Snape was there when he woke up, looking like a great black smudge. Well, a smudge with something propped on his crossed knee. Book, maybe.

Harry yawned and sat up. "I can still see," he admitted. "Not too well, though." His glance swept the hazy outlines of the room. "Anybody else in here?"

"No." All the same, Snape proceeded to draw his wand and cast Silencio, which of course reminded Harry of his own failure.

"Ah, well that's one of the things we should discuss," Snape said when Harry mentioned it. "Your magic. More specifically, your wild magic. But let's leave that for a little later."

A tray levitated over towards the bed, then hovered atop Harry's knees.

"What about you?" Harry asked as he began to eat, squinting at his food. "You said we'd have dinner together."

"You really can't see too well," Snape sighed. "Mine is just over there." He waved somewhere off to his right, and then Harry saw the vague outline of a tray floating over. "So, Harry. What did you want to talk about? Alone," he mocked.

Well, that was as good a place to start as any, Harry figured. "Can you please tell Malfoy to stop lurking around? I really don't want to see him."

Snape finished chewing something before he answered. "I'm afraid I must decline your request."

"Why?"

"Put yourself in Draco's place." Snape's voice was deliberately calm. "He's been raised all his life to follow the Dark Lord. Every family and social connection he had was predicated on this expectation. He's given it all up. Now he has nothing, Harry."

"Disowned or not, I'm sure he's still got piles of gold," Harry scoffed. "I've heard him brag about how he has his own vault stuffed with money he inherited from his great-grandfather."

"You cannot be so immature as to think money can compensate for family," Snape rebuked him. "Wouldn't you trade all your Galleons for ten minutes with James?"

That was true enough, Harry realised.

"And before you say that Lucius Malfoy isn't worth a Knut, let alone a Galleon," Snape continued, "I'd like you to consider the fact that we don't get to choose our fathers."

Another good point, but Harry had heard just about enough Draco-pity for one evening. "Yeah, well he gets to choose his own behaviour, doesn't he? He dressed up as a Dementor to make me fall off my broom! Last year he was square in Umbridge's corner. This year on the train on the way here, he--"

"What is he choosing now?" Snape interrupted. "To turn his back on his family allegiances. To return your wand to your hand. To do his classwork late at night so that in class he can help me brew draughts for you."

"But don't you see?" Harry pushed his finished tray aside, letting it hover beside the bed, and went on, "This could all be some sort of plot--"

"It's not."

Snape's absolute certainty was nothing short of infuriating. "How can we know that?"

"Apply your mind to the problem!" Snape snapped, losing patience. "What plot could possibly include returning your wand?"

Harry blew out a breath through his nose. "All right. Just for the purpose of argument, assume that during some fit of insanity, Malfoy stole my wand. Maybe he was mad at his father or something, and figured it would be a good way to get him in trouble with Voldemort. So he did it, without thinking, probably. And now he's stuck. It doesn't mean we can trust him in the future!"

Snape reached out for one of Harry's hands, and clasped it gently. "Does it mean we should reject him, and drive him right back into the ranks of the Death Eaters?"

Shite, Harry thought, sighing. He would have to have a point.

"I am not saying you should trust Draco Malfoy, Harry." Snape pressed his advantage, giving his hand a squeeze. "I am saying you should think about your own choices. What can you accomplish by openly inflicting your hate and enmity on him? I happen to trust him, but let us suppose you are right, and his loyalties are wavering. Shouldn't you seek to capture them, rather than hand the Dark Lord yet another follower?"

"I hate his guts," Harry said, scowling. "He's the real reason I ended up at Samhain, you know. Lucius Malfoy only got information to find me with because he talked to my uncle. And just how did he know where to find my uncle? Draco Malfoy gave him the address!"

"Oh, that explains why the Order's been watching you like a hawk the past two summers, someone on guard duty every hour of every day," Snape mocked. "Because the Dark Lord didn't yet know your address. Be serious! He's known for years where to find you. He just couldn't get through the wards!"

Harry snorted. "You're the one who told me I shouldn't have let Malfoy see that address, that there was no doubt he'd communicated it to 'all interested parties!'"

"There is no doubt," Snape snapped. "He did in fact tell his father your address. But since Lucius had long known it, that made no real difference to anyone. When I said you shouldn't have let Malfoy see your address, I was trying to make you realise how very foolish you had been! What if the letter had slipped out of its envelope and you'd handed Draco information the Dark Lord didn't yet have?"

Too Slytherin by half, Harry thought.

"When you were missing from school and no longer on Privet Drive," Snape continued, "that's when the Dark Lord took enough interest to have your uncle Legilimized and that idiot Lupin followed. What happened to you has got nothing to do with Draco!"

Harry's stomach sank somewhere down to the region of his knees as the truth sank in. "Um, so it's not his fault either that Uncle Vernon got killed?"

Snape just glared at him, his inky eyes coming clearer the longer Harry stared.

"All right, all right, so it's not his fault," Harry conceded, though he declined to feel too bad about the letter. Draco was a hate-filled little shite, and Harry was glad he'd had to hear that, and write it down in his own hand. Actually, it was sort of strange that he'd put up with that, assuming he had of course. Harry hadn't had a chance to check what the letter said. For all he knew, it was a list of people Draco wanted to hex. "I still don't trust him."

"That's your prerogative. Just consider this, Harry. The Dark Lord did not want your wand taken out of his reach. Therefore, either Draco was sincere when he stole it, or he was indulging some childish whim that he may or may not regret in future. If he was sincere, he deserves more from you than complete and utter scorn. If he was simply getting some petty vengeance against his father, then his recklessness has placed him in our sphere of influence. Shouldn't we try to influence him?"

"I don't know how you do it," Harry muttered, rubbing at his eyes. Funny, they hadn't been itchy before. Well, not like this. "Somehow you make be nice to Malfoy sound so sensible."

"Think about it," Snape merely advised. "Is there a problem with your eyes?"

Harry opened them again, and groaned. "Everything's gone dark again!"

"Lumos . . ." Harry sensed his teacher leaning closer, so close he felt a sweep of long hair against his shoulder. "Completely dark? Or not quite black, as you described before?"

"Not quite black." Harry flopped to his back as soon as Snape uttered Nox. "What went wrong?"

"Nothing. I told you it would take time. We'll dose you again with Elixir before I go."

"My vision's supposed to fade in and out like this?"

"Ideally, no, but your magical state is still indeterminate."

"You were going to tell me something about that wild magic," Harry reminded him.

"It takes a violent form because it's a manifestation of dark powers," Snape explained. "You've had them all along; you were the source of the black energy in the Dursley house."

Harry crossed his arms. "I'm not a dark wizard, Professor."

"I didn't imply you were. What you are is a normal wizard, although very powerful. Having dark powers doesn't mean you use them for ill. I have them myself."

"What does it mean, then?"

"There are nine primary classification systems in use, but the best definition, in my view, is this: you have the ability, should you wish to wield it, to control and harm other creatures, wizards included. You can utilize the power in other ways, perfectly acceptable ways. But what makes it dark is the potential for abuse."

Harry frowned, and rolled over on his side. "By that definition, all wizards have dark powers."

"To one degree or another, yes. You have more than most."

"Like Voldemort," Harry whispered, thinking of the prophecy. Marked his equal.

"But unlike him, you don't want to use your dark powers for evil. It's like your Parseltongue, Harry. You use it to chat with Sals. He uses it to possess Nagini."

"Or Occlumency," Harry murmured.

"Ah, Occlumency," Snape thoughtfully murmured. "On Samhain, you held off the Dark Lord, and even misdirected him into thinking I was still the bane of your existence. You credited me last night with saving you, but the truth is that in large measure, you were instrumental in your own rescue, Harry."

It wasn't a compliment, but Harry still felt praised, though he had to own, "Well, only 'cause you taught me how."

"I would say it was because you made the effort to learn," Snape corrected. "You practiced."

"Yeah," Harry said, wishing with all his heart that he'd practiced when it would have mattered to Sirius.

Perhaps Snape sensed the direction of his thoughts, for he brought the conversation away from past regrets. "Occlumency is a dark power," he explained, "but it is not necessarily evil, as you demonstrated on Samhain. All dark powers, however, are very deep and strong."

"Okay, I get it," Harry announced. "Dark's not even that good a word. We ought to be calling them deep powers, or something. But what does it have to do with my wild magic?"

"After the operation, when you ran that high fever, your magical core was severely charred. It wasn't burned completely through, as Marjygold believed; the deepest of your deep powers remained. These are the hardest to bring under conscious control, which is why Occlumency is so difficult for most wizards. That you could acquire the talent so rapidly suggests that you were tapping into your dark powers."

"That's why I can't even tell when I'm speaking Parseltongue!" Harry exclaimed. "It's not really conscious . . ."

"And neither are your dreams. All dark powers," Snape confirmed. "And too, dark powers are what erupts as accidental magic. They did this when you were a child, Harry, though as you've undergone such traumas in the past few years, your capacity for rage has grown as well."

Harry thought about that for a while before he replied. "How do I get the accidental magic under control?"

"The usual way is through magical education, which teaches you to use light magic instead, to deal with this or that problem as it arises. Your capacity for light magic has been incinerated. It took some time for even your deep powers to grow back from the spark that was left, but they are present in full, now. Yet you still have no surface magic to calm them, which explains how when you grow enraged, your deep powers go completely wild."

"But how do I get my light magic, surface magic, back, then?"

Snape had let go of his hands a while earlier, but at that, he clasped them again. "I don't think you ever are going to get it back, Harry."

Harry just stared, seeing nothing, a choking feeling of utter panic coming up to cut off his air. He swallowed, but it was still there. It felt like the room was spinning, or like his head was floating up off his shoulders, or something---

"Breathe," Snape dryly recommended.

Harry tried, he really did, but a lead weight was pressing down on his lungs, constricting all movement. It hurt something fierce, almost like he'd taken a Bludger to the chest---

"Breathe," Snape said again, more stress on the word. "Breathe, you idiot child!"

He couldn't, though, not until a sharp blow between his shoulder blades startled him so completely that he gasped, then sucked in a huge wheezing rush of air to compensate. After Harry had got his wind back properly, which took a minute or two, he couldn't help but narrow his eyes, because damn it all, that blow had really hurt!

"I think you're supposed to slap someone who's hysterical, Professor."

"That would go over well, after the way your lout of an uncle used to treat you."

Good point . . .

For a moment more, Harry concentrated on breathing again, because really, he couldn't think what else to do. His light magic was gone, just like that? All he had left were the dark powers that were so . . . well, powerful, that they scared even him?

Then it came to him that Snape was wrong, that he had to be. Harry fetched his wand out from beneath his pillow, and held it as though intending to cast a spell, and once again, he felt a warm honeyed glow climbing along his spine, heating him up from the inside out, the feeling so thoroughly good that he couldn't be discouraged. Could he? "This feels the same as the first day I held it," he told his teacher. "I can just tell my magic's back inside me, sir."

"You're feeling your dark powers trying to make themselves useful."

"But it's the same as in Ollivander's--"

"Yes, it would be," Snape agreed. "Because you're the same as then, without any access to light magic. Then, it was because you didn't know how to reach into yourself and grasp hold of it. Now, it's because there isn't any to call forth."

"But my wand feels the same," Harry repeated, feeling like he didn't really follow Snape's argument.

His professor paused a moment. "The same as when you first held it, yes. I understand. Has it always felt that way to your hand? Third year, for instance, when you would take it out to practice defence spells with Lupin, did it light you up inside before you even began to work the charms?"

"No . . ."

"Because by then, it was well-wrapped in the light powers you had used it for, year after year. It wasn't drawing energy from the deepest well of all, the dark powers at the bottom of your soul. Now it is again, just as when you first purchased it."

"You have got to be wrong," Harry insisted, the idea unthinkable, really. Magic was all he was. Oh, sure, he'd spent eleven years thinking he was a Muggle, but it wasn't like he'd done all that well as one, was it? Not being a wizard meant being hated and despised. Being one was all that made him . . . well, him.

"Harry, I would like to be wrong," Snape admitted, a heavy sigh interrupting his words. "You don't know how much. But just as with the condition of your eyes, I thought you would want to know the truth, no matter how unpalatable it may prove to be."

"Unpalatable?" Harry echoed, outraged. "You just told me I'm as good as a squib, after all!"

"Would you stop using that word?" Snape rebuked him, rising to stand. "I told you no such thing. Now, listen!" He leaned over Harry, planting a hand on either shoulder, his face so close that Harry could feel as well as hear his words. "You. Are. A. Wizard. You have not lost your magic. You have, in point of fact, far more magic than any other student in this school! You, and you alone, are the Dark Lord's equal, you gibbering fool!"

"Geez, calm down," Harry stammered, a little freaked out. It wasn't that he thought Snape would do anything if he lost his temper, but he didn't much like getting shouted at from six inches away, either. Or being called a fool. That one wasn't a good insult, like you idiot child.

"I am not the one periodically forgetting to breathe," Snape sneered. "You calm down!"

"Okay!" Harry shouted, backing up a little. "I'm a wizard, not a squib. But see, that hardly makes me feel better, considering. Squibs at least get to know where they stand. They don't go blowing out windows whenever they get upset!"

"Neither will you, once you gain control over your dark powers," Snape assured him from what sounded like the chair, again. "The balance inside you has changed. You simply need to learn to compensate, and you will be able to direct the flow of magic both through you, and through your wand. In fact . . ." Snape paused a bit. "You've seen me do a charm or two without a wand. I wager you'll be able to do a fair sight more than that, once you know how to force your dark powers to do your conscious bidding."

"Wandless magic?" Harry breathed. "Me?"

"You're the Dark Lord's equal, and he's no stranger to it," Snape explained. "Moreover, you've done it already, though it was certainly uncontrolled. The windows, making the stones here fade to transparent--"

"Transparent?" Harry squeaked.

"You wouldn't have seen," Snape realised. "But they were, yes, when you made them blaze."

Harry remembered then, those surges he had called forth from his anger when he'd been in that tiny stone cell. He'd made the stones there fade, too, although only halfway . . .

"Um, were they see-through all the way, or just kind of half there?" he asked.

"We could all see the bailey outside, though it was quite a feat through the glare the stones were putting out."

"Then my dark powers have grown since S-- Samhain," Harry concluded, hating the way he stumbled over the word. He had to say it twice more as he explained his reasoning to his teacher.

"Postulate the following," Snape suggested. "Each time you experience a grave trauma: the marrow extraction, your aunt's burial, Samhain . . . your dark powers become more accessible to you, though it takes time for you to be able to reach into them. A few weeks after the extraction, you were able pull them forth out of your fear in that cell. That was even consciously done. A handful of days after Samhain, your emotions here again dragged the powers forth, to much greater effect. But that was not consciously done. The pattern would suggest that with more time, you can bring it to the conscious level, as you did when you were imprisoned."

"A few weeks, then?"

"I would speculate that the greater the trauma, the more time you may need to accept the powers being cleaved open inside you."

"But even when I controlled them, I didn't really," Harry pointed out. "I wasn't trying to make the stones vanish. I was just trying to do something."

Snape must have leaned forward, for his voice sounded nearer. "Your level of control is non-existent to abysmal, I agree. But that will improve. You have already gone through this process once, I hope you realise. When you started Hogwarts, you had no talent with a wand. Then we taught you to channel light magic to do your bidding. Simple charms, wingardium leviosa. Any wizard can accomplish as much, because surface powers are so near the wand hand; they are easily siphoned off. What you need to learn now will no doubt be harder. Consciously channeling your deep powers into your wand, or channeling them without it, is not something most wizards can achieve. But Harry, they are not the Dark Lord's equal."

"You do realise you sort of harp on that?"

"Hmm," Snape murmured, clearly lost in thought for a moment. "Yes. I think that is because for most of your time here I've thought you rather arrogant, as I'm sure you know."

It took Harry a minute to follow that. "Oh. Um, you mean now you maybe think I'm not quite as arrogant as you supposed?"

"You are not your father, any more than Draco is his," Snape quietly affirmed. "You're actually prone to believe that you could not be the Dark Lord's equal. Yet is it your magic, Harry, that nullified his wards and defences that night."

"My accidental magic, you mean."

"Exactly. So we are back to what matters. You must get your dark powers under conscious control, because then, you will be more than his equal."

Harry drew in a shaky breath. "You don't mean . . ."

"Yes."

"But I'm just a . . . a kid, and he's . . . Voldemort--"

"To think I ever called you arrogant," Snape groaned. "Listen, Harry. He has not had his darkest powers split wide open and made available for his use, as you have. You will have far more power than he can dream of. All that remains is to learn to channel it." His teacher paused. "Do you remember when I told you that your instincts were often good?"

"Yeah. It's why I don't trust Malfoy," Harry put in.

Snape ignored that. "Deciding to have your marrow tampered with . . . for quite some time now I have felt that it was a serious miscalculation, leading as it did to your illness, and then indirectly to Samhain as well. Now, though, I begin to suspect that it was as I said: a good instinct on your part. The end result may be your ascendance into powers that can finally vanquish the Dark Lord."

Yeah, sure, find the silver lining, Harry thought. "But Professor," Harry protested, "has anybody ever done what you're suggesting? Brought deep powers completely under conscious control?"

"Not to my knowledge, no," Snape confirmed.

"Do you know how I would start? I mean, how to even try?"

"I don't."

"So what's the point to any of it, then?"

Snape reached out and patted his hand, the touch light and reassuring. "I think you once believed that you could not Occlude, either. We'll find a way through this, too."

Harry just felt exasperated, and wanted to get off the subject. For the moment, anyway. He'd think about it more when he was alone. Try some things with his wand, maybe. Hmm, maybe all he really had to do was think of Draco before he let a spell loose . . . anger had worked to unleash that accidental magic, maybe it was the key to making dark powers flow at all. "I remembered my question about the Portkey," he abruptly announced. "The headmaster said my wild magic nullified every spell for leagues around. So why did the Portkey even work, after that?"

"That would be instinct again," Snape explained. "The headmaster's, this time." A clinking noise drifted through the air as Snape settled something around Harry's neck. "It's a wide gold ring studded with emeralds. I've hung it on a chain for you." He paused, then said, "It's the ring your father gave to your mother on their wedding day. Albus recovered it from Godric's Hollow the night they were killed; it's been in his keeping every since."

Harry fingered it, imagining how it must look. "Um, so this was spelled to be the Portkey? It . . ." he cleared his throat, not really wanting to cry again in front of Snape, and changed what he had been going to say. "It's tiny. This wouldn't fit on any of your fingers."

"It's a wizard's ring," Snape drawled, clearly amused. "It was made in Lily's size, but it'll change to fit whatever finger it's thrust onto. That's why I put it on a chain for you. I thought you might like to keep it the way she had it."

"Yeah," Harry murmured. "Thanks. But . . . I still don't understand why it worked after I unleashed my dark . . . um, deep powers."

"You might as well call them dark," Snape advised. "I think half the solution to getting them under your control will be to accept them. However, as regards the ring. Your parents' love for one another is bound up in that ring, and it's that same love they gave to you, right up until the night they died. I suppose some part of your wild magic recognised it as safe, as part of yourself."

"You suppose?" Harry echoed. "You don't know? That isn't why the headmaster made the Portkey this ring?"

Snape gave a sharp, dry laugh. "We were hardly expecting you to run amuck, magically speaking, and enable our escape."

"Then why the ring?" Harry pressed, before the answer came to him. "Oh, simple. Because it could be bound to my mother's sacrifice. Like . . . warding."

"Our hope was to keep the Dark Lord from detecting that it had been spelled," Snape agreed. "Of course his own wards kept the spell from functioning, until you obliterated them. Albus and the Aurors were casting like madmen to try to break through . . ." Snape groaned in remembrance. "I could do nothing for you save keep my hands on you so that the ring would transport us both out the moment it began to heat."

Harry glanced up, though he could see nothing. "Oh, I get it . . . so that's why you didn't really object to holding me down to be tortured!"

Snape's voice went low and cold. "Why did you think I didn't voice more than a token objection?"

"Well, I didn't know!" Harry cried. "I thought it was odd that you would . . . er, almost join in like that. I suppose I thought that you had to because Voldemort had asked, and defying him would have made him suspicious . . . It's not like I thought you intended to enjoy yourself, Professor! I trusted you, I really did. I just didn't really . . . understand."

"I suppose," the Potions Master replied, sneering at the memory, not at Harry, "it's a good thing the Dark Lord did demand I participate. Otherwise, I would have had to ask for the honour of restraining you to be tortured. I would have had to beg, and I dare say you'd not have trusted me so readily after hearing that."

"Of course I would have--" Harry objected.

"Don't be stupid!" Snape barked, that time unmistakably at him.

"All right, maybe not," Harry conceded. "You did know when I slugged you that I didn't really mean it. Didn't you?"

"I should hope you didn't. You barely bruised me."

That set Harry's teeth on edge. "Well, I was sick to my stomach from just Apparating, not to mention seriously dehydrated, reeling on my feet, and scared to death!"

"All the same, it clearly demonstrates a need for you to be trained in some more effective fighting techniques. It's folly to rely solely on magic, which can be foiled in various ways. Still, I will admit that your verbal misdirection---so I'm a rat bastard? what a charming epithet---was somewhat more believable than your pitiful blow."

"It wouldn't kill you to utter a simple Well done, you know," Harry groused.

"Indeed," Snape drawled, "I do believe I am still alive."

"What?"

"As I recall, I was most forthcoming on the subject of your Occlumency and misdirection during your ordeal."

"Yeah, well you didn't say well done," Harry groused.

Snape softly laughed, the sound sardonic, but also rife with amusement and resolution both. Harry didn't really understand, not until his teacher spoke again, suggesting an agreement that was Slytherin to its very heart. Something Snape wanted, for something Harry wanted. But that was all right, Harry supposed; the agreement was well balanced. "Let me put in the Elixir without holding you down, Harry, and then, I'll most decidedly say well done."

It wasn't pleasant by any means, and it took them more than one try to get it right, but by the time Snape headed off towards his own quarters, he was able to deliver those words that meant so much to the Gryffindor boy. He even ruffled his hair a bit as he said them.

"Well done, you idiot child."