Malfoy’s Killing Curse. Pettigrew killed himself when the Aurors showed up. He’d hoped it would be me.” Harry knew that only the last was official.

“Okay,” Skeeter said. “Ms. Zepher, who would you like to play for?” she asked, back to her friendly tone.

Suze’s jaw fell open. She pulled it closed again when Harry winked at her. “Falmouth. They are my favorite team. I like their defensive tactics.”

Skeeter jotted that down. “I do something for you, Potter…you end up owing me more.”

“I realize that,” Harry said blandly. “A delay would be nice.”

“I’m good at what I do,” Skeeter snapped at him as she closed her notebook with the quill pinched between the pages, still twitching.

When she was gone, Suze started to speak. Harry stood and invited her back out on the dance floor where they could talk out of range of prying ears. “Thanks for that,” she said. “How did you know all that?”

“Because the Death Eaters were all after me when they were caught. The binding curse was mine and I ducked under Mulciber to avoid Lucius Malfoy’s Killing Curse.”

She gaped. “You say that so calmly. Guess you could be an Auror.”

“I don’t know what else I’d do.”

They danced another song. Harry noticed Hermione looked like she was thinking of switching partners. Next one, he mouthed at her. She nodded.

“So you haven’t asked the obvious question,” Suze said a little put-upon.

“What would that be?”

She gave him a difficult and blameful look. “Isn’t it obvious?” she asked in annoyance. “Why I look this way?”

“It’s just the way you are,” Harry said. From anyone else that might have sounded stupid. She blinked at him as though assessing that. “Is it a wizard thing?” Harry asked.

“Of course.”

“You have to understand—I was raised a Muggle,” he explained.

“Really?” she asked. At his nod, she said, “Then maybe you don’t know what Triptendora is.” He shook his head. She went on, “It is also called Wizard Measles. It is easy to treat but if you get it as an infant and it isn’t treated in time…you end up with no color and very small. You barely grow at all after that.”

After a moment, Harry said, “So your parents weren’t very smart, I guess.”

“That’s just it—they are very smart. I don’t know what their problem was,” she said peevishly.

“They mean well most of the time?”

“They mean well all of the time. Makes me crazy. They are perfectionists like you wouldn’t believe.”

They passed the head table in silence. After passing the quintet, Harry said. “You probably remind them of their failure. Through no fault of your own,” he added quickly. “That would make them hard to live with I can imagine.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” She blinked at him in surprise. After a pause, she asked, “What do I do about it?”

He shrugged. “Live with it. Tolerate their craziness.” At her doubtful look, he said, “I was raised by my magic-hating aunt and uncle who lied about how my parents died, kept me locked in a broom cupboard until I was eleven, and barely fed me enough to stay alive. That’s why I am small for my age.”

“You’re not inventing that to make me feel better, are you?” she asked warily.

With long-suffering humor, he said, “Why is it when I tell people about myself, they assume I’m making it up?”

She giggled then apologized for it.

Harry said, “Well-meaning would go a long way in my view of parenting.”

The evening ended with one last waltz. Ginny had cut in on his dancing with Padma the song before. Harry insisted they both switch back to their original partners for it. Suze still seemed as chipper as when the evening had started. Harry wondered at that—he was definitely winding down.

“Hope you had an okay time,” Harry said, stifling a yawn.

“I did. I hope they have a few more of these while I’m in school.”

“Tell McGonagall. She loves them too.”

“Cool.”

As the song ended, Harry bent down and gave her a peck on the cheek. “Thanks for coming with me.”

She ducked her head and smiled, then raised her head and pretended to be haughty. “Thanks for the invitation.”

The train left Hogsmeade right on schedule the next morning. Harry had gone down to the platform with the rest of the students to wave Ron and Hermione off as the train chugged away. They both shouted, “Merry Christmas!” to him out the window, making Harry realize that Ron must have finally accepted things.

Hogsmeade lay in silence as Harry wandered up the street to Puddifoots where he had tea and a scone. Six months to go, he thought. He envied Suze her upcoming years here. His friends would think he was a nutter for that. They were all so eager to leave. But he had missed a lot over the last six years and was running out of time. Being tormented by Voldemort had cheated him out of things, like getting to know most of his classmates. Getting through a year without something suspicious and tragic happening had been impossible and had left him with only stolen moments of enjoyment that were all his own.

Harry paid for the tea and stepped back out into the crisp air. He strolled slowly back to the castle through a light dusting of snow. The Entrance Hall and the Great Hall were empty and echoing too much, so Harry wandered up to the Defense office in search of company. The door was open and Snape was packing books from the shelf behind his desk into a small trunk.

Snape glanced up at him and said, “I am caught up with marking, so we can leave shortly.”

Harry was looking forward to Christmas with mixed expectations, nervous about pinning too much hope on it. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“You appear to have survived the ball,” Snape said as he compared the spines of two books.

“It was all right,” Harry said as he leaned casually against the doorframe. In the window, snow lay in little ridges on the sash, haloed by ice crystals.

Snape raised his dark eyes from the books. “Interesting choice of date.”

“You did say…”

“Yes, I did. It was unexpected, nonetheless. But you seem to have handled it appropriately, in the end.”

Harry crossed his arms and leaned harder on the doorframe. “Why wouldn’t I have?” he asked, sensing that he was wading into something murky.

Snape selected one of the books in his hands for the trunk. “As you yourself said: I do look out for my students,” he stated.

Something inside of Harry shifted and he didn’t like the feel of it. He tried to pin down the squirming thing. “As opposed to me,” he said without forethought.

Snape set the book he had just pulled out onto the desk. His eyes narrowed as his head tilted to the side. “In this, I do not expect you to need it.”

Harry considered that before he pushed himself straight. He didn’t feel like arguing over this unless he had to. “Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll be in the tower,” he said before walking away.

The next morning in the Zepher household, Suze rubbed her eyes and sat down to breakfast. Her mother had woken her early to eat with them. Even though it was not a work day, both her parents were dressed well and sitting properly, her mother with her pinky extended as she gripped her teacup.

“How did your examinations go?” her father asked, sounding less than confident of the answer.

“All right,” Suze replied, feeling defiant but working hard to keep it out of her voice.

“Well, good,” her father said in a we’ll see kind of way.

Suze frowned and buttered her toast rather than get into anything. They acted like she didn’t try at all.

“Wurther’s called a meeting for this afternoon,” her mother announced to her father from behind the peach-tinted Financial Times. “I’ll pick up your robes on the way back.”

Suze wondered if her parents had ever been interesting people who went to balls. She propped her chin on her hand and remembered yesterday evening while munching her toast. It seemed even more fun in retrospect than it had at the time, and Harry had been much nicer than she had imagined. She sighed a bit as she cracked her egg with her butter knife. They had rotated around the Hall so many times she could still feel the movement this morning.

Hope I can live down being at the ball with a Gryffindor, Suze had said when she had felt a little more at ease.

I’ll tell you a secret, Harry had said. The Sorting Hat tried to put me in Slytherin, but I made it change its mind.

She had laughed very hard at that notion, and without thinking had said, You are the very picture of Gryffindor. I hear they’re going to replace the lion with your face. This was a rephrasing of a much repeated Slytherin insult and she had immediately wished to retract it.

Harry had made a noise as though she had mortally wounded him, then laughed. Merlin, I hope not, he had said, not angry at all.

“Are your school supplies all set?” her mother asked sternly, interrupting her reverie. “Make a list if you need anything. I’ll get things today but I don’t want to have to go out again before the holidays.” Her tone indicated impatience held over from past times when Suze had forgotten things.

Suze got up and made the list right then. She bit her tongue as she handed it over, and her mother took it without comment, wearing a sober expression. By the time Suze returned to it, her egg was cold. She ate it anyway.

A scratching at the window announced the post owl. Her mother pointed her wand backwards over her shoulder to open it. The owl dropped the paper, picked up a sickle in its beak from a hollow stone on the table, and flew off again. The window closed itself after the owl left.

Suze watched, barely breathing, as her father unrolled the Prophet. He read the headlines and then flipped it to unfold it. On the front page was a photo from the ball. It showed Harry on the left talking to the headmistress as Professors Snape and Sprout looked on with polite attentiveness. She was cut off. Not even a hint of sleeve showing. Suze sighed as she squinted to read the headline and the first part of the article before the paper moved. It was boring stuff about how things were completely normal at Hogwarts. Or as normal as they ever were, as McGonagall was quoted. Pages rustled as her parents read. Suze heated a piece of toast from the bread basket with her wand and buttered it.

Being a professional Quidditch player sounds like fun, Harry had said.

I don’t know what else I would do, she had returned, echoing his earlier comment.

Just keep getting a little better all the time. You don’t have far to go from what I can see. She replayed that in her mind a few times, pinning dangerous hope on it—hope that would not have come from anyone else’s opinion.

Her father’s confused voice said, “Isn’t this you?” He folded the paper around, then folded it in half again before laying it on the table for her to see. Down the right-hand column was a rather nice picture of the two of them dancing. They were swaying to the music and Harry was talking silently. “Isn’t that Harry Potter?” her father asked in near utter confusion.

“Yeah,” Suze replied as casually as possible. “Harry asked me to the ball,” she stated as though it happened everyday.

Her mum put the Times down and leaned over to look. She grabbed up the paper in a sudden motion and read out the caption, “Harry Potter and Suze Zepher enjoying the Hogwarts Christmas Ball. I didn’t know you knew Harry Potter,” she said in surprise.

Suze shrugged. “He’s the Gryffindor Seeker.”

“We know that,” her father said. “But isn’t he a Seventh Year?”

“We just went as friends, Dad,” she said, borrowing one of their tones.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said, “I’m just surprised you got to know him that well.”

“We had a good match—we talked about it afterwards. That’s how we got to know each other,” she felt compelled to explain. They rarely asked her about her friends, or her playing, even though they seemed to follow the school’s Quidditch matches rather closely.

“Slytherin lost that match,” her father pointed out.

A little miffed, she said, “Yes, but Potter ended up in the hospital wing overnight.”

“You put Harry Potter in the dispensary?” her mother asked, appalled.

“One of the Beaters did. Potter got knocked into a tower by a Bludger and despite bleeding like crazy, he wouldn’t quit. He passed out from lack of blood right after catching the Snitch and fell about sixteen feet.” In a darkly determined voice, she added, “I was this close to beating him to it.”

Her parents appeared startled by this speech.

“You should come to the matches more often,” Suze said brightly.

“All right. From now on we’ll try to do that,” her mother said.

Suze couldn’t tell if she were really excited by the notion or thought it would make it easier to keep tabs on their daughter.

Diagon Alley was decorated for Christmas: wreaths with twinkling miniature lanterns hung on each lamp post, house-elves in green and red costumes tossed glitter dust on passers-by. A dusting of snow lightened the scene and neatly covered the grime.

Harry went to Gringott’s first. As he waited behind a hunchback, a family with four misbehaving small children, and a hag, for a goblin to take him to his vault, he tried to estimate what his list was going to cost. It was at least fifty or sixty galleons, he thought. Once he got to his vault, this seemed like an extravagant amount given his dwindling piles of coins. But he reassured himself with the thought that even after he filled his sack, he would still make it through the school year.

Back out on the alley, Harry headed first for the Quidditch supply store. He had only yesterday thought of what to get Ron, and if it were going to work out, he would have to act fast as there were only seven days until Christmas. At the shop he purchased an authentic Chudley Canons cloak, cringing a bit at that much orange fabric in a single garment. The stitching on the logo was nice, though, unlike the cheap versions he had sometimes seen.

He folded it up tightly and took it to the Post. He had already written the letter out, which he reread as he waited in queue. The letter was a plea for the team to autograph the cloak. Harry had not missed the look Ron had given the Bulgarian bat at Harry’s birthday party. He hoped his own personal request would be enough to get the cloak back signed in time for gift-giving. He suspected with chagrin that it would be, and felt a little uneasy about doing this at all, but he had not thought of anything better and was desperate.

With the cloak owled off to the team captain, Harry went back down to the bookstore. He perused the recent arrivals, looking for anything Hermione or Snape might appreciate. He pushed through the crowd to move around the table and picked up a new book on advanced counter curses and flipped it open to read a few random pages. Beyond the book, his eye was caught by the sight of a silver-tipped cane tapping along the floor as someone approached.

Startled a bit, Harry raised his eyes. A greying, portly man in a fine, three-piece suit and satin-lined cloak approached, but unlike Malfoy, this man seemed to need the cane since he kept it close beside his right leg as he walked.

“Hm,” the man said as he stopped a polite distance away. “Mr. Potter, I believe.” His voice was deep and rolling.

“Yes, sir,” Harry replied, wondering if he should know this man.

After a pause the man said as though it were a point of information, “I am Alfred Freelander.”

Harry froze but recovered quickly and held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, sir,” he said honestly.

The man’s grey eyes looked Harry over. “You look to be doing well, Mr. Potter.”

A witch pushed her way behind Harry, nearly losing her hat. “I’m doing all right, sir,” he acknowledged. Then thinking quickly, added, “I did appreciate your offer, sir.”

Freelander smiled faintly at that. “I wonder…would you be willing to grace my table with your presence, on Boxing Day?”

Harry hesitated only an instant. “I’d be honored, sir.”

“I’ll have an invitation sent to you then. Do you have a card?”

“No,” Harry admitted, laughing lightly at that notion. From his knapsack he pulled out a parchment and never-out quill. He wrote out his address and handed it over.

“Shrewsthorpe,” Freelander read from it. “You are very close by, indeed. My estate is in Riverden, just two towns over.” He gave Harry a polite smile. “I look forward to your visit,” he said and gave Harry a small bow of the head.

“So do I, sir,” Harry managed to remember to say.

Harry carried his haul back to the house and immediately took it to his room. He realized now that he was going to have to get more wrapping paper, but he had a few days to manage that. The evening felt stiffling quiet in comparison to being at Hogwarts or even shopping. The fire in the dining room hearth made the room comfortable as they sat down to dinner.

“One term down,” Harry chanted, finding himself falling into a regular countdown.

Snape raised his head and pushed his hair back from one side. “Looking forward to finishing?”

“Yes and no,” Harry replied honestly. He felt like he should, since every other student was, but he also resisted the thought of moving on, since it was all he knew.

“How did your examinations go?” Snape asked.

“Pretty good, I think. You haven’t finished marking the Defense ones yet?”

“Not quite.”

Harry frowned as he reconsidered. “Are you really marking me twice as hard as the other students?”

“Yes.”

Flustered, Harry mumbled, “I might not have done so well, then.”

A platter of roast mutton appeared, covered in sauce. It smelled wonderful. As he served himself, Harry complained, “Geesh, Greer is doing that too, I know, and the other day I suspected McGonagall of it as well. I think my marks are in trouble.”

Snape smiled a little slyly as he accepted the serving spoons when Harry finished with them. Harry shook his head and sighed, prompting Snape to say, “All that matters at this point are your N.E.W.T.s.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Harry breathed, not feeling much better about that.

An owl arrived late as they were enjoying a bit of chocolate cake. Harry accepted the creamy white envelope and the aged bird took off again.

“What is that?” Snape asked curiously.

“An invitation to dinner, I expect,” Harry said. The card-shaped envelope was addressed to Mr. Harry Potter & Guest. He tugged the wax seal open and took out the card which had a message written upon it in gold flowing script. Boxing Day dinner at seven o’clock was the summary of its lengthy prose.

Snape was examining the seal on the envelope with a lowered brow. Harry handed him the card as well and retook his seat. “You knew this invitation was coming?” Snape asked.

Harry lifted a shoulder. “I ran into Lord Freelander in Diagon Alley yesterday,” he replied casually.

Snape stared at him. “This is a rather highbrow event, Harry.”

“So…dress robes, you are saying?”

“At the very least.”

A few days later, Harry woke to a surprise breakfast guest. Sitting at the table looking mussed and casual as though she might have spent the night, was Candide. Harry hoped he covered his uncertainty quickly enough as he sat farther down the table than normal, across from an empty chair.

Breakfast arrived and she asked in a friendly tone, “How did your term go?”

“Well enough,” Harry replied, grateful that he could occupy himself with eating rather than conversation.

He ate and listened to them talk about everything from Ministry politics to gossip about her officemates. When he finished, Harry rose from the table, picked up his cup of coffee, and mumbled that he wanted to get his holiday assignments out of the way. The pair nodded at him as he departed.

In his room Harry buried himself in his schoolwork, starting with his Potions assignment. At lunchtime he was called down to eat. Harry took his Transfiguration textbook with him. It was his weakest subject, and looking over his essay grades from the previous term made him think McGonagall believed so too. At the table he opened the book before him like a suit of armor. Snape’s eyes passing over him, he didn’t point out that Harry was being unsociably occupied.

During the afternoon, Harry spent an hour or two reading in the window of his room, sitting on his trunk. He found himself hoping the girl in the yellow slicker would walk by, although he couldn’t decide whether he would run down and try to introduce himself or not. She would probably be wearing a different coat in the winter, but he thought he would still recognize her.

He didn’t need to decide, as she didn’t pass by while he was waiting.

Harry did not bring a book down to dinner because he simply could not study any longer. He found Snape and Candide playing a card game with Harry’s wizard pack while they waited for Winky to serve. They were drinking something in little metal cups, and Candide was laughing much more than usual.

Dinner materialized. Harry, not feeling particularly hungry, picked at his plate in a desultory fashion. Candide tried gregariously to involve him in the conversation.

“So, Harry,” she said, “How much longer do you think the Minister of Magic can ride the popularity he gained when Voldemort was defeated? He’s waiting a long time to call an election.”

Flatly, Harry replied, “I don’t read the political items in the Prophet.”

In a slightly snide tone, Snape explained, “He doesn’t like to read about himself—you must understand.”

“Lucky for you,” Harry said levelly, “nothing shows up in the Prophet about you.”

Had Candide not been sitting across from them both, this comment would have garnered a different reaction. As it was, Snape simply peered down his nose at him, shoulders stiff. Candide said, “There was that nice picture of you dancing with someone the other day. You didn’t even see that?”

Harry shook his head.

At the conclusion of the meal, Harry tried to use the excuse of assignments to get away, but Candide urged him strongly to join in some three-person game she wished to play.

“I’ve never played card games with more than one person,” Harry explained in an apologetic way.

“Perhaps it is time you learned,” Snape said in one of his more insistent-on-obedience tones.

Harry retook his seat, trying to not appear too much as though he were giving in. He listened politely to the rules of the game and the random strategy hints she proceeded to impart. After the deal, Harry picked up the nine cards before him and sorted them as instructed.

After several rounds and many corrections he finally had a basic sense of the strategy. He couldn’t win a hand, though, but he did manage to prevent Candide from winning one with a lucky play. “Figures you two would gang up,” she commented as she collected the cards to re-deal.

At ten, when he could reasonably do so, Harry claimed he was too tired to continue and this got him out of a new game that was about to be introduced.

The following morning, only Snape was in the dining room, having a coffee. Harry sat across from him, glad to have a quiet breakfast. Breakfast failed to appear though, and Harry was forced by boredom to read some of the paper. As he was turning to page two, footsteps sounded behind him and Candide shuffled in, looking in dire need of coffee. Harry froze, then pulled the paper up before him to hide his reaction, which was more severe than expected.

When he had his expression under control, Harry lowered the paper and folded it casually beside his plate. “Good morning,” he managed in return to her greeting. Not feeling social enough for this, he ate fast and left for his room.

Harry paced for a minute before pulling out a quill and parchment to write to Hermione. After the basic greetings and hopes that her holiday was going well, he stalled. Candide has moved in, he considered writing, but it sounded so odd. Candide has been visiting, he wrote instead. Whatever generosity he had felt toward her had dissipated utterly. He wondered at that, reminding himself that he had been determined not to allow it to slip away.

I’ve been learning to play cards, he added. Certainly Snape deserved someone, he thought, remembering the real regret he had expressed when she had broken it off. Snape had used him to make some kind of point with her, but Harry had to guess what the point had been, exactly.

He finished the letter with meaningless chatter, folded it up, and attached it to her present. Hedwig came to the window from the neighbor’s pine when Harry opened it. She flew off again, willingly carrying the thick book and light letter.

Harry didn’t sleep well that night, which was becoming a trend during this break. He woke several times with bad dreams but did not want to ask for potion, if only because it would mean interrupting both of their sleep, at the least. And Snape would want to know what he was dreaming about, and he wanted to keep to himself his queer dreams of being left behind.

The next afternoon, a Christmas tree appeared in the main hall. Not a large one. One that in fact had the look of the last chicken in the shop, but it was decorated with an array of interesting glittery spells which made glowing orbs appear and disappear and the branches themselves glow green intermittently. A few presents were under it already for him from Anita, Dobby, Gretta and Shazor. There was also one for Snape, presumably from Candide, as it was not signed. Harry thought of fetching his gifts, but realized that he had not bought anything for Candide, so he didn’t. He had had no notion before that moment that he might need one and didn’t, in any event, have any idea what he might get her.

Harry fetched his books instead and went to the library to study until dinner.

“It’s really sweet,” Candide said in a playful tone, from the doorway of the drawing room where Snape sat making lecture notes from a textbook.

“What is?” he asked in a very doubtful tone.

“Harry’s fallen asleep over his book in the library,” she said with a grin.

Snape stood suddenly and stalked past her with purpose. At the door to the library he stopped and surveyed the scene. Harry was slumped over the small desk, his head pillowed on what appeared to be his History of Magic textbook.

With angry motions, Snape stepped in and started to close the French doors, but paused to say, “If you’ll excuse us for a moment.” He shut the doors on Candide’s concerned face. He went over to the desk. “Potter,” he said sharply. Harry jumped awake and rubbed his eyes. Snape demanded, “You are not sleeping properly?”

Harry frowned but didn’t reply. He closed his textbook, the pages had become rippled from the moist heat of his face.

Snape said, “Go up to your room. You have two hours before dinner to get a little sleep.”

Harry stacked his history book with the others and, scratching his head, left the room. In the hall he encountered Candide, who peered curiously at him. Tired, he turned away mutely and went up the stairs to his room.

In what felt like minutes after he put his head on the pillow, a sharp rap sounded on the door to his room. He assumed it meant dinner and forced himself with effort to sit up.

Dinner was very quiet and even a little tense. Harry waited after finishing his plate for tea to be served. He really needed to spend more time on his assignment for McGonagall. Before the holiday, he had had a notion of rereading the textbook carefully from start to finish, and he had not given up on doing so yet, but he would need some serious tea to even consider working on that this evening.

That night in his room, Harry read Transfiguration until he could not keep his eyes from falling closed at each new sentence. Eyes aching, he put the book aside and turned down the lamp before flopping onto his pillow.

At midnight, in the bedroom at the other end of the balcony, Snape sat up. “I should check on him,” he said after exhaling loudly.

Carefully, Candide said, “You were a little harsh with him earlier…”

Snape huffed again. “Harry periodically has difficulty sleeping but I only discover this when he becomes narcoleptic,” he explained impatiently as he pulled on a pair of slippers and a dressing gown.

Harry rolled over when he heard the door latch click open.

“Still awake?” Snape asked. When Harry didn’t respond, Snape stepped over to the bed and stood beside it. “Are you having nightmares?” he asked factually. When Harry shrugged, Snape said, “Why didn’t you say?”

All Harry could think of to do was to shrug again, so he did nothing.

“What is in your nightmares?” Snape asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Harry replied. After a pause he added, “There aren’t any shadows or anything,” in a slightly desperate tone. He really did not want to talk about it.

Snape stood silently for a while in thought before sitting on the edge of the bed. “You have had a nightmare already tonight?” At Harry’s reluctant nod, he said, “What was in this dream?”

“I don’t want to say,” Harry repeated tiredly. “It’s a stupid dream.”

“If it is keeping you up for days at a time, it cannot be insignificant,” Snape pointed out. “Where were you in the dream?” Snape asked in a soft, demanding tone.

Harry sighed in frustration. He really wanted to be left alone to try to sleep. “In the ocean,” he finally replied reluctantly.

“In the ocean? Doing what?”

“Swimming. Treading water. I’ve fallen overboard,” Harry admitted.

They both sat still for a long moment before Harry continued, “No one notices. No one on the boat notices,” he clarified. In his mind he could see the vision from the dream of Snape, Candide and formless others laughing and drinking, unable to hear his calls. He frowned. “It’s a stupid dream,” he repeated, finally turning to look at his guardian.

Snape eyed him in surprise before bending over to rest his forehead on his palm. His hair fell around his face. “Harry, you are not being pushed aside, or abandoned,” he stated forcefully.

“I know that,” Harry retorted in a difficult tone. “I said it was dumb,” Harry insisted, feeling an ache of uneasiness despite his assertion.

Snape rubbed his eyebrow. “Do you have potion?” he asked.

“I don’t want any,” Harry said stiffly.

“You wish to continue to fall asleep while studying? Shall we expect you to fall asleep during meals as well?”

Stung, Harry rolled away, curling his legs up a bit and ducking his head. He wanted to just tell his guardian to go away, but he could not quite bring himself to do it. He ignored him instead.

Snape sat in silence for a long minute before standing to leave. Back in his room, Candide asked if everything was all right. “He is having nightmares,” Snape said. “A not uncommon occurrence with him,” he added as he turned the lamp down.

At three in the morning, Snape found himself still lying awake. He rose with cautious movements to check on the boy again. Harry actually seemed to be asleep this time, Snape discovered with relief. Although, the duvet was crooked on the bed, implying that he had not been sleeping undisturbed. Snape moved to straighten it and found that Harry’s hand was clutching it. Pulling it free drew a noise of complaint from the sleeping form, so he hesitated straightening it farther. With a start Harry woke up and immediately rolled away again into a ball on his side, tugging the duvet around himself tightly.

At five in the morning, Snape again rose to check on him, strongly compelled to do so. Harry was sitting in the window this time, staring out of a pane that had the frost cleared from it. He was sitting on his trunk, wrapped in the duvet from the bed. The fire burned high in the hearth on piles of new wood.

Snape stepped over to him and stared out at the crystallized street light and snowy road. “Is there anything I can do, Harry?”

Harry shook his head. He looked exhausted.

Back in Snape’s room, Candide said in a mystified voice, “Checking again?”

“He is being difficult and obstinate,” Snape commented.

She rolled over and peered at him in the dim light. “He’s a teenager. He’s supposed to be.” When Snape didn’t respond, she said a little impatiently, “Don’t you remember being his age?”

“I try not to.”

She laughed mirthlessly at that. “Well, it would be normal for his age. I think you’re taking it too seriously.”

Snape sat on the edge of the bed and mulled things over in silence. Candide broke into his thoughts by asking in honest curiosity, “Isn’t he usually difficult?”

“No,” Snape replied, “only when he is distressed.” While Candide froze and considered that, Snape added, “Your presence is disturbing him more than I imagined it would.” He went on, “Perhaps it would be best if you departed today.”

“I can leave first thing,” she said in an ambiguous tone.

“Perhaps after lunch and please make some external excuse, if you will. His capacity for nightmares is second only to his one for guilt. I do not want him suspecting.”

She fluffed her pillow before plunking her head back on it. “My parents are wondering why I haven’t made it to their house yet. They’re hinting strongly that I should be bringing you.”

Snape exhaled audibly. “That is as good an excuse as any,” he said a bit forcefully.

Breakfast proceeded in silence until Candide finally said to Harry, “Severus told me that you’re invited to the Freelander’s for Boxing Day.” At Harry’s nod, she said, “Too bad it isn’t summer, the estate is supposed to be beautiful. You’ll probably get a tour of the house, though.” When Harry shrugged again, she gave up.

After lunch, as Harry sat reading his Transfiguration textbook and drinking tea, Candide came back down with her satchel. Harry took this in with surprise.

“I have to get to my parent’s house,” she explained with reluctance. “They are about to send another owl, I’m sure,” she added in a long-suffering tone. “Here is your present, though.” She handed over a smallish yellow-wrapped box. Harry accepted it slowly.

“It’s nothing much,” she said, “compared to what you undoubtedly deserve.”

Harry cradled it against his arm. “Thanks.”

She smiled kindly at him before turning to Severus for a quick hug. Then she was gone in a flash of green in the hearth.

Harry frowned lightly at the gift. “I didn’t realize she was leaving today,” he said, thinking again that he would not have known what to get her.

“She has delayed visiting her family twice already,” Snape commented. “There was some pressure in fact for my visiting with them as well,” he added with honest loathing of that notion.

“Oh,” Harry muttered. He stood to take the gift and put it under the tree and realized that tomorrow was Christmas Eve. He went up and fetched his presents for Snape and put them under as well. Hedwig had not returned from taking Neville his present, although she had returned with Harry’s gift from Hermione, which was also under the tree now. Gifts for him definitely dominated the room.

Harry returned to rereading his Transfiguration text in the dining room, finding it much easier to concentrate now, which he credited to the tea.

In the middle of Chapter 6, Harry asked, “Do you know the theory of Holistic Hovering?”

Snape shook his head, looking like he might not have ever heard of it.

Harry frowned and sighed. “Of all the N.E.W.T.s I need to get at least an ‘E’ on, this one is the most in doubt.”

“Have you asked Minerva for extra help?”

Harry shook his head. “She’s a bit busy. Hermione helps when she has time.”

“Ms. Granger’s remarkable grasp of certain subjects, notwithstanding, especially for a Gryffindor—”

“Oh,” Harry interrupted. “She did the same thing I did—talked the Sorting Hat out of putting her in Ravenclaw.”

Snape looked disturbed by that. “That hat needs a spell rework, I think. Nevertheless, I believe you would find a teacher’s assistance more useful. Do not be hesitant about seeking help from Minerva. She would make time for you if you expressed a need for it.”

A pair of owls arriving cut their conversation short. Harry opened the window and used a severing charm to cut the strings to the package they were jointly carrying. With grateful sweeps of their wings they took off again.

Harry read the label as he brought it to the table. “All right!” he said in excitement. “I was afraid this wasn’t going to make it in time.” He tore the box open. There were two orange cloaks inside, which explained the weight. He snapped the first cloak out. It was signed to him. He stared at it in confusion.

“Dark Merlin,” Snape exclaimed snidely. “Where do you plan to wear that?”

“I don’t.” He pulled out the other one. “It’s for Ron’s present.” This one wasn’t signed quite as extravagantly, but it was still nicely done in a variety of ink colors.

Snape lifted the corner and read one or two. “Well, at least you are learning to use your influence for something.”

“You think I abused it?” Harry asked in concern.

“Did you send them two cloaks?” Snape asked. When Harry shook his head, he said, “Then clearly the Cannons do not feel that you are.”

“I couldn’t think of anything else to get him,” Harry complained. “And Ron was jealous of the Bulgarian Quidditch bat I received from their national team.”

“I expect he will be pleased,” Snape commented unreadably.

Harry packed it up quickly and said, “I hope Hedwig returns soon.”

“You may use Franklin. He is a much larger owl and that isn’t exactly light.”

“Thanks,” Harry said and took it to his room to wrap it. He stuffed the other cloak deep in a trunk with the thought that if Ron ever saw it, it would diminish his own cloak considerably in his friend’s eyes. Once that present was away, Harry relaxed and returned to his studies, making notes now of things he should ask McGonagall when he had the chance.

That evening at home passed much quieter than the previous one where someone else kept cajoling the two of them into activities. It occurred to Harry that if Snape enjoyed playing card games with Candide, he might like playing something else. “Do you like wizard chess?” Harry asked.

“I do not dislike it,” came the even reply.

Harry went and fetched the set from his room and set it up on the small table in the library. He was promptly and utterly beaten two games in a row.

Harry shook his head as he set the board up again.

“You want to play another?” Snape asked in surprise.

“Sure. Why not?”

“You usually are not so sanguine about losing,” Snape pointed out.

“I’m not?” Harry asked.

“You nearly killed yourself on the Quidditch pitch rather than lose to a younger, more skilled opponent.”

“Yeah, but that’s different. I lose at this to Ron all the time.” Harry sat back after putting the last pieces in place to restart. He counted the moves this time. It only took seven to be beaten this game. Harry thought over the sequence before quickly resetting the board. “Can you replay that?” he asked.

Snape did so. Harry saw the trap point this time and sat a while before making another move that threatened one of Snape’s pieces. It was a poor tradeoff though, which he resisted.

“Better,” Snape said as he took Harry’s piece. Harry took Snape’s in exchange. Even so, he could not foresee anything other than a long slow death.

“I’ve lost, can we start again?” At Snape’s nod, Harry reset the board again. After three rounds he finally managed to almost avoid the trap altogether but had sacrificed too many pieces.

“May I make a suggestion?” Snape asked.

“Sure.”

Snape reset the board this time and then made the first few moves on both sides. “Move these two from the back row. That frees the rook to move here and defend this pawn. Then I cannot even set it up.”

Harry looked the board over. “All right,” he said, rubbing his eyes. It was late and he was tired.

After putting the board aside, he went up to his room with a casual goodnight. He slept quite soundly that night.

The day before Christmas, Franklin returned with Ron’s present to Harry and a card from Mrs. Weasley to them both. Dinner was duck, roasted until it had a dark crispy skin. Harry ate until he was groggy from it. As the dinner plates disappeared, he pulled out his Transfiguration text despite his heavy eyes and forced himself to read it.

Snape sat back with something thick in a little metal cup. “You are going to study on Christmas Eve?” he asked in surprise.

Harry looked up from his text. “I was trying to reread this during break and I’m running out of time.”

“You are taking your studies very seriously.”

Harry frowned. “I feel like I’m letting McGonagall down, I’m doing so poorly. I think she thinks I’m really dim.”

Snape tilted his head at him with a look of disbelief. “I am quite certain she does not think that,” he said reassuringly, a little amused even.

“She has no patience with me,” Harry commented.

“She is not known for that. Does she have patience with other students who are struggling?”

“Neville,” Harry said after a moment’s thought. “Somewhat.”

Snape sighed lightly. “Yes, well.”

“That’s different,” Harry guessed.

“In what way?” Snape probed.

Harry opened his mouth to reply then found he didn’t have one. He and Neville were very similar. “I don’t know.” He closed his textbook and leaned his chin on his palms. “Certainly getting picked out for a Mark wasn’t in my best interest,” he said in annoyance. Although if he hadn’t been, where would the wizarding world be now, he wondered before putting such thoughts aside.

“And that is the only difference that you see?”

Harry shrugged. He remembered getting ready for the ball and asked as he pushed his fringe back, “Do you think my scar’s getting fainter?”

Snape appeared surprised by the question as he set his drink down and leaned forward across the table. He reached out and brushed his thumb over the jagged scar, making Harry jump as though a shock had gone through him. Harry rubbed it, decided it wasn’t tingling, and muttered, “That was odd.”

Snape looked at him uncertainly for two breaths before saying quietly, “It might be fading. You keep it obscured most of the time, so it is difficult to say.”

Harry fidgeted with his hands before opening his textbook again. Snape’s eyes remained on him for a long minute before he too went and fetched something to read.

Christmas morning, Harry put on his dressing gown and headed downstairs just after seven. He had gone to bed early and finally felt well rested and alert. He sat before the shining tree and looked over the presents. He imagined Ron was probably opening his right about now and he smiled to himself. Snape stepped over, carrying a cup of coffee. Harry held one of his gifts up to him. Snape placed his cup on the floor and opened it. It wasn’t a bad gift, except that Snape would have figured out that it existed easily enough in his own time.

“I didn’t realize they were ever releasing a supplement,” he said in a very pleased voice as he flipped open the Potions Compendym Update Voluum 1. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry replied. He shook the present from Hermione. “Books all around then,” he quipped as he tore the wrapping. It was a Transfiguration study guide for the N.E.W.T. He sighed at the notion that everyone knew he was struggling. “Ever practical,” he muttered of his friend.

Inside the present from Ron was a vast collection of Weasley Wizard Weezes experimental candies and novelties. “You didn’t see those,” Harry said, closing the lid quickly.

“I am endeavoring to forget,” Snape said stiffly but with a vague humor.

Harry set that box aside and pulled out the present from Neville. This one was a little more mysterious. Inside was a half dome of crystal with something like an egg inside it. Harry peered at it curiously.

“You don’t know what it is?” Snape asked. When Harry shook his head, he went on, “Set it on the window sill for a few days.”

A little worried, Harry set it on the book from Hermione. He handed Snape the other present from him. “It worked well the last time,” Harry commented as Snape opened the wrap to reveal a canister of robusta shade-grown Polynesian coffee. His guardian actually smiled lightly in amusement. “Open yours,” he prompted.

Harry pulled out the present from Snape. He gave the large box a light curious shake. It sounded like clothes. He opened it and pulled out a long black satin cloak with a red velvet lining. “Wow,” Harry said, and stood up to swing it over his shoulders. The pewter clasp was in the shape of a snake. With a huff of false offense at that, he hooked it and turned around. “It’s great. Thank you,” he said honestly as he flicked the corner out to see the flash of red.

Harry sat cross-legged on the floor, still wearing the cloak, and reached for the next present. It was from Gretta and Shazor. Harry hadn’t intentionally grabbed that one ahead of the one from Anita. He pretended he hadn’t thought of any significance to that as he unwrapped it. Inside was a painted mask with a comic happy face. A little confused and intrigued he lifted it out and dropped it immediately back into the tissue when it distorted to an equally overdone look of surprise with a round mouth and brows steeply angled outwards.

“A wizard Carnival mask,” Snape provided. “I assume you have never seen one, given your reaction.”

“No,” Harry breathed. He put the box lid underneath and set the in the box with the others to avoid touching it again. Snape reached over and lifted it out. The mask went neutral, with a flat mouth and brow. Harry watched him turn it over.

“It is from Rio De Janeiro,” he said. “Gretta does like to travel,” he went on as he put it back into the box. It held its neutral expression, even after he released it.

Harry pulled his eyes away from it and over to the next gift on hand-printed paper. Inside was a hand-sewn book of quotes and a few poems, something they had put together at the coven. Harry flipped through and read a few words of wisdom, most a bit trite, before setting it with the others.

Candide’s present he lifted up and, rather than risk breaking it by shaking it, opened the bright wrapping. Inside were handmade dark chocolates, each one just a little different from the next, all of them a little strangely shaped. Harry tried one and made a long noise of delight. Thickly, he said, “These are good.” He lifted out another one, stripped with raspberry color, before he closed the box and stacked it on top of the one from Ron.

“Huh, no jumper,” Harry commented.

“No what?”

“Uh, Mrs. Weasley always knits everyone jumpers with a big letter or picture on them,” Harry said.

“That…would explain a lot,” Snape said carefully. At Harry’s slightly challenging look, he added, “…about your wardrobe.”

“Hey, the thought that someone would actually make something for me, rather than give me some way oversized, badly dyed, hand-me-down was really touching,” he explained. He carried the glass dome and Wheezes up to his room and brought the study guide and chocolates to the dining room.

Snape stepped in a few minutes later and stood near the hearth. “Do you have other holiday rituals you are accustomed to?” he finally asked.

“I don’t have any at all,” Harry said.

Snape took a seat across from him and eyed the chocolates. Harry pushed them over and Snape selected one with an odd daintiness. “Hm,” he said appreciatively as he tasted it. Breakfast arrived on the table, distracting both of them.

“Are you almost ready?” Snape called up from the main hall.

Harry checked himself in the mirror again. He was wearing his dress robes yet again—it had to be a record. His hair looked as good as it ever did. From the balcony, he said, “Right here.”

Snape, looking much better groomed than usual, almost startlingly so, led him to the entryway and pulled down their cloaks. Harry watched as Snape pulled out and examined some thick white sheets from a pocket before re-stowing them.

“What are those?”

“Calling cards.” He held one out. It was like a large Muggle business card but larger and more stylish. “Essential for a such an occasion.”

“I don’t have any,” Harry said. After Freelander had asked for one earlier, he should have thought of this sooner himself.

“Go write up a few on nice parchment. Quickly,” Snape said.

Harry dashed to the library. He cut up a few sheets of thick cream parchment and pulled out the peach quill Dumbledore had given him. Writing carefully, he put his name and address on each: his name in the middle and the address along the bottom, smaller. The only title he had ever been given, by the sweet company that made chocolate frogs, he did not relish using, so he stopped with that. He made up five of them before stashing the quill away.

In the entryway, Snape draped the new cloak over Harry’s shoulders and opened the door. A horse-drawn carriage stood outside on the dark road, flickering lanterns hanging on its sides. “It is the appropriate way to arrive for an event like this,” he explained at Harry’s hesitation.

Harry climbed inside and closed the half door. He leaned out as they pulled away with a snap of a whip. The shod hooves on the road sounded too loud at first, but the sound fell into the background after the first mile. A few cars passed them, accelerating fast. A town went by, the pavements full of people milling in the warm glow from the shops.

Finally, they pulled through a pillared gate of white stone and up a cobbled drive that beat against the wheels. Harry glanced out and caught his breath at the massive building and organized grounds. Their carriage waited in a short line to be unloaded at the steps, where a red carpet had been laid out, dusted with fresh snow. Harry wished he owned better dress robes, or even a Muggle coat with tails.

“Only you would get invited to such a thing, Potter,” Snape commented. He sounded a little put-off, or even jealous.

Harry considered that he should have explained the whole story, but at that moment they pulled up before the grand entrance and the carriage door was opened by a footman. Harry stepped down and waited for his guardian before ascending to the bright light pouring from the doorway.

Inside was a marble floor and two-story hall with a gilt balcony all around. The plaster ceiling was sculpted elaborately with garlands. A dour man in tails bowed and took their cloaks as another stepped up to lead them to the threshold of the next room, which was even larger than the first. Harry could not fathom this as his own. How could all this belong to one person?

Before them a tall, lithe woman with her glasses on a jeweled stick stood with her arm through a stout man’s. The man handed over a card and the butler read it out loudly. “Mr. and Mrs. Trout of the Devonshire Trouts.” From across the room a small man with a pince-nez came over and greeted them warmly as old friends, otherwise there was no acknowledgment, which was surprising, considering the volume of the announcement and the number of people in the ballroom. Harry had had no sense of the scale of the event he had agreed to attend.

“There are Muggle lords here. Peers too,” Snape observed under his breath.

As they stepped forward, Harry glanced at his guardian who looked haughty and alert. If he stuck with that, Harry could manage. Snape handed his card to the man who read it out without seeming to think it out of line. He handed it back. Harry handed him his after. The man had to squint at the oddly bright ink before he announced the name, causing most of the room to stop and turn. Harry fought the flush coming into his cheeks.

Harry waited a moment to receive his handwritten card back, but the man had stashed it in his inside suit pocket with a smile. Harry sighed. Freelander himself came over.

“Good to see you, Mr. Potter. And…Snape, Professor. Correct?” he said, shaking Snape’s hand. “Please come in.”

A waiter swooped in with mugs of mulled mead that spoke profoundly of clove and cinnamon. Harry couldn’t resist. He immediately had to switch hands as he was introduced to two Peers and some solicitor who seemed very self-assured. Harry wondered who was Muggle and who was Witch or Wizard. This wasn’t a problem he had expected to have. Everyone eyed him appraisingly the way Fudge had a habit of doing. After a minute or so of conversation, the looks wore off, thankfully.

They circled the room. Harry realized after the second group that he was being herded by Freelander or his wife or by the butler even. He was grateful when they sat down to dinner at a table that rivaled the house ones at Hogwarts. A man by the name of Ratslinger sat across from them with his young wife or mistress. Harry wasn’t clear which. Harry hadn’t understood quite what he did. The man’s introduction had included Lord of Morals, but he hadn’t caught the rest.

As the first course was set before them all by an army of staff, Harry leaned over to Snape and said, “This party is mostly Muggles, right?”

“Half and half, I would guess,” Snape said.

“Why don’t you think Fudge is here?”

“I expect he was invited. I expect he had several competing events this evening. Do you wish he were here?” Snape asked snidely.

“No. I was just trying to figure things out.”

“By the time you do, you will inextricably be part of it,” Snape said.

After dinner they joined the tour of the house and stables. The two of them lagged behind the group to talk more easily. One garish baroque room flowed into the next, distinguishable only by wall color or a unique tapestry or painting.

Freelander came up to them as the bulk of the tour moved around a turn. He joined them as they stared at a scene of a knight bowing to a dragon who looked to be considering whether roasting or barbecuing would leave the man more tender. “So glad you could make it, Mr. Potter,” he said sincerely. “I don’t think we were quite introduced properly,” he added, looking to Snape.

With a faint sense of doom Harry said, “This is my adoptive parent, Lord Freelander. He teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts.”

Freelander looked Snape over far differently this time. “Huh,” he said, clearly mystified. He looked Harry up and down next. “You appear to be doing well. That is what matters,” he added factually.

They continued following the tour. Harry ignored Snape’s questioning glance until Freelander had moved ahead to explain the origin of a grand landscape painting in a room at the end. Harry stopped and waited until the rest of the group had entirely gathered around for the story. He and Snape were stalling in the wide preceding corridor that seemed to serve no purpose but to hold paintings of other large manors.

“I’m sorry. I should have explained completely,” Harry said quietly.

Snape stood examining a painting that showed a garish fountain of Neptune in the foreground and paths leading in all directions. The one up the center led to a yellow estate house in the distance. He turned and said in a slightly disinterested voice, “Explained what?”

“Freelander wanted to adopt me.”

Snape blinked in surprise. He tilted his face to the ceiling as he took that in. When he spoke it was disbelieving. “And you said ‘no’?”

“Of course I said ‘no’,” Harry replied smartly.

In a bit of a sneer Snape said, “I cannot believe you would have chosen me over this,” as he swept his hand to indicate the room.

Harry, annoyed with Snape’s tone, said, “It wasn’t like that. I turned him down in May.”

“You could have changed your mind. You most likely still could,” Snape said with a harsh undertone that Harry hadn’t heard in a long time. “The Wizard Family Council would jump at the chance to place you in a proper home.”

Harry stared him done. “Don’t do this,” he pleaded quietly. When Snape didn’t respond, Harry said, “I don’t need all this stuff. What would I do with it?”

Snape leaned closer. “It isn’t the ‘stuff’, Potter—it is the power. Something you have been utterly unable to grasp,” he said condescendingly. “You whose idea of undue influence is getting a Cannon’s cloak autographed.”

Harry stared at a bright painting of a lake with a path beside it leading to an open domed building on a bit of a point. He wished he had turned the party invitation down.

As though that thought might have summoned the man, Freelander approached. “You have fallen far behind,” he said in a gracious tone.

Harry looked to Snape, who had masked his expression and now simply appeared as restrained as many of the other guests. They followed through the next wing and out to the stables, which were connected by a covered walkway to the main house.

The stall doors each had a brass plaque with the horse’s name. The first one said, “Studebaker.” The massive brown animal turned and studied them before turning back to the pile of hay in the corner.

“Steeplechase, this one,” Freelander said with the same tone of voice Ron used to discuss Quidditch. “As is the next.” They were given a little history and siring on each one as they went.

At the end of that row they turned and headed back. “What about these?” Harry asked of the next row of stalls. A beautiful black horse with a long white blaze peered out curiously from one of them.

“Those are just the riding horses,” Freelander said dismissively.

The black horse whinnied as though insulted. Another farther down answered from inside its stall. Harry stood glued to that spot imagining that. When he looked up at Snape, his guardian had an expression that said figures. Harry shot him a sharp look in return before they followed Freelander back out the way they had entered.

Brooms were better than horses, Harry told himself. Except a broom didn’t exude the raw power and borderline wildness the black horse had. He shook off the regret that tried to weasel its way into him.

The carriage ride home was silent until they passed the intervening town. Harry felt he needed to say something. He adjusted his cloak, grateful for it. “The cloak is warm. Thanks,” he said.

“You are welcome,” Snape said quietly, barely audible over the clopping of the hooves outside. He sounded uncertain. Harry didn’t know what to say, feared saying the wrong thing. He closed his eyes and dozed off to the regular rocking of the carriage.

Back in Shrewsthorpe, they alighted and entered the unlit house. Harry hung up his cloak and stepped into the dim hall. He waved the chandelier up brighter and turned to wait for Snape to emerge from the entryway. When he did, he gave Harry a vaguely disgusted look. With an ache of frustration, Harry huffed at him, unable to find words to make the situation all right again.

“You prefer this?” Snape asked snidely with a wave of his arm to indicate the main hall.

“Yes,” Harry insisted.

“You are a fool,” Snape said as he turned to stalk off. Harry followed close behind, grasping for a retort. Partway up the stairs, Snape turned on him and said, “They owe you everything, those wizards and Muggles tonight. You should have taken everything you could from them.”

Harry considered that Snape saw the world very differently than he did. “I don’t want what they have,” he said.

Snape shook his head with a toss of his hair and continued up to his room.

At breakfast Snape seemed to have calmed down. Harry was sitting at the table working on holiday assignments when his guardian came in. His first reaction to seeing Harry there appeared the opposite of the night before. Harry thought he almost looked grateful, but covered it so quickly, it was hard to be certain.

Harry sighed and bent back to writing about the formation of Goblin monetary law in the fifteen hundreds. A cup of black coffee appeared before Snape and he drank it in silence as Harry worked.

After long minutes, Snape said quietly, “Getting everything finished?”

“Yep,” Harry replied, glad Snape sounded as normal as he did.

Another long pause. “Need help with anything?”

Harry hesitated, then said with a grin, “You could look over my Potions essay…”

Later in the day, the sun came out of the clouds. Harry went up to his room to exchange the textbooks he was working on and to put away his mail, including a letter from Ron that was incoherent with gratitude for the Cannon’s cloak. At first Harry didn’t notice anything, but as he turned to the door he suddenly swung around again. The window was now nicely framed in a dark green ivy. Harry stepped over to it. It was emerging from the glass dome from Neville that he had placed on the sill and forgotten about. Tiny little buds were on the branches, hinting at a variety of colors between the green capsules around them.

He stepped back and admired it. The room did look much better that way, much less wintery.

Harry was asleep, calmly asleep, when a noise woke him. It was the noise of the logs in the hearth shifting. They made the hollow, high, rasping sound of the coal they had become. Dark and light flickered in his mind, flame and shadow. He rolled over upon recognizing the noise, and pulled the covers up a bit higher against the chill of the room. The noise repeated, sounding less natural. Harry raised his head and found Snape adding fresh wood to the fire.

Finally, his guardian stood and brushed off his hands. He turned and noticed Harry was awake.

“You’re the house-elf tonight?” Harry teased.

“It is especially cold and she had not come around yet,” Snape explained. He came over to the bed and stood above him. “You seem to be sleeping well.”

“Really well.” He couldn’t remember any dreams at all, just restful darkness. “When are we going back to Hogwarts?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

Harry nodded and mumbled, “All right.” Fleetingly, he realized that this had been the first normal Christmas he had ever had. Gifts from grandparents, even, sort of. “Thank you for the nice Christmas,” Harry said as Snape moved to the door.

The figure in the flickering dimness turned. “I am glad it turned out to be so. Good night, Harry.”

“’Night,” Harry said back just before the door clicked closed.

The Weasley household was strewn here and there with the remains of presents being opened when Harry stepped out of the Floo. He had selfishly been enjoying his time at home, but Ron’s third owl where he mentioned his mum inviting him over, brought him to the Weasley hearthstone. Harry kicked a half-burned strip of pink ribbon off his shoe and savored the fact that for the first time he needn’t view the Burrow with deeply buried longing.

Mrs. Weasley came downstairs and gave him a firm hug. “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Weasley,” Harry greeted her.

“Happy Christmas, Harry dear. Did you get everything you wanted?” she asked, tweaking him on the chin.

Harry considered that his lack of jealous pang upon arriving at the Burrow was good a present as he could have imagined. “Yes, but, uh, I didn’t receive a jumper, I don’t think,” he teased.

“Didn’t do any knitting this year, dear,” she said.

“No?”

“Been trying out something different—would you like to see?”

More footsteps sounded on the stairs and Ron appeared. “Harry! Oh, Mum’s showin’ you her new craft, what?” He sounded a little pained. From a large wooden sewing box beside the rocking chair, Mrs. Weasley pulled out and proudly held up a set of colorfully decorated robes. “She’s inta needlepoint now,” Ron explained.

“What do you think?” Mrs. Weasley asked, shaking the garment flat. It was festooned with a bizarre array of shapes: flowers along the cuff and collar, but dragons on the breast and then—only partially filled in—gnomes along the hem. Even if muter colors had been selected, the design would still not hold out in even wizarding public.

“That’s…” Harry began, trying hard for words in the face of her proud expression. “Really…expertly sewn.” Which was true. He hadn’t imagined needlepoint gnomes looking quite so realistic. And horrifically ugly.

Ron leaned over. “Thank Merlin she’s been too slow to get at my dress robes yet,” he whispered.

As he and Snape took the Floo back to Hogwarts castle before the next term, Harry wondered at how he was allowed to skip the train that everyone else was required to take. Not that he was the only student around in the days before classes restarted. Four other students had stayed over because of family schedules or problems. Harry joined them in the Great Hall the afternoon he arrived.

Pansy Parkinson gave him a dissuading look at he sat down, but she was the only Slytherin, so she remained silent. There was also a second-year Gryffindor named Desmond Hern and two fourth-years from Hufflepuff Harry didn’t know the names of until they were introduced as Quinton Alden and Frobin Waxwing. All but Parkinson seemed surprised to have him sitting there.

“Did you have a good Christmas?” Desmond asked.

“Yes. Thanks,” Harry replied as he took out his Transfiguration textbook.

“Professor Snape get you everything you wanted for Christmas?” Pansy asked in a rude tone. The other students stiffened.

Harry shrugged. “I didn’t ask for anything. But I got some nice things anyway,” he answered calmly.

“You really live with him?” Desmond asked, sounding uncertain how he felt about that.

“Yes,” Harry replied, sounding much more annoyed than he intended. Desmond visibly closed his mouth tightly and bent over his own school work.

A few minutes later the two Hufflepuffs were arguing in close whispers. Frobin finally shushed the other and asked Harry in a pained whisper, “There isn’t any sign of You-Know-Who coming back, is there?”

Harry looked at her. She had short hair pulled nonetheless into two tight ponytails on the top of her head. Her truly worried brown eyes looked large in the cloudy light of the hall. With certainty, Harry replied, “No.” She relaxed a little at this answer, but not entirely. “I would know,” Harry insisted. “My scar tingled or burned when he was doing much of anything and it hasn’t done anything at all. In fact it’s fading,” he added, rubbing it unconsciously.

“Really?” Frobin asked hopefully. All eyes at the table were staring at him, wide-eyed.

“Really,” Harry replied with extra assurance, returning to his textbook in the hope that they would return to theirs.

The new term began as winter settled in around the castle. Harry had not imagined it possible, but Ron and Hermione seemed even more glued together than they had before break. He had expected some commiseration from Ginny on this, but found that she wasn’t paying much attention to anything but Dean.

At first he felt merely mystified by all of it. That was until he noticed that he had faded into the background along with everything else, then he felt a little annoyed. The weather was definitely conducive to sitting close together, he considered. Often. As the first few days passed, it began to grate on him more, making him feel unsettled and anxious. He started avoiding his friends when it was convenient to do so.

Friday evening, Harry stood in the common room with his book bag over his shoulder, looking for someplace to settle in to talk or even study. The room, to his eye, seemed paired up into fixed sets. He didn’t feel like interrupting anyone, so with a sigh he headed out the portrait hole, thinking of the library. He wandered instead to Snape’s office. His guardian was researching something in stacks of books piled on the desk.

“Do you mind if I study here?” Harry asked.

Snape, his long finger holding his place in the text, looked up at him. “Not at all.” As Harry sat in the visitor’s chair and dropped his bag hard on the floor, Snape asked, “Is something wrong?”

Harry wrinkled his face up as he thought over an answer. “All of my friends are, I don’t know, wrapped up in each other.” He shook his head in light disgust. “Voldemort could Apparate into the common room right now and no one would notice.” Harry cracked his Transfiguration text open and slouched over as he read.

“Hm,” Snape murmured.

“What?” Harry asked, feeling a little annoyed.

“I am surprised you do not understand.”

Harry frowned at him. “They’ve all lost their heads,” he complained. “What’s to understand?”

“You’ve never fallen for someone?” Snape asked.

Harry thought about Cho, how he had thought about her when she wasn’t around, how he had been jealous of others around her. It seemed dumb in retrospect. With a hint of anger Harry said, “Not like that.”

“Well, you will,” Snape stated dryly.

“Yeah, right,” Harry breathed. He tried to read the first paragraph of chapter ten yet again. His mind refused to take it in. Anger had built in him, generated by some source he wasn’t aware of before. He glanced up at Snape to find his guardian considering him in silence. Snape closed the book before him and clasped his hands on the desk.

“What?” Harry asked.

Snape did not react, just continued to consider him. Harry closed his book as well, a little harder and with a huff of frustration. “You are doing one of those Dumbledore things, aren’t you?” Harry asked. “Just waiting to see what I’ll say.”

“I am actually trying to determine what the problem likely is before venturing to ask anything,” Snape said. “You are clearly jealous.”

“I’m not,” Harry returned smartly. “I have too much work to do to spend my time mooning over someone like they all are. Fat chance, anyway, given how hard it was to find a partner for the ball.”

Snape reopened the book he had been reading and looked for his page. “I cannot believe it was that difficult.”

Harry stuffed his book away in his bag, disgusted and angry now. He was shaking a bit as he moved, he was so furious. “You think just anyone would go with some freakishly dangerous person…” With a jerk he stood up and hefted his bag. “…who has spent the last seven years as nothing but a puppet a dark wizard, as—what did McGonagall call it—a Vold-o-meter?”

As he turned to the door a spell flew over his shoulder and highlighted the doorframe for an instant. He tried the handle anyway, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Sit down,” Snape intoned.

Harry remained facing the door, but let his book bag slide to the floor. His fury had peaked and ebbed between the chair and the door, leaving him achy, hurt, and without purpose. Snape did not speak as Harry gathered himself together before turning around. He avoided Snape’s eyes as he abandoned his bag and returned to the chair. The twisty ache in his chest was only intensifying.

They sat in silence with Harry trying to imagine getting to know someone as closely as Ron and Hermione knew each other. It seemed impossible. “I can’t imagine explaining it all,” he breathed out in a pained way. “And who in the world would stick around for the whole story?” He wrapped his arms around himself without realizing it.

“I am not unfamiliar with your dilemma,” Snape said. His chin rested on his bent fingers, thumb picking at the edges of his nails. “But there are thirty-seven girls in your year—”

“Please don’t,” Harry interrupted, willing him to stop. “I’ve been through them all with Hermione already. Sixth Years too. Thank you for trying,” he added, then thought better of his tone. “I don’t think you realize how many students are just plain scared of me. The others are disgustingly adoring or think I’m a freak.”

“I believe you are exaggerating,” Snape said.

“If I pull my wand out at dinner, care to lay a bet on how many people duck under a table?”

“You are mistaking awe for fear. But neither is conducive to getting to know someone,” Snape admitted. “And trying that would not improve the situation.”

“I have some sweets that will turn my eyes red. I could do that tomorrow. Imagine how many nightmares I could cause with that,” he said provocatively.

“Harry,” Snape chastised him.

“No one will ever understand,” Harry said quietly, sounding bleak.

“May I offer some advice garnered from observation during many years here watching dunderheaded young people make the same mistake over and over?” Snape asked. At Harry’s dismissive shrug, Snape said, “You need to adjust your goals. If you set yourself exclusively to immediately finding someone to be everything to you, you will almost certainly fail, after much injurious frustration, I might add.”

Snape stood and came around to the front of the desk. “You need to reduce your intentions to finding a friend of the opposite sex. It is much easier to get to know someone casually. If more is possible it will flow on its own from there.”

Ignoring Snape’s gaze, Harry stared out the window as his guardian spoke. “Okay, so where is this person?” he huffed.

“Perhaps not here at Hogwarts,” Snape admitted.

“Maybe not even a witch,” Harry mumbled.

Snape raised a brow. “If you are willing to open the field that wide the possibilities do increase considerably.” With his knuckle he tweaked Harry’s chin to bring his eyes back over. “Do not destroy yourself worrying about it in the interim. That is the worst you can do. Although at your age it is not an uncommon thing to do.”

Harry frowned deeply and tapped his foot against the chair leg impatiently as he returned to staring out the window. Snape made sense, but it didn’t improve his mood any to hear it.

Snape went on with yet another huff. “I know it is not easy. Especially since your friends are most likely intimate at this point.”

Harry turned to him in surprise. He thought a moment before rolling his eyes. “Yeah, probably,” he mumbled. That thought really didn’t help.

Snape frowned. “You may very well have to settle for never being fully understood.”

“Did you tell Candy your whole past?” Harry asked bluntly.

With a shake of the head, Snape huffed and replied, “No.”

“That’s setting a good example. You’re saying I should live a lie?” When Snape did not reply, even though he looked for a moment like he was going to, Harry said in frustration, “I can’t imagine going over it all again. But, what’s the point in being close to someone if they…don’t understand?” His eyes were burning, making him blink.

Snape frowned and rubbed his forehead as he stepped back around to his desk chair. “I do not know what to say to you, Harry, except perhaps that I don’t expect that anyone is fully understood by anyone else.”

Harry rubbed his left eye under his glasses. “I really can’t imagine explaining it all,” he murmured, repeating himself. “It takes something out of me every time I have to.”

“I have no answers for you,” Snape repeated. “I will, however, point out that everyone is different. Do not make assumptions about someone until you know them well. You clearly dislike others doing it to you.”

Harry gazed sadly at the floor, thinking idly about that. He thought about the girls in the school, most of whom seemed giggly or fashion obsessed and really not worth getting to know. It was daunting to think of trying to get to know any of them better, especially since if he sat down beside them they would either giggle gratingly or gape in surprise.

Snape’s voice pulled him from his circling thoughts. “There was something I wanted to discuss with you, since you are here.” When Harry looked up, he went on, “I saw your first term marks—”

“I haven’t even seen them,” Harry complained.

Ignoring the interruption, Snape said, “You received an ‘A’ in Potions.”

“What?” Harry blurted. “Greer hates me,” he commented.

“Also in Transfiguration.”

Harry did frown at that. “What about the rest? Did I get an ‘O’ in anything?”

“Hm,” Snape replied. Harry kicked the chair leg with his heel in frustration. “You need to do better,” Snape insisted.

This felt like the final blow. He put his head in his hand and sat hunched over. “I can’t try any harder than I have been,” he said. “I do almost nothing but revise. And I’m doing better than that in Potions,” he insisted. “She’s not marking me fairly.”

“What is the basis for Frenkels Salve?”

“Isisin and Chamomile.”

“What four potions use Uyrs Iodyn?”

“Uh, Draught of Isis, Venidyn, Smith’s Semper, and…” He tugged his hair back as he thought. “Just a second, something else uses Venidyn as an ingredient. Uh, Hope’s Harm Reducer.” Harry waited as Snape considered him a long moment. Harry said defensively, “You said I did well on that big essay. Don’t you think that was at least an ‘E’?”

“Yes. I expect that is how I’d have marked it—if not higher.”

“She only gave me an ‘A’ on it, you know.”

“Perhaps your Potions grade is in error, then. But the Transfiguration one is not.” When Harry groaned in frustration, Snape said, “I am certain Minerva would give you extra tutoring if you asked.”

Harry pulled his book out again and flipped back to chapter ten, tired of talking about it when he could try to do something about it. “I’ll think about it.”

Harry sat in the library studying. Normally, he would have found his friends here, but he was starting to suspect that Hermione was catering to Ron’s dislike of doing assignments in a place he was forced to be quiet. Harry joined Neville at a long table and took out his books. Snow fell in thick currents outside the window that billowed and swirled mesmerizingly. Harry had to repeatedly force his gaze to return to his parchments.

Neville fidgeted often as he studied. Harry finally took a break from rereading his notes to ask him what he was working on. “Transfiguration,” Neville replied. “My worst.”

“Mine too.” It felt good to share studying complaints with someone. Neville seemed like a safe person to revise with. There were fewer interruptions from others. “I have to get a good N.E.W.T. score,” Harry breathed. “It’s not looking good right now.”

“You’ll do all right, Harry,” Neville said without looking up. “You always do.”

“Doesn’t feel like it this time.”

Luna came by a few minutes later. “Want to go for a walk outside?” she asked.

Harry blinked at her in surprise until he realized she was asking Neville, who surprised him further by answering brightly, “Yeah!”

When they had gone, Harry frowned. It looked awfully cold outside to him. He really didn’t get it, he thought.

An hour later, Suze wandered by. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

She glanced around them as though to check if anyone were listening. “You have this club, the D.A., right?” At Harry’s nod, she went on. “Can I join?”

“Of course,” Harry said.

“Well, you don’t have any Slytherins in it. I thought maybe they weren’t allowed.”

Harry’s brow furrowed as he thought about that. “We don’t keep them out. It’s just that no one has ever asked.” He reached into his pocket and took out his fake Galleon. Next Thursday at seven-thirty had been scheduled. He showed her how to read the serial number.

She accepted it and asked, “Why the coin?” as she tossed it off her palm.

“Because we were illegal under Umbridge and we needed to vary the time to avoid her.” And the Slytherins she had hunting us down, he almost added. “It’d be great if you could come.”

She pocketed the coin and gave him a smile before walking away.

Harry was exceedingly grateful for his new cloak during astronomy class. The stars blazed in the night sky as the students huddled before their telescopes on the astronomy tower roof. The wind was low but the clear sky left the air bone-chillingly cold. Ron and Hermione were bundled under her cloak together, which was awkward, as they were not allowed to share telescopes. Sinistra eyed them a few times but did not comment. Harry kind of wished she would.

Harry sighed and moved two degrees right ascension with the dial. He pulled his hands inside his cloak as he stared at Arcturus. Inside his cloak he pulled out his pocket watch and used a charm to light the face of it. He preferred his own watch to the one Sinistra provided. He checked the telescope and his watch, back and forth. As the star passed the crosshairs he noted the time. He glanced around. Only Hermione also seemed to be noting the extra credit meridian passage of Arcturus on the assignment sheet.

Harry rarely worked out the extra credit questions, especially since he could be packing up his lenses instead of shivering. The second part of the question: How does nutation affect the reliability of your answer? He thought hard and jotted down that it could be off by nine minutes of angular distance but that the component of that in the right ascension was small. He did not know by how much or how to compute it, so he stopped there. Hastily rolling up his parchment with bitter fingers, Harry frowned as he noticed Hermione had her telescope put away already because Ron was helping.

In Defense they were doing curse breaking. Each of them came up and picked out a box from a widely varying collection on the front table. For the assignment one needed to retrieve what was inside. This explained why Snape had not wanted visitors the last two days. Harry waited and took the last one remaining, a burnished brass box with outsized hinges. Once closed magically, it did not look likely that there was another way into it even using Muggle power tools.

Harry had grown into the habit of sitting in the far back of the room. His friends seemed confused by this, but they changed as well and sat nearby. Harry returned to the last desk in the middle row and stared at his assigned box.

Malfoy let out a cry of surprise as his sleeve caught fire when he simply tried the latch on his inlaid wood box. Parkinson used a water charm on him, leaving him damp all over. Harry looked over his notes as he suppressed a laugh.

Harry rubbed his eyes as he read. He was tired from Astronomy last night, which had gone until one in the morning. Snape swished by, pausing behind him. After a moment, fingers rested on Harry’s shoulder. He glanced up and gave him a weak smile and then, a little nervously, looked around at his friends. At the desk beside his, Neville was chewing his lip, staring with concentration at his glass box. Hermione and Ron were bent over a parchment so close that their hair touched.

Harry took out his wand and used the curse detection charm Snape had used the night Malfoy and company had attacked. The blue lines zipped around the lid and turned red at the hinges. An obvious place to curse this particular box, really. He glanced again over his shoulder at Snape, who gave him a somewhat soft look, for him anyway.

As Snape moved on, Harry thought about what curse he might use to foul big hinges like these. There were a lot of possibilities. He started through them one at a time, beginning with a Counter for a Sticking Charm.

His seventh attempt—an Oil Charm to counter a possible Ancient Aging Charm—caused a flare of gold fire to blast out the sides. That was not what he had expected to happen and he worried what it meant.

Hermione looked over. “What was that?”

“I don’t know.” Harry ran the curse detection spell again and it remained blue all over now, but he was still very hesitant to try the lid.

“What spell was that you just used?”

“One we are going to do in D.A.,” Harry answered distractedly, hoping she did not ask to see it now, because he was busy thinking. It had taken him a week to work it out. It detected bad intention in the form of a curse. Harry carefully considered what else he should try, since he did not want his robes ignited or his hair to turn green, as had happened with Padma. He avoided looking up at Snape. This was between him and the box only, as far as he was concerned.

As he sat thinking, the hinges flared gold again. On a hunch he repeated the curse detection and found the hinges back to red again. “Huh,” he muttered and tried to think of what that might imply. Moments later, Ron leapt up, crying out in surprise and shaking his hand, which was surrounded by a flickering halo.

Snape stepped over and forced him back into his chair with a sharp admonishment that it was only an illusion. A flick of the teacher’s wand canceled the Octarine Fire.

“I followed the suggestions from the lecture exactly,” Ron complained as he looked his hand over in concern.

“You need to think a little more creatively than that,” Snape sneered as he stalked away. In the front row he paused and observed Malfoy using a cutting spell to simply remove the lid of his box. A smoky haze floated around his desk.

“Got it!” The Slytherin said proudly as he produced the metal ball from inside the box.

“I did mention, did I not, that you would be marked down for damage to the box?” Snape asked.

Malfoy shrugged and tossed the ball into the air and caught it. The cuff of his sleeve was brown and shriveled. “I get extra credit for being first though, right?” he asked.

Harry returned to contemplating his box. Some kind of timing charm or curse was on it, perhaps. He tried a few more simpler curse-detection spells and they were clear. It must be a charm then. Beside him, Hermione was pulling the ball from her box with a broad grin. Figures, Harry thought with a sigh. Ron’s box was soon to follow, he considered, now that he would get full-time help.

As Harry lifted his wand to try one of the timer canceling charms he had seen Mrs. Weasley use for cakes, Hermione’s box let out an ear splitting wail. She stared at it in shock for painful seconds before slamming the lid shut. It promptly popped open again and returned to full volume. Ron stood up and jumped on the lid, and for a moment there was silence. The lid however had other ideas and, despite appearing to be made of dilapidated, pink cloth-covered wood, it tossed him onto the floor when it popped open again.

The students pressed their hands back on their ears. Hermione canceled the noise on the second try and the room fell blessedly silent. Many students sighed in relief. “Drat,” Hermione muttered. “Thought I’d managed full marks, too.”

Harry savored that comment for a while as he tried the timing spells he knew. None of them worked. This wasn’t an assignment where they could do more research so it must be something simpler or more common. He went through in his mind the spells that reinitiated themselves. The only common one he could think of was the filing charm for letters that returned them to their proper envelope. It had a white flare but maybe that was only on parchment or paper.

He did the cancel spell for the filing charm. Nothing appeared to happen. He did the Oil Charm again and this time the lid popped open. Hermione looked over sharply. Harry gave her a victorious look as he Accioed the ball out, just in case the lid had designs on eating his hand.

“Five points for Gryffindor, Mr. Potter,” Snape said from the front of the room.

“That’s not fair!” Malfoy complained.

With narrow eyes and a dark challenging tone, Snape asked the Slytherin, “What, precisely, is not fair about it?”

Frowning, Malfoy declined to respond.

A week later, Harry sat studying before D.A. on one of the fifth floor window seats, far from the usual active areas of the castle. He liked this spot. In the evening the sun shined in through the colored glass. The owlery was nearby and the birds flitted past regularly, keeping him company.

He read through his Transfiguration essay for the third time and sighed. It did not read like one he would have written for Potions or Defense where he really understood what he was writing about. Transfiguration had only grown harder. The assignments seemed to have less and less to do with the book and lecture, leaving him frustrated, especially since Hermione did not ever have this problem. When Harry would ask her a question now to help clarify something, the answer would only generate more questions, since he had fallen too far behind to understand the immediate answer. Rereading the textbook from last year had helped some. Maybe he should order some alternative textbooks, he considered. That had helped with Potions, a lot. Hermione had some catalogues, he would have to remember to ask her for them. At the last possible moment Harry headed down to D.A.

During this session they finished up curse detection from the previous meeting, then the four of them stood off to the side talking about what to do next. Neville whispered, “I really want to do Animagia.” He gave Harry a wince as he did so. Harry figured he worried that because of Sirius, this would be a sore topic. Neville’s glanced nervously at the others. “We’ve been discussing it and…well…”

Hermione also gave Harry a pained smile. “I’d like to try it as well,” she finished for Neville. “What do you think, Harry?”

Harry rubbed his cheek in thought. “It’s worth trying. I’m pretty sure it’s against school rules so we can’t have everyone working on it. Why don’t we split the group as we have been talking about doing, into advanced and intermediate. Only people you trust to not mention it to a teacher get into the advanced group.”

Hermione said slowly, “And you’ll stick with the intermediate?”

“For now,” Harry said, “I’ll do both.” He didn’t have much hope for figuring out a transfiguration that advanced, but he couldn’t bear failing by not trying.

Harry watched Neville collect Luna with a shy smile and take her aside to talk to her. Harry watched them with an ache of jealousy before collecting up the newer members and leading them to the far side of the room.

“Good evening, Severus,” McGonagall said as he stepped into the headmistress’s office. It was late and she had on a long black dressing gown for warmth, apparently not willing to stoke the fire up so close to not needing it.

“You sent for me…” Snape prompted.

She paced across the back wall, along the glass-fronted cabinets. “Yes,” she breathed, clearly considering how to proceed. “I don’t wish to interfere with Harry…” she began and looked over at him. He did not react, and she went on: “but I have noticed he has withdrawn himself from his friends. Three times this week I have seen him studying alone in a disused corridor on the fifth floor. I only note it because he seems unhappy, frankly, which is in great contrast to how he was at the end of summer.”

Snape crossed his arms and stepped slowly over to the celestial model on the corner of the desk. The breeze from his movement made the etched glass globe rock on its spindle. He touched it to make it turn slowly.

McGonagall prompted in the tense stillness, “Have you spoken with him?”

Snape nodded. “Yes.”

“And?” she prompted.

Reluctantly, but with a tone of being unburdened, he said, “I believe the immediate problem is that he is the only one of his friends without a love interest. Secondarily, he sees no hope for one in the immediate future. Thirdly, at no point does he feel he can expect to be understood by anyone.”

“Ah.”

Snape touched the glass sphere to halt its turning. “I had scant advice to offer him,” he stated in frustration. “Not that I ever expected to be asked for such advice…”

She came up to the other side of the desk and leaned on it. “It is a difficult age in most cases, and getting to know members of the opposite sex would be even harder for him.”

“I do not see that,” Snape said doubtfully.

She studied him closely. “Everyone he meets is certainly utterly mistaken about him. I assume he cannot approach anyone without it being too significant for whomever he approaches.” She sighed. “I assume the ball brought this on.”

“That, his friends’ close relationships, and other things,” Snape replied, failing to mention Candide.

She fell silent with her brow furrowed. “So many lovely young ladies in this—”

“Do not mention that fact to him,” Snape said. “His friends have already walked through the list with him and he is adamant about the uselessness of it.”

She shook her head with a sad smile. “All right. You clearly speak with him regularly, and intimately, so I am going to assume you are keeping an eye on him.” She tossed her robes back as she sat down. “There is something else I’ve been meaning to discuss with you.”

Snape straightened his shoulders, clasped his hands behind his back, and gave her an attentive tilt of the head.

“I’ve been trying to convince Pomona to be my deputy headmistress…without luck, I must add. She insists she cannot lose the time from her research projects.” She smiled wryly. “Not to drive home the point that you were not my first choice, because you usually handle things precisely the way I would, but would you consider being my deputy headmaster?”

Snape, not having ever considered this, did so now. When he had thought it over in silence for half a minute, McGonagall added, “You are already doing many of the duties, as you probably realize. But there would more official paperwork for those duties.”

“You do not expect the board to complain?” Snape finally asked.

She tapped her finger on the desk. “I honestly don’t know how much cachet I have with the board. This would be one way of finding out.” She clasped her hands together. “Does this mean you are saying yes?”

Snape’s eyes roved around the office as he stalled. “Would I be in charge of performance evaluations?”

“Why?”

“I wish to discuss marking criteria with Ms. Greer,” he replied, his tone lower.

“Hmm. If it is marking involving Mr. Potter, you will have to leave it to me it in any event.” She sighed lightly. “I wondered about that Potions mark.”

“He is doing better work than that, I am quite certain.”

“I’ll speak with her then.” She fell thoughtful a moment. “And with regard to Mr. Potter’s other difficulties, perhaps there is something we can do…”

At Snape’s curious look, she waved him off with a mischievous smile.

“First session went well, don’t you think?” Hermione said brightly as they studied in the common room after Advanced D.A. Ron nodded energetically. He was actually, honestly, reading the book Hermione had ordered. The original title Animagical had been charmed to read Remedial Potions. Harry had ordered some alternative Transfiguration textbooks at the same time. They might have helped if he could find the time to read them.

Hermione took the ring off her pinky and charmed it to the same time next week. She had issued plain silver rings to the ten students who wanted to work on becoming Animagi. The date and time were engraved on the inside. Harry had helped her with a parchment charm to make the date and time into a nice flourishing script that scrolled around the inside.

Harry suppressed a sigh at the memory of his own frustration at the session and pretended to be too involved in his own book to respond.

“Boy, I really want to know what animal I am. I think that is the most interesting part,” Ron said quietly without lifting his nose from his book.

“You are most likely what your Patronus is, but that isn’t always true,” Hermione lectured.

“McGonagall’s Patronus is a tiger but she’s a house cat as an Animagus,” Harry said.

“When did you see Professor McGonagall’s Patronus?” Hermione asked, then answered her own question quickly. “Oh yeah, the Dementor attack. How could I forget?”

“Snape have one?” Ron asked.

Harry shook his head. It bothered him to consider. The thought that it might not be possible for Snape to think of anything happy enough to generate one was hard to accept. He frowned and really tried to get into his reading to have something else to think about.

Harry kept his books company so much he began to look forward to Easter holiday, even though it was still a month and a half away. The Advanced D.A. group had begun to hang out more together outside of sessions, everyone except Suze. When she had asked Harry why some of the Sixth and Seventh Years were not going to the regular meetings anymore, he had willingly told her. Without knowing her all that well, he found himself trusting her completely. When she had expressed keen interest in joining as well, he had asked Hermione to give her a ring.

They were sitting in the Great Hall when Hermione joined them. “Did you hear?” she asked in a whisper. Obviously, none of them had, so she said, “We are getting eleven Durmstrang students for the rest of the year. Seems they don’t have much of an advanced Potions or Defense Against the Dark Arts classes right now, so some of the students wanting to take those are coming here.”

“When are they arriving?” Ginny asked with avid interest.

“In a week or so.” Hermione looked sideways at Harry, who had the N.E.W.T. preparation study guide in front of his nose. “Did you hear that, Harry?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I heard you,” he replied in disinterest.

Hermione rolled her eyes and huffed in frustration. The conversation soon returned to Animagia.

“You have a lot of scrolls to go through,” Harry observed when he stopped in for a visit at Snape’s office before dinner. They were all bulky, some with faded gold braid hanging off the wooden dowels.

“Policy documents,” Snape explained. He considered Harry a moment. “The school’s board approved my posting as deputy headmaster.”

“You’re the deputy headmaster now?” Harry asked in wary surprise.

“Yes,” Snape confirmed. “Thinking about getting into trouble?”

“Uh, no,” Harry replied quickly. “Better not, I guess.”

“That was always true, but perhaps more so, now,” Snape said, as he returned to reading.

Harry lifted one of the smaller scrolls and unwound a foot of it. It was a detailed description of scheduling procedure. He wondered how he could ask for one that would cover what complex spells were forbidden for students to work on. After rolling that one up neatly, he picked up another. This one was about grounds maintenance. Insomnia would not be a problem with one of these by one’s bedside.

“Looking for something in particular?” Snape asked without raising his gaze.

“No. Just curious,” Harry lied. “I’ll leave you to it.”

When he reached the door, Snape said, “Minerva will most likely announce it at dinner tonight.”

“Thanks for the warning. My friends will be thrilled.”

Snape grinned lightly when he raised his eyes. Harry shook his head and smiled, giving up on his suffering mode.

McGonagall did announce it at dinner and Harry’s friends did all turn to him with surprise. He just shrugged in return and insisted that he could not have given them much warning.

“Boy,” Ron muttered as he served himself roast. “Good thing this didn’t all happen years ago. Imagine how much less trouble we’d have got into. It’d have been awful.”

The others laughed and Harry adjusted the napkin in his lap. He’d not considered the past in that light, all the stress and pain of it, the mistakes he still regretted. With someone actually watching out for him, the last six years certainly would have gone differently.

Harry remained withdrawn through the meal, listening to his housemates carry on a spirited discussion of the relative merits of two Wizard Wireless performers Bretagne Lancelot and Treegrove Simsdaughter. Idly, as he ate his pudding, he wondered that Snape did not have a Wireless set somewhere in the house. Maybe they did have one. A proper wizard household should.

He was mulling over what a Wireless set might look like, thinking over each of several objects in the house which had unclear purpose, so he didn’t notice when the table around him fell quiet.

Ron uttering, “Professor,” a little formally, brought Harry’s attention back and he looked up to find Snape standing behind and to the side of him.

“A bit brooding, aren’t we, Mr. Potter?” Snape asked, although the tone failed to match the words, being too concerned.

Harry pushed his glasses on firmly and gave a slight shrug. He could not shake the what-ifs that were clawing at his mind right then.

“’e’s just sad ’cause ’e can’t cause trouble no more,” Seamus commented with a snicker.

Harry managed to brighten up a bit, although it seemed to hit his pride to do so. He sensed that Snape saw through it, and that made him feel unexpectedly better.

“All right,” Hermione said loudly to get everyone’s attention during Advanced D.A. “This is the spell. The incantation is Canarevelatio but you MUST have your animal in mind when you do it. If you can’t visualize anything, you aren’t supposed to be trying it. Foot is safer than hand, because if you have a wing or something, changing it over might cut off your limb, and that will take some explaining to Madam Pomfrey.”

Everyone shuffled nervously, but most took out their wand and some sat on the floor to remove a shoe. Harry sat off to the side watching, hoping no one got hurt. Ginny had her shoe off already and was concentrating hard.

“I’ll go first,” Hermione said, seeing this. She sat on a chair and closed her eyes for a long minute. She opened them and tapped her foot while speaking the spell. Nothing happened. “Hm,” she said. She tried again with no result. After many attempts, she gave up with a huff. Harry felt a little amused at her expense. Neville tried next, also with no luck. Ginny, finally running out of patience, shouted the spell and whacked her arch hard with her wand. At first Harry thought she had also failed, but Ginny squealed in surprise.

Everyone gathered around her. Ron said, “I don’t see anything.”

“It was there,” Ginny insisted. “Feathers. Brown ones with little white stripes. Right about here.” Due to the close crowding of students, Harry could not see where she indicated.

“Try it again,” Ron urged excitedly.

Around the twentieth try, Ginny could reliably change her foot into a bird foot. It stuck grotesquely off her leg and it faded quickly, morphing back to her own after a few seconds.

Neville said, “I have a bird book. We can look it up later.” He was looking over Dean’s shoulder at his sketch of what Ginny’s foot had looked like.

“I’m next,” Ron said brightly. Like the others, he couldn’t produce anything.

Several more students tried with no success. Suze went last. “What is your Patronus?” Hermione asked her.

“I can’t do one,” she replied. “I haven’t learned that yet. But I’ve been listening and I want to try.”

“Go ahead, then,” Hermione said. Harry could hear in her voice that his friend assumed nothing would come of it. She had been even-handed with Suze but Harry suspected she had only agreed to let her in because Harry had asked. She had not been in the regular D.A. long enough, really.

Suze sat on the floor and bent her bluishly pale foot toward herself with a dancer’s ease. She sat quietly for a long time before incanting the spell. Even from where Harry was, he could see her foot transform into a little white paw. The room broke out into awed noises.

“What is it?” Ron asked, leaning over to peer at it more closely. It stayed transformed a lot longer than Ginny’s bird foot.

“A white mink,” she replied factually. “That was always my favorite.” It finally faded.

“Wow,” Hermione said. “Well you guys are going to have to help the rest of us out. But I think we are done for the night. I have an essay to finish.”

General grumbling went around at the thought of uncompleted schoolwork. Hermione turned to Harry, still sitting off to the side.

“What about—?” Ron started to say before he cut himself off.

Hermione came over to Harry and sat close beside him. “Don’t even want to try?” she asked in a pained voice.

“I’m really rotten at this stuff,” he said.

“Harry,” she said admonishingly. “Listen to you. You’re good at nearly everything. Don’t get down on yourself.”

“I’m getting an ‘A’ in Transfiguration. That’s all I’m going to get on the N.E.W.T., if I’m lucky. I’m not going to get into the Auror’s program.” The thought of that made his chest tighten up. He forced himself to breathe deeply.

“They can’t keep you out of the Auror’s program, Harry,” Ron said.

Harry stood suddenly and said stridently to his face, “If I don’t deserve to be in it, then I shouldn’t be.” He stalked off, leaving his friends frowning at each other.

The next day at dinner, Hermione said to Harry, “Why don’t you ask McGonagall for help?”

“Like she has time,” Harry said smartly.

“She’d make time for you,” Hermione said in her talking to an idiot voice. “She now has an assistant, remember? Go ask her after dinner. Do you want me to ask her for you? I don’t mind,” she offered, sounding ready to jump up just then.

“Don’t do that. If it comes to that, I’ll ask.” Harry put his napkin in his lap. The food had not appeared yet, which was a little slow. He wished for it as a distraction.

The doors to the Great Hall opened and a tall young lady wearing Durmstrang student robes and very long black hair stepped in a little uncertainly. She was followed by an Indian girl in the same outfit who had her long hair in a thick braid wrapped around her head. McGonagall was heading down the center of the Hall with her confident stride.

“Welcome,” she said with broadly spread arms. Three more girls stepped in as the first held the door open.

“What? Are they all girls then?” Ron asked.

Harry didn’t see it but when he turned, Ron was rubbing his arm as if he had been struck hard on it, presumably by Hermione. McGonagall waved her wand to open both doors, revealing six more students.

“There are boys,” Hermione said smartly of the three, stern looking, olive-complected young men standing at the back, two with crossed arms, one with eyebrows like Krum.

If Harry had looked at his friend, he would have seen her keenly eyeing him to see where his interest seemed to fall. The boldest girl, the one who had first appeared, had caught his eye. He watched her as they stepped up the Hall, glancing at the ceiling and the assembled students with equal interest.

“Please come in,” McGonagall said in a kind voice. She led them to the ends of the tables where the students were far less crowded due to the proximity of the staff table. “Have a seat at any table. I’m sure you’re hungry from your journey.”

She addressed the whole room. “Everyone, these are visiting students from Durmstrang Institute. They are here to take advanced classes for the rest of the year here at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I expect you all to welcome them and make them feel at home as they settle in.” Her eyes took in the room as though trying to pick out all the troublemakers. She turned and stepped around to the staff table, whose occupants looked as though they were trying to eye the new students without actually appearing to do so.

Food finally arrived after McGonagall returned to her seat. Ron whispered to Hermione and she shushed him sharply. He rolled his eyes in disgust and served himself from the bowl of potatoes that had appeared. Conversation in the Hall didn’t return to its previous volume as everyone talked of the new arrivals in muted voices.

At one point the three newcomers sitting with the Gryffindors stood up to peer down the table in their direction.

Hermione said to Harry, “You could wave.”

“What?” Harry asked, looking up from his study guide, which he was now intent on simply memorizing cover to cover.

She laughed. “Too late.” Ron had a smirk on his face. Harry shook his head at both of them.

Immediately after dinner, Hermione left the table, then returned as they were all standing up. At the doors they glanced back at the newcomers gathered in the front being introduced to the staff.

Back in the tower they gathered their books for studying. Hermione came back down from her dormitory and said, “Three new trunks are in our room and more beds have been added.”

“That’s right,” Ron said jealously. “It must have been awfully spacious in there with only three of you with a whole floor.”

Hermione just shrugged. “Now it’s normal, I think. But it does seem crowded,” she admitted.

The portrait hole opened and Professor Sinistra stepped in followed by three of the new students. Everyone in the common room stopped what they were doing and watched them enter. The two longhaired girls were there and a shorter one with a flat topped head of dusty brown hair. She stood like a Quidditch beater might, with a lot of physical confidence.

“Students, we have a few additions for the rest of the year. They will be living with the girls in the seventh-year dormitory.” Sinistra gestured over her head for Hermione to step forward. Harry stepped up a riser to get a better view over Ron’s shoulder. “Girls, this is Hermione Granger. She is Head Girl and is also in your dormitory. Please come to her with any questions you may have.”

Hermione gave them a smile which was only returned weakly.

“This is Penelope Tideweather,” she said, introducing the tall girl who had led the way into the Great Hall. “Darsha Seth,” she said, indicating the Indian girl, who did smile at the room. “And Frina Chuchinick.” Frina nodded at the room, her light colored eyes taking everyone in with vague suspicion. “Hermione will show you up to your room. Your trunks are there already.”

Harry stepped aside as the group approached. Frina spotted Ron’s Prefect badge and shook his hand in what seemed an official way.

“Ron Weasley,” he said, in an oddly deep voice.

Harry had a feeling he was imitating Percy and had to turn away to hide his laugh. Ginny and several other girls followed the newcomers up as well.

Ron said with some glee, “Well that will put a damper on studying tonight.” He turned to Harry and shook his head. “I can’t believe…”

“What?” Harry asked when Ron had trailed off.

“Uh, that Durmstrang can’t teach a decent Defense class,” he finished hurriedly. “Hope they like Snape. Seems like their type. No offense intended,” he added, touching Harry on the shoulder.

“None taken. I would agree, really. Sort of a stoic bunch.”

Ron picked up his book bag from the floor by the stairs. “I’m sure they’ll loosen up once they’ve been here a while,” he said with an unexpected comic certainty. They took seats near the hearth and took out their books.

As predicted, the girls were a long time returning. Hermione and Ginny, when they finally reappeared, came over and sat with them. “They were tired from the long train ride, so they’re going to sleep,” Hermione said. “They seem nice enough. A little standoffish, maybe, but I’m sure they’ll open up once they get to know people,” she said reassuringly, oddly echoing Ron.

The next morning at breakfast, Ron and Harry grew tired of waiting for Hermione to appear and went down without her. Ginny was also apparently helping the new arrivals make their way around this morning because she did not appear either.

“Girls,” Ron breathed in dismay as they exited the portrait hole. “How good do they have to look for breakfast anyway?”

This was the first time in a long time that Harry had been alone with Ron. As they walked down the corridor to the staircases, he swallowed hard and said, “So things are going well with you and Hermione?”

Ron tilted his head from side to side. “Yep,” he answered noncommittally.

Harry frowned. He was really darn curious just how close they were but he had no idea how to ask. He would need an entire evening with Ron to even get near the topic. And maybe a jug of mead as well. With a quiet sigh he let it go for now.

In the Great Hall they took up their normal seats near the center of the table. Neville was already there. He gave them a smile as they sat down.

“Where are the others?” Neville asked.

“Who knows?” Ron asked in disgust. “They’re girls. It could be HOURS.”

Neville laughed. “Luna’s not like that.”

“Consider yourself lucky,” Ron said as he took an apple out of the basket on the table and bit into it with a loud crunch.

As it turned out, it was just another five minutes. Hermione led the way to the bench across from the three of them and invited the new students to sit. They thanked Hermione politely and sat almost in unison, although it was clear they were not accustomed to stepping over the bench. Penelope had to lift her hair to the side to avoid sitting on it. They took up their serviettes and primly arranged them.

Frina, sitting across from Harry, looked over at him and froze. Harry had to fight a frown as their eyes locked. She nudged Penelope beside her, to no avail, since her friend was discussing the ceiling with Hermione in great detail.

“Hello,” Harry said evenly.

“Hello,” Frina returned in an accent he didn’t recognize. She seemed to recover herself and tossed her head as though she realized she’d been silly. “Very pleased to meet you,” she said as though quoting a phrase book.

“Where are you from?” Harry asked.

“Split. That is in Croatia.”

“Ah,” Harry said, happy to have a geographic reference for the accent.

With a small smile, she nudged her companion, again to no avail.

“Where is your friend from?” Harry asked.

“Switzerland. The German part.” She gave Harry a wink.

“Just asking,” Harry returned defensively as food appeared before them.

“So much easier than the serving line at Durmstrang,” Frina said. “The Prefects get to get in line first, behind the teachers. It is ridiculous,” she complained. She picked up her fork and began eating with the same relish Ron did, slowing down only when her plate was empty and she had to pause to serve herself seconds. When she glanced up at Harry, she seemed surprised all over again to be across from him.

The conversation about the enchanted ceiling, its spells and history, finally wound down.

Frina yet again nudged Penelope and asked, “Did you meet my new friend?”

Penelope dabbed her mouth and looked across where Frina indicated.

With a quirky smile Frina said, “This is Harry Potter. I am pretty sure anyway. I am told he has this scar.”

Harry frowned lightly at that and Penelope’s shocked expression. She definitely fell into the he could get dangerous at any moment category.

“Hello,” Harry said.

“Hullo,” she returned hesitantly as she stared at him. After a moment she too seemed to realize she was behaving oddly and pushed her shoulders back. “You are, uh, normal looking,” she said in a light German accent.

“Thanks,” Harry said with a little sarcasm. Beside him, Ron ducked his head.

“I haven’t heard that one,” he said with amusement. “And it probably isn’t true.”

Harry addressed his plate a bit more than the students around him.

“I am not intending to be rude,” Penelope said evenly, sounding concerned.

“I’m sorry,” Hermione said, “I should have done introductions. These are my friends. Ginny Weasley. Across from her is Dean Thomas. This is Harry Potter.” She ignored the gasp from Darsha on her left. “Ron Weasley, my boyfriend. Neville Longbottom. Over here are Dennis and Colin Creevey.” The Creevey brothers gave cheerful waves.

“You are friends with the Destroyer of Voldemort?” Darsha quietly asked Hermione in her heavily accented English. It carried well down the table.

“Someone has to be,” Ron quipped.

“Ron,” Hermione said in such a dangerous voice that Neville instinctively shifted away from his friend in case something bad were about to befall him.

Harry had to resist shooting the new Indian student a dangerous look just to see how she would react. He sighed faintly and pushed his scramble around with his fork, not the least bit hungry anymore. He pushed the plate away and it disappeared. His pumpkin juice sat untouched. He drank it, acutely aware that he was the center of immediate attention.

“I’ll see you in class,” he said as he stood up to leave. “Nice meeting you all,” he said flatly.

At the head table McGonagall watched Harry depart with abnormally slumped shoulders. “Ten points from Gryffindor,” she murmured.

Snape, in the seat on her right, turned to her in surprise. She stared at her nails in thought as breakfast wound down.

Two rows of new desks had been added to the Defense classroom. By the time everyone arrived, it was rather crowded. Harry and his friends took the back right section of seats. Especially with the new students, Harry decided he liked being back here and able to watch them all without effort. Penelope and Frina mouthed hellos as they sat down. Hermione responded in an overly friendly way. Harry gave them a weak smile. Ron frowned in apparent annoyance, which Harry wondered about.

Snape stepped up to the platform and said, “We may need to find a different classroom. We’ll see how it goes today.”

Snape lectured at length about advanced blocking and counter-cursing, much of which they had already covered. Hermione took almost no notes, even. Dean, beside Harry, seemed intent upon this review session as did some of the others.

“A demonstration then,” Snape said, looking over the room. “Who is the strongest among you in this?” he asked the Durmstrang students.

The new students all turned to the tallest boy, who stood up slowly. He had a mop of curly dark hair and a roman nose below his prominent forehead. As he stepped up to the platform, he moved with easy confidence.

“You can do all of the spells I just reviewed, Mr. Opus?” Snape asked him.

“Yes,” the young man responded in his rolling deep voice.

“Mr. Longbottom,” Snape said. “Come up here.”

Neville recovered from his surprise and came up. “Me, sir?” he asked.

“Yes, Longbottom.” Snape directed him to stand at the other end, ignoring when he almost tripped over his own feet getting into position. “A Figuresempre, an Expellimarius, and a Mutushorum, in that order.” He stepped back to get out of the way.

Neville ran through the attacks. Each was blocked easily. “This is the best you have?” Opus asked Snape.

“May I run through them again, sir?” Neville asked, seeming to try not to sound too eager.

“No. You may return to your seat.”

Neville actually looked like he considered arguing before he gave in. “I was trying to be polite,” he complained as he sat down in the seat ahead of Harry’s.

“You know those attacks, correct?” Snape asked Opus. He looked over the class. “Who wishes to block for Mr. Opus?”

Hermione stood up immediately and stepped to the front. Harry sat forward and watched with some nervousness until he noticed Ron didn’t look concerned at all.

As Hermione stood across from Opus, wand out, the new student said, “I cannot send curses at a lady. We are never required to do this.”

“Good chance to get used to it then,” Snape stated with false helpfulness. He gestured for him to begin.

Opus lowered his wand hand to his side. “I will not do this.”

“What are you concerned about?” Snape asked with impatience. “I am quite certain Durmstrang does not tolerate arguing with the instructor.”

Opus cringed and gestured in Hermione’s direction. “That she will get injured. She is so small—imagine if her block fails.” Hermione put her hands on her hips and glared back at him.

“Mr. Opus,” Snape stated, “the two students you have faced, Ms. Granger and Mr. Longbottom, provided blocking for all nineteen students who attacked the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters in the Entrance Hall of this castle. You truly need not worry about her block failing.”

The Durmstrang students, especially the three living in Gryffindor, gaped at Hermione. Opus relented with a concerned ripple to his brow. He incanted a very weak Figuresempre which Hermione blocked, barely needing to move her wand.

Snape stepped in a little angrily. To the two other Durmstrang boys, he said, “Either of you willing give Ms. Granger a chance to demonstrate her blocks?” When they merely looked at each other and shrunk down in their seats, Snape huffed. “Mr. Potter, come up here.”

Harry got to his feet. The Durmstrang students were whispering avidly amongst themselves as he stepped onto the platform. He followed Snape’s gesture for him to take Opus’ place and the tall boy stepped over to the wall and leaned against it, holding his wrist in his hand.

“Yes,” Snape intoned while eyeing the visitors. “The Harry Potter.” He stepped back again. “What is your strongest attacking spell?”

“Uh, blasting curse, I guess.”

“That then. Full power, Mr. Potter.”

At the other end Hermione took a deep breath and concentrated. Harry spelled her with about ninety percent of what he could do. It struck her Chrysanthemum block and scattered around the room, shaking the window panes and desks, even upsetting a stack of books on Snape’s front table. She was forced to take a step back as it hit, and she grumbled to herself about that.

“You are light, Ms. Granger,” Snape commented. “Even a good block will move the caster when it is hit hard. Now, Mr. Opus.”

Harry retook his seat, disregarding the stunned expressions of the new students as he walked between their desks. Opus gave it a good show this time, although Hermione looked displeased. She returned to her seat looking dangerous.

A few more pairs went through the spells. The quality of the Durmstrang blocks dropped off after the first five demonstrators. Snape had asked for them to come up in order of skill. Frina was second followed by Penelope and two others. They were each paired at random with a Hogwarts student.

One of the Durmstrang girls Harry didn’t know, raised her hand before the next pair was chosen. When Snape acknowledged her, she asked, “Are these all purebloods in this class? Because we are not…”

Snape rubbed his forehead and glanced at them all under his hand. They remained silent, waiting to see what Snape would say.

“Ms. Travoli, such notions are not acceptable here. Although you may well hear them expressed on very rare occasion by one or two students.” He glared at Malfoy sharply as he said this.

He stepped down to the floor of the classroom and stopped before her desk. “What you are seeing isn’t breeding or even nurture. It is the end result of two years desperation against overwhelming odds. Eighty percent of what these students know, or most of them anyway, they taught themselves. I am not trying to demonstrate either school’s superiority here, I simply need to know where you are to revise the syllabus for this course.”

He returned to the platform. “I have every intention of bringing every one of you to the same level at the end of this year. It is going to require a great deal of work on your part, but I see no reason why it is not possible.”

The Durmstrang students appeared relieved at that. The next student came up and was paired with Parkinson.

“Ms. Granger,” A familiar voice said as Hermione and Ron came down the staircases for lunch. They turned to McGonagall, who stood down a side hallway. “A moment.”

Hermione received a sympathetic look from Ron before she stepped over to the headmistress. McGonagall steered her down to Snape’s office. As they entered, Snape shelved the book he had been holding and crossed his arms.

“What happened this morning?” McGonagall demanded. Hermione, faced with incriminating Ron, who had only made things more difficult, shrugged. “Ms. Granger,” McGonagall prompted dangerously.

Hermione frowned as she replied, “There were two, oh-Merlin-I-can’t-believe-it’s-him and one he-might-kill-anyone-at-any-moment. Should have warned them, I guess.”

Snape’s eyes narrowed in thought. McGonagall huffed. “These are some of Durmstrang’s best students. They aren’t lily-white by any measure.”

“We didn’t handle it well either,” Hermione admitted, spreading the blame around.

“Then you deserved to lose the points you did,” McGonagall breathed as an aside.

Hermione’s jaw dropped open. She closed it without comment. McGonagall seemed too upset to risk arguing with.

“You will do better?” McGonagall asked with a threatening certainty.

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied smartly. “And you are going to start tutoring him in Transfiguration then, right?” Hermione added, leaning forward in anger. Surprised at herself, she backed down immediately. “Sorry Professor, that was out of line.” She glanced at Professor Snape and found him looking at her with positive regard.

“He hasn’t asked,” the headmistress pointed out.

“You’re going to have to make him do it,” Hermione said. “You know him. He thinks you’re too busy to bother, so he won’t ask.”

McGonagall drew herself up straight. “All right,” she said. “I’ll do that. And you will take care of the social direction?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hermione replied with confidence. “I think Harry won sympathy points, frankly, so it’s probably all right from this morning.” She glanced at Snape who had a neutral, thoughtful expression. He had not said a word, she realized, as she departed.

After the last class of the afternoon, they gathered in the Great Hall with the new Gryffindor boarders. The three young Durmstrang ladies settled in quickly and intently to their assignments. Harry found himself across from Penelope. She gave him the occasional considering look, which he ignored as he worked out his Astronomy assignment.

As students arrived for dinner, McGonagall strode in. She tapped Harry on the shoulder and gestured for him to follow her. He obeyed, stepping over the bench and down the aisle. When they were out of earshot, the headmistress said. “You have no D.A. tonight, correct?”

“Uh, correct,” Harry replied. They had no official D.A., just Advanced, which he could not admit to.

“Bring your Transfiguration books to my office at eight,” she said. “Ah, Pomona,” she then said to the teacher walking past, turning away from Harry. He blinked at her in confusion as she stepped around the head table, intent upon another conversation.

Harry sighed and returned to his friends.

“What was that about?” Ron asked. When Harry moved his silver ring to his other hand, the signal that he could not make the meeting, Ron said, “Oh.”

They put their books and parchments away as dinner arrived.

That evening, Harry gained admittance to the headmistress’ office. His book bag weighted down his shoulder, full of his assigned and self-purchased alternative texts. It thuded when he set it on the floor beside the visitor’s chair. As he sat down, McGonagall waved the straight-backed old thing into an overstuffed armchair. Harry settled in comfortably and sighed.

“Are you sure you have time for this, Professor?” he asked in concern.

“Tea?” she asked, rather than reply. At his nod, she tapped the teapot and it poured out two cups. As she handed one over, she said, “One of your most endearing qualities, Harry, is that you have never asked for, nor expected anything in return for eliminating Voldemort.” She smiled affectionately at him. “I will never forget the day after, when you insisted that you couldn’t read your post because you had assignments to finish.”

Harry sipped his tea and wondered what she had expected. His furrowed brow must have given him away.

“As opposed to,” she explained, even more amused, “insisting on, say, a week off from your studies. Or even a year, frankly.”

It was true that he had not thought of that. Too late to ask for a pass on his N.E.W.T.s probably too, he thought. He shrugged instead of responding.

She took her chair and with bright eyes shook her head lightly. “You saved so many students’ lives, Harry. And many of ours, as well. Most of us would have traded anything for that, and yet you never asked.” She put her teacup down and refilled it. “I am glad Albus insisted on giving you something anyway, although how he ever managed to arrange it is beyond me.”

Harry sort of considered that to be between him and Snape, so he didn’t respond.

She sipped her fresh cup with pleasure. “I promised you that I would see you through your N.E.W.T.s so that you could gain admittance to the Auror’s program, and I intend to follow through with that. Now, where shall we begin? What was the last assignment you had difficulty with?”

“Protasmic Elastic Transformations,” Harry stated slowly, as though the words themselves were hazardous.

“It was just a special form of Elastic, which we covered in fifth year,” she offered in a helpful tone. His face must have given him away, because her tone dropped as she said, “You didn’t understand it then, either.”

Reluctantly, Harry shook his head. “And it didn’t make more sense the second time around, last week.”

In a commiserating tone she said, “That can happen at this level of coursework. You fall a little behind and it escalates until everything is simply too remote to grasp any longer.”

Harry nodded and dropped his gaze. “And I feel daft when I don’t even know what to ask to get another explanation. I’m afraid I’m just going to waste your time here.”

“Oh, my dear Harry,” she said with pained affection. “Goodness, imagine my class of all things making you feel less than worthy.” She stood up with a rustle of her robes and came around the desk. She stood before him and said, “In the forty years I have been at this school, you are the student who has amazed me the most. You have already passed the most important test of your life—the rest of this is just so many small details. And I will get you through them.”

Exhausted and with a History of Magic essay unfinished, Harry made his way back to the common room. Hermione, Ginny, Dean, and Ron where studying in the corner. The new students were not around.

“That took a while,” Ron said upon seeing him.

“Tell me about it,” Harry breathed as he plunked down in a nearby seat. He rubbed his eyes as he pulled out his half-filled essay parchment. It felt like torture to have to complete it, but he had no choice. “How did Ani go tonight?”

“No one made much progress,” Hermione whispered. “We read one of the Animagical chapters aloud and discussed it, mostly. What do you think of the visiting students?”

“They’re all right,” Harry answered as he reread the first part of his essay titled History of Laws Applying to Trolls and Giants. He remembered Binns discussing something about them being only allowed to carry weapons that were all wood with no charms. He had not mentioned that yet.

“Just all right?” Hermione asked brightly.

Harry shrugged and pulled out his notes.

“Penelope is very pretty,” Hermione went on.

Ginny asked, “Does she use something on her face at night? She has the nicest skin.”

“I haven’t noticed. You could ask her, I’m sure,” Hermione said chummily.

Harry was writing fast now, desperate to finish. Hermione went back to her studies as well.

During Care of Magical Creatures the next day, Hagrid pulled out the Blue Wombats. They had mated, apparently because there were nearly a dozen small blue creatures which even Harry had to admit were very cute as they slept in their wooden crates. The girls were ohing excessively as they gathered around, their winter cloaks brushing together noisily.

“Yer going ter be assigned one teh take care o’ until the end of term. So find a partner,” Hagrid instructed. “Nah, tha’ won’ do,” he said as they chose their normal partners. “Split up a bit and take one o’ the Durmstrang students, each a yers.”

Hermione bit her lip and hauled Ron over to where the six Durmstrang students in this class were gathered. “Ron, why don’t you partner with Opus?” she suggested brightly.

Ron opened his mouth to protest but was cut off by Hermione saying. “Frina, do you want to be my partner?”

“Everyone says you are the smartest in the school…” Frina said, sounding eager.

“Great,” Hermione said.

Harry wandered over at that moment.

“Do you haf a partner?” Penelope asked him, making Hermione bite her bottom lip very hard.

Harry shrugged and said, “No.”

“Vould you mind?”

Hagrid came by with small crates lined with shredded Prophets and Witch Weeklies.

“That’d be fine,” Harry replied levelly.

Hagrid handed him a crate, and with one of his massive hands, lifted out a small blue ball of fur. Harry accepted it and placed it in the bedding. It curled up tighter and ignored them all.

“What magical properties do these things have?” Harry asked as another was scooped out for Hermione. He watched with trepidation as Malfoy took one out of the big crate and handed it to Parkinson.

“Oh, ye’ll find ou’ soon enough,” their teacher said happily.

Harry froze.

Hermione giggled and leaned over to say, “They aren’t dangerous, Harry.”

“That’s no fun,” Frina complained, as she prodded theirs gently with her index finger. Her hair turned blue and everyone gasped. A few laughed. “What?” she asked curiously.

Harry heard Parkinson’s annoying laugh and looked over at Malfoy whose blond mop had gone to the sapphire. Frina turned as well and her hand immediately went to her own head.

“Aye,” she breathed.

Penelope doubled over in laughter, her delicate fingers half over her mouth. She had a much nicer laugh than Pansy.

After dinner, they trooped up to the attic to check on their wombats. Each pair’s crate sat on the floor along one eave, charmed to prevent anyone else from opening it or even disturbing it. Harry stood aside and let Penelope open the crate. The small blue fur ball was absolutely still. She peered at it with a tilted head.

“You don’t think it likes to be touched?” Penelope asked.

“Hermione?” Harry deferred.

“I don’t know. The books referring to magical wombats have all been removed from the library.” She sounded insulted. “I tried to look up more information but no luck. I think this assignment is about the process of figuring it out for ourselves.”

She and Frina stared down at theirs as well.

“Do you think it’s hungry?” Ron asked.

Ron’s and Opus’ crate sat two down from Hermione’s. Ron stepped over to the supplies area where fresh bedding, dog’s milk, dried blue corn, and a large mortar and pestle sat on an old heavy table. Hermione joined him and the two of them mixed up a bottle with two tablespoons of ground corn as they had been instructed. Ron shook it as he took it back over to the crate and tried to get the wombat to accept it.

Opus crouched across from him. “You not ever live on farm?”

“No,” Ron replied, sounding as Malfoy might if asked the same question.

Opus took the bottle and with practiced motions, used his finger to get the wombat interested in it. It sucked eagerly at it after that. His hair didn’t even change color.

“Wow,” Penelope said. “It did not look hungry.”

Ron looked proudly at his impromptu partner and gave Hermione a grin. The rest of them, with some instruction from Opus, gave all three of theirs bottles. After long minutes when they stopped drinking, they wouldn’t give them up again.

Harry shrugged and said, “Just leave it inside, I guess,” as he picked up the lid and set it in place. He added an additional locking spell to their crate, just in case.

That night, Harry awoke with a start. He couldn’t remember a dream or a shadow, so he was not sure why he was awake. He had been sleeping pretty well lately, so he was a little annoyed to be wide awake at three in the morning. As he lay on his back, staring into the darkness, he started worrying about their wombat. Maybe they should not have left the bottle in the crate all this time, he thought. Although, what was the worst that could happen?

With a huff he rolled over and punched his pillow to fluff it, but he was now even more awake. Silently, he slid out of bed and down to his trunk. It had been a long time since he had taken out the Marauder’s Map to actually use it for its intended purpose. With his invisibility cloak and the Map, he crept out of the room.

The walk to the attic proved rather pleasant. The castle was dark and silent and he felt old comfort in its corridors and halls.

Once in the attic, he turned up the oil lamp dangling from the ceiling. The crates in this light resembled coffins, which disturbed him. He stepped down to his, released the spells and lifted the lid before promptly dropping it and jumping back in horrified surprise. Instead of a cute, fuzzy, blue, bear-like thing, there was an oddly monkey-like, blue, winged bat.

As Harry crouched beside the crate, catching his breath, it moved its dark skin-covered wing to shade its fox-like head from the light. Harry’s panic eased and he leaned over the crate to take a better look. The bottle was still there, about half-full. He really needed to take it out; it almost certainly had gone sour. Because the chimneys ran up through the room, the attic was warm all the time, which would certainly have spoiled the milk. Bracing himself and wincing, he reached in with two fingers and plucked the bottle out without disturbing the occupant of the crate. He exhaled in relief and sat back to think. He and his partner now knew something none of the other groups knew, but what did it mean?

Harry decided that he needed to know what kind of bat it was. With the cloak and Map he nipped down to the library and brought back a book on flying mammals. Other than being blue, it looked an awful lot like a Livingstones fruit bat, which according to the entry could have a wingspan of six feet. Harry tried hard to imagine that and failed. This one was a lot smaller, but then it also was young.

Harry headed down the kitchens on a hunch and had Dobby put together a basket of fruit, including lots of blueberries, which he took back to the attic. He had left the crate open and had a bad moment before he found his bat hanging from the rafter above its crate. It blinked at him, turning its head this way and that to look him over. Harry dimmed the lamp and offered it different fruit, one kind at a time. It expressed some interest in the blueberries, but mostly it just dropped them on the floor. The orange it took up eagerly when Harry handed it a slice. Using the hooks on the bend in its wings as hands it quickly chewed down the wedge, sucking at the juice before dropping the remains. Harry gave it another.

The creature ate three-quarters of an entire orange before refusing the next slice. Harry tossed the peel and masticated wedges back in the basket along with every last stray blueberry. Lastly, he needed to put the wombat-bat back away. He looked at the crate in thought before emptying the bedding and putting just a little in one end. It took a little awkward coaxing but eventually he got the bat to hang on the inside of the crate, which he placed on the floor on its end before attaching the lid. He put on extra protective spells and took the basket away.

Yawning, Harry went down to breakfast. He intentionally sat across from Penelope, who gave him a casual good morning.

“We should check our wombats before class, so eat fast,” Harry said and then winked at Penelope.

She blinked at him in surprise before returning to her plate with a befuddled air.

In the attic Harry moved in first to reset the crate before anyone saw it, then stalled a bit to let the others get involved in their wombats, changing bedding and bottles. Penelope gave him a concerned look as Harry held the lid just cracked and waited until no one was watching. He put his finger to his lips as he opened it.

Inside wasn’t what he was expecting either. Penelope almost gasped, but clamped it off. Inside was a much larger wombat, one with orange tiger stripes. Harry nodded to the corner where spare crates were kept. Penelope went over and picked out a larger one, filled it with bedding and brought it back. Using his body to block the view, Harry moved the sleeping form from one to the other before covering the new one. In rapid, covert silence, they put together a bottle and gave it to the creature before re-closing the lid.

“I have to recheck my essay before class,” Harry announced.

Hermione made a noise of acknowledgment as she and Frina tried to get their wombat to take a bottle. Theirs and Ron’s were exactly the same as they’d been the day before. With a wag of his eyebrows at Penelope, Harry left. After a moment, Penelope followed, saying a quick goodbye to her friends.

“What did you do?” she asked when they were on the stairs.

“It was kind of an accident. Not a bad one,” he said quickly. “Last night I couldn’t sleep so I came up to check on it and…” he waited for a cluster of third-years to pass, several of whom said hello to Harry. “…you wouldn’t believe what I found.” He patted his chest at the memory of his racing heart.

“Vat?” she whispered eagerly, accent thickening.

They were at the portrait hole and waited as students came out of it.

“I have to get my books for class,” Harry said as they stepped through.

The common room had a few mingling students in it.

“Come up to the boy’s dormitory,” he said, thinking they could talk freely since it would be empty.

She appeared shocked.

“Or…not,” Harry retracted, a little amused. “Boy’s can’t go up the girl’s staircase, but the reverse doesn’t apply. A bit suspicious, I think. We can talk after classes then. We’ll find someplace,” he said dismissively and started up.

“Zis is really okay?” she asked uncertainly from the base of the stairs.

“Hermione has to come up all the time to get Ron moving some mornings.”

With a glance at the other students in the room, who weren’t paying any attention, she followed. Harry then hoped the room wasn’t a total sty. He opened the first door and stepped in. It wasn’t as bad as it could be.

She looked all around curiously, especially at Dean’s football posters. “Dis is a Muggle poster.”

“Dean is Muggle-born,” Harry explained offhandedly as he tossed a pair of Neville’s socks onto his closed trunk lid.

“Both of his parents?” she asked in surprise.

“Far as I know. Hermione’s the same.”

That surprised her even more. She stepped around the ends of the beds. “And this one is yours?” she asked. Her eyes moved avidly over the stuff on the night stand, the poster on the wall. “Do you play Quidditch?”

“Seeker.”

She looked at him doubtfully. “You are too tall.”

“I didn’t used to be. No one told me to change positions for this year.”

“No, I don’t suppose dey would,” she said. Beside he and Ron’s shared window, Ron had pinned up a few Daily Prophet articles regarding the final battle. She leaned over to look at the photo of him in the Entrance Hall. “It is the same picture as your chocolate frog card.”

Harry could barely stand to look at that picture now. “Blue wombats,” he said to draw her away. When she turned with a curious look, he said, “What I found last night at three in the morning was a real bat in our crate. What looked like a Livingstones fruit bat, except blue.”

“Hm,” she said. “Guess you couldn’t come and tell me so I could see.”

He shook his head. “On a hunch I went to the kitchens and brought back fruit for it. It ate most of an orange, hence the stripes, I think. And it’s phenomenal growth, too, I suppose.”

“Wow. We should check again tonight. Three a.m. vee meet in the common room?”

“Sure. We have to get to Potions, as much as I hate saying that.”

He turned to check the contents of his book bag sitting beside the bed. Penelope headed out on her own. When she was gone, he unrolled the Auror’s application that was slowly being crushed in the side pocket. He rolled it back up and stuffed it in the drawer of the bedside stand.

Harry and Penelope met up with the rest of their friends in the Entrance Hall and headed down to the dungeon together.

“Not your favorite?” Penelope asked Harry as she, Hermione, and Frina sat at a bench. Greer wasn’t there yet but they were a little early.

“It never has been,” Hermione said consolingly. “Though I don’t know what Professor Greer has against you, Harry.”

“I think I do,” Harry said, remembering lunch the first day she arrived.

“You guys just didn’t hit it off.” Hermione commented.

“And we won’t ever. She tried to get Severus fired,” Harry said quietly.

“You didn’t tell us that,” Hermione said in a blameful tone.

“You are referring to Professor Snape?” Frina asked in confusion. “You refer to your teachers by first name?” she asked in horror.

Harry shrugged. “The headmistress keeps telling me to call her ‘Minerva’.”

Hermione said, “Harry’s special,” with a broad grin. “And after the years of suffering in Snape’s Potion class, he deserves it.”

“Professor Snape used to teach Potions?” Penelope asked.

“Yep,” Harry replied. “In fact he graded your school’s O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. examinations this past year.”

“Did he?” Hermione asked with keen interest.

Harry nodded in confirmation.

“It is too bad he cannot teach both,” Frina said stoutly. “I like Professor Snape. He treats girls and boys the same.”

Penelope gave her friend a distressed look.

“There’s a reason to like him,” Hermione quipped, garnering a difficult look from Harry.

Greer stomped in at that moment and conversation stopped.

By the end of double Potions, Penelope and Frina were very concerned.

In the corridor on the way out, with Darsha trailing behind, Penelope said, “She is completly unfair to you.”

Harry shrugged it off. “I have too many other things to worry about. And my N.E.W.T. grade is all that matters.”

“I hope she grades us fairly,” Frina said worriedly. “What do you think?” she asked Darsha.

“I liked the lecture,” she replied. “Her pomposity does not matter.” She gave Harry a measuring look when their eyes met. He ignored it.

“Bring her a present or something. Get on her good side,” Harry suggested.

“Good idea,” Hermione confirmed.

“We will do that at lunch,” Frina said. “We have a few things we brought to give as presents, but your headmistress did not expect any so we still have them.”

Late that night, Harry went down to the common room without his cloak or Map. Penelope was waiting before the fire. He stepped over, making her jump.

“Sorry,” Harry said.

She patted her chest and caught her breath. “I didn’t hear you.” She stood up and hooked on her cloak. Harry thought she looked a little sad.

Outside the portrait hole, he asked, “Are you glad you came to Hogwarts?”

“Very. Durmstrang lost many staff last year, so even zee end of last year’s classes were cancelled or not taught well. You were very lucky here. In one way,” she added quickly. “I keep forgetting who I am conversing with,” she said, half to herself. As they rounded the first corner, she said, “You are not at all as one would expect you to be.”

“No?” Harry prompted. He wasn’t sure he wanted to cover this topic, but he was a little curious what she meant.

She thought a moment. “You are not as…grand, I suppose is the word. Quieter zan I would have expected.”

“Keeping low was important for staying alive,” Harry pointed out.

“Very true,” she agreed quietly.

Harry sensed there was something there but didn’t feel he could pry at it.

Up in the attic they opened the crate and found the same striped wombat as before, although it looked a little bigger than this afternoon.

“It is too cute to not pet,” she said, reaching into the box to touch it on the head. Her long black hair turned blue striped with orange. She pulled her hair around and examined it with her other hand. “Hah,” she breathed, but continued to pat the creature on the head.

“If your skin changes, maybe you should stop,” Harry suggested in concern, taking a seat on the floor nearby.

Silence descended for many minutes, until Penelope said in an odd voice that sounded closed in by the low attic, “What was it like, destroying Voldemort?”

Harry tilted his head to the side and did not reply. He noticed the strips in her hair oscillating a bit when she spoke.

“You did kill him, correct? That is not just a story?” she asked stiffly.

“Oh, yes,” Harry said. “I had a little help, of course. My friends kept his followers at bay long enough for me to do it.”

She shook her head. “De news reporters said you were fulfilling zome prophecy. Is that why you were trying? Otherwise you were insane to try. You don’t look like someone who could defeat such a powerful wizard.”

“It was insane,” Harry admitted, feeling the honesty of that relaxing him. “I’m amazed I succeeded when I think back on it. But I couldn’t not try. He was there to kill me.”

She lifted the wombat out and cradled it on her arm. Harry held his breath, afraid something bad might happen. It seemed to be asleep.

“Don’t move much, do they,” Harry observed.

“I think it is a lovely thing. Like a baby bear.” She held her hand out to check it for color. Seeing it normal she petted the wombat more. “Were you taking revenge when you killed him?” she asked.

Harry looked her over. He couldn’t shake the notion that she sounded hopeful. Her hair definitely rippled that time.

“No. I would have died had I been.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t want to explain.”

She looked up. “I’m sorry. I’m too curious. It is easy to talk to you, which is very strange. You are so ordinary.”

Harry grinned at that. He stood up and with a sigh, said, “I’d like to be.”

He went to the supplies table and put together two bottles. He had kept an orange from breakfast in his pocket.

“I want to try something,” Harry said. He squeezed the orange into one of the bottles and brought them both over. She lifted the wombat to put it back in the crate. It clung to her robes with a kind of desperation.

Harry reached over and unhooked its broad claws so she could put it down. It pawed the bedding when she released it.

“It wants zomething to hold on to,” she said, sounding very concerned. She stood up and took off her cloak.

As she wrapped it into a tight bundle, Harry said, “You’re going to use that?”

“I zink it will like de fur collar.” She put a few charms on it to keep it clean and untorn and stuffed it beside the wombat, down into the bedding. The creature grabbed the furry side and pulled itself over to it. “Zeems to like it.” She looked up at him. “Harry?”

Harry had fallen into a trancelike state of memory. “Don’t mind me,” he said quietly, mentally shaking himself. He saw the bottles he had set beside the crate and picked up the orange-tinted one. “I want to see if it still wants some fruit.” The two of them coaxed it to take the bottle and it happily went to it. “I assume it wouldn’t eat it if it shouldn’t,” Harry said. “You think?” he asked her.

She lifted a shoulder. “Probably would just annoy it to zwitch back and forth to test.”

By silent consensus they closed the lid again and left it there.

It was a bitter day for the Slytherin-Ravenclaw match. Harry was glad Gryffindor weren’t playing when the icy wind cut through the gap in his cloak as he and his friends mounted the steps to the stands. They emerged on top into the teeth of a gale that froze their cheeks. Harry bundled his new cloak tightly around himself as he sat between Ron and Penelope.

“For which side are you cheering?” Penelope asked.

“Oh…” Harry said and hesitated.

Ron’s head snapped around at his indecision and he glared at Harry. “Don’t tell me…” he breathed in annoyance.

“I like Suze. I wouldn’t mind if she caught the Snitch,” Harry explained.

Ron grumbled but it sounded vaguely conciliatory.

The Gryffindor stands were backing Ravenclaw, so Harry kept his cheering for the Slytherin Seeker quiet. Roody, the Ravenclaw Seeker was just shy of Harry’s size and he was having a very hard time keeping up. Harry could see him deciding to just play his own game and ignore his feather-light opposite.

The Slytherin Chasers, whom Harry had not had time to watch last game, were truly skilled, and eagerly violent, rarely swerving out of the path of an opponent who tried to cut them off. Sometimes they would just take a Bludger to the body rather than lose an offensive setup. Quickly the score was fifty to ten. The green-clad Beaters then focused on Roody, who could not handle both the violent harassment and his agile opponent. He let himself be forced farther out of the pitch area, where it was not impossible the Snitch was hovering, but it was unlikely.

Forty-five minutes into the match, the crowd rose to its feet as Suze turned and dove for the snitch. Roody was too far away but he turned anyway and sped toward the center of the arena. The Snitch dodged twice, but Suze stayed right with it and snagged it easily out of the air.

The Slytherin stands erupted into cheers. Harry grinned. Ron gave him a disgusted look as the crowd drew in its breath and shouts of warning went up. Harry turned in time to see Roody careen into Suze, unable to slow in time from his mad dive. Harry stiffened at the smacking collision of bodies and brooms. Without forethought he dashed for the stairs and took them three at a time. Other spectators were also pouring onto the pitch.

When Harry arrived where the teams were landing, Suze was trying to stand up and her teammates were urging her to stay down. Roody was rubbing his elbow with a pained frown.

Harry grabbed the front of Roody’s jersey and demanded, “What did you bloody well think you were doing?”

Roody gaped at him in shock and Harry released him with a small shove. Everyone around them quieted, waiting to see what might develop. Snape arrived and ordered Suze to sit down on the frozen grass to await Madam Pomfrey.

Ron grabbed Harry’s arm and tugged him away from the Ravenclaw team. “Hey there, mate. No fighting,” he said in a strangely amiable tone.

Hermione was giving him a soft, understanding look.

Harry tried to justify his reaction. “She’s too small. Roody should have been more careful.”

“Harry, it’s Quidditch,” Ron stated as if that covered it.

Harry glanced back. A witch and a wizard he did not recognize were crouching beside Suze, fussing over her despite her protestations. Harry studied Suze’s very ordinary looking parents as the crowd pressed in, blocking the view.

They walked slowly back to the castle. “You were starting a fight?” Penelope asked Harry.

“Wasn’t trying to,” Harry replied.

Ron supplied with a crooked grin, “Harry was just standing up for his date from the Christmas Ball.

Penelope blinked at that. “She is so young, no?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I was ordered to find a dance partner for the ball,” he griped, trying to close the topic. “It wasn’t a date.”

Ron, still in a teasing mode, went on, “So he picked the girl that would make the teachers least happy with him.”

“I had a nice time,” Harry said defensively. “So did she.”

Hermione found herself cornered on the way to Advanced D.A., of all times.

“Ms. Granger,” McGonagall intoned before opening her classroom door and inviting Hermione inside.

Hermione followed and kept her face neutral as she waited for McGonagall to speak.

“How are things progressing?” the headmistress asked. “I had Harry to my office for tutoring just an hour ago, but I could not judge him this evening.”

“Pretty good, I think,” Hermione said. “He is partnered with one of the new students on a Care of Magical Creatures project. Penelope. I get the sense that they’ve talked a little.”

“Good,” she breathed. “Harry, of all people, should not feel left out.” She gestured that Hermione could leave.

Hermione hurried down to the Room of Requirement. She was now firmly determined to make Harry try the Canarevelatio spell today.

While the rest of the students worked on building what the book called ‘membrane energy’, Hermione cornered her friend. “Try for me, please,” she pleaded. When he frowned, she pulled out her best try. “Your father would be so proud of you, following in his footsteps.” She held her breath. That was either going to work, or backfire badly.

Harry huffed and sat on the side bench to take off his shoe. Ron, seeing this, came over and sat beside him. Harry incanted the spell on his right foot. Nothing happened.

When he shrugged, Hermione insisted impatiently, “Try again.”

Harry did so, many times, still with no result.

Suze came over and stood beside Hermione, who said, “Maybe you are thinking of the wrong animal. What are you thinking of?”

“A stag, like my father and my Patronus,” he said, a little annoyed despite them all trying to help with the best of intentions.

Suze, in her lilting voice, said, “Just think of your spirit, like an energy with personality, not a thing. That’s what I did.”

Harry’s brow furrowed as he considered that. He scratched his head and thought a long time. Images of himself as various things flitted through his mind: Fawkes, a stag, a dog like Sirius. He tried to imagine himself as something else, something all his own, though not anything in particular, as an essence, maybe, and spoke the spell.

“Whoa!” Ron exclaimed.

Harry looked down at his foot, which was now a huge scarlet furred paw. Blindingly bright scarlet. He was afraid to touch it, just stared at it, waiting for it change back, fearful it might not.

“What is that?” Hermione said reverently as she crouched to look it over. When she reached out to touch his foot, he jerked it instinctively away. “I’m not going to hurt you, Harry.”

“It just bothers me,” he said. His foot morphed back at that moment and he breathed out a deep sigh.

“Let’s see it again,” Dean said.

“No,” Harry said. “I saw it enough. Certainly big enough not to miss anything about it.”

Over the groans of disappointment, Hermione said, “Come over and start working on your membrane energy. Come on,” she urged, tugging on his arm which forced him to follow.

McGonagall stepped into the Defense classroom between sessions. She held out a rolled parchment to Snape. “I took the liberty of checking with the Ministry if Mr. Potter had applied.” She waited for him to unroll the blank form. “I apologize if I have overstepped my bounds but I have an old promise I feel obliged to uphold and the application period is only open one more week. I have hopes for his N.E.W.T. result, but perhaps he does not. I will leave it to you.”

“Thank you, Minerva,” Snape said. “Perhaps there is one thing more you could do…” he added, as she moved to the door.

Harry inevitably stopped by, that evening in fact, as Snape worked in his office. “Sit down,” Snape said to him.

Harry, caught a little off-guard by the tone which was more businesslike than expected, obeyed slowly as he tried to think of what he could be in trouble for. Snape waved the door closed and stepped before his desk, arms folded.

“Do you wish to apply for the Auror’s program?” Snape asked him.

“Yes,” Harry replied automatically. “I still have time, right?”

“Yes. Not much, however,” Snape pointed out. “May I inquire what the delay is caused by? Clearly you won’t be certain of your N.E.W.T.s until months after the deadline.”

Harry looked away as he thought up an answer. When he didn’t reply right away, Snape said, “Is it caused by your inability to know for certain that you have rightfully earned a spot?”

“Maybe,” Harry hedged. He hadn’t given it a terrible amount of thought, just kept putting it off for vague reasons.

“I have taken the liberty of having Headmistress McGonagall contact Ms. Tonks regarding your concerns. We have been assured by her that your application will be treated with as ordinary a regard as possible. Also, that should you qualify, your testing will be equally as rigorous as your peers’.”

Harry considered that. At one level, their interference bothered him, but at another he felt relieved. Snape reached into his pocket and pulled the application out. “Why don’t you fill it out right now?”

Harry accepted the rough brown paper. He hadn’t filled in anything on his own copy, anyway. With one hand he flattened out the sheet on his lap and reached in his bag for a quill. Snape set a bottle of ink on the edge of the desk for him to use. After pulling his chair closer to use Snape’s desk for writing, Harry considered the many blank boxes. The questions at the end had seemed as daunting as when he had first looked it over.

“Certainly the first line does not present a problem,” Snape said in a vaguely sneering exhalation.

Harry shot him a slightly annoyed look and filled in his name. It felt like he was gaming things unfairly just with that. He kept Snape’s reassurances in mind as he filled in his basic contact information, including the address in Shrewsthorpe, and date of his N.E.W.T. testing. He left the score boxes blank since the date was in the future. He willed those blanks to be filled in with the proper number of Os and Es when the time came.

Below the basic data were large, fancily-framed boxes. The first one said, Describe in 300 words or less why you wish to pursue a career as an Auror.

Snape considered Harry as he thought this over, then stepped around to the back of the desk and sat in his chair. As he steepled his fingers before him, Snape said, “Perhaps you should answer the last question first. The answer to the first one may flow from that.”

Harry uncurled the parchment to reveal the last blank space. Please include below any other details you would like considered with your application. Harry stared at that with a vaguely floating feeling that was not very conducive to writing.

Snape’s voice interrupted his pointless musings. “When did you decide to become an Auror?”

“When I found out there was such a thing. Nothing else has seemed remotely interesting since then,” Harry replied. “I met Tonks and the others. They enjoyed what they were doing. They were always involved in whatever was going on.” Always knew what was going on, Harry thought wryly. “Whatever they are assigned, always has some kind of meaning.”

“I would not go that far,” Snape commented from his leaned back position in his chair. “But your point is a valid one, nonetheless. All good material for the first box.”

Harry shifted the parchment up and forced himself to rephrase what he had just said. It looked pale to him, but he had to put something down. “Do you think I should be applying?” he asked, looking for reassurance.

“Harry, if I didn’t think it utterly unfair to do so, I would talk you out of it.”

Harry blinked at him in surprise. “Why?”

Snape’s hair had fallen to frame his face as he stared at his steepled fingers. “Because it is a exceedingly hazardous occupation.” He frowned inwardly and sighed.

“You don’t think I’m used to that?” Harry asked.

“Too much so, in fact.” Snape fell silent a long time before he said, “Promise me something, Harry.”

“Of course.”

“No matter how routine a task seems, never let your guard down,” he said, then after a slight pause he went on in his earlier, generally helpful tone, “The second box asks about special skills, does it not?”

Harry made himself check the answer to this. “Yes,” he said. He swallowed as he thought about that. “I’m resisting writing Parseltongue,” he said. “As well as pointing out that I see Death Eaters in my vision at the edge of sleep.”

“You have unique insight into the Dementors,” Snape said.

“Don’t you think they know that?”

“If you wish to be treated as an ordinary applicant, you must behave as one and assume they know nothing.”

Harry managed to write something down to the effect that since he had temporarily been part of the Dementors’ mind web, that he understood them rather better than the average wizard. He thought over his other skills. Seeker wasn’t very meaningful, although his skill on a broom might be, in general. He wrote that down, trying to make it sound Quidditch-neutral.

After Harry paused again in thought, Snape commented, “Certainly you have more than two skills.” At Harry’s shrug he said, “Did you include your ability to teach spells to others?”

“Do you think they care?”

“It is rarer than you realize. Probably worth noting.” As Harry added it, Snape said. “You are adept at Occlusion.”

“Good one,” Harry said, adding that with confidence.

“You pick up new defensive spells quickly,” Snape said.

Harry noted that, trying hard not to sound cocky in the phrasing. The list looked pretty good. “Last box,” Harry said, considering his answer. “I suppose saying that I wouldn’t know what else to do with myself wouldn’t be the best thing.”

“Do you have a backup plan?” Snape asked.

“No. Do you think I should?”

“For your own flexibility only. There is no chance they will turn you down for the program,” Snape said evenly.

“I thought you said—” Harry said with ready offense.

Snape sat forward and interrupted him sharply. “You are consummately qualified, Potter—that is why you will not be turned down.” Harry could hear plainly how Snape regretted that notion. “If you are not qualified, no one is.” Snape sat back again and stared at the far corner of the ceiling. “Use the last box to list the dark wizards you have survived battling, captured, or outrightly killed.”

Harry could not interpret Snape’s tone. “Do you think I’ll get past the first stage if I don’t?”

“Most likely.”

“Maybe I won’t then.”

“Your fellow applicants certainly would.”

Harry stared at the blank space. “It would take a while to work it out.” At Snape’s expression, Harry said, “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“The result is the same. Start from the beginning, if you must.”

“How about from the evilest down?” Harry quipped in his own obnoxious tone. At Snape’s shrug, Harry frowned, he found he couldn’t just write, I have fought the following dark wizards, followed by a list. “I can’t just write them out.”

“Why not?”

Quietly, Harry replied, “Because I wish none of it had happened.”

Snape rubbed his forehead before tossing his hair back and staring at the ceiling. “Why are you applying for this apprenticeship again?”

Feeling more uncertain than he ever had about it, Harry admitted, “I’m not sure.”

“You need to figure it out,” Snape commented levelly.

After a long pause, Harry asked, “Can I sleep on it?”

Snape ignored this plea. “What does Nymphadora Tonks have that you do not?”

That was a good question. Harry pulled off his glasses to rub his eyes as he pictured her going about her duties. “Control of her destiny?” he finally suggested.

Snape considered that before he said, “We should all be so lucky, Potter.”

Pleading ever so slightly, Harry said, “I’m doing this because I want to. Not to stay alive…or to preserve everything that matters,” he finished grimly.

“I would not recommend writing that,” Snape said.

“It is the other side of ‘what else would I do with myself?’” Harry added and laughed painfully. He looked down at the parchment and sighed. “I don’t feel so badly now about not starting this sooner.”

“I really think you should list who you have faced and be done with it. It speaks for itself,” Snape said. He pulled out his wand to make tea as he spoke.

“If I didn’t become an Auror, what do you think I could do?”

“Aside from follow the path Lockhart so clearly blazed for us all and sell books with yourself on the cover, perhaps teach, since you show promise for that.”

Having never considered that, Harry gave it due consideration now. “But you have the job I’d want,” he pointed out.

Snape poured tea for them both with a momentarily alarmed expression.

Harry assumed it was a put-on and laughed. As he accepted the cup he said, “I do want to get away from this place.”

“You should. And I am not just saying that because of my lack of confidence in which of us McGonagall would choose for this position, if offered the choice.”

Harry watched him top up his tea. A surge of gratitude at having a parent flowed through him. His friends were scheming their flight from this place, making it clear by their optimism that they would not look back, nor feel much consideration for others not so well set up with plans. At the end of the year, he would essentially be left alone to find his way were it not for the wizard sitting before him.

“Shall I list them for you?” Snape asked, breaking Harry’s reverie.

“I can.” Harry did as he said he could not stand to do, and began listing. “Quirrell, Voldemort, Tom Riddle, Peter Pettigrew, Barty Crouch Jr…”

“Sirius Black,” Snape suggested. At Harry’s disapproving look, he added, “The Ministry would count him.”

Harry shook his head and re-dipped his quill, surprised to find only a deep ghostly ache where there had once been a gaping wound. He blinked at the parchment and waited for a wash of regret to pass before he returned to his task. “The twelve at the Ministry, Voldemort again so I won’t list it, especially since I’m certain I would have been toast if Dumbledore hadn’t shown up. Malfoy and company, which is a subset of the Ministry battle…” Harry looked up as he thought about that. “Anything happened with the other two, Avery and Jugson?”

“The Ministry thinks they have gone to ground permanently, although they are still looking.” Snape studied his fingernails as he added, “Next to Crabbe and Goyle, they were the least effective members of the Dark Lord’s inner circle.”

Harry had forgotten about them. He forced himself to list them too. It was a long list. He glanced back at the first box. “Should I add that I think I would be good at it?”

“No, because I think they will be spending the first year beating overconfidence out of you. That is only a guess, of course, based on interacting with several Aurors over the years. I certainly hope they will be doing so.”

Harry left it off. He folded it up and took the envelope Snape offered. He copied the address from the top of the application onto the front and sealed it. Holding it in both hands, he said, “Is my detention over then?”

Snape raised an amused brow. “Yes.”

Harry hesitated in the doorway, grateful to Snape for putting his own inclinations aside. “Thank you, sir,” he said simply.

Snape nodded as he returned to his earlier work.

 

A few weeks went by. Harry and Penelope had to change crates yet again as their wombat grew. It now ate fruit exclusively and it started to forcibly resist returning to its crate. Dean accused them of using a larger crate just to make people wonder. They had to cleverly choose times to take care of it when others weren’t coming up to check on their own projects. As they arrived one night during dinner time, Malfoy was just leaving. He looked angry and his whole hand was blue.

They went through the now-practiced procedure, using less bedding this time since they didn’t have a larger crate, and it was crowded, which the creature didn’t seem to mind. As they worked, Harry could not keep his mind off Malfoy’s wombat. His eyes kept straying over to Malfoy and Parkinson’s crate in the corner. He felt badly that he had forgotten his concern when he had first watched them take one.

As they closed the lid on their crate, Harry stepped over to the far one.

“Want to check on it?” Penelope said from behind him.

“Yeah.” He ran a long string of curse breaking spells on the crate, getting two flashes on random ones as the spells released. Then a series of unlock spells, which revealed nothing.

“Wow,” Penelope breathed after the long series ceased.

Harry lifted the lid. Inside was something similar to a chrysalis. “What is that?” he asked.

The stiff skin of it rippled as something inside shifted and squirmed. Unnerved, Harry closed it and respelled it. “It’s in some kind of defensive mode, I guess.” He felt badly for it.

“What can we do?”

“Complain to Hagrid. I’ll do that after class tomorrow.”

Greer stalked around the classroom as they brewed. She paused beside their bench and peered into Frina’s cauldron appraisingly.

“More heat,” the teacher stated smartly.

Frina moved quickly to adjust the flame. Greer then eyed Harry’s potion while he mostly ignored her.

“And we are not allowed to say anything negative about Mr. Potter’s potion,” she said quite snidely.

Harry held off just barely on rolling his eyes or just snarling at her. His expectation that she’d grow bored of this theme had proved wrong. Clearly either Snape or McGonagall had spoken with her at some point.

He continued to ignore his teacher as he ground beetle wings into the finest powder that one could ever imagine. Luckily, she had stopped asking him questions as well and he hoped it was because he almost never got them wrong.

Padma fell under the teacher’s unrelenting scrutiny next. She added too much rat brain powder and a cloud of noxious grey smoke mushroomed from her cauldron. The Slytherins jeered in whispered singsong and Padma looked as though she wanted to knock her setup onto the floor. Greer waved the contents away with a falsely sympathetic grin.

“Poor dear, perhaps next time,” Greer said.

Padma bit her lip and took out her notes and sat down to review for the remainder of the session. The rest of them shared pained looks.

“She is too soft,” Frina stated sadly.

“Greer is too—” Hermione began, sounding unusually vicious, but was cut off by the teacher asking her a question that was not in the reading, which she answered correctly anyway. Under her breath after Greer turned to praise the Slytherin potions and assign them some points based on her praise, Hermione said, “If nothing else, we will ace our N.E.W.T.s if we survive this class.”

“Don’ worry, Harry,” Hagrid said when he and the gamekeeper were in his cabin after class. “Can’ really harm ’em. Yer weren’ supposta look yeh know. Tha’s cheating.”

“We were worried about it,” Harry explained.

“Ah, yer a softhearted one, Harry. Have time fer a spot o’ tea?” Hagrid asked, lifting the big bucket off the fire to take it to the pump out back.

“Not really. I’m going to be late as it is for double Defense.”

Harry ran to the Defense classroom and still arrived five minutes after the start, which Snape pointed out as he entered.

“You took five points from Slytherin last time I was late,” Malfoy complained.

“You are correct,” Snape said, “Five points from Gryffindor,” he said and gave Harry a look that dared him to challenge it.

Harry frowned and sat down, but Penelope gave him a sympathetic smile which made it all right. The dark look she gave Snape after, made him a little uneasy.

After class Harry went to the front and said quietly, “I was talking to Hagrid about something important.”

“You should have done it later. I have to be strict with you, or I could lose control of the class,” Snape said.

“Or at least the Slytherin part of it,” Harry said with a sly grin.

“Perhaps you will do me a favor next session,” Snape said as he flipped through the parchments that had been turned in.

“After that?” Harry asked with false sharpness.

Snape touched him on the arm and said with a small smile, “Yes, after that. I want to split the room up to run two different sessions next week during the double class. Can you and Ms. Granger cover the examination review for the regular students, while I cover curse detection for the Durmstrang students? The Durmstrang students are not taking end of term examinations and it is a good opportunity to catch them up.”

“Sure,” Harry conceded.

Snape reached into the drawer of the desk and took out a roll of parchments tied with black ribbon. “Here are my notes for the term. Please don’t lose them. Starred topics will be tested. Don’t show that to anyone but Ms. Granger.”

Harry nodded and put it in his book bag. He said goodbye and stepped away, surprised to find Penelope hovering by the door, apparently waiting for him.

“Thank you, Harry,” Snape said as Harry crossed to the door.

“No problem, sir,” he replied over his shoulder. Penelope followed him out, looking strained.

In the corridor, when they had almost reached the portrait hole, she said in a low voice, “Professor Snape was good friends with Headmaster Karkaroff, you know.”

“I wouldn’t have said, ‘friends’.” Harry led the way into the common room where they joined Ron and Hermione. Penelope appeared to wish to say more. “Don’t hold back because of them,” Harry said to her.

“What’s up?” Hermione asked in concern.

“She is trying to warn me about Professor Snape, insists he was friends with Igor Karkaroff.”

“Oh,” Hermione said. She gave Penelope a pained smile. “Don’t wade into that,” she suggested.

Penelope gave Hermione a narrow look before ranting, “He was evil. You don’t how bad it was when he came back. It was a nightmare. He caused so many to die. And anyone who was with him, with Voldemort, well…” She looked them all over sharply, eyes bright. As she spun away to leave, Ron caught her with one of his long arms and dragged her back.

“Let me go,” she protested.

“Sit down,” Ron said, exchanging places with her, so he was standing, holding her down in the chair by her arms.

Harry stared at Penelope’s face, transformed by distress. She had her long hair pulled over her shoulder and ran her hands over it repeatedly.

“Stay,” Ron said before releasing her.

She sighed unevenly. “It was terrible. Everyone took sides. Some took Karkaroff’s because dey thought he would restore order which vould be safer, maybe. Dey foolishly beliefed him.” A tear dropped out of her right eye. She rubbed it away angrily. “It is zo much nicer here. De place where Voldemort came himself. I don’t understand.”

“That was mostly Dumbledore’s doing,” Hermione said. “He worked hard to keep the outside world at bay.” She glanced at Harry and they shared a frown.

“But you haf on staff his old associates…”

Harry said, “Professor Snape is my adoptive father. He isn’t a dark wizard. Even if he did know Karkaroff from way back.”

She stared at him. “Dis is true?” she asked the assembled. When they nodded, she dabbed at her eye primly. “You would trust him? To be alone with him?” this she directed at Hermione.

Hermione shrugged. “Harry lives with him.”

Harry nodded to confirm this and said, “If you need someone to talk to about what happened with Karkaroff, Professor Snape might be willing. I’ll ask him if you want.”

She looked alarmed at the notion, then relented slightly. “Perhaps I am keeping it too boxed up,” she said dazedly. “But I would not have thought to talk to him.”

“Or talk to any of us,” Hermione offered.

Penelope looked over at her. “You faced twenty-two Death Eaters.” She shook her head. “We only had to face each oder,” she said sadly.

“Sounds worse,” Ron said. “It helps to know who your enemy is.”

The other students in the common room were quieting to listen in. Ginny came over and crouched beside the chair. “Discussing bad stuff over here?”

“I would have wanted revenge,” Penelope said as she stared at the far wall.

“Surprised Harry didn’t,” Ginny said. “Why was that, Harry?”

“Let’s not go into the Harry part of it,” he said.

“Keeping it all boxed up too?” Ginny teased.

“Yes. Thank you,” Harry snapped at her although it had a playful edge to it.

Ginny laughed.

“It’s almost the end of term,” Ron said. “We’re coming up on the bloody anniversary, you know.”

Ginny teased in a falsely excited way, “That means the press will be here.”

“Merlin,” Harry breathed.

Penelope looked at him with sad eyes. “It is so unreal to be here with you all,” she breathed. “Wit the Destroyer of Voldemort and his friends. I write home to my mum and dad and I don’t think dey belief me.”

“We would have taken out Karkaroff during the Tri-Wizard Tournament had we known,” Ron said with feeling.

“Dumbledore would have kicked your arse,” Ginny said to him.

“True,” Ron said with a little alarm at the notion. His stomach growled at that moment. “It is dinner, right?” he asked hopefully.

“Why don’t I take you to the girl’s toilet to wash up,” Hermione said to Penelope. “Ginny, can you get her kit? It is the purple one on the first night stand on the left.” Ginny jumped up and went to the dormitory stairs.

In the toilet as Penelope washed her face, Hermione asked, “Did you lose someone?”

“My brother. My boyfriend.”

“I’m sorry,” Hermione said, choking up at the thought.

“It vas terrible. Every two or three days dere vould be more bodies. You start to get used to it and just…check if dey are someone you know,” Penelope said.

Ginny came in and handed over her purple toiletry kit.

“Why didn’t you leave?” Hermione asked.

“Durmstrang Institute, it is not like the Hogwarts School. It is spelled in more ways to hide it and protect it. You cannot just leave. De headmaster controls dat.”

Horrified, Hermione swallowed hard and helped Penelope put a bit of base under her eyes.

“I should just skip the dinner,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror.

“No. That isn’t a good idea,” Hermione insisted. “You have to stay around your friends. People who know what happened to you.”

“Works for Harry,” Ginny said as she crossed her arms and leaned against the next wash basin.

“Ginny,” Hermione said in a warning tone.

Ginny retorted, “Hey, thinking about how messed up Harry was always made me feel better. I never had Dementors in my head. Just Voldemort like he did.”

Penelope froze as she put on a bit of blush. “He had Voldemort in his head?” she asked in a stunned voice. “You had…?”

“Ginny, you are like Ron. I’m going to have to smack you to get you to shut up,” Hermione said angrily. “If Harry feels like sharing stuff like that, he can do it himself. He has a hard enough time getting treated normally without you two reminding everyone of how messed up things have been.”

“I tink he is very ordinary,” Penelope opined carefully.

“Good,” Hermione said forcefully. “Tell him that sometime, will you?”

“I did before.” She started putting away her makeup. “He did zeem pleased to hear dis.”

“I’m sure he was.” Hermione said, moving to open the door. “It’s a lifelong dream, I think.”

Dinner passed in self-absorbed, reflective quiet at their part of the table. Everyone moved on automatic as they served themselves and picked at their plates with little eating. Harry had a sense that this was obvious to others and that they were being watched because of it. He finally turned and challenged the gazes from the head table. McGonagall looked away a little guiltily. Snape narrowed his eyes at them and stood up.

“Oops,” Harry said as he turned back. “We’re about to have company.”

Hermione turned and watched Harry’s parent approach.

Snape stopped behind Harry and asked, “Everything all right here?”

Harry watched Penelope across from him, studying Snape in a pained, worried way.

“Uh,” Harry started, then noticed that much of the table, up and down from them, were listening. “I’ll explain later, sir.”

Snape’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Yes,” he confirmed simply before walking back to the front.

At the end of dinner, Snape waited beside the hearth where Harry joined him. Standing in silence, they let the rest of the students and staff file out. When the Great Hall was empty, Harry checked the doors and saw Penelope standing there. She had a fondness for that, apparently.

“Come in if you want,” Harry invited.

“And the topic is?” Snape prompted.

“Durmstrang. Karkaroff,” Harry replied levelly.

“I see,” Snape breathed. “By all means, Ms. Tideweather. Come in,” he invited dryly.

She stepped in silently and came over to them. The lamps in the Hall had dimmed themselves and now the fire provided most of the light. “Karkaroff was a desperate man,” Snape stated, his gaze sliding over to her. “That kind is always the most dangerous.”

“How vell did you know him?” she asked.

“Better than average, I suppose,” he replied reluctantly.

Harry stepped back and sat on the nearest bench, facing the fire.

“You are saying that is why he did it?” Penelope challenged him.

“He did it because he was weak. Durmstrang and its spells were a tool and a kind of shield, a powerful one built up by centuries of enchanting. Taking over the school bought him time.”

Snape turned to look back at Harry sitting behind and to the side of him. He seemed to be deciding how best to proceed. “Only the weakest of men like Karkaroff would work so hard to take so many down with him. To punish the world for defying them their due.”

“He took so many down,” Penelope agreed sadly. Her eyes darted around the Great Hall. “The risk here of de same?”

Snape replied, “The risk of that here is much lower—most of the magic left by the Hogwarts founders has been reduced to only the most passive spells.”

Harry snorted quietly.

“Well, for the most part,” Snape admitted. “Harry had the misfortune his second year to be led into a trap left by one of Hogwarts’ founders.”

“Who led you in?” she asked Harry, clearly distracted from her own dark musings. “The ghost of the founder?”

“Voldemort,” Snape supplied.

“What?” she blurted in surprise.

“This school, for all its protections allowed Voldemort access many times. Wouldn’t you say, Harry?” Snape prompted, seeming unwilling to let Harry sit out the conversation.

Harry, worried at Snape’s tone, replied quietly, “A few, yeah.”

“Your first year as I recall and your second.”

“Voldemort was here—?” Penelope began in alarm.

Snape continued over her, “Your fourth he had to abduct you, since he could not access the castle, but yet again you prevailed.”

“That was a draw at best,” Harry pointed out, thinking only then that he’d forgotten Snape had helped save him from death that time too.

“It made the Dark Lord mortal, therefore killable,” Snape refuted in a hard tone. “Fifth, he certainly got the better of you. Sixth of course, we all know. Five times, Potter. My goodness.”

“And your point is?” Harry asked in an annoyed tone. He didn’t want to meet Penelope’s gaze. The glimpse he had of it made it appear far too awed.

“That if you, with your penchant for feeling sorry for yourself, can persevere, then anyone can,” he stated with his old snideness.

”I had a lot of help. And I think having friends pitted against each other would be far worse then facing a clear evil, no matter how powerful that evil is.”

“Hm,” Snape replied noncommittally. To Penelope, he said flatly, “Healing and the blessing of failing memory take time. Dwelling in the tragic past only keeps it alive so that it never enters the past. You can never fully forget but you can gain perspective that makes it possible to go on.”

She wrapped her arms around herself and looked between them with a strained expression. Harry gave her a soft frown, not finding anything useful to add. He didn’t like the pained, wishful expression she was wearing now. He thought she was hoping for too much from him.

Snape crossed his arms and added, “Or consider it an expensive lesson. Such things do not happen because of only one wizard. They happen because others become primed to serve whoever does rise. Next time you will see it coming far earlier. It is invaluable wisdom that can be gained no other way.”

She looked away with an unsatisfied wrinkle to her lips.

Snape said, “You are young. Be patient with letting memory fade. And know you are wiser because of events.”

They fell silent and she stepped away, her expression closed and inward.

After the tall door closed behind Penelope, Snape put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “And you are doing how?”

“All right,” Harry said with a doubtful tone. “You really think it works to make someone feel better by telling them how much worse someone else has it?”

“Yes.”

Harry shook his head, but didn’t argue.

The next morning, their wombat, now actually the size of a small bear, outrightly refused to go back in the crate. It clung to Penelope and made a sad screeching noise when they tried to unhook it.

“I’ll keep it,” she said.

“All day?”

“Why not?” she countered firmly, taking it up like a child, propped on her hip. “It will eat from de fruit bowl at breakfast. Let us take it down.”

“Okay,” Harry agreed doubtfully, although he would have felt very bad about forcing it back into its box, so he was glad from that perspective, but he thought she was a little optimistic.

They were early for breakfast. Penelope sat with the wombat on her lap feeding it orange sections. Harry said, “Slowly. Otherwise it will get full before breakfast is over.”

The other students who were studying or talking stopped and looked over curiously. Penelope’s matching blue hair with orange stripes was something to see. Ron and Hermione came in and froze.

Hermione ran over. “Is that your wombat?” she asked. “Ours has barely grown at all and it’s all blue. How did you get it to eat anything solid? Wow.”

Harry laughed at her pile of comments. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I would!” she said sharply. “We are completely missing this assignment,” she complained to Ron.

They sat down, still gaping. Others came in and stopped by, amazed by the creature.

“Heh!” Hagrid said as he came in with McGonagall. “Look at tha’, will ya? Harry, tha’ yours?”

“Yes.” Harry glanced at McGonagall who looked neutral on the topic of blue wombats.

Hagrid leaned down and patted the wombat on the top of the head. “Orange was a good choice,” he said.

“I let it choose,” Harry said.

“Interestin’,” Hagrid drawled, then winked at Harry.

As he passed by Hermione and her frustrated expression, Hagrid patted her on the head as well, though not as gently.

The day’s classes went better than expected. The wombat mostly slept, although it insisted on being held. It turned out most anyone was more than eager to do this, so Harry and Penelope did not have much to do with it except keep track of its whereabouts.

By dinner its orange stripes were bright and made of much longer fur, making it look a bit like a caterpillar. Hagrid stopped by again while Hermione was holding it. “Aye. She’s a beaute. Mus’ ’a had a lo’ o’ attention today.”

“It did,” Harry confirmed forcefully.

“Yer pret’y much done,” Hagrid said, plucking at the long blue claws resting on Hermione’s shoulder. “Can’ grow much more en tha’.” He put his sizable pinky against its mouth and it sniffed it before turning away. “Well tempered ta boot. Yer got a place to keep ’er for the nigh’?”

Hermione and Penelope nodded vigorously. “We’ve already set up a crate in the girl’s dormitory,” Hermione said as she patted it on the back and put her nose against the top of its head the way she did to Crookshanks.

Harry was starting to feel sorry for the thing.

Exhausted after his tutoring with McGonagall, Harry made his way down from the headmistress’ office. As he passed one of the unused classrooms along a darkened corridor he thought he heard something. He quietly backed up a few steps and listened. Giggling followed by Malfoy’s voice speaking low, came from behind the closed door. Harry rolled his eyes and stepped more quietly away, fearful of being detected. He just got out of range as Parkinson sighed and said something he really didn’t want to hear clearly.

Literally shutting down with tiredness, Harry used the handrail heavily down a set of staircases. He wanted nothing more than to sleep, but he really needed to work on his Potions essay. As he trudged down the next corridor, Hermione came up to him.

“Harry,” she said nicely. “Could you please help us with our wombat?”

Harry grinned at her tone and amiably walked along with her. “If I knew what I did, I would. But it was kind of an accident.”

“Well…what happened?” she asked impatiently.

“The first night I couldn’t sleep so I went up to check on it. It was about three in the morning. I didn’t find quite the same thing in the crate.”

“Oh,” Hermione said thoughtfully. “I’ll have to check the moon phases, zodiac, cloud cover, Merlin what could have caused it? We’ve been up there at one or later and it has been the same.” When Harry shrugged, she said, “Maybe Frina and I will just sleep up there with it. Or take turns.”

Harry was still working on his essay in the common room when Hermione and Frina headed up to the attic. “Want company?”

“Sure,” Frina said eagerly. “Since we’re babysitting your project.”

“I’ll take it to our dormitory,” Harry offered.

“You can’t have it,” Frina countered stiffly, then laughed gaily.

As they walked, Harry feared they would all hear some couple having a rendezvous, and he blushed warmly just thinking of facing that with these two. Fortunately the way was quiet this time. Up in the attic Hermione went to their crate, opened it, and took out their wombat.

“Boy, that is small,” Harry criticized, garnering a dark look from his friend.

“Hermione said you told her your one turned into something else,” Frina said.

“I don’t know why it did, though,” Harry admitted.

“You are just very lucky,” Frina stated matter-of-factly.

He pulled out his parchments and worked on his essay as the two of them sat talking. Harry looked up as Hermione handed the creature over to her partner, amused by the shifting hair color. Hermione looked better with brown hair than blue. As he worked and listened, he was amazed by the things they talked about: personal things about growing up, interesting people they knew, bizarre relatives, parental annoyances. He couldn’t imagine sitting around with Opus and doing the same thing…not a chance.

Harry finished his essay, finally. As he rolled it up, Hermione held her hand out for it. “Thanks,” Harry said as he gave it up. He stood up to stretch and paced the length of the gable. At the window he remembered Malfoy’s strange creature.

He stood before it and described to them what he had seen. “Hagrid wasn’t happy I’d looked.”

“Let’s look again,” Hermione immediately said, setting Harry’s essay on the floor to stand up. He stepped aside for her to run through the un-cursing spells herself, and the same ones were on it as before. Inside the box was now a hard-shelled blue chrysalis that was attached to the inside of the wood by an organic blue cord with root-like tendrils.

“Whoa,” Hermione breathed. “What’d he do to it to make it do that?”

“I hate to think about it,” Harry said, re-closing the lid. “At least it looks safe now.”

Revising for end of term examinations and Quidditch practice occupied the next week. Harry did not think it possible for him to cram any more information into his brain, but somehow he seemed to manage, going from classes, to constant studying, to quizzing by his friends without much rest in between.

Harry was taking a break, a nap really, on a window seat on the fifth floor. It was midday and McGonagall came by, stepping sprightly.

“Everything all right, Harry?” she stopped and asked in concern upon seeing him there.

“Just tired, Professor.”

He bent his knees to move his feet out of the way for her to sit down, which she did, as though they were chums. The sun lit her robes as it slanted through the glass behind her.

Harry said, “If I try to learn anything else, I think my brain will explode.”

As she smiled in real humor at that, he marveled that he was sitting here so casually with the headmistress of all people. He shifted back against the stone frame to sit up more.

“Looking forward to a holiday, then?” she asked.

“Very much so.”

“And you filed an application for the Auror’s program?” She sounded serene, way too much like Dumbledore.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She smiled. Harry thought of mentioning what Hermione had told him, that demonstrating an Animagus spell at the N.E.W.T. testing was worth thirty bonus points. He hadn’t made any progress since revealing something of his form, but then again he also had not had much time. Then yet again, they were not supposed to be working on it at all…he was pretty certain.

“It will all be over soon,” she said helpfully.

“I don’t necessarily want it to be.”

She smiled more at that. “Even you will look back on this time with fondness, I think.” She patted him on the leg. “Why don’t we skip your tutoring until you return from break.”

Harry nodded that he thought that was a good idea.

“I’ll let you get back to your nap,” she said with a smile in her voice.

“You are playing today?” Penelope asked as Harry hurried through of the common room.

Harry needed to get down to the pitch early for a strategy meeting with Ron and Ginny. Ron didn’t want to discuss tactics inside the castle—he thought someone might be listening in. Harry had to admit that Extendable Ears had become unnervingly common during the school year and Filch had not caught on to start confiscating them.

Harry paused long enough to reply, “Yes.”

“I vill be cheering for you,” she said.

At the portrait hole, Harry said, “Thanks,” with sincerity.

In the changing room they suited up and adjusted pads, taking their time. The wind leaked through the boards of the changing room making it comfortable even fully uniformed.

Ron said, “We’ve already beaten our toughest opponent, Slytherin, so we are on track for the Quidditch Cup. We just have to keep doing what we’re good at. Overconfidence is our biggest enemy.” He paced before them, talking forcefully.

Ron went on in this vein for a while before going over a few plays he wanted to try out this match before facing Ravenclaw later in the year. Harry considered pointing out that treating Hufflepuff as practice smacked of overconfidence, but he held back, mostly because he was feeling confident.

It was warmer today than the last match, although Harry still had one of his rabbit lined gloves on his left hand for holding his broom. His right he kept against his side to keep it warm until the whistle blew.

The match was long, although Gryffindor held the lead throughout. Harry paced Janet, the new Hufflepuff Seeker, for most of the match, confident that he could overtake her if she made a move. She didn’t even try to fake him out, which Harry would have done in her place. Frequently.

In the end the Snitch came up from behind. Harry caught sight of it in his peripheral vision, turned hard, and gave chase. Janet followed, never managing to get position on him despite the rapidly dodging Snitch giving her a few openings. The crowd was on its feet and shouting as the chase went on, raising Harry’s spirits as he gained on the elusive thing. It looped around him and he had to foot spin to catch it. He was still dizzy from the maneuver when he landed on the grass with the fluttering Snitch in hand.

The team landed as well and thumped him hard, elated with the win even though it was not much of a contest. Hermione and Penelope came out as the team was moving to the changing room.

“You are very good,” Penelope said, eyes bright. He had not seen quite that expression on her before, it was vaguely worshipful, but it didn’t bother him for some reason.

“Thanks,” Harry said with a broad smile, as the team moved off the pitch, slowing to wait for him. “I’ll see you later—when I’m presentable,” he added over his shoulder with a smile as he brushed his mussed hair back. He brought Hermione into that with a glance and found she had a far too pleased of a look on her face.

In the changing room Ginny said, “Well, that went all right.” She sounded a little put out in contrast to the words.

“It went really well,” Ron countered.

Ginny shrugged and tossed her wrist guards haphazardly into a locker before bending and unsnapping her shin guards with quick, annoyed movements.

Harry and Ron shared a perplexed look. Ron shrugged and ignored her. Harry figured Hermione would be better to talk to her than himself, so he didn’t question her either.

“You’ve got it, I think,” Hermione said excitedly. “Try again and think of your form this time.”

Ginny closed her eyes and stood still for long breaths. Colors rippled over her robe like sunlight through water. A long time passed before a warping sound started, startling all of them. A fluttering thing fell to the floor and scrambled at the stones. Hermione was the first to react. She stepped quickly but carefully over and tried to lift the hawk up by the feet.

“All right!” Ron exclaimed, stepping over too.

The bird was too awkward to balance even with Hermione helping and it fluttered back to the floor, wings and claws scraping.

“Ginny, you remember how to disrupt the energy to release the form, right?” Hermione asked the bird, a little loudly and panicked.

Harry, in his usual seat off to the side, watched things with growing worry. He huffed and stood up as Ginny reappeared, half-sprawled on the floor. The room erupted in cheers, making Ginny grin broadly through her blinking disorientation.

Harry stepped right up to her. “No flying,” he said firmly.

“What?” she replied.

“No flying. That’s final.” No one said anything immediately.

“You’re no fun,” she snapped at him.

He followed closely as she turned away. “Ginny, I mean it. You don’t know the first thing about it. And what if you change back a hundred feet off the ground.”

“Actually…” Neville started to say, holding up one finger. When Harry turned his hard gaze to him, he fell silent.

“I kinda have to agree with Harry,” Ron said reluctantly.

Ginny huffed in frustration. “All right, all right,” she breathed. She took a seat on the side bench and put her chin on her hands. “I’m sure I can find a cage to perch myself in,” she muttered.

“You did great, though,” Ron added in a concessionary way. “Wish I could do it.”

“Yeah, you are all just jealous,” she said with another huff.

The morning of the Express departing the Gryffindors and honorary Gryffindors shared a large breakfast.

“Are you going back to Croatia?” Harry asked Frina.

“Yes. I miss my parents and they are worried about me. Oh, which reminds me. Opus!“ she called to the Durmstrang students huddled in the doorway. “Do you mind?” she asked Harry.

“Mind what?” Harry responded.

Frina pushed the platter of bacon aside, climbed over the table agilely, and sat beside him. “Peni,” she said as she reached around Harry and tugged on her friend’s robe to get her attention.

Opus had come over with a camera and now stood on the other side of the table checking its settings. Harry sighed and smiled as they leaned in close for the first picture. For the second one he relented and put his arms around the both of them. A warm feeling started up in him as he did this. He could feel it responding to the sense of their shoulders and even their arms against his sides. He stretched his neck and forced it out of himself.

“Oh good,” Penelope said. “My parents will finally belief me.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Harry asked in confusion.

She shrugged broadly with an expression that said he would not understand the explanation.

Harry went home that evening. Snape had to stay at Hogwarts a few days longer to finish up marking and paperwork, but he pointed out that he could then stay in Shrewsthorpe until late Sunday if he did so.

Harry stepped out of the hearth at home and started when he found himself face to face with a purple-haired witch.

“Tonks?” he said in surprise.

“Hey, Harry,” she greeted him casually and balled up the parchment in her hand. “I can skip the note since you’re here.” She banished the note with a toss. “One of the old spells we left from last summer was triggered, so I came to investigate. Only the outer one was touched, so I suspect it was a neighbor kid crossing through your back garden.”

“Guess they don’t do that often,” Harry said, thinking it strange that it had not triggered before now.

“Your wall is pretty high and a little crumbly at the top. That would dissuade most people,” she said casually. “Every other protection is still in place, so don’t worry about it. If it hadn’t been your place, I probably wouldn’t have come right away.” She gave him a wink as she said this.

“Want some tea?” Harry offered, kind of hoping she would stay a little while.

She sighed and replied sincerely, “I really don’t have time, Harry, but thanks.” She put her stuff in her hipsack and sealed it with a spell. “I saw your application come in,” she said, sounding teasing.

Harry couldn’t interpret her tone. “Did it look okay?”

She laughed lightly. “Of course. We received a lot of applications this year. Good ones. Still trying to decide how best to handle them all. I think we should just make the admission tests harder. That would be to your advantage, anyway.”

Harry looked away, a little embarrassed by praise from this quarter. The post that had arrived in his and Snape’s absence was scattered over the table. He organized the envelopes as a distraction. Tonks stepped to the hearth, nearly knocking over the rack with the poker and ash shovel. She righted it and took out a leather drawstring sack of Floo Powder.

“What are you doing Sunday night?” Tonks asked him.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Care to hang out in London with me for the evening?” she asked. “I need to get out and I’d love to catch up with you.”

Harry’s heart sped up as he imagined that. His jealousy of Ron’s freedom to explore London over last summer had not completely disappeared.

“I’d love to.”

“Clubbing all right with you? A little befuddlement charm will get you in past the bouncer at the places I like to go.”

Harry blinked at that stretching of wizard law. And Muggle law. “Sounds good,” he replied.

“Want to meet me at Trafalgar or Soho?” she suggested. Upon seeing his reaction, she said, “I’ll just come here and we’ll go together.”

“Great,” Harry said.

“I really have to run,” she said. “See ya.”

She stepped into the hearth and vanished in a column of green flame.

Harry fairly skipped up the stairs to his room with his overloaded book bag, feeling weightless. Sunday evening was going to take years to arrive.

An owl had arrived that morning from Snape saying that he would be delayed until Monday morning. Harry studied to pass the time and finished two long essays before Sunday lunch, as if to deserve these seemingly random turns of luck.

Not only could Harry stay out late, he would not even have to explain his ‘date’ to his guardian. He wasn’t sure what Snape would think, if anything at all, but he wasn’t taking any chances with his first time out in the London club scene. With a woman. With someone he liked a lot and a woman. The thought was almost overwhelming.

Sunday night, as Harry was dressing in Muggle clothes, he decided he should leave a note in case Snape came home earlier than expected. As he was folding the parchment over and writing Snape’s name on it, the hearth flared.

The first thing Harry thought upon seeing Tonks was that he himself was hopelessly underdressed. Tonks was wearing shiny pants and a fuzzy yellow top. She read his expression and hooked an arm through his.

“You look fine. Guys never dress as well as women anyway at these places. Well, unless they’re trolling.”

They took the Floo into an upstairs parlor in Soho. When Harry arrived, the two well-dressed couples sitting around a table on the other side of the room were greeting Tonks like an old friend.

“Your date?” a woman’s high-pitched, nasal voice said loudly. “Let’s see him. Let’s seem him. Come on, he has to pass inspection since you clearly have no sense yourself. We know this, girl. Really.”

Harry stepped over to them and stood beside Tonks. They were paired by gender by the way they sat. The woman who had spoken had sharp yellow eyes and very short auburn hair. Her many large earrings clanked as she leaned forward in her seat to inspect him.

“What’s that? Lightening scars aren’t in fashion now are they?” she asked in dismay, rubbing her forehead as though considering what it might be like to have one.

“And no fashion sense at all,” the taller man said with a grimace. “Early eighties schoolboy,” he breathed in clear horror. “Dated!”

Harry looked down at his plain black trousers and crisp white shirt. Tonks put her arm around him.

“Ignore them. We’re leaving now,” Tonks announced melodically, pressing her fingers into Harry’s shoulder to turn him.

“Wait, wait,” the ear-ringed woman said. “He hasn’t passed a full inspection yet. What does he do?”

“He catches dark wizards,” Tonks said. “Let’s go,” she said to Harry.

“He’s an Auror then? Thought you guys weren’t supposed to date each other?” the other woman said. “Looks a little young, frankly.”

“He’s not an Auror, yet,” Tonks insisted. “And this is just old friends out for an evening.”

She gave Harry a push toward a closed door on the other side of the room.

“Shoulda said. We wouldn’t have wasted our precious energy in that case,” the ear-ringed woman commented loudly.

“Or wasted his ego,” the other woman quipped.

“His ego is just fine,” Tonks reassured them, patting Harry on the shoulder. “Right, Harry?”

Harry shrugged and let Tonks open the door since she moved to it first.

“Wait a minute!” the woman said, jumping up and striding over to them. “You aren’t really?”

“Really what?” Harry asked.

She peered at him closely. “This is just a Clandestine Charm, right?” she asked Tonks. “You aren’t really out for an eve with Harry Potter…are you?”

“She’s what?” the taller man exclaimed, spilling the black liquid he was pouring as he spoke. “Sorry ’bout the fashion comments, Mate,” he said quickly giving a wave of dismissal. “The Studious Ones never know how to dress,” he said in a stage whisper to his male companion.

“Or how to have fun either,” his companion came back with a nudge.

He held his glass out for a refill and nudged again when he didn’t get any.

“Well,” Earrings said as she took the door from Tonks and held it for them while leaning on it heavily. “Have a nice evening. We’ll have a nice drink and discuss He-Who-Shall-Be-Not-Named when you come back through.”

“Voldemort,” Harry supplied.

She flinched and bit her full red lips. “Yeah. That bloke.”

On the pavement outside, Harry adjusted his cloak and breathed out in relief. “Interesting friends.”

They walked along a tree-lined street. Ahead, bar patrons spilled onto the walk from the restaurants.

“Acquaintances really. They run that Floo node like a social parlor. Keeps them occupied and mostly out of trouble. Though who knows what they were drinking.”

They had dinner in one of the small, cramped places along a side street. Tonks, with her matching fuzzy top and yellow spiked hair, attracted more attention than Harry, which was a nice change.

After eating, as the sun set behind the buildings, they walked a distance to a place Tonks liked to go to dance. It was below ground and very large. It was also relatively deserted on a Sunday. The bouncer at the door paid them no heed beyond giving Tonks a nice hello that sounded insinuating to Harry.

Inside, ten or so couples gyrated on the dark dance floor, outlined by the changing colored lights behind them. With a grin Tonks led him over and cajoled him into joining in. The song shifted to another one. Harry counted out a swing rhythm and took Tonk’s hands.

“Where did you learn to dance?” she asked as they moved around the floor.

“I hate to admit it, but McGonagall.”

She laughed. “Poor Harry,” she said in humor. “You’re pretty good though.”

“I had a lot of practice at the Christmas Ball.”

They chatted about school. Harry asked about the apprenticeship, reluctantly, since he worried that if he got too tied up in it and was rejected, he would be really sunk.

The song shifted to a slow one and Tonks moved in close. This made it easier to talk over the music.

“So, how is it having a dad after all this time?”

Harry shrugged to buy time. He had not been required to answer that question for a while. “I like it. I like knowing if I need something, he can’t turn me away.”

“That’s what you like?” she asked in surprise. “You really haven’t had anyone to rely on, have you?” she asked in a gentle tone.

“Guess not,” Harry answered stiffly.

She frowned and changed the topic.

During the fourth song, Tonks tensed and watched something over Harry’s shoulder. Harry glanced that way, but didn’t see anything or anyone in particular. Tonks huffed in annoyance and steered them to another part of the dance floor.

“Someone here you don’t want to see?” Harry guessed.

“Ex-boyfriend,” she said darkly. After dancing for a while longer in a manner that Harry was certain was designed to keep them from being recognized, she said, “Let’s sit down. I’m thirsty.”

She took his hand and led him to a high side table with permanent stools around it. The bartender came around immediately.

“I’ll have a scotch and he’ll have a…an ale.”

The bartender glanced closely at Harry before stepping away, but came back a few minutes later with their drinks. Harry sipped at his. He thought it could have stood to have been sweeter, but it wasn’t bad. Tonks poured a dash of water into her tumbler of amber liquid before sipping it.

“I have tomorrow off. First day in two weeks.” After a minute of silence she added, “Being an Auror is too much work, Harry,” as though warning him off from the whole notion.

Harry didn’t reply. He was watching a man on the other side of the dance floor who was looking at Tonks’ back. Her hair was still spiky yellow, which really gave her away. Harry thought then that she should have turned it black or some other normal color.

The man approached, leading a young woman by the hand. They were both exquisitely dressed.

“Tonks,” the man greeted her unctuously when he reached their table.

His dark hair was styled foppishly and it flipped down when he leaned over and rested his elbow on the table facing her. Harry disliked him instantly.

Tonks gave no indication that she felt anything. “Hello Rick,” she said evenly.

“How have you been?” he asked, then didn’t wait for a reply as he said, “Have you met Tara?”

He pulled the fair-haired, tight-skirted woman closer to the table. Tara looked as though she wanted to resist but gave in and held out a hand in greeting. Tonks shook it with a touch of coldness.

Rick was going on in the same smooth tone, “Tara is working at the bank. Father and her actually get along, can you imagine?”

Rick leaned over the table, even more pointedly ignoring Harry, who decided that this was just as well. Harry assumed the man would bore of this game and leave soon enough, although the topics of the bank and father seemed to supply a lot of potential material. Harry automatically assumed they were Muggles, but a little magic was dropped through the conversation, changing that assumption, and really, they didn’t seem Muggle, despite the super nice clothes.

Finally, as though just noticing Tonks had a companion, Rick turned to Harry. “Oh,” he said in a kind of girlish way. “Name’s Richard, by the way. Richard Guilderchild.”

With deliberately slow, calm movement, Harry accepted the pro-offered hand. “Harry Potter,” he said, very evenly.

The man froze, which Harry resisted reacting to.

“Well, you are,” Rick said, sounding stunned. He turned to Tara and leaned close to her. She was standing with her lean arms crossed, looking like she wished she were elsewhere. “It’s Harry Potter,” he said to her, still surprised.

She blinked and found Harry’s eyes and presumably his scar. Tonks gave Harry a roll of the eyes.

“Well,” Rick offered, “why don’t we join you for a drink?”

Harry thought of saying, why don’t you not? as the man smoothly took one of the other stools and gestured for Tara to do the same, all while simultaneously waving to the bartender.

Harry shot Tonks an apologetic look and received a disbelieving one in return. “So,” Rick said breathily if not a little hungrily, “you are the, what does the chocolate frog card say…?”

“Destroyer of Voldemort,” Harry finished for him, wanting to rattle the man if possible. He definitely got the girlfriend with that one.

“Yes,” Rick said with more than a hint of pleasure. “So what are you doing with yourself now?” he asked, then ordered drinks for himself and Tara when the bartender appeared.

“I’m in school,” Harry said. “I’ve applied to the Auror’s program.”

“Ah, well, you are in good company here, then,” he said with a glance at Tonks.

Harry looked at Tonks as well, with a look he hoped conveyed some of his feelings. “Tonks is the reason I want to be an Auror,” he said honestly, his gaze not wavering. “She’s my inspiration.” Her lips curled into a true smile, making Harry very glad he had said it.

“That’s very sweet,” Tara said.

The drinks arrived. Rick accepted his and immediately began clinking the ice in it.

Harry turned to the girlfriend. “What do you do?” he asked.

She smiled lightly. “I work in finance at Bennett’s of London. We do a lot of cross Muggle-Wizard project financing.”

Harry nodded sagely in a way he hoped looked knowledgeable. He didn’t want to ask how that differed from accounting.

“Do you like it?” Harry asked.

“It’s interesting and sometimes a lot of work,” she said, seeming surprised to be addressed again.

“We are working with Goodley and Stevens right now,” Rick put in but Harry had no idea who they were. “Where do you live?” Rick then asked Harry.

“Shrewsthorpe,” Harry replied, wondering how to get rid of him.

Maybe they needed to finish their drinks and claim another appointment, he thought. He took a big gulp of ale to that end. Tonks had already finished her drink and waved for another. She seemed to be trying for a different kind of exit.

“Oh, you are very close to Riverden,” Rick said. “The Freelander Estate encompasses it. It is just lovely. I was there once as a boy,” he added as though this fact were important to share.

“We were there for Boxing Day dinner,” Harry said evenly. “It is a big place. The stables were bigger than our house,” he quipped to Tonks.

Rick froze at that. “You were?” He reassessed Harry at this point, seeming conflicted with his clothes and that notion.

Tonks said, in the air of one forced to participate, “He has a lot of horses, then?”

“Freelander only introduced us to the first twelve or so, but there were a lot more for just riding.” Harry decided to just pretend it was him and Tonks. “I’d thought they were like Thestrals but his steeplechasers are huge animals. And they aren’t magical, so how one controls them…” He looked alarmed at the notion.

Tara laughed. “They are usually pretty easy-going,” she said, then backed off on her bright expression.

“Really?” Harry asked her quickly, afraid she assumed she had insulted him.

Rick nursed his drink, standoffish and fidgety now.

Tara relaxed a little. “Depends on the breed. I wouldn’t have ridden my brother’s Arabian for anything…it was totally out of control. My Morgan was like a big kitten for personality.”

“Huh,” Harry said. “Does sound like fun. But not worth getting adopted for,” he murmured to Tonks, whose eyes went wide at that, so he gave her a mischievous grin.

Rick gave him a close one as though dearly wanting to know what he had said.

A slow song started up. Harry stood and held his hand out to Tonks. “I promised the next slow one, remember?”

She set her fresh drink down with a thud and jumped off her stool to join him. When they were out on the floor, she said, “You are better at socializing than I imagined. Sorry about him.” She laughed then. “You really knocked him with that comment about Boxing Day.”

“It was some big event. I didn’t realize when I accepted the invitation,” Harry complained a bit.

“You were serious?” she asked, amazed. “I thought you made that up.”

“No,” Harry said. “I wouldn’t make things up to impress Mr. Guilderchild there. Are you joking?” he felt vaguely disappointed in her assumption.

“I’m sorry,” Tonks said, “Of course you wouldn’t. One of the things I like about you. Of the many.”

Harry smiled and dropped his gaze.

“That and your humbleness, which always astounds me. You are the opposite of him. Totally opposite.”

“I hope so,” Harry said forcefully, making her laugh. He noticed in relief that the other couple were finishing their drinks and departing from the table. “So, I’m not sure the best way to ask this but…”

“What did I see in him?” she finished for him. At Harry’s nod, she replied with a strained expression, “I’m not sure. He impressed my parents. He impressed me at first, frankly, but that wore off. Once everyone around you keeps saying how great it is that you are on the right track finally, it gets hard to get off the train.”

Harry tried to imagine that and his face must have revealed something because she added, “When he turned his charm on just the right way, I could overlook a lot. And surprisingly few see past it, even though you weren’t fooled at all.”

They danced another song, a faster one, without separating. Harry was deciding that he really preferred slow dancing better. He and Tonks were exactly the same height, so they moved with surprisingly little awkwardness around the floor.

Several songs later, Tonks was dancing even closer, which was starting to affect him. The room felt too warm and the gaps where they moved apart felt too long. He pulled her closer without thinking, which brought a sharp look from her, a surprised and calculating one.

Harry dropped his arms and turned to walk back to the table since the song was winding down anyway. At the table, his ale was too warm. He drank a big gulp of it anyway, feeling the need for anything that might calm him down.

Tonks didn’t comment, but she did have a very small smile on her face. They finished their drinks in silence.

“Another round? Or do you want to go?” she asked.

“Maybe go,” Harry said. He checked his pocket watch. It was just before eleven.

As they passed the bar, Tonks waved to the bartender and tossed a Muggle note on the bar. The bartender nodded goodbye with a wink. Out on the street it felt fresh and quiet, letting Harry relax. It was chilly now, making him glad he had worn his warm cloak.

“It’s still pretty early,” she said, sounding reluctant to quit the evening. “How does tea and biscuits sound to you?”

“Pretty good,” Harry conceded. “Somewhere quiet?”

“Sure.”

They walked back to the parlor where they had used the Floo incoming. It was empty this time for which Harry was grateful. He was tired of verbal jousting. Tonks stepped into the Floo and gave a location followed by a password. When she was gone, Harry followed.

They landed in a small flat with shelves lining the walls with all kinds of things on them. An owl fluttered in a cage in the corner.

“This your place?” Harry asked.

“Yep,” she replied. “You said ‘quiet’.”

“I did, didn’t I,” Harry said, feeling his nerves perking up. He took a seat at the small table near the stove as she made tea.

She eventually placed the pot on the table and opened the biscuit tin. “Help yourself.”

Harry, feeling hungry despite the big dinner he had had, accepted eagerly. The tea steeped and she poured out cups for each of them. Harry sipped his gratefully. The sudden silence was still ringing in his ears and the ale had made him groggy.

Two cups later, Tonks stood to clear things away. Harry had relaxed now, feeling less anxious about being at her place. She brought a few things back over from the shelves. One of them was a picture of her in surprisingly dull black robe and cloak, finishing the Auror’s program. Harry looked at her glowing smile in the photo. As the photo moved, a middle-aged man put his hand around her shoulders proudly.

“Three years of training goes fast,” she said wistfully.

“How many people apply normally?”

“Six or so take the tests. More apply but are rejected. I think you’ll do fine on the tests.”

She held up the other thing. It looked like a large glass marble with swirling colors. It was a little dusty.

“What’s that?” Harry asked.

She handed it over. It had many balls inside one another each floating in a clear liquid. When shifted, it clunked inside as the spheres bumped.

She replied, “A Promise Ball, which it occurred to me that I could break now. Severus fulfilled it for me.”

“What was it?” he asked, handing it back.

“A promise I made to myself to get you away from your aunt and uncle the first chance possible. I actually yelled at Dumbledore after the rescue, which stuns me even now to remember. He finally explained why you had to be there, which didn’t help much.” She tossed the ball in the air. “It bothered me a lot, like a whole lot, thinking of you there, so someone suggested using one of these to ease my mind. It worked. It magically binds you to take action when you can so you can relax and not obsess in the interim.”

She stood and tossed it into the hearth where it smashed in a bright white flame. The shards crackled and fell through the grate. As she stepped back to the table, she put a hand on Harry’s shoulder from behind.

“It’s good to see you doing so well.” Her hand shifted to trail through his hair. “Everyone says that, you know, comments on how well you are doing.”

Harry sighed in embarrassment and crossed his arms. She bent over to reach swiftly around him and forced them uncrossed, holding his wrists so he couldn’t lift them. Her cheek was pressed against his from behind as she held that position. When she did move, it was to bend down to kiss him on the neck lightly.

Harry couldn’t seem to draw a breath. Maybe that wasn’t too much of a surprise as his chest had turned to putty. His will had gone. He held still and waited for something else to happen.

Tonks pulled him to his feet and kissed him fiercely, pressing him back over the table. Harry found he did have will, at least to pull her tighter.

Harry woke with a start. “What time is it?” he asked. As memory flooded back, he was glad for the darkness because if the burn in his cheeks was any indication, he was blushing pretty badly.

“Ten to four,” came the groggy reply.

Harry forced his heart to slow down. Snape would probably not be in before breakfast, or much before. Tonks shifted closer and Harry started yet again at the feel of so much of someone else’s skin. From the sound of her sigh, he assumed she intended to simply fall back to sleep. Harry was wide awake and almost in panic. He lay in the darkness listening to her breathe and dwelling in memory until grey dawn lit the flat’s single window.

In the eye-straining light, Harry sat up, rousing Tonks from sleep. “I should go,” he said. “I really don’t know what Severus will think if I’m not there.” Harry had left a note, but it just seemed much simpler to avoid any conversation at all on the topic of his evening out.

She stretched and sat up, uncaring apparently about covers or not. “I can’t imagine he’d care, but who knows,” she said, yawning. “I couldn’t imagine him as the father type, either.”

She rubbed her eyes and pushed her rampantly blue hair back. Harry thought that she looked pretty nice. When she stood up with a mumble about making breakfast, he thought that even more so. He also thought that looking closely, in the long run, wasn’t going to do him much good.

He sat down at the small table by the stove as she plunked down toast and hazelnut butter. She was only wearing a fuzzy pink robe. Harry, on the other hand, had got completely dressed before daring to emerge from the covers.

Tonks sat across from Harry and sipped a steaming hot mug of tea. She put her hand on her forehead and considered him in depth. “I keep trying to regret what I did, but I can’t.”

Harry didn’t know how to respond to that. He certainly didn’t regret beyond the ongoing embarrassment that he could not shake. In this, he apparently could not avoid learning about himself without whomever he was with learning it too. That had not occurred to him before. Nor had it ever occurred to him that Tonks may have been named appropriately.

“How are you?” she asked.

“Good,” Harry replied with certainty, making her laugh.

“I stretched a few Ministry rules, I’m sure.” She sighed. “Good thing your application hasn’t been accepted yet. Once it has, I’m essentially your boss, or one of them.”

She sipped her tea again. “We can’t repeat this,” she said, sounding like she was talking to herself more than to Harry.

Harry had a feeling, in a week or so, that was going to seem more cruel than it did at this moment. “Yup,” he said in agreement.

Harry was sitting, studying diligently, at the dining room table when Snape appeared from the Floo around ten in the morning. Harry managed a casual greeting, although he was Occluding his mind when he lifted his gaze from his book.

Snape seemed distracted, so it probably didn’t matter. He said, “I need to visit Diagon Alley for some supplies, if you would like to accompany me.”

Eager for a break, Harry put his books aside and stood to fetch his cloak. As he returned and hooked it around his collar, he was amazed that there was not some blatantly obvious difference in him announcing what had happened to the world. Snape seemed completely oblivious, which wouldn’t be like him at all. Fighting a blush, Harry grabbed a handful of Floo powder and ducked into the hearth to hide his complexion.

They walked along Diagon Alley away from Gringott’s, where Harry had withdrawn what now seemed like an exorbitant number of Galleons. Good thing he didn’t go out for dinner at nice restaurants regularly, he thought with some stress.

“I need to get something from a shop down this way,” Snape said, indicating Knockturn Alley. When Harry hesitated, looking down the street with sharp eyes, Snape said, “Never been?”

“Uh, once…accidentally. Hagrid rescued me, fortunately.” Harry still did not like the looks of the place.

“I truly do not think you will have a problem, O, Destroyer of Voldemort.”

Harry frowned at him. “Well, go on then,” Harry urged with stung pride while indicating that Snape should lead the way.

Far from having a problem, Harry seemed to be upsetting the economy of the place. Many grimy witches and wizards ducked out of the way or Disapparated when their startled gaze fell upon him. A few remained as they were, giving Harry a measuring look as though wondering how much he really could do.

“Far less crowded than expected,” Snape stated airily, when they reached a shop called Fiddlesticks and Sone. Snape stood outside and waited for the proprietor to appear. An extremely thin, old man with a hump and sparse straggly red hair eventually emerged from the dark interior. Snape handed him a list. The man squinted at it with a foul expression before approximately smiling and shuffling back inside.

“It is best to remain on the street,” Snape said as they waited.

Harry rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Late night?” Snape asked as a pair of hunched-over hags spotted Harry and promptly turned around and walked the other way.

“Loads of clubs in London, it turns out,” Harry explained, avoiding Snape’s gaze as he remembered the whole night yet again. This led to his limbs going tingly even through his tiredness. He leaned on a barrel of Black Cat syrup and closed his eyes to rest them. He opened them when he heard the voice of the shopkeeper. The shriveled old man handed over a ratty basket and Snape handed him some coins. Harry watched this in a daze.

“Let’s go,” Snape said easily. He stepped past Harry who followed automatically.

As he turned with another yawn, Harry realized with a jolt that there was one dark shape in his mind ahead of him, and one dark shape behind him. He grabbed a handful of the back of Snape’s cloak and pulled. His heart was racing as he responded to Snape’s questioning look.

“Shadow,” Harry breathed.

Snape went instantly on alert. He grabbed Harry’s upper arm and demanded, “Where?”

“Behind me,” Harry whispered.

Snape peered sharply over Harry’s shoulder as he surreptitiously pulled out his wand. His eyes moved avidly back and forth along the alley. Harry turned slowly around as well, trying not to attract attention as he did it. He pulled his wand out of his pocket and into his sleeve, holding it where it wasn’t visible. He didn’t see anyone he recognized among the black robed figures standing in small clusters talking or moving with laden baskets and cauldrons among the shops.

“I assume you are certain about what you sense,” Snape queried.

“Yes.”

“Which one do you sense?”

“Did. I’m fully awake now. And I can’t tell who it is anyway.” He almost pointed out that all the shadows in his vision were alike, but censored it.

“Go inside,” Snape said. “Call the Auror’s office.”

Harry obeyed. Inside the shop, he discovered that the bent-over man who had come out earlier was the son. An incredibly wizened old wizard sat at a counter logging the latest sale.

“I need to use your Floo,” Harry said.

The son shuffled over to him, his eye twitching. “You are the Boy Who Lived?”

“Uh, yeah.” Harry decided not to quibble about the term ‘boy’ just now.

A little peeved the man said, “Go on, then,” as he gestured at the small hearth. “Who’s to stop ya?”

Harry dashed over to the aged marble hearth and took out his pocket canister of Floo Powder and tossed some in. When he announced that he wanted the Ministry Auror office, the proprietor gagged in surprise behind him. Rogan’s head appeared and Harry explained that he’d seen one of the remaining Death Eaters on Knockturn Alley.

By the time Harry stood up, four Aurors had Apparated into the shop. Tonks stepped over to Harry, who noticed that the shopkeepers had vanished along with half the contents of the shelves.

“Whom did you see?” she asked him. Nothing but professional focus showed in her posture, stabilizing Harry’s heart rate. On the other hand, Harry resisted explaining his Voldemort inherited vision to her or anyone connected to the Ministry.

Considering that a fifty-fifty chance was a pretty good one, Harry randomly said, “Jugson, I think. It was pretty quick though,” he added to try to insure they considered either possibility.

The Aurors went out to the alley. Harry’s gaze raised to Snape’s just inside the doorway of the shop. He didn’t react at all to Harry’s lie.

Harry approached him slowly, and when he came aside, Snape commanded, “Stay in here while they sweep the alley.”

Presently, the Aurors returned and reentered the shop. The section of alley Harry could see through the grimy window was now utterly deserted.

Rogan said, “I didn’t like the answers Burke gave. Really didn’t.”

The others hadn’t turned up anything. “We’ll set up a stakeout then,” one of the others said. Harry didn’t know his name, he looked a lot older than the others. “You are certain you saw one of them, Mr. Potter?”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said, comfortable being certain with that answer.

No one argued with him or expressed any doubt.

Uneasiness haunted Harry that evening at the house. His emotions teetered between feeling euphoric and feeling cheated out of having his life to himself again.

During dinner, Snape stated, “I am quite certain you are safe here, now. The spells will hold against even three or four attacking together.”

“It isn’t that.” Harry tore his bread into many small pieces as he collected his thoughts. “I don’t want this vision anymore,” he complained. “I’m tired of it.” As he painstakingly buttered the many chunks of squashed bread he wondered if that were really true. He didn’t mind, really, sensing that Snape was nearby.

Snape put down his utensils and held his mug without drinking from it. In a low voice he said, “I don’t believe anything can be done.”

“I didn’t think so. And I wasn’t asking you to try, just…wish things were different,” he said wryly. “I’ve been doing less of that lately,” he added, “which is good.”

Snape topped up his mug of mead from the bottle on the table and sat back, cradling it in his long hands. “You really wish none of it had happened?”

Harry poked at his roast ox and Yorkshire pudding with his fork. “I don’t know. Mostly. Though I’d be someone else in that case, which might not be better.”

“You would still be with your parents, presumably,” Snape observed levelly.

The comment felt a bit like bait, since Harry didn’t know what Snape was getting at. With honesty he said, “I can’t imagine that anymore—haven’t been able to for some time.” He felt a little guilty at that notion but couldn’t resolve it with a daydream that had drifted too far into fantasy. “It’s the killing and fighting I could have skipped.”

Snape returned to eating, appearing more relaxed. “And becoming an Auror will certainly isolate you from more of that,” he stated with his classic snarkiness.

“I’ll be old enough to deal with it and trained to,” Harry pointed out. “I expect that will make a difference.”

Snape nodded sideways, his way of acknowledging a point, but also doubting it.

After dinner they settled into the library. Harry had no desire to study so he pulled a book off the shelf on Muggle-safe illusion spells instead.

The library was silent beyond the turning of pages, the lamp flames still and tall. Harry’s mind wandered back to last night. He marveled at how much he had learned, too much to absorb it all at once, apparently, because the knowledge would sneak up on him at random times, as it did now.

Harry stood up and changed books even though he wasn’t finished with the one he was reading, simply needed the distraction.

Snape sat at his desk in the drawing room. It was Wednesday, which meant half of the holiday had gone already. He sorted through his old files, tossing things he didn’t need into the hearth and a summer fire he had started just for that purpose. The window was wide open and a pleasant breeze carried away the extra heat.

Harry knocked on the doorframe. “There’s a picnic this afternoon at the Burrow. I told Ron I’d come. Did you want to go?”

Snape considered Harry as he stood in his doorway in old jeans and a Chudley Cannons t-shirt. While every Weasley offspring strongly disliked him, Harry’s presence would most likely negate a great deal of it. “I am enjoying the quiet,” he replied.

“That’s true. It probably won’t be quiet there. All right then,” Harry said. His tone almost could have been considered disappointed.

“I assume it goes without saying, remain with the group at all times.”

“Yep. I will. I’ll be back late, I think.” He added over his shoulder as he departed, “So you know.”

Snape just barely heard the flare of the Floo Powder over the wind in the trees across the street. He pulled out another stack of files and sorted through them. In the last file he found the old letter from Dumbledore that had been left for him after the wizard’s death. The flap was open now. Snape set it aside until he had finished sorting through the entire drawer and had closed it with a satisfying thud. He leaned back in his chair and reluctantly pulled out the missive. The yellowing on the envelope made him expect that the letter would contain old notions. Within the envelope was a note card, with writing only on the inside, although the text was small and cramped as though the words had been forced to make space for each other.

Dearest Severus,

I would firstly like to thank you for your years of service. Once you came to me, you were the most faithful of servants, in all ways. Perhaps because your choices were so clear to you. Secondly, I want to express my gratitude again for your taking on my last unfinished task.

 

Snape stopped there and huffed as he changed his understanding of the letter. The old wizard had charmed the entire message, not just the envelope. The envelope might very well have been sealed ten years previously as the color indicated.

By now his presence is most likely a given. It has been a year, and that can seem a very long time.

Snape blinked at that. A year? he wondered, before he understood Dumbledore meant a year from rescuing the boy from the Forbidden Forest. He felt consternation that the old wizard would have considered that so significant. On the other hand it did seem in retrospect an incredibly long time. Literally everything had changed in the interim.

Harry is incredibly special, although I suspect you still will not admit that. All the more reason to remind you once again. For him to be more than a vehicle of all our freedom, he needed more than he was getting. Understanding. Loyalty. Security. Consideration. By now you realize, I’m sure, how straightforward these things are to provide. You’ve already commented to me about his fierce loyalty and I know firsthand your own capacity for it. A good match, I’ll always believe strongly, for that and other reasons. Learn how to receive these things in return, Severus, and I will truly feel I have tied up every loose end.

It was signed neatly below. Snape closed the card, feeling a little annoyed with the dead wizard, which even he could not be for long. He opened the card again to glance over it and noticed that a postscript had magically appeared at the bottom:

“Loyalty” was always a safe euphemism to use with you.

Snape slapped the card closed, now definitely annoyed. He re-filed it with his other old letters from the former headmaster and found something to read to force it out of his mind.

Harry did return very late. It was almost two, a whole twelve hours after he had left. Snape was reading with a pot of tea at the dining room table.

“You’re still awake,” Harry said. “I didn’t realize you were going to wait up for me.”

“I wasn’t precisely.”

“Oh, good.” Harry took a seat across from his parent. His head pounded a bit, so he rubbed his temples. “It was a big party,” he said. “A bunch of Ministry people and some from Gringott’s, although no goblins. All the neighbors. Actually had enough for a real Quidditch match. You’ll be pleased to hear I was at Chaser this time. Lots of younger kids wanted to play, so there were three Seekers per side.”

“And you were the main attraction?” Snape prompted dryly.

“For a little while,” he admitted with a frown, remembering autographing odd things people happened to have on hand, like Muggle money or even clothing. “And the kids were scared of me at first—I really hate that.”

Snape put down his book. “They assume that since you did the impossible that you can do anything. Children are wary of that kind of power, for good reason, frankly.”

Harry looked at him closely. “Have you been drinking some of the weird things they were serving tonight?”

“As someone who knows intimately what can go wrong with bad brewing, I assiduously avoid unknown concoctions.” Snape squinted at Harry as he rubbed his temple again. “Were you not avoiding them?”

Reluctantly, Harry admitted, “I tried a few. Nothing that was on fire permanently. That was my rule.”

“Pity. All kinds of intoxicating things burn off very easily.” Snape stood and leaned over the table to look closely into Harry eyes. “At least your pupils are equally dilated and not excessively so. Want something for that headache?”

“You have something?”

Snape looked insulted. “Of course.”

“I guess I shouldn’t doubt you.”

“I should say not.” Snape left the room. He returned a few minutes later with three bottles of liquid. He poured a splash of each of them into a teacup. The result fizzed bright pink. He pushed it over to Harry.

“Thanks.” Harry drank it down, swallowing bubbles to do so. His head cleared instantly. “You really are very good at those,” he said honestly. “If that could be made into a sweet, you could license it to Fred and George.” He held the teacup up. “Professor Snape’s Plain-thinking Pop-ups.”

“And clearly you spent far too much time speaking with those two this evening.”

“About two hours. More. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they have going on. Scares me. Doesn’t scare Ron or Ginny though. They just come back with some idea even more frightening.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Really much better,” he said. “What is in Absinthe anyway?” he asked in distracted curiosity.

Snape actually laughed. “Perhaps I should accompany you next time,” he said, shaking his head.

Harry’s sleep degraded that night making him decide that Snape’s remedy hadn’t completely cleared up everything he had experimented with drinking.

The next day the weather grew warmer yet and the lure of fresh air drew Harry outside. There was a very old stone seat in the garden beside the door. He took his History of Magic textbook out there and set about clearing aside the ivy that had grown over the bench. As he did this, he noticed that roses grew beside it, nearly choked out. The yellow buds were tiny as a result. With hands on hips, Harry surveyed the small area. At one point it had been laid out in a fairly organized manner.

With an eye toward putting off studying, Harry took his book inside and grabbed a pair of old dragonhide gloves that sat on the shelf above the coats. He also grabbed the orange Cannon’s hat Ron had given him at the party the night before. It was a Muggle-safe hat that only showed a player on a broomstick when one was actually at a match, otherwise it was blank.

With his eyes and hands protected, Harry attacked the ivy, tossing the yanked strands into the center of the bricked path from the gate. The dragonhide gloves made it easy to work around the roses and soon they were looking much happier and unencumbered.

Harry became so engrossed in the weeding that he didn’t notice the door open. “What are you doing?” Snape asked.

Harry looked up from his kneeling position in the grass as he carefully pulled up something that was crowding out some bulbs that had emerged. He thought over his response. “Avoiding studying?” he replied.

Snape shot him a dubious look. “You are not a servant, Potter.”

“I know that,” Harry answered sharply. “I like doing this,” he added as he pulled up a long runner root of a small poplar that needed to come out. Indeed, yard chores were the few tasks the Dursleys had made him do that he hadn’t abhorred. He had always thought it was because it let him spend time away from them, but it felt like more than that now. “You’re not worried about what the neighbors’ll think, are you?” Harry asked challengingly.

“Certainly not,” Snape huffed and went back inside with a swish of his robe.

Harry grinned as he easily pulled up the poplar now that its roots were exposed.

He weeded the house side of the garden before stepping back and reassessing. It occurred to him only now that there most likely were spells to accomplish this in a matter of minutes or seconds. Snape probably thought he was being the nutter Muggle for doing it by hand. It felt more satisfying this way, and it passed more time he would otherwise be reading History of Magic.

Someone had rather carefully laid out the garden long ago. Surrounding the bench were roses and some other small-leafed shrub he didn’t recognize and beside that was a low bed of bulbs and in the corner, ivy emerged, meant to cover just the stone wall. He tapped his finger on his leg—he needed mulch to really finish the job by covering the newly exposed ground.

As he wondered where he would get some, light footsteps came along the road and stopped beside the gate. Harry turned and found himself face to face with the girl he had been watching every day from his window over the previous summer. Bit of a shock really, seeing her so close, where she could see him too.

“Hi,” Harry said. She was not wearing the slicker today, but a short woolen cloak.

“Hello,” she replied with a hint of uncertainty. “Do you live here?” she asked, eyes glancing down to his clay-clumped gloves, then his green and brown stained knees.

“Yes,” Harry replied as he stooped to toss some stray strands of ivy onto the pile.

“Hm. I didn’t realize there was anyone else in the Snape household,” she said, sounding concerned to not be up on this. “This is still Severus Snape’s house, correct?”

“Yes,” Harry replied. He was taking advantage of the close proximity to fill in his understanding of her looks. Her skin was almost too smooth, and transparent, and her nose definitely too pert, especially in view of the very proper accent. He pulled his hand, still clean, out of his glove and offered it. “I’m Harry, by the way.”

“Oh,” she said as though realizing her manners had been set aside. “Elizabeth. Peterson. My house is down the road two hundred meters or so past the station.”

“Yes, I’ve seen you walking by a few times.”

This appeared to unnerve her a bit. She blinked and recovered with ease and said, “I go to my lessons every day, almost, over the holidays. Piano and harp from Mrs. Blithewell, just around the corner.” She pointed as she said this.

Harry, wondering fiercely if she were a witch or not and, thinking that he had little to lose, said, “Would you like to come in for tea?”

“Oh,” she said in vaguely pleasant surprise. “My lesson is in five minutes, so I really can’t. Perhaps another time.”

“Sure,” Harry said with no expectation.

She bade him a pleasant day and went on her way. He watched her back as it disappeared around the gentle bend in the road. He suspected he may have spent too much time wondering about her—she seemed downright ordinary, really. Or maybe he was comparing her to Tonks. The latter seemed more likely, as he warmed at thinking of the Auror. He really needed to avoid making that a habit.

Just before noon, when Harry was finally settling in for a good long read of Astronomy, a knock sounded on the door. A little mystified, Harry went to open it.

Ginny stood in the garden, looking rosy as though from a brisk walk. “’Ello,” she said.

“Hi,” Harry returned. “Come in,” he invited, scratching his head idly. “Just wake up from the party?”

She hesitated. “Yeah,” she admitted. “You left early, you know.”

Harry shrugged, thinking he had been finished hours before he had actually left, and most of it was a blur.

“Did you get in trouble for being out so late?” she asked as she stepped in and eyed the entryway keenly.

“No.” At her surprised look he shrugged as though not understanding her disbelief.

Harry led her into the main hall and wondered if he should force her to say hello to Snape. His guardian saved him the decision as he stepped out of the library with a book under his arm.

“Ms. Weasley,” Snape said in a manner of greeting.

“Sir,” she replied, straightening as she did so. She gave Harry an uncomfortable look when Snape disappeared into the drawing room.

Harry gestured toward the dining room. Once there, they sat down across from each other at the table. He assumed Winky would bring tea.

“Enjoying the holiday?” Harry asked.

“Yes,” she replied forcefully. “One more term ’til summer,” she added in a mantra-like way.

“Don’t like school?”

“I dislike the book work. Well, and the assignments.” She sniffed. “And sitting in classes.”

Winky came in with a tea set, startling Ginny severely. “You have a house-elf?” she asked in complete shock.

“Yes,” Harry answered, intentionally in a tone that indicated he thought it the most normal thing in the world. He wanted to see how she reacted. She looked confused. After Winky shifted everything from her tray, he thanked her and poured for Ginny. Winky gave them a little curtsy, which wasn’t normal, and departed. Harry tried not to appear too mystified by that, since it dismayed Ginny more.

Ginny sipped her tea. “So how is your holiday going?” she asked in a normal chummy voice.

I got shagged, so it is going pretty well, Harry considered saying, then almost laughed. “Good. Fun party last night,” he said quickly to cover after a long throat clearing. “And I’m finally meeting the neighbors here a bit.”

Ginny sipped her tea before setting it down on the saucer and straightening both with unusual precision. “Do you like me?” she asked suddenly.

“Uh, you’re nice,” Harry replied.

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. Harry avoided smiling with some effort. Ginny ate a biscuit and glanced around the room with interest. “Nice house,” she said.

“Thanks. It’s nice to have one.”

“Oh yeah. I ’spose it would be. Hope I’m not keeping you from something by being here.”

Harry shook his head. “I have studying to do. Take your time.”

She chuckled at that. “You have been a real bookworm. Don’t know what happened to the fun Harry.”

“I wasn’t fun at the party?” Harry asked.

“I didn’t get to talk to you much—you were always surrounded, either by the kids or my brothers.” She took another biscuit. “Well, one term more,” she said again, sounding glum.

As though mention of school had conjured him, Snape stepped in. He poured himself a cup and held it. “Revising hard this break, Ms. Weasley?”

“Trying to, sir. My brothers—who don’t have any school assignments hanging over them—like to throw big parties.”

“Poor dear,” Snape said in a classically snide tone.

Harry gave him a warning look.

Looking uncomfortable in Snape’s presence, Ginny drank her tea quickly. Harry poured her more and took another biscuit so that she would take another. She smiled, apparently noticing his urging her to stay a while.

An awkward minute later, Snape set his cup down and rolled up one sleeve, presumably since it was warming up in the house. “Staying for lunch, Ms. Weasley?” he asked, making it sound less like an invitation than a point of interest.

“Uh, no. I don’t think so.” She swigged the last of her tea and stood up. “Nice to visit a bit, Harry,” she said quickly.

Harry showed her to the door and waved her out of the garden. She gave him a fleeting glance over the shoulder that had more furrow to the brow than expected. Back in the drawing room, Harry said to Snape, “Did you chase her off on purpose?”

“No Weasley was ever chased off that easily,” Snape replied as he looked for something in the little drawer of the desk.

“Yeah, I suppose,” Harry agreed and stepped away.

When Harry slept badly the second night after the party, he wasn’t so certain that his alcohol and potion consumption was the culprit. Saturday morning, after another poor night, he mentioned it at breakfast.

“The Ministry hasn’t caught the Death Eaters you ‘saw.’ Are shadows involved in your dreams?” Snape asked.

“I’m not sure. Possibly,” he answered with a frown. He had grown accustomed to not being harassed this way and hated to imagine it was happening again. Plates with extra bacon appeared, spurring Harry to take up his fork.

“Need potion?”

Harry shook his head. “I have some.”

After a moment Snape added, “You may wake me in the night if you need someone to talk to.”

“I appreciate that,” Harry said, with a twinge of gratitude as he wrapped a long greasy strip around his fork.

That afternoon, Harry again grew bored of doing assignments. Thinking about the unfinished garden made him eager to continue on it. He decided to check the back garden where an old wardrobe, charmed to resist the rain, stood in for a shed. He found a claw shaped tool that would be good for loosening the hard soil and fertilizer in the form of a large woven sack of dragon dung—so old, it smelled fresh—so old, it would stand in for mulch in a pinch.

Harry carried his haul back around to the front and arranged it all before starting in. He used the claw tool around the plants and pulled up stray weeds he had missed last time, after deciding that they weren’t magically growing back that quickly. He considered that would be a rather cruel way to curse a garden.

Footsteps came along the brick walk. Harry sat back from crawling around the shrubs to use the claw along the edge of the wall.

“I have a few errands on Diagon Alley,” Snape said. “I assume you are safe to leave for an hour or so. I am certain you would render either Jugson or Avery helpless with laughter were they to approach while you’re are doing that.” Harry tried to give him a dark look, but failed. Snape went on, in the same tone of dry, airy disbelief, “Barring that, I am certain you could beat them off with that thing you are holding.”

Chuckling, Harry said, “Too bad if you don’t like it. I’m doing it anyway.”

“Hm,” Snape muttered before disappearing back into the house.

Harry was just finishing mulching and was pretty happy with the way it all looked, when he turned and eyed the other tangled half. He thought maybe he should have had Snape buy a book of gardening spells while he was out.

“Hello again,” Elizabeth said from just the other side of the low wall by the road.

Harry spun around and adjusted his cap as he greeted her. He realized that because if it, she didn’t know who he was. “How does it look?”

“Vastly improved,” she stated.

“That’s what I thought,” Harry said happily, surveying it again.

“You must really dislike studying,” she commented, looking around.

“History, yes,” Harry said. “Boring as it gets.”

“I like history,” she said. “Classes at Malvern are always at least somewhat interesting.”

“Where’s that?” Harry asked, never having heard of it. It didn’t sound magical.

“Worcestershire.” She pulled off her white gloves and put them in her pocket. “Where do you go to school?”

Harry grinned as he thought of replying St. Brutus’. “A boarding school in Scotland,” he said with a shrug.

“With a boring History class,” she added for him.

Harry considered that if he explained that it was boring because the professor was dead, that might not go over so well. “Yes,” he replied simply. “Would you like tea?” he asked, sensing that she was impatient about something.

“Yes, please,” she replied eagerly, taking Harry by surprise, mostly because he had not imagined he had pinned her motivations correctly.

Harry led the way inside, dropping his gloves just inside the door and intentionally forgetting to remove his cap. In the hall, while she looked around, he leaned down the steps to the kitchen and asked Winky for afternoon tea. Winky came over to the bottom of the steps and actually gave him a wink, which she had never done before.

Shaking off the confusion from that, Harry turned back to Elizabeth. “Dining room,” he said gesturing at the nearby door.

With a smile she followed his gesture, glancing at his cap as she passed him. Harry pretended not to notice.

“This is nice,” she said of the wooden-walled room. She glanced down and studied the patterned rug. It was Harry’s favorite room as well, so he smiled at that as he sat down across from her. “Is the rug Belgian?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Harry replied.

“You only know plants,” she suggested in a level tone.

Harry, accustomed to harmless snideness, was nonetheless a little taken aback. “Actually, I don’t know plants really, either.”

Winky arrived with the tea in that instant. She set the table and poured two cups.

“I wouldn’t have expected a house-elf,” Elizabeth said, clearly pleasantly surprised. She seemed to have a special tone of voice just for conveying that.

“So you are Harry Snape? Or is your name something more formal, like Harold?”

Harry almost inhaled his tea. He cleared his throat as gently as possible. “No, just Harry,” he managed hoarsely.

The Floo flared and Elizabeth calmly put her cup down and watched as Snape bent under the mantel. Snape’s eyes moved between them with a slightly suggestive expression.

Elizabeth stood and held out her hand out. “Elizabeth Peterson, sir. We’ve met, but several years ago.”

“Ah, yes,” Snape said, shaking her hand.

“Rather surprised to find you have an addition to the household,” she said pleasantly.

Snape swung his cloak off and draped it over his arm. “He is a recent addition,” he stated helpfully.

“Surprising that no one knows,” she went on insistently.

Snape seemed to search for a reply. As he did so, his eyes glanced over Harry’s orange cap. “It didn’t seem to warrant a formal announcement to those in the area,” he stated, matching her formal tone and almost matching her accent. Harry had to fight a grin. “I’ll leave you two to your tea,” he said politely, sounding very odd as a result.

As he turned to the hall, Harry had the distinct impression that Snape was trying to tell him something. At the doorway, Snape glanced back one last time and Harry realized he was telling him he could remove the cap since his back was to the bright window.

As Elizabeth sat back down, Harry pulled off his cap and fluffed his fringe to hide his scar. She smiled when she saw he had removed it. They chatted for a half hour or so about the village. Harry learned a lot of things he had wondered about at one point before forgetting when he got used to the place, such as how long wizards had lived here in the relative open: 300 years, and what the resident Muggles thought of witches and wizards: they were mostly relatives of magical people who found it nice to easily have either kind of visitor. Most households had a signal, a certain figure in the window or door decoration that indicated they needed a magical free zone for a little while due to Muggle visitors.

Snape wandered back in after Winky had brought them a fresh pot. He poured himself a cup and stood sipping it.

“Do you want to join us, sir?” Harry asked. Snape shook his head and took another sip.

Elizabeth said, “You should both come for dinner some evening. Mother would be most interested to meet you.” For an instant, Harry thought she had recognized him without giving any indication, until she said, “Another Snape, how interesting,” in a gossipy sort of way.

Snape gulped and jerked his cup away from himself. He looked like he may have burned his mouth.

Harry cringed. He really should have corrected her immediately. His guardian looked about as amused as Harry had ever seen him. He rubbed the bridge of his nose as he fought to keep from laughing.

Elizabeth, uninterrupted, went on blithely, “Really surprising, you adopting a Muggle and all.”

“What?” Harry blurted. Snape lowered his hand to give him a very odd expression. “What makes you think I’m a Muggle?” Harry asked her, stunned by the notion.

“Well, you were doing the gardening by hand,” she said, as though that covered it completely.

“Oh.” Harry thought of saying that he didn’t know how to do it any other way. Instead, he said, “I prefer doing it by hand. I was killing time.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding completely mystified.

Harry decided she must be a witch. “Why do you go to Malvern instead of Hogwarts?” he asked.

She sat back and crossed her legs, picked some lint off her lap. “Father doesn’t believe in magical education. He’s a Muggle. Mother tried to explain, but he insists I go to Oxford like himself.” She ended with a shrug. “I prefer it now. Before, when I first started, I wasn’t very happy about it. My mother has taught me some useful spells and she bought me a wand. I have it at home,” she added proudly.

Harry stared at her, trying to take that all in.

“So you probably know lots of spells,” she said, apparently to fill the silence.

“Hundreds,” Harry replied.

“Well,” she waved her hand in the air, vaguely in Snape’s direction. “You have a teacher for a father,” she said dismissively.

Harry nodded, “True.”

“Besides, things must have been simply dreadful there last year with He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named visiting and all.”

“Voldemort,” Harry supplied flatly. “But still true.”

“Much better to be away from things. Safer that way,” she asserted in a different, flatter, tone.

“Not everyone in Shrewsthorpe was safe,” Snape stated in one of his talking-to-a-dim-student voices.

“They were safe-er,” she replied firmly, sounding like she was quoting someone else.

“Ah, yes, Mrs. Thrimbol would definitely agree and Horis Jourhart and Sora Dreamham,” Snape stated, sounding a little relentless.

Elizabeth looked away. Harry did not recognize any of the names. “Who are they?” he asked.

Snape appeared reluctant to explain. As he considered a response, Elizabeth said, “I was walking home the night the Mark floated over Trudy Thrimbol’s house. What the hell did they want with her anyway?” she snapped in frustration, then flushed, apparently at her language.

Harry dropped his gaze and took a deep breath. He listened as Snape said, “She worked in the records department at the Ministry part time even though she was retired. That made her extremely useful.” After a pause, he said, “Harry?” a bit sharply.

Harry raised his eyes as he frowned.

Snape put down his cup and stridently said, “You did everything you could have possibly done. Sooner than anyone expected you to.”

“What are you talking about?” Elizabeth asked.

Snape crossed his arms and huffed. “His capacity for guilt is phenomenal,” he snapped with a hint of anger. “I am attempting to persuade him to not take on any more. Especially any not his to bear.”

She looked very confused. “Why would you be responsible?” she asked.

Harry sighed. “Because killing Voldemort was my task. Maybe I could have done it sooner.”

“What?” Elizabeth uttered.

Snape scoffed. “Have you forgotten already how you did it?”

“No,” Harry admitted in a difficult tone.

The night in the abandoned manor had been key, Harry knew all too well. Only a month had passed after that. How much difference had that made? It probably made a difference to someone, another gnawing voice in his head said. But he couldn’t have hunted Voldemort down himself, hauled his friends off again somewhere unsafe, and he had needed them too, just as much. Snape was closely watching him think this over.

“Um…” Elizabeth interrupted his thoughts. She started to speak, then stopped, twice.

Snape put his hands down to lean over the table and said to her. “Yes, he is Harry Potter. Not Harry Snape,” he barely managed the last, having to swallow a laugh to get it out.

It bothered Harry rather a lot that his parent was finding this so amusing, especially since he only ever found the darkest irony amusing.

At Elizabeth’s disbelieving look, Snape wanded the lamp up and came around behind Harry to pull his hair back. “See?”

“G’off,” Harry protested, pushing his hand away.

“The Hero of Wizardry himself,” Snape went on in an odd tone. Harry shot him a narrow look over his shoulder. Snape added, “Of course, he does not think that is a positive thing.”

“Why not?” Elizabeth asked, sounding stunned in general.

“A very good question,” Snape said, sounding too much like a teacher. He stepped back to the head of the table and crossed his arms. “Perhaps ask him. I’d be curious to hear the answer myself.”

“Were you hiding?” she asked, amazed.

“No. I just—” he gestured at the cap. “Well, maybe,” he conceded in a low tone. “It is hard to get to know someone that way.”

“Really?” she asked doubtfully. “I would have talked to you longer the other day, had I known.”

“Yes, but that wouldn’t have been talking to me,” Harry insisted. “Just someone you thought you knew from the Prophet.”

“No,” she insisted, “I would have been talking to a wizard—I thought you were a Muggle.”

Harry sighed and gave up trying to explain.

Elizabeth sat straighter. “In any event, you are very welcome to the village, hero or not,” she said, now all primness. “I think I must be going, now,” she added suddenly and stood up.

Harry showed her to the door, where she shook his hand and gazed in amazement at his scar before stepping out.

“Very nice to have met you,” she turned and said in an almost comically proper voice.

Harry waved her off, hoping he didn’t wear too dismayed an expression. Back in the dining room, Snape was in her chair, having another spot of tea.

“Now everyone will know I’m here—won’t they?” he said dully as he sat down.

“Within minutes, I believe,” Snape stated. After a long pause, he added, “You are who you are. There is no sense running from that.”

Harry stared into his cold teacup. “She bothered me,” he said.

“And why shouldn’t she?” Snape asked.

Harry shrugged. “I don’t know,” he replied in a annoyed tone, not wanting to voice the reasons for his disappointment since they were things he’d apparently invented in his own head.

Later, as he was finally reading a bit in in his Astronomy text, a post owl arrived, flitting straight in the open window. Harry accepted the letter and noticed the return address of Switzerland. He opened it as he nibbled on the last chocolate biscuit.

There was a letter as well as a copy of the photo Opus took. The photo took him by surprise--his eyes were brighter and happier than he imagined they looked most of the time. He set it aside. When Snape raised his chin to look over at it, Harry pushed it around to his parent, who lifted it to examine it more closely. Snape raised a brow and placed it back on the table.

Dear Harry, Hope you are having a fine holiday. Currently we are visiting my grandparents in Geneva. My mother and father were rather stunned by the photograph. They insist I invite you to come visit during the summer, so I am doing so, even though I am certain you are much too busy. I am looking forward to returning to Hogwarts and am very glad to be there rather than Durmstrang even though I miss many friends terribly. I have not been studying as much as I should be. I hope you are having this problem too so that it will not be as noticeable. See you very soon, Penelope.

That evening, many visitors came to the door to say hello as though the two of them had just moved in or something. They were all very pleased to meet Harry. All wanted the two of them to come for dinner very soon. Harry was glad they were due to leave for Hogwarts too soon to accept any invitations.

Elizabeth returned with her mother who actually patted Harry on the head with her white gloved hand, pushing the control of his annoyance to the limit. Elizabeth gave him a apologetic wince that balanced out some of it.

As he closed the door when they had finally said goodbye for the last time, he exhaled in relief and leaned back against it. “Maybe we should leave first thing tomorrow,” he muttered.

Early Sunday evening, as he came down the stairs to depart for school, Harry considered that the house really did feel like it was equally his. The wholeness that realization brought him in view of departing for a time surprised him. This place would be there, waiting, part of him.

In the dining room, Snape asked, “Ready to go?”

Harry rechecked his book bag for his texts and nodded. He stepped into the hearth and ducked back into the room to take up a handful of the coarse powder Snape offered him.

The visiting Durmstrang students had returned—as well as the rest of the students—for Sunday dinner. Harry sat down with his friends. Everyone chatted vigorously about their activities.

“How did your holiday go?” Penelope asked Harry with shy interest.

“Oh, good,” Harry said, feeling more than a bit uncomfortable.

She seemed to sense his unease and turned to Frina with her next question.

“Don’t mind him,” Ron insisted to Penelope. “He had a rough break.”

“What, your picnic qualified as ‘rough’?” Harry asked sarcastically.

“I meant being stalked by Death Eaters,” Ron said.

“I told you about that?” Harry asked him in confusion, certain that Snape wouldn’t have said anything. Frina and Penelope turned at those words and listened with trepidation.

“After the second kamikaze, yes,” Ron replied, amused.

“Oh. Did I say anything else I didn’t mean to?” Harry asked.

Ron laughed. “I don’t know. Why wouldn’t you want us to know? No one else has seen those two.”

“No one else sees Death Eaters with their eyes closed,” Harry breathed very quietly to himself. When he fell silent in thought, Penelope gave him a sympathetic look.

Harry had studied only cursorily over Easter break, so when Greer asked him a question during the first Potions class, he didn’t know the answer, which was a first for months and a bad way to start the last term of his school years. Greer asked one of the Ravenclaws, who answered correctly. A moment later, Parkinson’s annoying laugh rang out. Harry glanced over to see Malfoy leaning over and whispering to her. Harry looked away and ignored them for the rest of the class, which was harder than usual. Malfoy seemed to be making more snide comments today, keeping the students around him entertained. Although Harry could not actually hear the content from the other side of the room, it was making him a bit annoyed, or maybe it was just that he had a few of the Hufflepuffs laughing.

Dean leaned over and elbowed Harry, he assumed to keep him from retorting and making more trouble. Harry gave him a weak smile and returned to his notes. Dean sighed and returned to his own notes. The sigh seemed too heartfelt for the current situation, making Harry wonder what was really bothering him.

More snickering brought Harry’s gaze up before he could stop himself. Malfoy sat smugly with his arms crossed, fingering the material of his uniform. Harry wondered if Pansy beside him was taking notes for both of them. He wished Greer would penalize them for the disruption they were causing, but the teacher didn’t seem to be noticing anything was amiss and pointing it out would certainly be a big mistake.

Hagrid had taken care of Harry’s and Penelope’s wombat over break, so after Potions Harry went down to the gamekeeper’s cabin to see if he should take possession of it. It was sleeping in a crate on the floor, still curled around Penelope’s cloak. Fawkes’ perch overlooked it and the two made for a brightly colored pair.

The wombat had not grown much and when he commented on that, Hagrid said, “It was done growin’ Harry. And in record time too. Yer musta given it everythin’ it needed.” It still looked small when Hagrid scooped it up with his large hand and gave it to him. “You can turn it in next class, ifn yer wan’. I’ll see that it’ll get sen’ to Australia an’ released.”

“I’ll have to talk to Penelope about that,” Harry said, accepting the cloak as well.

He carried the wombat up to the castle, hitched on his hip. It looked around in interest as he walked into the main doors and along the Entrance Hall. He had half-expected it to be alarmed after Hagrid’s small, quiet cabin, but it seemed a little curious about what everyone was doing. When he found Hermione, Ginny, and Penelope in the Great Hall, they jumped up to greet the wombat rather than him.

Returning to school did not help Harry’s dreams. The second night, he awoke with a start and required a long minute to feel oriented and safe in a different bed than he had slept in over holiday.

“Harry?” Ron said in a faint whisper.

Harry pulled the drapes aside quietly. “Yeah?”

Ron’s grey silhouette hovered beside his bed. “Need anything?”

“No.”

“Wanna go for a walk around the castle?”

“Maybe not,” Harry replied, although he could clearly remember their many walks before Voldemort was destroyed.

Ron’s outline moved away. “Let me know if you change your mind,” he whispered as he crawled back into his bed.

Harry lay awake for a while, grateful for his friend’s attempts at helping. He tried in vain to catch the threads of the shadows in his dream. They made less sense than they had in the past, moving counter to each other somehow rather than just coming at him. He thought maybe he should owl Tonks and try to explain somehow that his dreams made him think something was happening, without explaining everything. Thoughts of her made him grin in the darkness and relax enough to sleep, which he finally did, in time to feel mostly rested in the morning.

The next day, Harry and Penelope agreed to turn in their wombat. Hagrid accepted it with a grin and put it in a pen behind his cabin before starting the lecture on electric walking sticks—long insects that zapped painfully if you touched them. Hagrid had them in a box. As they all leaned in to look, little lightening bolts flickered between the camouflaged things. Harry stepped back to let others see. As he did so, he noticed Malfoy had his hand right on Parkinson’s bum as they stood waiting to take their turn at the crate. Malfoy gave Harry a sneering once-over at his expression. Surprised by this bold rudeness, Harry stepped around to the other side, closer to the pen where the wombat was rolling around holding its back foot as though to playfully attack it. Not the brightest animal, he thought.

In Defense Against the Dark Arts, Snape paired them up for a full practice session. “I have discovered that some of you are taking the liberty of dueling on your own time, which I will point out yet again is strictly against school rules. I have decided that it would be best to just get it out of your systems during class.”

Penelope and Hermione dueled first. They were ridiculously polite about it, with their low-power spells and long pauses between offense and defense. It was like watching a ping-pong match between two grandmothers. Opus and Neville went next. This was a little more interesting since both of them acted like they had something to prove. Neville lost, unfortunately, when his blasting curse was rebounded by some kind of flexible block Harry had never seen. Neville lost his balance and had to jump off the back of the platform to keep from falling on his head. Harry had not noticed until that moment, but Neville looked more athletic than he expected.

“Mr. Potter,” Snape said, inviting him up with a sweep of his fingers. “And…”

“Oh please, let it be me,” Malfoy murmured.

“Despite the interruption, why not?” Snape drawled, indicating he should come up.

Harry pulled out his wand and moved to the center of the platform. As they stood back to back, Harry said, “You going to cheat again?”

The other boy scoffed. “I don’t need to cheat to beat you.”

“Good luck,” Harry sneered as the count started.

On ten they both issued blasting curses which they both managed to block. Harry was first with the next one, a Figuresempre which was blocked easily. Harry decided that Malfoy had been practicing since their last ‘draw’. Malfoy, grinning with almost disturbing pleasure, made Harry wait before he incanted a chain binding curse. Harry ducked under it and it wrapped up one of the wooden stands behind him with a loud clatter.

Malfoy was supposed to wait for Harry’s next one, but instead he cast at the same time Harry did and their curses met in the middle with a spectacular explosion of light. The other students ohed. Malfoy was faster than expected again, with a spell Harry did not know. In a panic he put up a Titan block since it was the first thing to pop into his head. When the strange spell hit, it jolted him to his knees and made him drop his wand when his hands stopped working right.

As he grabbed up his wand and tried quickly to aim back, he discovered Snape had stepped in the middle. “No permanently damaging curses, Mr. Malfoy,” he stated angrily.

In a bit of an overdone whine, Malfoy retorted, “It isn’t if he counters it.”

Harry got to his feet and shook his arms out, which were tingling painfully.

“Take your seat. Ten points from Slytherin for that, Mr. Malfoy.” Snape turned. He seemed to want to ask if Harry was all right, but held back. “A Chrysanthemum Block would have been a better option and generally is for an unknown attack,” he said factually, although it had a layer of something under it, something seeking to soothe, perhaps.

Harry took his seat, still rubbing his prickling arms. Malfoy glanced over and grinned as he saw that. Harry dropped his arms and pretended they didn’t hurt anymore as Ron and Dean were paired up on the platform.

More members of the Advanced D.A. were managing to achieve their Animagus forms. Hermione became an otter in the next session, to a long run of cheering. She actually came over and chewed on Harry’s shoe, when he stayed off to the side while everyone else gathered around. Harry laughed despite himself, especially when she changed back and ended up on all fours.

“Maybe I should stand up some before changing back,” she said, blushing fiercely.

“I’m glad I’m spared such embarrassment,” Harry opined.

She slapped him on the leg. “Not for long.”

Dean also managed his form late in the same session. He turned into a Moor pony. He turned back again quickly when the others began arguing over who got the first ride. Four students were now Animagi since Suze had attained her white mink form over holiday. In a buoyant mood, they broke up to return to their assignments for tomorrow.

On the way back from the Room of Requirement, the thing Harry had feared earlier did happen, but fortunately he was with Ron, Ginny, Dean and Hermione. As they passed a cupboard, voices could be heard talking low and sighing romantically.

Hermione, closest to the door, actually giggled, utterly surprising Harry. They all moved on as quickly as they could while remaining silent.

When they were out of range, Hermione said, “Boy, thought Malfoy was really attached to Parkinson.”

“He does seem to be,” Ginny commented.

“Why was he back there with someone else?” she asked, amused.

“How could you tell?” Ron asked doubtfully.

“I could hear them talking. Couldn’t you?”

“I wasn’t listening that closely,” Ron grumbled uncomfortably.

As they reached the stairs, Hermione said thoughtfully, “Sounded a bit like Eloise, actually, who I thought was going with Moon. Ah well, anyone dumb enough to trust him kind of gets exactly what they deserve.”

Harry was dreaming. Not a bad dream like he had been having, but a more pleasant one in which he was dancing in the Great Hall with Tonks, who was wearing a rather extravagant fuzzy yellow ball gown that flared wide around her. The hall was decorated similarly to the way it had been for the Tri-Wizard Tournament except that the walls themselves glittered. And through the tall windows the stars winked brightly rather than ominously.

Tonks smiled at him with equally bright eyes and laughed as they spun intermittently fast and slow. Harry pulled her close but in the dream he could not feel her the way he expected to. She leaned forward with a sly grin and kissed him softly, timidly. Harry did not understand why she was kissing him so when she had done it much more aggressively before. He reached out dream hands toward her to try to make things right, painfully aware that this was not right somehow.

A pleasant sigh snapped Harry awake. Lips were on his and the transition from dream to reality hard to distinguish. “Wha?” Harry said, grabbing the figure above him. He could feel narrow shoulders under his hands.

“Harry,” a familiar voice whispered.

Harry sat up and grabbed up his wand and used a Lumos Charm. The light revealed that the drapes around his bed were closed tight and that Ginny knelt on the bed beside him. She had a very crooked smile and bright eyes.

“What are you doing?” Harry demanded in a harsh whisper.

“You don’t have to be quiet—I used a Silencio on the drapes,” she said in a normal voice. She reached out a hand and touched his arm. “I wanted to see you,” she said quietly despite her previous assertion.

“Ah…” Harry said as he rubbed his hair back to think. “You shouldn’t be here,” he finally said.

“Why not?” she asked smartly. “The dormitory steps don’t keep girls out, even at night. Don’t you want me here?”

“I was sleeping. And…” he trailed off as her hand brushed his upper arm with tantalizing lightness. He grabbed her hand in his and held it away. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Her face had fallen when he had restrained her. Harry set the wand aside, still glowing, and sat up straighter. “Really, Ginny, Ron is just in the next bed,” he pointed out a little distressed. “What were you thinking?”

She frowned a bit and said, half to herself, “I see the way you look at her.”

“What way?” he asked.

“That way,” she said as though he were slow.

Harry became distant and thoughtful. “Do I really?” he asked a little eagerly.

With a grumbling huff, she tossed aside the drapes and departed. When Harry heard the dormitory door click closed, he breathed out in a deep sigh of relief, but he could not relax and it took forever to fall back to sleep.

The half-ruined stone cabin stood in the brunt of the unceasing wind from the sea. Whoever had built it was either an idiot or really wanted a view. A figure approached along a grassy path, wand waving occasionally before him to ward off protective alarms. He approached quietly enough that the occupant did not detect him until he stepped into view.

“You!”

A sweet smile then. “I have something I need from you.”

Slight relaxation accompanied this statement although the man continued eyeing the other suspiciously. “Take whatever you want,” he said with a gesture at the drooping roof of the cabin behind him. He then laughed a little maniacally at his own sarcasm.

“It is true you only have one thing left. And you really have no choice but to give it to me.”

The visitor fired a Binding Curse from his ready wand.

Harry stretched his neck as he stared at the glass sphere before him. A moment ago it had been an orange, so he was at least making progress. But any moment now it was going to switch back. He sighed. He was tired and not really in the mood to change things into other things. He had had a difficult time at breakfast pretending everything was normal, a much harder time than Ginny, who appeared to have forgotten what happened. His forced casualness had attracted his friends’ attention, although they had not pressed him to explain. Harry took off his glasses to rub his sore eyes. At some point he had fallen again into the mode of being tired all the time. Too easily, he thought, although people interrupting his sleep certainly did not help.

When he put his glasses back on, he found McGonagall observing him. He sniffed and returned to the next phase of the transfiguration which was to turn the air in the center of the sphere into smoke. Fortunately, even Hermione was having a tough time with this one. Her sphere kept cracking open when she attempted that stage. Today, since Harry was stalling, she was the one using up all the oranges at their table in a bid to get it right as fast as possible.

McGonagall eventually stepped around to them. “We can go over it again this evening, Mr. Potter, if need be,” she said in reference to his tutoring session.

“I really need to get this?” Harry asked.

She frowned. “It is commonly on the N.E.W.T., I’m afraid, since it tests all known forms of multi-transformation. A little hint to you: if they give you just the end points for the transfiguration rather than the steps, assume that the steps are applied in order of easiest to hardest, because that is typical of the test design.”

“Hm,” Hermione muttered sounding like she were committing that to memory. “Thank you, Professor.”

Harry, realizing that he could work on his spell again later, casually used the smoke transformation on his sphere out of boredom. It actually worked.

“Hey,” Hermione said brightly, “nicely done.” In a frowning voice she added, “So, what did you do?”

“If I could tell you, I would,” Harry commented. “I doubt I can repeat it.”

She set another orange before him, moving his smoky sphere gently to the side. “Do it quick while you still remember.”

Harry tried, but could not work it correctly again, even when he made himself pretend he didn’t care if it worked.

Harry left his friends studying in the library and took the long way around to the staircases, just for a chance to stretch his legs which were stiff from the hard chair he had been sitting in the last few hours. He was looking ahead to his tutoring session, so he was not paying too close attention to what was happening around him. As a result, when a figure burst out of a side corridor and looked around, it startled him more than he would have liked.

“Suze?” Harry asked in concern at the way she glanced around herself.

She relaxed a bit upon seeing him there, giving Harry the notion that she feared he might be someone else.

He stepped over to her. “What’s going on?” he asked.

She composed herself and surreptitiously glanced around behind him. “Nothing,” she replied. For a Slytherin it was a poor lie. She straightened her ponytail efficiently and started to walk away.

Harry, worried, said, “No, really,” as he reached out a hand to her shoulder to slow her down.

She jumped away from him and snarled, “Don’t touch me!”

Stunned silly, Harry jumped back himself and stared at her. “I didn’t—” he started, then stopped. “I’m sorry,” he managed, holding his hands to the side and a little back.

She turned again and walked away, but Harry followed. “Suze, what’s wrong?” he asked in concern.

She stopped at the bend where the sunlight tried valiantly to light the corridor through thick clouds. “Who do you think you are, my big brother?”

“Uh,” Harry said, feeling like he had missed part of the conversation. He knew she had no siblings, so he dove in as though he were following along. “If necessary,” he said.

Her shoulders fell as though admitting defeat. Harry knew that feeling well: the one where your strength leaves you because someone says that they will help. “I can take care of myself,” she insisted.

“If you won’t talk to me, you should talk to Professor Snape,” Harry insisted. “Whatever is wrong…”

She gave him a glance as though he were an idiot and strode away again. Harry let her go this time. As she disappeared down a short set of steps where the wings connected, someone stepped up beside Harry.

He turned as Malfoy, arms crossed, pert nose a little high, said, “Bit of a wench.”

Anger poured into Harry as heat in his veins. His hands balled into tight fists at his sides. Malfoy gave him a glance that said, what is your problem?

In a low voice, Harry threatened, “Don’t you ever…”

The blond boy scoffed and walked away, shaking his head. Harry reached into his robe and put his hand around his wand but left it there. So badly did he want to hit the other in the back with something jarring, something that would land him in the hospital wing or St. Mungo’s for a week. With a quiet growl he let go of his wand and went around the floor the other way to the main staircases.

Snape was in his office, grading as usual. His first glance at Harry seemed to tell him a lot. “What is it?” he asked, setting his quill down beside the stack of parchments.

Harry, too keyed up to sit, pushed the visitor’s chair out of the way of his pacing route. He knew he had to say this just the right way, but as he thought it over, he realized that he did not know anything for certain. He swore lightly in frustration.

“I do hope you don’t use that language around the other staff members,” Snape said with a touch of snide.

“Huh? Oh, no. I don’t.” He stopped and gestured with his hands as he said, “Look, I think there’s a problem with one of your students.” Harry rubbed the bridge of his nose and Occluded his mind. If Suze did not want to say anything herself, he could not by rights give her away. “Are you keeping a close watch on Malfoy?” Harry asked.

“Not so much lately, I must admit,” Snape said. His intent gaze made Harry suspect he had noticed that Harry had closed his mind. “There are other, far more problematic students to watch over.”

Harry struggled for words. “I think he’s getting…aggressive, maybe is the word, with some of the female students.”

“That does not sound at all like Mr. Malfoy,” Snape said.

Harry thought back to the scene of minutes before. The events were coincidental, maybe?

“Whom are you protecting, by the way?” Snape asked.

His guardian’s bluntness surprised Harry enough that he almost dropped his Occlusion. Gathering himself together, he replied in frustration, “The person who should be here talking to you.”

Snape interlocked his fingers before himself and stared at them a long moment. “I will speak with him and a few others.” He paused before saying, “Do not do anything stupid yourself.”

“How did you know I was thinking that?”

Snape gave him a small smile and a raised brow in reply.

Harry noticed the clock. “I have to get to my Transfiguration tutoring,” he said in a rush.

Carrying his full backpack, because he had not made it to the tower to drop it off, Harry headed for the gargoyles. As the stairs turned upward, he rested his forehead against the center stone post that turned with him. He almost dropped his bag from surprise at the shadows moving in his mind.

The steps stopped at the top and McGonagall said, “Are you all right, Harry?” Her door was open as usual and she stood reading something before the bookcase near the doorway.

“I think so,” Harry said, hefting his heavy bag into the room by its straining straps.

“What was that just now?” she asked as he plopped into the visitor’s chair.

With a frown he replied, “I’ve been seeing more shadows lately.”

The book she held hit the desk with a slap. Almost accusingly, she said, “You are still seeing that green vision from before?”

With a reluctant frown, he replied, “Yes.”

“Does Severus know this?” she demanded.

“Yes.” She relaxed marginally, so he added, “I owled Tonks as well.” Although this was a bit of a lie, as he had only told the Auror he was having worrisome dreams. She had owled back saying they were very close to picking up at least one of the last two, but could not go into detail.

“Well, at least you are willing to tell someone you are in danger, unlike before.”

A little peeved, Harry said, “I’m a little better able to take care of myself now, Professor.”

“Nevertheless, it was Albus’ intent that this place be safe for you and it is mine as well. My staff and I will review and renew the spelling that was set up to protect you last year.”

Harry paused in pulling out his Transfiguration textbook. “The castle was spelled to protect me, specifically?” He felt a little touched by this notion, then thought more. “But it didn’t work. Voldemort just walked in.”

“Yes, well,” she sighed. “It should not have been that easy,” she stated offhandedly as she set an orange out on the desk. “He had inside help. And his powers were still growing, it seems.”

Harry’s brow furrowed. “Good thing he’s gone, then,” he said as he found the right chapter in his book and placed that on the desk as well.

She smiled lightly at him. “Yes. It means we may devote our full attention to attenuated multi-transformational charmed objects.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Harry agreed, trying to sound excited by that notion, but it came out as suffering instead.