Harry’s chest tightened horribly as Snape let out another gasp of pain from the deadly curse working its horror inside of him. No, he thought, you can’t die. I can’t lose somebody else. Not again.

Gripping the back of Snape’s robes and aiming his wand at the closest death eaters, Harry stood and began to drag Snape towards the entrance to the castle. He had to stop every few feet to duck or aim, and so their progress became very slow. There are so many, Harry thought. Fifty or so death eaters lay motionless on the front lawn, and another fifty were still fighting, still more of them appearing from the sky that was determined to bring a flood upon them.

He dragged Snape ever closer to the castle, around what he was sure were some dead bodies of death eaters. There was a rasping voice and a moan a few feet from him, and Harry looked over to see a death eater lying on the ground, his hand trying to reach Harry. The man’s hood had fallen from his face, and Harry saw that it was Stan Shunpike, the boy that worked on the Knight bus and was not ten years older than him.

“Help me,” he cried quietly in pain.

Harry hadn’t thought Stan was capable of the murder necessary to become a death eater, but then again, Harry had only ever seen him twice in his life. While he wanted to help the dying young man, the truth was, he couldn’t, and Snape was more important to him.

Jets of light streamed over Harry’s head and one narrowly missed his left arm. There was another cry of pain from Snape, and Harry knew it had hit him.

From the darkness a figure began a mad dash towards the pair, and Harry aimed for the assailant’s head. Before he could get the curse off though, a pale, dirt covered face appeared, blood streaming down one side, blond hair in a mess.

Draco ducked as the ground next to him exploded violently by the hand of a well-aimed curse, and dove for Harry and Snape. Still aiming off curses, he grabbed another part of the neck of Snape’s robes and began dragging him along with Harry. With help, they circled the death eaters and finally made it back to the castle.

“What happened?” Draco asked through the rain and thunder, and the shouts of pain from wounded fighters.

“Some kind of curse… it will be fatal,” Harry told him, wishing desperately that he knew what to do.

Harry was a good fighter, he knew. He knew how to aim, duck, and duel, and if he didn’t have a wand, he knew he was decent with his fists… he’d been in enough fights with Draco and occasionally Ron over the years to know that. He knew how to do schoolwork for a passing grade, and he knew how to keep a secret. There were many things he felt capable of, but this was the one time in his life that he felt so desperately helpless… the one time he didn’t have any ideas, and had the sinking feeling that no matter what he did, he would fail. There was no playing hero this night, Harry told himself. He had finally found somebody that he could not save.

Dumbledore saw the two boys dragging Snape towards the castle, and stepped further forward, aiming harsher spells on the castle’s attackers. The Professors and students around him followed his lead and did the same to give the trio cover.

“Inside!” Dumbledore shouted to them as they passed him, half carrying him, half dragging him up the steps now. “Get him inside!” Severus was floating in and out consciousness now, and was seeing the battle in stages. He didn’t know where Draco had come from, and wasn’t sure if he was there at all but for a few words he’d thought that he had heard him speak.

Severus was vaguely aware of being out of the rain now, and on solid ground rather than lumpy, mushy mud and grass. He thought that he should be cold being inside and being soaked to the bone, but he could feel nothing but violent fire racing through his veins.

Students dashed past Harry, two of them Slytherins, and Harry wondered whose side they were on. He knelt next to Snape, and Draco did the same.

“I don’t know what this one is,” Draco told him. “It looks bad though.”

“Voldemort said it was fatal,” Harry informed him. Draco looked up and caught Harry’s eyes.

“Is he inside your head now?”

Harry shook his head. “He’s gone. He’s up on the roof somewhere watching the battle.”

Draco looked up to the ceiling of the Entrance Hall, and his gray eyes flashed uncertainty and fear, along with something else that Harry was sure was determination.

“If its fatal St. Mungo’s is not an answer,” Draco finally said. Harry nodded. He knew that.

Hermione ran from the Great Hall suddenly, small cuts up the side of her arm and face. She had been fighting through a broken window.

“Harry!” she cried, “You’re all right!”

Harry pointed to Snape, but Hermione had stopped suddenly upon sight of him. “It’s fatal,” he said.

She knelt, and lifted one of Snape’s eyelids, which had been closed. “Was it a curse?” she asked.

“He said it was old magic and that it would be a painful death.”

Hermione pulled her hand back slowly and put it over her mouth. “We already lost Sinistra,” she said.

A large window high above them suddenly came crashing down, and they shielded their heads. A few pieces of glass caught Harry’s arm and tore through his sleeve into his flesh. He cursed, and said. “I wish there was no magic!”

Draco looked up at him, and said, “You would live like a Muggle rather than here?”

“Such a fantastic place,” Harry ranted sarcastically, motioning to Snape. “Magic has killed everything I’ve known and loved.”

Suddenly a hand reached up and tapped gently on Harry’s chest above where his heart should be, and he looked down to see Snape, eye’s half open, looking at him.

“Magic saved you though. The magic of the heart is the strongest of all. Without that, even Muggles cannot live.”

Snape’s hand dropped, and he fell unconscious again. Harry let his head hang low.

They were silent for a moment, listening to the cries of battle rage around them and up through the castle. It was clear that other students were battling from windows high above them, and that death eaters had breached other defenses and gotten inside.

“Wait,” Draco finally said, looking up. “What if there wasn’t magic?”

Hermione frowned, and Harry didn’t say anything. “No, I mean it,” Draco said, getting excited now. “No magic! No magic, no curse! Didn’t you go someplace where there could be no magic Potter?”

Harry looked up, and said, “Shadowland.”

“I don’t understand,” Hermione said. “What’s that got to do with-” and then it dawned on her.

“Stay here,” Draco said, and jumped up and ran off to the dungeons.

Hermione jumped up and ran off too, up the stairs and around a corner. “I’ll be right back!” she shouted.

Left alone with Snape in the Entrance Hall, most of the staff and students having left for the grounds now, Harry knew what he had to do, but wondered if he would be able to. It was a long way to Shadowland. He could take Snape up to the magical corridor, but they had no guarantee it wouldn’t put them further away from their destination, and he didn’t know if he could get it to work again in any case. He didn’t know how to apparate yet, assuming they could get off school grounds, and he couldn’t count on Snape to apparate them safely.

A moment later, and Draco came tearing out of the door that lead to the dungeons, two broomsticks in his hands.

“These are the fastest we have,” he told him, holding them out for him to take. “The Firbolt’s mine and the knock off brand is Goyle’s… I had to wrestle it from him. It’s brand new and just as fast.”

Harry looked to Draco’s face, which now contained a new scratch and a brilliantly blossoming bruise on his chin where Goyle had hit him.

“Why-” Harry started, but Draco waved him off, pushing the brooms on him.

“He’s the only one who was ever nice to me,” Draco said, motioning to the unconscious Snape. “He’s the only person who cared what happened to me.”

Harry took the brooms, and looked down to Snape as well.

“Put a sticking charm on that before you leave!” Hermione was running down the stairs with something long and leather, metal glinting at the end. When she reached them, Harry realized it was a sheath.

“Take this,” she said breathlessly. “I found it fighting a death eater in the corridor by itself… If you can’t use magic, you had better take something, because chances are he’ll follow you in there.”

Harry nodded. He took the sheath and pulled the handle of Gryffindor’s sword out just far enough to see the crimson ruby glittering in its hilt.

Hermione took the two brooms and put sticking charms on both of them. “The cancellation for the spell is Haud Virga,” she told him. Harry nodded.

“He’s on the roof Hermione, he’ll see us leaving. I’m going to draw him off and maybe he’ll call some of his death eaters to him and away from you.”

“But, he’ll kill you Harry,” she said worriedly.

He shook his head, and said, “I’ll be ok.”

She lunged forward and hugged him tightly, and then released him as another window shattered above them.

Draco helped Harry stand Snape up and lead him outside, seeing as how he was halfway conscious again. Once they had him on his broom, Draco looked Harry in the eye, and said, “Ride fast.”

Harry nodded, and they were off. Hermione and Draco watched them rise into the sky for only a moment, and then were forced to begin aiming curses and ducking again, as several were aimed their way.

Dumbledore ran to the pair and gave only half a glance to the two figures growing rapidly smaller. “To Shadowland?” he asked.

“Snape’s curse is fatal,” Hermione said. “No magic, no curse.”

“Good boy,” Dumbledore said, referring to Harry. “He plans on leading Voldemort away, but I intend to keep him here.” With this he screamed, “Lord Voldemort! Show yourself!” as loud as he could, his voice magnified by his wand.

Louder than ever the thunder above them rumbled and the rain fell, and lightning cracked across the sky and struck down not a hundred feet from Dumbledore. Where it had struck the ground, stood Voldemort, wand out, and looking angry.

The rain felt as if it were slicing through his clothes and right into his skin as they flew. Harry was almost flat against his broom, holding onto Snape’s broom tightly next to them, they bumped into each other occasionally, bringing moans of pain and agony from Snape each time.

Every minute or so Harry turned his head and looked behind him to see if they had been followed. He had risen high enough, he had thought, to catch Voldemort’s attention, but now he found himself mistaken.

By now they were many, many miles away from the castle and grounds, and Harry could no longer see the massive black lake. He was torn between going back to lead Voldemort away from his fellows, or continuing on to save Snape. If he turned back, Snape would surely die. If he didn’t turn back… there might not be something to go back to at all.

Deciding that he needed to trust Dumbledore and his friends, he pressed on, urging the borrowed brooms to go faster still. Without warning, the clouds above them thinned, the rain stopped, and as if in a dream, the two of them burst out into open sunlight.

Harry shielded his eyes, stunned for a moment at the brilliant light. Finally they were free of Voldemort’s influence… for a short time anyhow.

On and on they flew, over hills and fields, over houses and small gullies filled with trees. Beside him, Snape was either asleep on his broom, or blissfully unconscious, and unaware of the danger they had just left.

Suddenly Harry’s scar felt as if it would burst open. It throbbed and seared horribly, and Harry wondered if his head were actually on fire. “Arrrrg!” he shouted in pain. Snape lifted his head to look at Harry, his cry of pain awakening him.

“He knows!” Harry said through clenched eyes and teeth. “He knows we’ve left. He’s coming!”

Weakly, Snape looked behind them and saw the dark, thick clouds forming behind them, almost as if they were in pursuit.

“He follows,” Snape said. Harry looked behind them as well, and bit his tongue, drawing blood as he did so, trying to make the pain go away.

Faster still he urged the brooms, and both he and Snape lay as flat as they could to the handles. The angry clouds chased after them at Voldemort’s will, determined to catch up.

We’re not going to make it, Harry thought to himself, again looking back and seeing the storm gaining on them. He didn’t know how far they were from Shadow land, and knew that the only way they would know they were there was if the brooms started to loose their magic. This too scared Harry, the pair of them being so high up in the air. The odds were that the brooms wouldn’t loose their magic gradually, but all of a sudden, and they would drop from the sky like stones.

Unwilling to die by lack of magic, Harry began taking them lower to the ground. Once they were just above the treetops, it gave him the feeling that they were going much faster, because now he could see things racing along underneath him.

After another ten minutes, the storm was almost upon them again. As if reading Harry’s thoughts, Voldemort’s voice filled his mind, and said, “You cannot hide Harry Potter. I am far faster and greater than you will ever-” the voice was cut off as Harry and Snape flew out over a yellowing field, but Harry had nothing to do with blocking Voldemort from his mind.

Wondering what had caused the sudden lack of Voldemort in his head, Harry had his answer as their brooms suddenly plummeted twenty feet to the ground. They had found it… quite painfully, but still… they had found the Shadowland.