Severus stood there looking at Harry. The boy’s eyes seemed both knowledgeable and also hopeful. He knew perfectly well what prophecy, Severus was sure, and at the same time, hoped it wasn’t true.

“What prophecy?” Harry asked again quietly, his arm lowering and Gryffindor’s sword going with it.

Severus lowered his eyes to the ground. After all they had gone through… after all he had come to feel for the boy… he knew it would be ruined now. He would lose a friend, and as well he should, he thought. He deserved it for his betrayal of Lily. Harry deserved to know why his parents had died. It was because of the man standing in front of him. It was because of the man he now thought of as dad. The brutal deaths had been on the account of the man Harry had tried so hard to save from death’s grips.

From the day Harry had been admitted to the school, Severus had been determined that he wouldn’t find out about his betrayal of the boy’s mother. Now it was the only right thing to do, to tell him, and he didn’t know how to do it.

“Your prophecy,” Snape finally said, looking up and meeting Harry’s eyes. He seemed taken aback, but remained silent. “There’s no excuse for it Harry,” Harry flinched at his name coming from the lips of the traitor standing before him. “It was a dark time… darker than these… back when I was still the Dark Lord’s servant. I-” he paused. He didn’t know if he could let Harry as far into his past as it would take to tell him the story.

“I thought he would spare Lily… I begged him to.” Harry was shaking his head now, green memory flashing before his eyes. He could still hear his mother’s screams.

“Murderer,” Harry accused him, eyes narrowed. He lifted Gyffindor’s sword again, anger pulsing through his veins, his heart aching to the beat of betrayal. He had trusted Snape, sometimes above his best friends.

Severus looked down, away from the sword. It was Harry’s right to take his life if he wanted it. “I give my life to you freely if you so choose to take it.” Having said this, Severus felt some kind of ancient agony… some kind of heavy burden lift from his soul.

“Coward!” Harry screamed. “Stand and fight me like a man!” Snape looked up at him and held his arms wide, offering up his body to the boy in front of him.

If his wrist hadn’t been broken Harry would have been holding onto the sword with both hands. His arm was shaking with rage, and the weight of the heavy sword wasn’t doing him any good. “Fight!” Harry screamed again. He couldn’t push the sword through the other man’s body if he wasn’t under attack. He wasn’t going to murder him in cold blood. The only reason he had done this to Goyle was in self-defense.

“I cannot hurt you,” Severus said quietly. “I swore an oath to protect you.” Harry’s entire face contorted with this.

“What? What oath?”

“To Dumbledore,” Severus said quietly. “After I told the Dark Lord of the prophecy… I went straight to Dumbledore and told him my mistake. I begged him to help…”

Harry was shaking his head again. “No! You lie! You don’t make any sense!”

Severus shook his head. “He put your family under protection with the secret keeper… after Lily-”

“Don’t you dare say her name!” Harry shouted at him, anger boiling up inside of him again.

He paused, and then continued, “After your mother and father died, and Dumbledore had placed you under the care of your relatives, I made a promise to him, to protect you… for your mother.”

Unexpectedly, Harry began laughing. “You expect me to believe that?” he cried with another wave of humorless laughter. “You lied to me all this time! You lied about everything! Why would I trust you now?”

Snape looked up at Harry, and then dove at him. For a split second Harry believed that he was going to try to wrestle the sword away from him and try to kill him with it, but the next moment they were both on the ground, and Harry heard a familiar sly voice.

“Well well… I suppose I should just let the boy kill you Severus, and then take care of him when you are gone… that would be amusing wouldn’t it?” Harry scrambled to his feet, leaving Snape lay where he was amongst the crunchy leaves. Lucius Malfoy stood a few feet away, sword of his own in his hand. It was a thinner sword than that of Godric Gryffindor. On its hilt was a green emerald, and a single snake engraved below it.

Lucius was not smiling. He looked worn and ragged from his injuries, and Harry wondered if Draco had caused any of them. He looked down to Severus, and laughed.

“Or you and I could kill the boy Severus… your punishment might be less to the Dark Lord if you killed him… and mine will be less for bringing you to him… we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Either way, the boy will die.”

Harry lunged at the tall, blond haired man with his sword, and missed. Lucius stepped to the side and Harry fell past him, barely gaining his balance again. Lucius hardly gave him a glance as he sailed by, as if he weren’t important, and instead kept looking down at Snape.

“I underestimated you Severus,” Lucius told him. “I did not think you had the cunning to defy the Dark Lord and live through it. But you can’t be terribly smart if you defied him willingly…”

Harry gripped the sword with both hands now, gritting his teeth at the pain caused in his left wrist as he brought the sword above his head from behind Malfoy and swung it down. Lucius turned suddenly and there was the sound of metal on metal as he blocked Harry’s attempt to split his scull in two.

“At least he has the loyalty of your son,” Harry told him, trying to stun the other man enough to get the upper hand on him.

Malfoy smirked. “My son… that is interesting isn’t it, that you would refer to him as my son. No, I don’t have a son. No son of mine would betray me the way that Draco has.”

Harry stepped back quickly and tried to take a jab at Malfoy, but again was blocked by the thin sword of Slytherin. “Maybe he wouldn’t have betrayed you if you hadn’t beat him constantly.”

Malfoy flinched. “Do not, ever, imply that I was a bad father!” he shouted. This time Lucius took the offensive and swung, trying to decapitate Harry. Harry ducked though, and at the same time stabbed towards Lucius, making a deep gash in the man’s only uninjured leg.

“That was for Draco you bastard,” Harry said as Lucius fell to the ground. He swooped and snatched up Slytherin’s sword, amazed by how light it was in comparison to the massive sword of Gryffindor. “I ought to kill you for your betrayal of him.”

Lucius’ eyes flashed fear for only a moment, and then he began to laugh, almost as high and cold as the laugh of his master. “Foolish boy… you may take my life, but the Dark Lord will have yours, and that of your pathetic surrogate father, and my foolish son. Ending my life now will only negate my suffering at the hands of the Dark Lord in the future.”

Harry stepped back, making sure he was out of Malfoy’s reach. “I didn’t say I was going to kill you,” Harry said, tilting his head, “I only said I ought to kill you. I would much rather know that you were tortured by Voldemort himself… he’ll do a better job than I can.”

Harry turned and began to walk away, knowing that if Lucius tried to get up and attack him, he would hear it before it was too late to turn around.

“You will die!” Lucius screamed. Harry didn’t turn.

“Not before you do, and not today.” Confidently he strode towards the edge of the wood, and out into the open field. No spells came flying at him this time. He would take Avery on single handed if he came into contact with him. Hurried footsteps came from behind him, but from the labored breathing, he could tell that it was Snape. Not wanting to carry two swords, he handed Gryffindor’s to Snape, preferring the lighter one; what did he care any more if Snape was hurt and couldn’t carry a heavy sword?

At the place where he thought the boundary to be, Harry stopped and pulled his wand from his pants pocket. “Accio brooms,” he said. Both brooms zoomed out of the grass thirty feet ahead of him and landed at his feet. He picked one up, and took a step back into Shadowland, Snape doing the same.

Harry tucked Slytherin’s thin sword between his belt and pants at his side to keep it there, and held on to Draco’s broom tightly with his good hand. Without turning to Snape, he said, “I don’t really care if you live or die. You deserve whatever you get for murdering the only family I ever had. If you make it back to Hogwarts, stay the hell away from me.” With this Harry ran forward, broom in hand, and leapt onto it, soaring high into the air. A spell shot up at him from someplace in the trees below, but he was high out of its reach before it could get to him. Curiosity was the only thing that drew Harry’s glance behind him to see Snape, also on the broom and also in the air a good distance behind him.

Harry kept his wand out, gripped as tightly as he could keep it in his left hand, holding the broom tightly with his right. He scanned the trees below him as often as he could spare, along with the sky, keeping watch for any sign of Voldemort or his followers.

Anger no longer coursed through his veins. Instead, the feeling had been replaced by a dull numbness that overtook him. Snape had been responsible for his parent’s deaths. Something more than this stabbed at his heart though. Harry thought that Snape had been helping him with Occlumency and being nice because he had wanted to… but that was lies, just like everything else in his life always turned out to be. He had only been helping him because he had promised to. Every once in a while Harry felt disgusted with the whole idea that he had ever thought of Snape as anything other than a murder and death eater. He felt like he wanted to be sick. Nothing in his world ever turned out to be real. It was all false.

Once the lake came into sight, Harry slowed down and began to circle the grounds. He wasn’t sure he wanted to land and make his way into the school to see all of the death and destruction that had been caused. Something inside him feared that he had lost the one place that he could call home, and the people that made it that way.

From above, the outer damage to the castle and grounds was apparent. Black cloaked figures lay dead on the lawn, all death eaters he hoped. There were places where the grass and dirt had been blasted away, leaving gaping holes instead. The windows around the front and one side of the castle were mostly gone, broken into little shards like the way he felt his life had become. One piece of wall on the front of the castle had caved in, leaving a massive hole. Harry could see people walking in and out of it to the grounds.

Despite Harry’s warning for Snape to stay away from him, he still circled, as Harry did, just far enough away that Harry couldn’t cast a spell at him or tell him to leave him alone. It aggravated Harry that the man wasn’t just a few yards closer, so that he could curse him from the sky.

After long minutes of circling, Harry finally landed near the now broken steps leading to the Entrance Hall.

Somebody, a student he didn’t know shouted from inside the Entrance Hall, “He’s alive! Harry Potter! He’s back!”