Stay with her.

In the past few days, those three words had consumed his every waking thought.

Grime had collected in the grooves of the tiled kitchen floor, but he was no longer expected to scrub it away. His list of chores had shrunk from an arm's length to one item:

Stay with her.

He was going to do this. He was going to prove to her--to both of them--that he could do this one thing right.

Lily was sitting near him at the kitchen table, stirring the dregs of her oatmeal. Every few seconds she would pause, staring into the bottom of the bowl. Then she would start again, stirring, the murky remains circling like the thoughts in her head.

She was at the end of her cycle. The final days when the curse had regained ground, but before she could take the Restituomens potion and be restored again.

"You should eat more," he said to her.

She dropped her spoon, startled. Her green eyes were dark but steady as she turned toward him. "Who...?" she began.

Harry pressed his forehead against the tabletop. He couldn't answer that question again. He simply couldn't. "I'm Harry," he said to her. "Your son." Snape had told him he could say this, that it wasn't a lie. He put every effort into the words, filling each one up with the feelings he had for her. He wanted each word to have magic in it, to make her remember, to fix what was broken.

It was a few moments before he could find it within himself to look up again.

Lily was watching him closely, as though seeing deep inside him. She reached out and touched his hair, his face. "You're so young," she said. "I shouldn't see that face on someone so young."

There was no sign of recognition. She'd already forgotten his words. It was to be expected. Her lapses were only a few seconds apart now.

But it still hurt.

"Mum," he began, but was interrupted by Snape entering the kitchen.

The lines around the man's eyes stood out sharply, and his hair clung to the sides of his face. The heady scent of the Restituomens ingredients wafted around his body.

Harry rubbed his hand through his own slick hair and imagined that they made quite a pair. The two of them spent every spare moment watching over her. When Snape could break away, he worked on Restituomens. When Harry wasn't watching over her, he was poring over the Potions books he found in the house, determined to understand what would help her recover. Determined to learn enough so that he could find a way to fix this.

But it was like trying to fly without a broom. He'd hunch over an advanced Potion text in the muggy evenings, ignoring the itchy beads of sweat springing down his arms and back. Reading the same passage over and over, the words skittering past his mind no matter how much he focused on them. He'd toss a book aside, until he remembered that his counterpart had read and understood these books. Had helped Snape prepare the potions his mum needed.

So he'd pick up the book again, telling himself he could do better. That he had to be better.

Snape cast a cooling charm across the kitchen. The blistering heat faded away for the moment.

"Severus," said Lily, turning in her chair to look up at him. Her face was open and welcoming. She remembered him instantly. She always did.

Harry felt a sharp stab in his heart. He turned over the past few hours, looking for something that could have helped her remember him. It made him think of his cupboard at the Dursleys. Curling up in the cramped space, he would run over the day. Tried to think of something he could have said or done to avoid that single finger pointing toward the dark space under the stairs. He couldn't stop trying then. And he couldn't stop trying now.

Taking a deep breath, he pulled himself back to the kitchen, and what needed to be done. He raised his eyes to Snape in a silent question.

The man shook his head. "The temperature dipped below the acceptable range for a few seconds. I'll brew it again this afternoon."

Asking Snape anything about potions reminded him strongly of classes in a dank dungeon. But he'd tentatively broached the topic. Snape had fetched the parchment that showed the formula he'd developed.

Harry's hopes that he could brew it for her this month had been dashed. The entire process took hours, and the slightest deviation from the instructions--some of which he could barely understand--caused the concoction to be worthless. The timing was also essential: a fresh brew, given on an exact day. Too soon caused a toxic interaction with last month's potion. Too late left her in a coma. Even Snape had difficulty with the demands. Harry knew his ability in Potions made him useless to her.

So he would stay with her, and take care of her. But he wanted to do more. He had to do more. He looked desperately at Snape. "Isn't there something...anything...?"

Snape gazed down at him with his fathomless eyes. With a rustle of robes, he sat near Lily. He leaned close to her, murmuring, asking her questions. Simple questions. "What do you hear?" and "What do you feel?"

Lily fell into the rhythm, answering back. "I hear rumble of your voice," "I feel the swell of magic inside me." It had a lilting, chanting quality to it, like lullaby that rolled on and on.

Snape paused and took Harry's hand, placing it over Lily's "Try," he said, offering an encouraging nod. He started to chant again.

Harry repeated after him, tripping over the words. There was a beat to the mantra he couldn't catch. But he did his best, listening to the words, feeling the heat where their three hands were joined, and finding strength in the strange ritual.

That afternoon, he helped Lily into the living room. He'd taken to memorizing bits of his day. Little things, like the fat rabbit he'd watched turn purple as it nibbled on one of the plants in Snape's potion flowerbed. Or how he'd managed to reach the first level of branches on the bubblefruit tree out back. He didn't care for climbing much, but he felt like he should try it, and tell her about it. He described each detail carefully, thinking hard, trying to push the feeling of remembering it into her.

She nodded silently, smiling at parts. She reached out and laid her hand over his, her face clearing for a moment as she looked at him. "It's okay, you know," she said. "You don't have to try so hard."

Harry shook his head, but a frenzied scrabbling inside him lessened. "Try so hard at what?"

Lily began to speak, but then her face clouded, and her eyelids fluttered. She fell forward, going limp in his arms, her body sliding slowly off the sofa.

The sense of peace he had begun to feel quickly left him. He grabbed her sholders, his hands sliding across the thin cotton of her shirt.

She slipped through his fingers and crumpled in a heap on the floor. Her eyes stared sightlessly ahead. Like she had never existed.

He swallowed the panic rising in his chest. "Mum?" he asked, hesitantly laying a hand on her forearm. His heart pounded in his ears. He held trembling fingers to her lips.

A gentle warmth.

He pulled his hand back. A choking sound came from his throat. She was still breathing. But...was it too late? Was this the coma? Harry glanced at the clock, but he clearly recalled Snape saying that they had until morning.

"Mum, wake up, please." He rubbed her hand frantically.

Her eyes focused for a moment, and she stared deeply into his eyes. She breathed in and out slowly, her pupils widening, as if she had just seen the most beautiful sunset. Then her eyes glazed over and unfocused again, and her body became dead weight. She looked like a discarded rag doll.

Breathing heavily, he laid her head gently on the floor. She was getting worse...maybe even falling into a coma early, and he didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to help her.

He raced to the bookcase that concealed the workroom. Then he stopped and paced back to where Lily lay. Snape was working on the Restituomens potion. She needed it. It might be the only thing that would save her, and any disturbance might destroy it. But his mum was lying there, looking like she'd never laughed or sung or tousled his hair.

He couldn't bear it. He pounded against the bookcase until his jangled brain brought forth the password: "Dragonwort."

The bookshelf slid aside, and Harry flew through the entry. He crashed into Snape at the bottom of the steps.

Snape staggered from the impact, and gripped Harry's arms so that they both maintained their balance. "I heard pounding," he said. "What-"

"It's Mum," said Harry. He kept a tight grip on one of Snape's arms and trampled up the stairs, dragging the man behind him.

As soon as Snape saw Lily he fell towards her and knelt. His wand out, he touched her gently, checking her breathing, her pulse points. Then he leaned back and took a deep breath, hand against his forehead. "She's fine," he said.

Harry was dumbfounded. "Fine? How can you say that?"

Lily's eyes opened and closed in a slow blink, as though the movement cost her great effort.

Snape ran the backs of his fingers along her cheek. Lily closed her eyes and leaned into the touch, as if it were something to be savored. "This is how the cycle always ends. She has lost all memory. Each moment, as it happens...that is her whole world." He looked at Harry, and there was an apology in his tone as he continued. "I've been distracted. I thought you already knew this. But that was..."

"The other me," Harry finished for him. The other Harry knew. The other Harry wouldn't have panicked. The other Harry would have known how to help her.

Snape nodded. "Well, you do have a passing resemblance." He waved his wand over Lily and chanted the light-as-a-feather spell.

"But...I...what do I do now?" Harry had been ready to help with a life-saving spell, a rush to St. Mungos, a plan to do...something. Now he was just standing there, feeling damp and twitchy.

Snape gathered Lily easily in his arms and stood. "There's nothing more you need to do. She will be like this until morning, when I can give her the Restituomens."

"The potion." Harry pressed a palm against his eyes. "It's ruined, isn't it?"

Snape was silent for a moment. "I will brew it again this evening." He carried Lily upstairs.

Harry groaned and paced across the sitting room floor. He couldn't stand still. He glanced at the bookcase and remembered the password: dragonwort. It was one of the ingredients for Restituomens, and it had to be harvested the day the potion was made. He headed for the garden.

The heat outside hit him like a brick wall. The plants were only kept from wilting by Snape's watering spells. The dragonwort was doing well, blooming in a small stone-lined plot near the gate.

He kneeled in the dirt and started working his fingers around the roots. He would get the plants ready for Snape, and then at least he'd have done something helpful.

The sun beat down on him. The dragonwort plants were scraggly things, long scars running along their stems. The heads held large, multi-colored blossoms, and seemed too heavy to be supported by the thin body of the plant. But the blooms were held high, turned toward the light.

Harry ignored the heat as best he could and kept working. He'd weeded the flowerbeds more times than he could count at the Dursleys. He'd never minded weeding as much as his other chores. He remembered once, after he'd weeded a particularly thorny patch, Aunt Petunia had given him the barest flicker of a smile.

There was a creak of rusty hinges as the back door to the house swung open. A moment later, the blast of the sun was muted by a long, thin shadow falling over him.

Harry didn't look up from his work. His fingers dug deeply into the soil, finding comfort in the crumbles of rocks and dirt.

"What are you doing?" asked Snape.

"It's one of the ingredients for the potion. I remember-" He paused for a second, silently cursing his tongue.

"Harry," said Snape.

He shook his head and went back to his work. "I know, the rules," he said. "But I'm already grounded, so can I just finish this?"

"Harry, stop," said Snape.

"Just tell me how much you need--"

"Stop," repeated Snape. He heard a sigh. "The dragonwort blooms must be cut from plants that have never been removed from the earth."

Harry stopped digging and stared at the pile of limp plants at his side. "So I destroyed them. For nothing." He stood up, looking at Snape for confirmation.

The man rubbed the heel of his hand against the droplets of sweat gathering at his temples. "They can be replanted," he said. He conjured a small wooden divider to separate the flowerbed into two sections, and then knelt, carefully gathering the pulled plants.

Harry gaped at him. "But...you said that they're useless. They're completely useless." An anger filled him, and he tried to grab the plants out of Snape's hands, to tear them to pieces.

Snape pulled away from him. His hand curled protectively around the flowers. "They're not useless."

"So...you can still use them? For the potion? They can give her back...I mean, they can fix her?"

Snape stared at him with somber eyes. "Not everything can be fixed, little one." He adjusted the plants and laid his palm along Harry's cheek.

Harry shied away, sitting back on his heels. "I'm not little," he muttered. "Tomorrow's..." he stopped, shifting uncertainly.

"Tomorrow's your birthday. I know." Snape gave him a small smile.

Harry's heart beat faster at that, although he wasn't afraid. He shrugged, not knowing how to respond. He gestured toward the plants the man still held. "So...what can they be used for, then?"

Snape glanced down at the plants, then gestured for Harry to kneel forward with him in front of the flower bed. Pressing his fingers into the soil, he carefully hollowed out a space, then nestled each flower in its tiny plot of land. Many of the plants listed to the side, or sprawled out across the ground.

"They don't look very good," said Harry.

"They'll get better."

"But they'll never be the same."

"No. They'll never be the same." Snape gathered soil around the last flower and pressed it into place. "Do you see the scars along the stems? Do you know what they're from?"

Harry traced a long, jagged scar on one stem and shook his head.

"From struggling out of the rocky earth. It tears at them, shredding some of them. But some survive their wounds to grow and bloom."

"Couldn't you plant them in softer soil?"

Snape shook his head. "Then they wouldn't be dragonwort."

Harry waved his hand at the newly planted flowers. "What about those, then? You said they weren't useless. But if I ruined them, they're just a bunch of scarred-up, scraggly things that are no good to anyone."

"But they'll live. They'll reach for the sunlight. They'll bloom." He stood, pulling Harry up with him. He held onto one of Harry's hands, rubbing away the dirt with his thumb. He frowned at what he saw. "It was that bad at the Dursleys?"

Harry looked down and saw that he'd dug so hard into the rocky soil that his fingers were bleeding around the nails. "I did that myself. Just now."

"Hmm," Snape agreed. "You stayed with her, as I asked. What did you learn?"

"I...I was supposed to learn something?"

"She's taught me. I...well, I have a tendency to hold grudges, sometimes."

"Er...yeah. I've noticed."

"I'm sure," drawled Snape. "I don't claim to be perfect. But I watch her. How she walks free while I'm stumbling, dragging weights behind me. Everything that was done to me. Everything I've done." A shadow flickered across his face. "It helps to only hear and see and feel in the moment." His thumb traced along the tiny grooves in Harry's palm. "It's helped with you, I think."

Harry thought he should pull his hand away, but didn't want to. He remembered the chant from this morning. What do you feel? He couldn't answer that, not at this moment.

"She can teach you, Harry. To see yourself. What you can offer her."

He flashed to the image of his mother on the sitting room floor, eyes as wide and still as death, and how he stood there, with nothing to offer her.

His throat twisted. Before he knew what had happened, he was gasping, tears leaking out of his eyes. "I learned...you were right," he said, finally pulling his hand away to wipe at his eyes furiously. "About me. I can't be her son. I..." Every word Snape had snarled at him since he'd entered this world came back to him, feeling true, feeling right. "I don't know what it means to love her. There's nothing...nothing inside that can do anything..." The tears were flowing more freely now, and the back of his hand had gotten slick from his attempts to rub them away. He clamped his jaw together to prevent his body from betraying him further.

"You're wrong," Snape said, producing a handkerchief from his robes. With quick movements, he removed Harry's glasses, placed a hand on his chin to tilt his face upward, then pressed the clean white linen against his eyes. "You're not empty, little one. You're overflowing. And she can see that. We both can."

The sunlight shimmered through the whiteness. The cotton was a whisper of softness against his face.

A barricade ruptured deep inside him, and with a shudder, the first sob tore out of his throat.

The handkerchief was removed and arms pulled him firmly forward, until his body shook against stiff black robes.

"I...I'm not..." Harry stuttered. A hand was pressing the back of his head against Snape's chest, and his words were muffled.

"What's that?" asked Snape, and the hand disappeared.

Harry moved his face to the side. "I'm not little," he managed to get out. He couldn't remember when he'd been this close to another person for this long. His arms hung limply at his sides, his hands grabbing fistfuls of air. "I'm near-nearly fourteen," he gasped.

He tried to gather the strength to pull away. A voice in his head reminded him of every insult he'd suffered in Potions class, every derisive look, every moment in the past three years that told him not to trust this man. But another voice, from deep within, was now screaming something without words, something bottomless and primal.

"Well," said Snape. The hand had returned, and was rubbing his back in a rhythm that was smoothing the sobs from his body. "Your birthday isn't until tomorrow. Humor me and be my little one for a while longer."

The voice deep inside him won, and Harry wrapped his arms around him. And he found that he didn't feel little. Not anymore.