He was standing in a large, dimly lit room, two wizards trembling at his feet. Rage overtook him, consumed him until nothing else existed.

“Fools!” he screamed, and the wizards flinched. “There were six of you. Six! And yet only two of you return to me. Tell me,” he lowered his voice dangerously, “how the Order could have known, could have been so prepared to attack, without their spy to feed them my plans. Tell me!”

“I-I do not know, m-my Lord,” stammered one of the wizards. “W-we were ambushed. They w-were upon us b-before we -”

“Enough.” He was through playing games. The ridiculous Order had succeeded in defeating yet more of his men, and he was no closer to his goal. The boy was too well protected by Dumbledore. The old fool had always underestimated him, had always wanted the young Tom Riddle to be no more than an ordinary, average half-blood. Ha! He’d defied those expectations, become Lord Voldemort, the most powerful wizard on earth, and yet still Dumbledore thought that he could be outmaneuvered. Well, the old fool was wrong. The boy would yet be his.

Harry Potter had a fatal weakness that even Dumbledore was too blinded by adoration to see as a flaw. He could see though. Oh, yes - he knew just where to strike.

“Potter! Push him out of your mind! Occlude. Occlude NOW!” A voice called to him, separating him for an instant from the boiling rage…but the voice was not stronger than the anger, which quickly engulfed him again.

He smiled as he called more of his followers to him. Only fools allowed their sentiments - so-called love - to stand in the way of their ambitions, and the boy was undoubtedly a fool. They would strike now. Not at the boy…no, not at Potter. That was proving more costly and time consuming than necessary.

They would strike at Harry Potter’s heart.

“Potter! Listen to me! Remember our lesson. Concentrate on the touch. Use it as an anchor to draw yourself from his mind. Potter! Can you hear me?” The touch... What touch? The combined rage and thrill lessened for an instant, but before he could consider heeding the voice, a new wave of intensity swept over him.

He laughed in anticipation as one by one, the cloaked figures of more and more Death Eaters appeared before him. “Welcome, my loyal servants. Prepare yourselves. It is time to draw out the boy once and for all.”

“Harry! You must listen. Control your mind. Pull it away from his. NOW!” The voice was clearer and more insistent. He could no longer ignore it. He mentally grasped for something, not knowing what precisely he was searching for, when all at once he discovered it.

Cloves. Lilac. Dirt and clay. Strangely, it was the faint, almost undetectable spicy waft of cloves mixed with the earthy scent of soil and plant that brought him to his own mind once again. He breathed deeply. Slowly his senses became clear, drawing him up, up, away from the darkness of Voldemort’s rage.

Harry opened his eyes. He blinked into a pair of familiar black eyes, and it wasn’t long before he registered an increasingly familiar pair of arms holding him on the laboratory floor. He closed his eyes for another moment, took another deep breath to steel himself against his splitting headache, and pushed himself to a sitting position.

“I did it,” he said numbly through a painful haze. “I got out.”

“What did you see?” Snape asked. He removed his hands from Harry, but he still knelt beside him.

Harry blinked, rubbing his searing scar. His head hurt something awful.

“What did you see?” Snape repeated impatiently, but at least this time he withdrew his wand to summon a potion from the cabinets which lined one side of the room. “Drink,” he ordered, holding a vial directly in front of Harry’s shaking hands.

Harry obeyed wordlessly. Or rather, he tried to obey. No sooner had he taken the vial from his professor than it slipped through his fingers. Snape caught it with his lightning quick reflexes, but not before half of its contents spilled to the floor. Harry cringed, but Snape didn’t say anything as he summoned another vial.

“Drink,” he ordered again, holding the vial while Harry gulped down the contents. He felt a calm instantly spread through his body, starting in his middle and flowing all the way through to his fingers and his toes. He breathed deeply, involuntarily leaning toward his professor as he did so.

“I need to know what you saw.” Snape’s voice was gentle but still urgent. “It was the Dark Lord, was it not?”

Harry nodded, but the nodding made him dizzy, so he stopped. Everything felt fuzzy and distant. He tried to figure out why, but it just made his brain feel even more muddled.

“Potter?” Snape’s hands grasped his shoulders, and Harry was sure he saw concern. But then again, things were a bit fuzzy right then. “You are in shock. What did you see? I must know. Now.” There was a modicum of fear along with the concern, and perhaps that was what drew Harry from whatever state he was in. Those weren’t the main emotions one associated with Professor Severus Snape.

Harry absently noted that despite the potion’s effects, his entire body was still shaking. “Vold– he was angry.” He licked his dry lips. “He was really, really angry. I…I think he lost some Death Eaters to some kind of trap set by the Order.” Harry watched Snape carefully for any sign of knowledge of a trap, but the man’s face was unreadable.

“That is all?” Snape pierced him with a stare. “There was nothing else?”

Harry shook his head automatically, then stopped. “No, wait. He was calling his Death Eaters. He has a new plan he’s working on, but he didn’t say what it was, only that –” He halted mid-sentence as an image came to him, an image he’d glimpsed in Voldemort’s mind as he’d pulled away from its grasp. He opened his eyes wide, panic setting in.

“The Burrow!” Harry gasped. His wild eyes met Snape’s. “He’s going after the Weasleys!”

Harry often had nightmares growing up, but the first one he vividly remembered occurred on the evening of his sixth birthday.

The Dursleys had ignored the special day, as usual. Dudley probably hadn’t even realized it was Harry’s birthday, for he had forgotten to gift him with an extra punch for the occasion. In fact, there really was nothing extraordinary about the day…except for the bicycle.

Dudley’s new bicycle was red, with black lightning bolts on the sides and shiny new handlebars with brakes, and the first time Harry saw it, he wanted nothing more than to ride it. For weeks it had been all he could think about. He could almost feel the wind on his cheeks as he raced it down the sidewalk in his mind. He imagined the looks of envy on the neighbor kids’ faces when he would squeeze the hand brakes and it would skid to a stop right in front of them. In his daydream, they came up to him to admire the bicycle, and they were so impressed that they wanted to be his friends, and they didn’t even care when Dudley tried to scare them off because they were impressed by how well he rode the bicycle and besides, they liked Harry…

Looking back, Harry wasn’t even sure if what he’d wanted more was to ride the bicycle or to finally have friends. Either way, he should have known better than to try. He was six, old enough to have learned by experience what would happen if the Dursleys found out.

He’d never ridden a bicycle before, and when he crashed down to the sidewalk on his first try, he barely felt the skinned knee through the feeling of sheer terror that washed through him. The bicycle was scratched. There was a huge scrape right through the center of the lightning bolt, and anyone could have heard the crash, and he didn’t see anyone - but that didn’t mean no one had seen him. The Dursleys would find out, and he was already hungry and didn’t want to be sent to bed without food again that night, and what if they decided not to let him leave the cupboard to go to school in the fall and and and…panic set in.

As it turned out, the Dursleys never found out. But Harry dreamed that night that they did. In his dream, they found out and decided they’d had enough of him and sent him to an orphanage that was run by a big ugly giant of a man with crooked teeth and a wart for a nose. Harry was surrounded by boys his age, but every time he tried to make friends with one, the boy would turn his back on him or laugh along with the tall wart-man at how stupid Harry was until finally they all left. He was all alone and friendless and then even the wart-man left because Harry wasn’t worth the trouble, and the orphanage was old and scary and it closed in on him until it was smaller than his cupboard and he couldn’t ever leave and he was so so so frightened and he was sure he was going to die there…

Harry woke up after an eternity, plastered in sweat, and he never tried to touch Dudley’s bicycle again.

Harry was sixteen now, but he felt like his six-year old self again, trapped in an endless nightmare. Only, this one was real. He couldn’t wake up from the real world, couldn’t make it better by gasping or screaming or thrashing or changing the direction of his thoughts. Waking nightmares weren’t always worse, he reasoned. At least when he’d been captured by Voldemort after the Triwizard Tournament, he’d been able to fight back. He’d been able to escape. The sleeping kind of nightmares didn’t always afford him that luxury. In dreams, just when you thought you’d beat the bad guy, another one could come to take his place. You’d die and the people you loved would die, and you would wake up and realize it was all a dream only to have to relive it the very next night. It was awful.

But when the waking nightmare was to sit and wait and hope that people he couldn’t touch in a place that he couldn’t see were surviving an attack that he could only imagine…that - that was real torture.

He had been waiting in the drawing room for what seemed like hours after Snape had disappeared in a cloud of green floo powder, and yet the hands on the clock moved at a frustratingly slow rate. Snape had told him to stay put while he left to warn Dumbledore and the Order about a possible attack on the Burrow. Harry had wanted to argue. He needed to go too. His friends were in trouble. He had to do something…but he had bit his tongue and agreed to stay put, knowing that Snape wouldn’t leave until he’d won the argument anyway. The Weasleys didn’t have time to wait for Harry to fight a losing battle.

But now that Snape was gone, all Harry could do was wait and feel useless as his best friend’s family was attacked. Maybe even murdered.

He increased his pacing. He’d have welcomed anything, any word of what was happening, but all he heard for the longest time was the sound of his own racing heartbeat and pacing footsteps.

By the time the floo finally flared to life, he’d very nearly devolved into a panic attack. As each head of red hair exited the floo into the drawing room of Grimmauld Place, he’d breathed that much easier. First Fred and George came through, followed by Ginny and several Order members…then Mrs. Weasley, her face streaked with soot and lined with worry. He remembered her face clearly when he looked back on that day, but not as clearly as the face that came through next.

For years to come, his nightmares would be haunted by the white, lifeless face of his best friend in the whole world.

Ron wasn’t dead, somebody rushed to assure Harry as his limp, gangly body was carried through the floo. He was breathing.

But the instant he took in how many downcast eyes set in grim faces wouldn’t meet his eyes, he knew what they really meant.

Ron wasn’t dead yet.

And try as he might, Harry found himself in the midst of another nightmare…one from which he could not wake.

It was ironic, Harry decided later that day: all he had wished over past the week and a half was for anybody but Snape to show up and keep him company, but now that Grimmauld Place was full of people, he just wanted to be left alone. The old house was filled to the brim with tension, anxiety, and mood swings.

Harry didn’t cry - he wouldn’t let himself with so many worried faces looking on - but by mid-morning, he had given up on hiding from hugging arms and teary embraces, mostly from Mrs. Weasley, and by mid-afternoon, he had given up on getting any information out of the closed-mouthed Order members rushing to and fro. In a sense, the unhelpful adults were helping him to keep his fear and grief under control, as he channeled those emotions into anger instead - anger that no one would tell him what had happened or let him know what was really wrong with Ron. The anger he felt toward the adults, combined with the rage he felt at Voldemort, coursed like fire through his veins. The only thing that kept him from lashing out in a truly magnificent fashion was the teary, worried face of Mrs. Weasley. He didn’t want to cause her more pain than she already had to be going on with. So he shut the door on his anger, allowing it to simmer in the back of his mind while he went through the motions of comforting Ron’s family.

Ron wasn’t waking up, and Harry didn’t need to be a Legilimens to know that all the sideways glances and deflection from the adults around him added up to the fact that no one was sure if he ever would.

And the adults weren’t the only ones giving him sideways glances.

“What?” he said more fiercely than he usually would have spoken to Ron’s little sister. “Tell me what’s on your mind or stop staring at me, Ginny. Please,” he added more softly, feeling a pang of guilt at the thought of her brother upstairs and the tears she’d been blinking away at random moments.

Ginny turned away, a tinge of pink on her cheeks, and laid out some playing cards on the drawing room table. It was some sort of solitaire, and the cards kept getting up and giving suggestions if she took too long to make a move.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Harry on the sofa and Ginny at the table. As the only two minors in the house, they had been directed to stay in the drawing room during each of the day’s Order meetings. Fred and George joined them at intervals, but even they weren’t in much of a mood to play games or visit, and they usually retreated fairly quickly to join the adults in the kitchen. Dobby couldn’t even distract them with his antics, for the house-elf had been occupied running errands for Order members all day.

Harry heaved a frustrated sigh and stretched out his legs, staring at the ceiling. This not being able to do anything was not helping his mood. He took a deep breath, then another, and glanced at Ginny in time to see her quickly avert her eyes again. He couldn’t even snap at her for it this time, she looked so wary of his temper. He leaned his head back to stare at the wall.

“Sorry,” he said after another minute of silence. “I didn’t mean to bite your head off. I’m just…on edge, I guess.”

“It’s okay,” she murmured quietly, “we all are.” He heard her shuffle a few more cards around the table. “Do you…” she cleared her throat and asked hesitantly, “do you think he’ll be okay?”

He opened his mouth to give her the standard vague answers he’d gotten from the adults: he’ll be fine…they’re taking good care of him…give it a little time and a healer, and he’ll be racing you down the Quidditch pitch. Harry shut his mouth with a snap. He knew by the way they wouldn’t meet his eyes that they were only lying and deflecting his questions, which had only made him more worried and more angry. He wouldn’t do that to Ginny.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I think…I think it’s pretty bad.”

Ginny nodded, blinking rapidly as she moved another card. The card sat up in annoyance and demanded that she move it to a different spot, and she quickly covered it with another card. It grumbled but stayed put.

“So…is Snape tutoring you, then?” Ginny asked in an almost normal voice, and though Harry wasn’t keen on discussing Snape, he was glad for the change in topic.

“Not really. Er…well, I guess kind of?” Harry closed his eyes against a budding headache. “He worked with me on clearing my mind last night. And I’ve helped him in the lab some. He’s not exactly tutoring me though.”

Ginny said nothing for a few minutes, then said softly, “George told me we’re staying here now - at headquarters - until school starts. With you and Snape.”

“Yeah?” Harry cracked an eye open.

“Yeah.”

“Did he…I mean, has he heard anything about Hermione?”

Ginny shook her head and swiped at a tear on her cheek before moving another card.

Harry sighed again and stared at the ceiling, though the light didn’t help with the pounding in his head. He had to fight to hold back another wave of anger. Ron and Hermione were his best friends, but the adults couldn’t be bothered to tell him the truth about either one. They wouldn’t even answer him when he asked a basic question, like if they knew where Hermione was. He was starting to get a stomachache to go along with his headache, just thinking about what could have happened to her by now if Voldemort had decided to target her family after failing with Ron’s.

He sat up abruptly. “I’m going to lie down. I’ll be in my room if anyone’s looking.”

He waited just long enough for Ginny to nod, then he retreated to his room. Though he supposed it wouldn’t be his room for long. He’d probably be sharing it with both of the twins now that Ron would need a room to himself.

He flopped back on his bed. He didn’t want to stay there but didn’t know where else to go, and he felt overwhelmingly lost in Sirius’s old house. He couldn’t face Ron’s shell of a body, interrupt Mrs. Weasley’s grief, or deal with Remus’ half answers just then. Remus had been a constant presence that day along with various members of the Order, and Harry knew he was in the kitchen now…but the man had given him the same answers all the adults were giving him – empty reassurances, no details, and urges to go back into the drawing room and “let the grownups worry about such matters.”

Harry was sick of it. His frustration came back full force, and with it came the urge to throw something, hard. If only Sirius were here. Harry knew his godfather would have found a way to tell him what was going on. The danger and thrill of the war would be too much of a temptation to him to hold back, and the other adults’ overt concern for Harry’s wellbeing would be an afterthought to his godfather. Sure, Sirius was more like an overgrown kid at times – not really like the father substitute that Harry had initially wanted or needed – but at least he had told things like he saw them. He wouldn’t have walked on eggshells or acted like Harry couldn’t handle the truth.

Yeah…Sirius would have told him the truth. Why couldn’t anyone else see that he could handle it?

Although… Harry sat up as a thought entered his mind.

Snape.

Unlike everybody else here, that man didn’t have any reason to coddle Harry. He certainly hadn’t tried to lighten bad news in the past out of any concern for how Harry would handle it. If anyone would give him the information he sought, it just might be Snape.

Excitement made his heart beat faster. The professor still might not like him, but they’d at least had to get used to each other over the past couple weeks. Being sought out by Harry Potter wouldn’t be quite as shocking to his system as it would have been a few weeks ago. And he’d seen the man leave the kitchen for his lab several hours ago.

Mind made up, he charged into the hallway before he could re-think his plan…but he came to an abrupt stop in front of the closed door of Snape’s lab. Harry wasn’t sure of the protocol. Snape hadn’t taken to closing the door of his lab as much lately, so often was Harry in there with him, but Harry had not seen it open even once the entire day.

He knocked, shifting from one foot to another as he waited. He knocked again, and before his knuckles had finished their rapping, the door swung open and Harry nearly fell forward into the room.

“What do you want?” Snape glowered at Harry. It was obvious by the dozen or so cauldrons throughout the room that Harry had interrupted him in the middle of quite a bit of work.

He decided not to be put off. “I want to know what’s wrong with Ron,” he demanded, opting for the direct approach. “No one will tell me anything.” He lifted his chin. “I’m not a little kid. I can handle it.”

Snape didn’t move for a moment, still glaring, until he spun on his heel to stir the nearest cauldron. “Close the door,” he barked.

Harry wasn’t certain if that meant he should enter and then close the door, or if he was being told to leave, but he opted for the former. He took a couple steps into the lab and closed the door softly behind him.

The room was a bit hazy. The cauldrons were filled with various substances, none of them quite the same. Ingredients were scattered about the counters in an orderly fashion, some chopped and some waiting to be prepared. Snape was checking each cauldron in turn, stopping to stir one methodically before moving on to the next.

As he was being ignored and had already asked his question, Harry awkwardly stood in the room, not certain how he should proceed. He cleared his throat. “I –“

He was cut off by a sharp, silencing gesture from Snape, who proceeded to ignore him again.

Harry grumbled under his breath. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get his information if he wasn’t allowed to talk. After fidgeting for a few seconds, he grabbed a knife from the nearby counter. If he wasn’t being told to leave, but he wasn’t allowed to speak, he couldn’t think of many other options than to chop some ingredients. At least if he did it well, it might help his chances at getting Snape to give him information. As he began to work, he half expected Snape to tell him to stop. When the man merely ignored him and continued working on his potions, Harry found that he was grateful. He hadn’t known how much he needed this – a mindless something to keep his hands busy and his body away from the melancholy that permeated the rest of the house.

The silence was refreshing, and neither wizard tried to break it as they worked side by side in the potions lab.

Runespoor eyes were disgusting and messy and slimy and squishy, Harry thought an hour later – which made them loads more satisfying to smash than the usual boring ingredients. Why weren’t they on the normal curriculum for Potions class? It wasn’t like they were difficult to manage. He smashed another…and instead sent the slippery orb flying across the room into the wall, barely missing a steadily steaming cauldron.

Oops.

His eyes darted to Snape, whose narrowed eyes were already trained on him. “Mr. Potter. Explain to me the properties of runespoor eyes,” the professor demanded.

“I…um...”

“Do not stutter. I believe made its properties clear you only ten minutes ago.”

Harry cleared his throat. “They are unstable. And they…require a steady hand or else they…blow things up.”

Snape stared, and Harry got the feeling the man was less than impressed with his paraphrased description. “Quite,” he finally answered simply. “They ‘blow things up,’ particularly when carelessly thrown into nearly complete medicinal potions! Are you trying to obtain more bandages, Potter?”

Harry gently rubbed the bandage on his hand. He shook his head and issued a polite, “no, sir,” not eager to upset Snape further – not while he still wanted information on Ron.

Snape narrowed his eyes, though Harry was becoming familiar enough with the professor’s expressions to know it wasn’t the sort of eye narrowing that meant Harry should start ducking or running. It was the sort that meant the man didn’t fully accept Harry’s response but wasn’t going to harp on it. Sure enough, he ordered, “Use more caution!” and turned back to his potions.

Harry couldn’t hold back a small grin. He didn’t know quite why, but being able to read Snape had lightened his dour mood a bit. Perhaps he could develop this summer into a new skill set – Snape Mood Reading. He could just imagine the trouble he could avoid getting into in Potions if he knew just what buttons he could push and when.

However, the thought immediately sobered him up. He’d almost forgotten – no Potions next year.

Which meant no becoming an Auror either.

Right.

Mood properly spoiled, he retrieved the wayward runespoor eye and concentrated on not blowing anything up – at least not until he got Snape to answer his questions. They had already been working for more than an hour, and Harry was prepared to stay all night if he needed to.

As it turned out, he didn’t have very much longer to wait. Only ten more minutes passed before Snape’s alert, methodical movements began to relax into a calm, steady watchfulness. It was a subtle change, but one Harry was learning to associate with the end of the professor’s brewing sessions. He focused more intently on his own task, senses on high alert for Snape to finish completely.

Snape soon stood over Harry’s work, inspecting it for precision. Harry figured he must have done all right, as the professor’s only comment was to instruct, “Clean your space. Preserve the pulp with two drops of solution.”

Harry didn’t need to be told twice. He followed the instructions as quickly as he could carefully do so and waited patiently - at least, he hoped he appeared to be waiting patiently - for the man to finish up his own cleaning.

A few moments later, Snape leaned against his table and crossed his arms. He fixed Harry with a level stare. “What precisely do you desire to know?” he asked.

Harry let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He’d expected to have to convince Snape to talk to him. A weight lifted off his shoulders. “I want to know what happened at the Burrow,” he said. “And I want to know what’s wrong with Ron.”

Instead of answering, Snape motioned for Harry to come closer. “Your hand,” he directed simply, holding out his own.

Harry quickly obeyed, holding out his injured hand for inspection. As desperate as he felt, he’d probably have handed over his Marauder’s Map just then if it would have helped him get answers about Ron’s condition.

Snape carefully removed the bandage and prodded and poked at Harry’s hand for a moment, then pronounced it nearly healed. He released the hand to summon a small jar of cream, which he promptly handed to Harry. “Spread this salve on the wound tonight and twice in the morning – once before breakfast, once after,” was his crisp order. Almost in the same breath, he said, “The headmaster dispatched members of the Order to the Burrow, by which time the attack had only just broken through the wards. They managed to hold off the Dark Lord’s forces long enough for the Weasleys to escape. Your Mr. Weasley was hit while flooing to safety.”

“Hit with what?” Harry asked quietly and perched on a nearby chair.

“They attempted repeatedly to target the younger Mr. Weasley. Even after the Order had arrived, all offensive attacks were concentrated on him. He might have been killed or captured if it had not been for the insanity of his brothers in setting off some absurd blasting contraptions. They were fortunate in not killing him themselves, the idiots,” Snape sneered, though without his usual malice.

Harry had no idea what contraptions he was referring to, but it was obvious that the twins had distracted the Death Eaters with some of their inventions. Harry sucked in a much needed breath, thankful for their quick thinking.

“Captured?” He grabbed hold of that word. “Do you think they meant to capture him?”

“We do not know. It is one possibility.” Snape didn’t have to say any more for Harry to know that if that had been Voldemort’s plan, it would have been for the purpose of arranging some sort of trade or trap for Harry. He bowed his head.

“The other Weasleys suffered no lasting harm,” Snape continued. “One of the twins was physically accosted but managed to escape. Part of a blasting curse caught the young Miss Weasley unawares upon commencement of the attack; however, after a few applications of burn salve, she has no doubt recovered to be her usual impertinent self.”

Harry’s heart sank even more, if that was at all possible. Ginny had been hurt too…because of him. He wondered why she hadn’t told him. “And…and Ron?” He prodded again, still scared to know the answer. “What’s wrong with him?”

Snape’s face remained impassive, clinical even, his arms crossed over his chest. “He is in a comatose-like state, as you have no doubt ascertained. As soon as we determine the specific curse that has led to his condition, treatment will be administered.”

“You mean...” Harry cleared his throat, willing his voice not to break even as it rose in pitch, “they don’t even know what curse hit him? He was hit with a Death Eater curse, professor! It could be killing him right now–”

“Yes,” Snape’s blunt reply cut through Harry’s rising panic, “it could be.” His steady stare was unapologetic at the harsh reality of his words. Still, the way he didn’t look away from Harry as he said it made it somewhat easier to hear, because at least Harry knew he was being told the truth.

Harry let it sink in. “I have to do something, professor,” he said. “I have to do something. I don’t know what, but…I have to do something!”

“What you have to do is calm yourself,” Snape responded matter-of-factly. “There is nothing you can do that the Order is not already doing for your friend.”

Yeah, he tried to calm his racing heart, Snape’s right. They’re on it. They’re figuring it out…

“No! I can’t just sit here!” he exploded. “There has to be something that I can do!”

“Like turn yourself over to the Dark Lord?” Snape hissed. His eyes glittered dangerously. “So help me, Potter, if you so much as attempt it-”

“I didn’t mean that,” Harry huffed. “I’m not stupid enough to just call up Voldemort-”

“The Dark Lord!”

“Why do you care so much what I call him?” Harry yelled. He felt the last strands of his temper snap, and unfortunately for both of them, Snape was in its cross-hairs. “IT’S JUST A NAME!”

“It is not just a name!” Snape said through gritted teeth. “It is his name, and my reasons for not wanting it spoken are my own. As my student, you will respect me in this.”

“Oh because you’ve always respected me so well, haven’t you?” Even as he realized he’d lost all thought of self-preservation, Harry couldn’t seem to change course. It was as if all of the stress and anger of the day had converged into his chest at once and the only way to relieve the pressure was to lash out. “Well I’m not your student anymore, am I? No Potions for me next year. I bet you’re thrilled about that, aren’t you? No Potter to bully or intimidate or blame for all your problems! No, I guess you’ll have to find some other pathetic soul to harass. Good thing there’s a fresh new batch of first years for you to pick from. Some poor naive little Hufflepuff might do the trick.”

“You’re hysterical, Potter. Get out before I throw you out.” Snape didn’t move, just pointed to the door. Harry could see the coldness in his eyes, but it only spurred him on.

“You’re not even a Death Eater anymore! It’s not like Voldem-”

“DON’T SAY THAT NAME!” Snape launched himself at Harry and stopped short of touching him. His lips were white with rage, and all Harry knew was that it matched the rage in his own heart. He almost didn’t regret pushing the man past the point of safety.

“Voldemort, Voldemort, VOLDEM-!” He yelled, and stopped abruptly as his head was thrown to the side by a sharp slap. Startled, he stumbled back, drawing a hand up to his stinging cheek. He felt his rage dissipate, as if startled from his body by the physical jolt.

Snape stepped back as well, his face white, his hands shaking. His eyes were wide, and despite their history, despite their long animosity, Harry knew that Snape was as taken aback by the slap as he was.

They stared at each other for a long moment, the sounds of their sharp breaths mingling in the air, before Harry turned and fled out the door, not bothering to close it behind him. He ran down the short hallway, up the steps until he reached the topmost room of Grimmauld Place. He barely noticed the dusty odds and ends of the attic as he collapsed against a battered old trunk and finally gave in to the grief he’d kept at bay since he’d seen Ron’s pale, lifeless face come through the floo.

The tears flowed freely, and he didn’t even bother to wipe them away.