Erin raced around the side of the red brick building. She stood at the corner for a few seconds, trying to get her bearings as her eyes scanned the car park for the metallic blue car. Where in the hell had Severus parked…there it is!

Careless of traffic, Erin stepped off the narrow upraised footpath onto the concrete surface of the car park and raced diagonally across it towards their car, threading her way through many other parked vehicles. She knew before she reached their car that Harry was not there. Severus had, of course, locked it but she could not see Harry standing anywhere nearby.

Erin, knowing it was hopeless, circled the vehicle in case Harry was sitting on the ground leaning against the bodywork. He was not. Panicking, she put one hand to her forehead and the other over her mouth, and with her breath coming fast, she turned this way and that, her face an anxious, fearful mask as she scanned the car park. Where is he? Then with a cry of frustration, she took off for the restaurant again. As she neared the building, she focused on the double glass doors, convinced that Severus and Harry would walk out before she reached them.

They didn’t, but a large crowd of other people did, squeezing through the doors so that Erin had to wait for them to move out of the way before she could get back inside. She wanted to scream at them to move their arses! But Erin wasn’t a person who could be rude to total strangers who were doing her no harm, so she refrained from screaming, instead she shouldered her way through the lingerers, apologising as she went.

Once back inside she rushed around to the side wing where the booth they had been sitting in was situated. It was still empty; their leftover food and dishes still littered the tabletop. Neither Severus nor Harry were anywhere to be seen, so without pause, she rushed back towards the toilets. If Severus was still back here, it must mean he had found Harry. She estimated that at least four minutes had passed since Severus had sent her off.

As she raced around the corner, she heard Severus’s deep, highly irate voice say an angry, “Stupefy!”

Shock halted her forward momentum for the merest breath of time. She had seen that spell used against Harry before; she knew it had been used against herself. Surely Severus wasn’t cursing Harry! Her rubber-soled feet made little noise on the terracotta floor as she flew to the open doorway through which light was spilling into the dim hall.

The scene inside the toilet made her heart skip a beat and she cried out involuntarily when a frighteningly livid Paul Vale raised Severus Snape’s wand so that it was pointed directly into her face.

8888

The noise of the lock turning had not alerted the paunchy Muggle to an intruder; but the door flying open so hard that it ricocheted off the tiled wall could not be ignored. He was frozen in an attitude of shock, and when the powerful Impediment Jinx hit him full in the face, he was blasted backwards away from his prey, and crashed into the wall where his head hit with a dull thunk. He slipped down the wall and ended up sitting in an obese heap on the floor, his head lolling to the side, his navy blue work shirt half untucked, his belt buckle and fly undone and his trousers barely covering his privates. Severus recognised him as the Muggle he had seen walking to the toilets not long after Harry had left their booth.

With fury still contorting his features, Severus strode forward, just in time to prevent a dazed Harry who was draped face down over the closed toilet lid, from slipping from his precarious position onto the floor next to his insensible assailant. Severus viciously kicked the man’s legs out of the way, causing him to slump sideways onto the floor, his head near the base of the toilet. Severus slipped his arms beneath Harry’s, supporting his groggy weight and feeling a powerful emotion well up inside him as he noted the contusion and the blood on the side of his head behind his ear, and the swelling that was already turning purple, under his left eye.

On his knees now, Severus manoeuvred Harry so that he was leaning into his shoulder, freeing his wand hand to allow him to cast another powerful spell, this one strong enough to warm a portion of the cold tile floor. So much for not using magic! Not only had he already cast three spells, one of them had been a jinx. If the ministry was paying attention, and there were no other witches or wizards in this part of England, someone loyal to the Dark Lord could very likely pick up on the anomaly. He needed to get Harry, Erin and himself out of here…fast!

Mercifully, Severus had arrived in time; although Harry was distinctly dishevelled, and his jeans undone, they were, thankfully, still in place. Grinding his teeth in an effort to contain his rage over what could have happened, Severus lowered Harry gently to the floor before whipping off his jumper and transfiguring it into a pillow which he place carefully under Harry’s head. Then with gentle movements—and his healer’s skill—he began probing around the swollen and bruised cheekbone with his thumbs to check for a fracture. But Harry was not as out of it as Severus had first thought. After exerting the lightest pressure, the boy hissed with pain and suddenly, his arms were flailing violently as he tried to fend Severus off. The gentle examination was all it had taken to bring Harry back to partial awareness. All his self-protective instincts came into play as he cried out in fear and thrashed so violently, Severus was worried he was going to hurt himself.

Regretfully, because he really did need to check Harry out before he moved him any further, Severus drew his wand, and holding Harry’s hands together to avoid being smacked in the face as he had been yesterday evening, he cast a light Somulus Charm. Harry’s movements instantly became slower and more sluggish, until, with a sigh, his arms became too heavy to hold up. Severus lowered them onto Harry’s chest and then performed a quick examination.

Able to work now without having to fend off flailing limbs, Severus used his wand to siphon off the congealing blood from the injury behind Harry’s ear…a very nasty contusion with a deep cut at the centre of the swelling. Separating the hair as much as possible, Severus pointed his wand at the cut, and muttering an incantation he held the point of the wand steady and drew it along the length of the wound, drawing the skin back together, and leaving a thin line of delicate pink, new scar tissue. He had a salve in his bag which would lessen the swelling and help with the pain, but that would have to wait.

Changing positions slightly, Severus leaned over Harry again to examine his cheekbone, but he had barely put his hands on Harry’s face when a muffled squeak came from the still open door. Severus spun around on one knee, his wand in his hand and pointed at a middle-aged woman who was standing in the aperture with her eyes bugging out of her head and her hands pressed to her mouth. Her bulging eyes darted from Severus, leaning over a clearly unconscious Harry, to the crumpled figure of the large man behind the pair of them. As her interpretation of the visual evidence coalesced in her mind, she dropped her hands and opened her mouth to scream bloody murder.

Severus cursed his own stupidity for not having locked the door, but it was too late for personal recriminations. He growled, “Stupefy!” with barely restrained fury, pulling his wand sharply back towards him so that the woman fell forwards into the room as she lost consciousness. Without pause Severus followed up with a non-verbal, Arresto Momentum! so that when she hit the floor, there was barely a noise…she too was slumped in a quiet heap.

Severus moved forward to turn the woman over, but then another noise had him snapping his wand back up and pointing it at the door again, his face newly contorted with rage because he had still not locked the door and now there was a second unwanted intrusion. Thankfully, his reflexes were not affected by everything that he had discovered and done since bursting into this bathroom because he managed to cut off the second curse and snap his wand arm down before he could curse Erin.

Erin stepped over the body of the unconscious Muggle. In her shocked dismay she ignored the woman, concerned only for Harry. She dropped to her knees by his side and took one limp hand in both of hers.

“Oh, my God, what happened?” she asked frantically, glancing up at Severus and then back down at the pale face with its still swollen and discoloured cheek.

“He happened!” gritted Severus, after locking the door and turning the woman over onto her side. He flicked his wand at the Harry’s assailant, the movement and non-verbal jinx making the man’s body rise off the floor about a foot before allowing it to crash back down.

Erin’s eyes took in the man’s unshaven face, huge, hairy forearms exposed by the rolled up sleeves of his shirt, and obese belly straining the buttons on the shirt and hanging over the two sides of his unfastened trousers where they sat very low on his hips. Erin’s eyes widened as comprehension speared her through the heart. She looked back down at Harry, moving her eyes over the young boy’s own clothing; Severus had been too busy attending to Harry's injuries to worry overly much about the state of his clothes.

Erin’s face was stricken when she looked at Severus who had knelt down again to try, for the third time to examine Harry’s cheek. “Oh, God! Severus, please…please tell me that…that that monster didn’t…he hasn’t…”

“He didn’t get that far!” said Severus in a deadly voice. But another minute and I would have burst in on a very different scene.”

Erin could see how angry Severus was; it was visible in every taut line of his body, except for those gentle hands still busy with the task of determining the severity of Harry’s facial injury. His voice was no longer the seductive, dark velvet drawl that usually sent shivers down her spine, and was the first thing that had attracted her to her Black Prince; now, it sent shivers down her spine for a very different reason. Severus seemed to be holding in the rage that he was feeling by keeping his teeth clamped together, almost as if he was afraid that if he opened his mouth, the vehemence of his emotions towards Harry’s assailant would come spewing out in more than just a verbal tirade.

Erin could understand the anger, but she was frightened of what Severus might decide to do to the Muggle man; after all, he had been working for a vicious, evil monster for a long time now, and even though he no longer believed in Voldemort’s values, nor his methods, memories of old behaviours would always be there, waiting for the right catalyst to set them off. Was the near rape of a boy that Severus had known for a long time, and whom he had recently—despite his assurances to the contrary—come to feel a certain regard for, enough of a catalyst to make him murder again?

Erin shivered. Though the thought of the man and what he had nearly done to Harry made her want to kick him where it hurt, and scratch his eyes out, she would do neither of those things because she was not a violent person. But would Severus be able to hold himself back...he had so far it seemed, but would his restraint last?

“I think there is a hairline fracture of his zygomatic arch, but I have not the wherewithal to treat it here. We have to leave as quickly as possible.” Severus stood up purposefully and stepped away from Harry. Even though Paul Vale’s eyes were grey and not the onyx pools that Severus’s were, they had darkened in his anger and become chips of obsidian. Erin, her heart in her throat, also stood and when Severus, his wand gripped tightly in his hand, stepped towards the fat Muggle, still insensible at the base of the wall, Erin stepped in front of him.

Severus made to push her out of the way, his eyes focused on his quarry, but Erin grabbed his arm. “No, Severus! You said we had to go!”

Severus tried to wrest his arm away but Erin, really frightened now but also really determined, lunged forward and snatched Severus’s wand from his hand. It was the last thing Severus had been expecting, and he looked at her, momentarily stunned.

“We need to get out of here, you said it yourself. So lets go! Please!”

“Give it back,” said Severus in an ominous voice.

“No! Severus…”

“Accio wand!” Severus had drawn Harry’s wand from where he had stashed it in his back pocket and pointed it at his own wand. Erin cried out as the wand flew from her shaking fingers and slapped into Severus’s hand. Then he pushed her—with admiral restraint—to the side.

“Severus, please don’t kill him!” whispered Erin, her voice catching on a sob.”

Severus stopped in his tracks. He stood rigid for a moment and then turned back to face his girlfriend; Paul Vale’s face was as stiff and still as Severus’s own could be. Then without a word, he faced the unconscious man again and took another step before leaning down, grasping a handful of collar and hauling him upright.

Erin stood with silent tears coursing down her cheeks. He wouldn’t…he just couldn’t. He wasn’t a Death Eater any more. He wouldn’t kill a man, even a foul, depraved man, in cold blood. Erin couldn’t think of a punishment bad enough for a person who did the kinds of things to children that this person obviously did, but she did know that she did not want Severus to become a murderer because of him.

“I have no intention of killing him, Erin, but he may very well wish he was dead,” Severus hissed. He pointed his wand at the man’s face. Erin could not see what he was doing, and if he was incanting a spell, he was doing it silently. All she could do was pray and wring her hands together. It seemed to take an age before Severus took a step back, but even then Erin could not see what he had been doing as he was standing directly in front of his quarry.

Severus pointed his wand again and this time said a clench-jawed, “Enervate.” Immediately, the man groaned and opened his eyes, blinking owlishly in the harsh, white light of the bathroom. Severus kicked him very hard in the thigh and the man cried out in pain, grabbing the place where Severus’s boot had connected. He immediately began to blubber pathetically, increasing the look of disdain on the face of Severus’s alter-ego.

“Get up!” Erin shivered at the cold menace with which the two words were uttered.

Small, dull, muddy-brown eyes crept up over jean-clad legs and a torso covered by a black polo shirt, before coming to rest on the frightening visage of a very angry, fully grown man. Not his preferred sized male at all, and he began to tremble visibly, his sobs quickly increasing in volume and pathos. Severus was totally unmoved.

“I said get up, you depraved bastard!” The boot connected with the same spot on the same thigh again. A howl of pain and fear rang out this time, but the obese creature began to lumber to his feet, his abused leg quivering when he tried to put his considerable weight on it. He had forgotten that his trousers were in such a precarious position and when they began to slip down his flanks, he made a wild grab for them. All the time, pathetic little whimpers were coming from his mouth and mucous and tears adorned his face in an unsavoury sticky mask. He stood there, gripping the opened edges of his waistband and looking truly pathetic.

Erin had cringed each time Severus’s foot had connected with the man’s thigh; she could only imagine how it would look in a few hours time because Severus had held nothing back when he had struck his victim with the toe of his boot. He might have been kicking a football.

She was still very nervous about what Severus had done and what he may still be going to do. She knew that the toe of his boot applied to a tender area of the man’s anatomy would not be the end of it. But when the Muggle stood up, his sobs and cries for mercy becoming very loud indeed, Erin now saw what Severus had been doing as he pointed his wand at the man’s face. She gasped.

The man was now blubbering almost incoherent words. Erin managed to make them out, however, and her disgust for this creature and every man with his inclinations increased.

“Please, please don’t hurt me anymore. I didn’t mean it…I can’t help it.” He indicated Harry with a shaking hand. “I’m sorry I hurt your son, but I’m ill…it’s a sickness.”

He looked at Severus through brimming eyes, and when he saw no sympathy there, he looked past him to Erin. “Please…I don’t want to be like this…I wish I could stop.” He put his hands together in supplication, and then he whispered. “I try to be gentle.” Erin turned away in disgust. She thought she might vomit.

Severus had had enough. He grabbed a handful of the man’s work shirt and pulled him close to his face. The man was a couple of inches taller than Paul Vale, but Severus’s fury seemed to have made him increase in stature.

“You’re only sorry that you were caught before you could do more damage, you animal,” said Severus in a venomous hiss. “And perhaps you could enlighten me as to how you can be gentle when you hit a child over the head and knock him out?” Severus put his hand around the back of the man’s neck and roughly turned his head towards a prostrate Harry, putting pressure on the sides of his neck with steel reinforced fingers and thumb.

“And just how, do you invade a small child’s body with your adult equipment and be gentle?”

The man’s sobs escalated even more and Erin was worried that someone outside would hear. Severus, however did not seem to be concerned about that and Erin supposed that he had cast a spell to stop the outside world being aware of what was going on in this bathroom.

Severus seemed to change tack in the blink of an eye. He put a solicitous arm around the grid-iron player shoulders and spoke in a mock caring voice. “Well, sir, this is your lucky day. I have decided to help you with your little problem. I couldn’t live with myself if I let you walk out of here when your sickness could overtake you at any time. You will no longer be able to be gentle with any more children.” And tightening his arm so that it became a painful yoke, he turned the man around amidst howls of distress and directed his gaze at the mirror above the hand basin.

The swimming muddy eyes saw the black markings on his forehead, but it didn’t seem to register for a moment what it was. He scrubbed the tears from his eyes and leaned in closer to the mirror, his blubbering tapering of as he stared. It took him a few seconds to decipher what the word was because it was written backwards in the mirror, but finally the penny dropped.

It would have been comical if the situation had not been so tragic. The man’s eyes widened and then the wide-lipped mouth dropped open in appalled shock. A choked cry of horror eventually forced its way past paralysed vocal cords, as the man stared and stared, at the new, blackened, ten letter word emblazoned across his broad forehead.

P-A-E-D-O-P-H-I-L-E!

The Muggle moved his face even closer to the mirror, a frantic hand pushing the remnants of his stringy grey hair off his forehead so that he could be entirely sure that he was seeing what he was seeing.

He let out a high pitched squeak that sounded totally incongruous issuing from the throat of such a large man. “Jesus…what did you…how did you…you bastard!”

“So glad you like it,” said Severus, and he watched with a malicious narrow-eyed grin as the paedophile ran water onto his hand and scrubbed frantically at the word that labelled him for what he was. Of course, it did no good at all and the man let out a bellow of rage.

“You don’t have to thank me,” said Severus. “I’m happy to help you with your little problem.” He put a finger up to his mouth and tapped it in a mock thoughtful gesture before continuing as if a thought had just occurred to him.

“There is one more thing that I could do to make absolutely certain that you never rape another child.” The sentence had started off lightly, but by the end, Severus’s voice had dropped several octaves and emerged in a truly frightening hiss. Before the Muggle could react, Severus had spun him around and with a sharp jerk, he pulled his trousers and underpants down together to his knees, pointed his wand at the man’s nether regions and incanted, “Reducto!” so that it sounded like an epithet instead of a spell.

Erin quickly turned away, but she could not block out the man’s squawk of horror and fear as his genitals shrank to the size of those of a five year old boy. Severus watched dispassionately as the obese Muggle cupped his tingling flesh in his hands and felt them shrink against his palms.

“Oh, my God, what did you do? You bastard! “Fix it…fix it now!” and he jiggled his child-sized package and let out another howl.

“You said it was a sickness,” said Severus. “Well, I have just set you well on the path to a total cure.”

8888

Ten minutes later, Severus was speeding along the motorway with a still groggy Harry sitting in the back, and a subdued Erin sitting with her arm around him, much as she had sat yesterday after Harry had vomited by the side of the highway.

After performing his coup de grace, Severus had wasted no more time…he had modified the memory of the woman first and made her continue her interrupted journey to the ladies. He had implanted in her mind the necessity to stay there for the next ten minutes. Then he had modified the memory of Harry’s assailant and sent him to the men’s toilet with the same instructions. Only then had he woken Harry from his sleep.

Harry had not seen his attacker; he did not even realise he had been attacked. Even when he had come to in the bathroom where Severus had found him, he did not know what was going on. Harry had sustained a concussion and he kept on asking Erin what had happened…why his face and his head were so sore?

Severus and Erin had decided to ensure that Harry remained ignorant of the facts. To this end, Severus told him he had slipped in the bathroom, hit his cheek on the rim of a hand basin as he went down and then he had smashed his head on the floor. Severus then told Harry he had found him there, unconscious. He told Harry that it was common for people who had suffered a head injury not to remember what had happened immediately before the accident, a fact for which Severus and Erin were thankful.

Severus was not entirely sure when it had happened, but suddenly it seemed that every instinct now led him to want to openly protect Harry Potter with all that he was capable of. He could only put it down to the softening influence of Erin.

No, that was not entirely true. For the last three weeks, Severus had been around Harry more than he ever was during the school year. Then, they had long respites between exposures and they were both always primed for battle when they did meet…and he, Severus knew that he had never even tried to look beneath the hated façade that was so very much like his father’s. His attitude had been implacable.

But finding the boy in such dire condition after his uncle had finished with him, added to the terrible events that had followed, had thrown him together with the boy much more than he could ever have envisioned. He had always been on the lookout before, to try to keep the boy safe, but he had not really cared. He had just been determined to see to his appointed task for Dumbledore’s sake, not for Harry’s.

Of course, when these recent events had forced him into closer contact with the boy, he had voiced objections for forms sake, but he had not pushed the issue to the point where Dumbledore would have had to find someone else…and he could well have done. He could have made life very difficult. Of course, the presence of the very attractive woman who had been thrown into the mix, and whom he had found himself drawn to from the beginning, had certainly made his forced guardianship of Harry much more easy to tolerate.

Severus looked at the slumbering boy through the rear-view mirror and was struck anew at the combination of bad luck and good luck that seemed to comprise his life. The bad luck was his having been targeted in the first place by the Dark Lord and then, after being orphaned, being placed with a family who so patently did not want him. The bad luck continued with his being a continuing target for the remaining Death Eaters and then his being the vital ingredient necessary for the resurrection of the Dark Lord.

The good luck of course was the fact of his mother loving him enough to lay down her own life for his, as well as the fact of his having survived all of the dangerous episodes since, that he had found himself embroiled in, when any other child would most likely have died. Severus did not know of another person who seemed to attract trouble like Harry Potter did. And most of that trouble stemmed back to that Halloween night that would forever be etched into his, Severus’s memory, no matter how deeply he tried to lock it away in the furtherest recesses of his mind.

After the reincarnation of the Dark Lord a little over a year ago, Severus, with Albus’s council and his own observations, had come to know of the ever increasingly intimate connection between Harry and the Dark Lord; during the torturous Occlumency lessons he had seen enough proof of it. Harry’s vision just before Christmas that had precipitated the need for him to learn Occlumency had truly shocked Severus, though Albus had told him to expect something monumental sooner or later.

Arthur Weasley would surely have died if the boy had not entered so far into the Dark Lord’s mind that night. And the images that he himself had seen when he had invaded the boy’s mind had worried him as much as they had shocked him: Harry’s visions of the corridor leading to the department of Mysteries and the eventual extension of those visions when he had finally found himself in the Hall of Prophecy itself, when he could have had no idea of the department’s existence if not for the Dark Lord’s thoughts lingering upon it. There had been the Dark Lord’s meeting with Rookwood, and, as Severus had found out later when he was next summoned, the punishment of Avery for wrong information concerning the removal of the prophecy. And worst of all, there had been the false vision of the capture and torture of Black that had precipitated the boy and his cohorts in crime’s expedition to the Ministry and the subsequent happenings there.

And most recently, there had been Harry’s painful reaction to the euphoria experienced by the Dark Lord when he and his minions had brought down the Brockdale Bridge, and whatever had happened yesterday evening that had caused the boy another bout of nearly unendurable agony. Whatever that had been, it had not made headline news and Severus had not had time to peruse the papers more thoroughly as yet. One way or another, he would fine out what that episode of scar pain had been about.

Severus might have decided that he cared enough to openly protect Harry now, but even back then, during the school year, though well hidden behind his hateful, disdainful façade, Severus had been worried about the things that the child was seeing. He had not actually seen the pain Harry suffered during these episodes until after he had collected him from his aunt and uncles two weeks ago, though he had seen that after each Occlumency lesson, Harry had left his office looking very pale and sickly and he had usually looked little better at breakfast the next morning. And yet, he had still acted like an arse whenever he and Harry were together.

Severus sighed and looked back at his companions again. Harry was finally sleeping against Erin’s shoulder and she had a far away look about her as she watched the passing scenery.

With everything that Harry had been through in his life, Severus was determined not to lumber him with the knowledge of what had really happened today; it would have been the ultimate degradation. And though Harry had escaped actually being sexually abused, knowing how close he had come would be traumatic enough. Severus felt that being targeted by a sexual predator would somehow be more shocking to the boy than knowing that he was the prime target of a crazed megalomaniac who wanted him dead because he was afraid of what the boy may be able to do because of a prophecy made before Harry was even born.

Severus knew that Harry was strong…far stronger than a sixteen year old boy had a right to be. But he had had to grow up strong. Severus could see now that Harry was the person he was, because he had grown up in an abusive household. He had had to keep himself strong because he had not grown up with affection, but abuse. He had never had an opportunity to develop an ego because it would have been beaten out of him straight away.

And then there had been the shock of discovering that far from being ‘nothing’ he was, in fact, someone famous in the new world in which he found himself. He had discovered that the unusual things that he could do were because he was a wizard, and not the freak that he had always thought himself to be. He had found himself amongst others of his kind and for the first time in his life, he had begun to have a sense of self-worth. But instead of developing an ego, he had tried to distance himself from his fame.

Despite his own abominable behaviour where he had baited the boy about his fame and his ego, Severus had never once actually seen him blowing his own trumpet as others would have done in his place. Albus had at least been right in his desire to keep Harry away from the knowledge of who and what he was. It had worked. Pity he had never seen it like that until just recently. His hatred of James Potter had always dictated his treatment of the boy. Every time he looked into the green eyes of the girl he had once loved, he had not seen Lily, but Potter’s face surrounding Lily’s eyes, and his bitterness over Lily’s ultimate choice of husband had made him blind to the fact that Harry was as much Lily’s son as he was James’s.

But now there was Erin. Not once, since he had lost Lily, had Severus looked at another woman with love or passion. Until Erin. He did not know why this Muggle woman stirred feelings inside him that had lain dormant for so very long.

Oh, he had not remained celibate, he was not dead, after all. He was a man, and men’s bodies clamoured for release every now and then, but any sexual partner Severus had indulged himself with had never engendered affection, nor even passion. They had been vessels to ease his body’s cravings, that was all, and he had made that plain from the outset of any liaison. Truth to tell there had been few enough of them anyway.

But Erin had done what none other but Lily had ever been able to do. She had made him feel alive and wanted for himself. She was bright like Lily, she was unafraid and she did not allow him to dictate the terms of their relationship. And she cared for him as Lily had done…cared for his wellbeing.

But where Lily had eventually baulked at his obsession with the dark Arts and his nasty temper and his choice of so-called friends, Erin had seen his nasty temper and given him back as good as she had gotten, she had deduced what he was and she had looked past it to the man he was beneath. And all of this in two short weeks.

This fact alone now made Severus finally understand why Lily could never countenance his lifestyle and his choices. She had never been in love with him. She had only ever considered him as her best friend. She must always have been attracted to Potter, and though she had always lambasted her fellow Gryffindor for his bullying ways and his childishness, she must always have harboured a hope that he would one day grow up. And he had done. After fifth year, James had not joined in the pranking and the utter foolishness that Sirius Black and the sycophant, Peter Pettigrew got up to with anywhere near the alacrity that he had done in their earlier years at school. And Lily had eventually succumbed to his roguish charms.

But for the first time since he had espied the beautiful little red-haired child in the park near his childhood home, Severus did not feel crushed by his feelings for Lily. Oh, he still loved her and he mourned her, but it did not hurt like it had always done. The pain that had always encased his heart had lifted. He now saw Lily for what she had been able to give him…her friendship and affection, both things that he could still have had if he had made the right choices.

And he could now understand and accept her anger at him for all the wrong choices he had made. He did not need to obsess about her anymore because the woman in the seat behind him was willing to give him what he had always wanted from Lily but which she had never ultimately been able to give him. And that was fine, he now realised. He should always have been happy that Lily was happy with her choices…with the man she had fallen in love with and then with her child.

Well, he was determined now that he would look after Harry for his mother’s sake, and not because Albus Dumbledore demanded it of him.

“Are you all right?” Severus asked now and Erin met his eyes in the mirror.

She offered a small slightly wobbly smile and tightened her grip around Harry’s shoulders. “I will be,” she said softly, and Severus knew she was upset for Harry and what had nearly come to pass, and not because of what he had done to the fat Muggle in the bathroom.

8888

Severus had taken the first off ramp to exit the motorway and had driven for another fifteen minutes into the barren, but beautiful countryside of the Yorkshire Dales. There were a couple of farmhouses that could be seen in the distance, and Severus knew that one of them was inhabited by a wizarding family. He had to contact Dumbledore and from here, he was sure that his spell would not be commented upon if it was observed by any at the Ministry.

Erin didn’t bother to ask him where they were or what he was going to do when he stopped the car and got out. But she did see the amazingly bright light that she had seen before at Hogwarts, as it shot out of the end of Severus’s wand and streaked through the cloudy day at an amazing speed.

Erin had to move, her arm was becoming stiff and very sore. Of course, Harry woke up and while she massaged her arm, Erin watched him as he fought his way to the surface of consciousness. She knew when he was there, because he winced when he opened his mouth to yawn, snapping it shut again immediately.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head to look around, his hand going to the back of his head to feel the lump there. He focused on Erin.

“What happened?” he asked before their surroundings caught his eye and he stared out of the window at the beautiful green hills surrounding them. “Where are we?” He jumped a little when Severus opened the door. Erin took this opportunity to slide out of the car to stretch.

“How do you feel?” asked Severus, bending down and studying Harry with his healer’s eye.

“My head and face hurt,” said Harry. “What happened to me?”

“You don’t remember what happened at the restaurant?” asked Severus carefully.

Harry shook his head, but stopped when the movement jarred his injuries. “No. I just remember arriving there. And suddenly we’re here.” He looked around again. “Where is here?”

“We are still in Yorkshire, but I drove off the main motorway.” Before Harry could ask any more questions, Severus slipped into the seat next to Harry and produced his wand and ignited its tip with a silent Lumos.

“Hey,” said Harry, leaning away from the bright wand tip. “What happened to not using magic?”

“Circumstances have changed,” said Severus, shortly. “Look at me.”

Severus shone the light in first one eye and then the other, watching that Harry’s pupils were equal in size and that they both reacted to the light. They did, and had done all along, so Severus was now sure that at least he did not have the worry of a bleed going on in the boy’s brain. Still, he would bear watching for another twenty-four hours and that was why he had contacted Dumbledore…that and the fact that he had used magic.

Severus urged Harry out of the car and sat him down on the grassy verge alongside the narrow roadway. “I have some salve here to reduce the swelling on you cheek and the back of your head,” said Severus, and while Severus tended him, Harry asked again, for the umpteenth time, what had happened to him, and Severus and Erin retold their lie.

Severus was waiting for a message from Dumbledore and they had been lounging (Harry) or walking backwards and forwards (Erin and Severus) for the last twenty minutes when a soft pop had both Severus and Erin whipping around, Severus’s wand already in his hand, to see Dumbledore standing at the back of the car.

Albus strode straight to the recumbent and deeply sleeping Harry and went down on one knee next to him. “Is he all right?” he asked in a low voice, not wanting to disturb the peaceful sleep.

“I thought you would send a message,” said Severus stowing his wand again as he and Erin approached Dumbledore.

“You made it sound as if you needed the personal touch, my boy. Things appear to have taken a rather unexpected turn.”

“You could say that,” bit out Severus. He gestured to Harry. “And the boy has a concussion as a result of his latest contretemps and I think he needs bed rest and observation.”

Albus brushed his hand over the unfamiliar brown hair. “Harry Potter sleeping in the daylight hours…I would have to agree with you Severus.”

“Then we will return to Hogwarts.”

Albus shook his head. “I am afraid that would not be advisable.”

“Why the hell not?” said Severus, only just managing to hold onto his temper. Erin grabbed his little finger and pulled on it in an effort to calm him. “He needs bed rest, Albus. And he needs skelegrow and the observations concomitant with its use. I cannot countenance him being jostled around in a car, any longer.

“Why, Severus, I would almost have to say that you are truly worried for our young Gryffindor,” said Dumbledore musingly. Severus ground his teeth together.

“I can see that to continue on a road journey will not be good for Harry in his current condition, my boy. Not to mention that Lord Voldemort will no doubt be on the lookout for Harry, now that magic has been used at a location where no known magical folk dwell. The risk is too great. They will be looking for disguises. And with Harry ill, you may have to resort to magic again at a moment’s notice.

“But I do not wish you to return to Hogwarts at this point in time, because…” Albus held up his hand to silence Severus’s automatic objection. “…because Rufus Scrimgeour has practically taken up residence at the castle. He and several Aurors.”

“What for?” asked Severus, incensed. Doesn’t he have enough to do looking after the welfare of the wizarding world at large?”

“That would certainly be what one would expect, but he is determined to speak to Harry, and as they of course know that Petunia Dursley is dead, they assume that Harry will turn up at the castle at some time or another. Of course, he is also trying to pick my brain about what the Order is up to. He is staying at Hogwarts for much of the time on the pretext that his supervision is needed in the fortifying of the wards around the school.”

“So he has ordered you to produce Harry, and you have not done so. I am surprised that he has not had you arrested.”

“He cannot have me arrested for anything that I have seen fit to do with Harry, because if Sirius could not, for whatever reason, take up the mantle of guardian, Lily and James named me as guardian in his stead. Rufus would make him a ward of the Ministry if he could, but he knows that he cannot.”

Severus was surprised by this information; he had no idea that Albus had officially been named Harry's guardian. He wondered if Harry knew. He very much doubted it. But now was not the time to ponder these developments.

“So what do we do then?” asked Severus, throwing his arms wide and slapping them down to his sides. “Hole up in some hotel until I am convinced that Harry is well enough to continue on with the rest of the journey?”

“I think that we can safely say that the advantages of having the three of you hidden amongst the masses of Muggles travelling the length and breadth of Great Britain has—as the saying goes—passed its use-by-date.”

Dumbledore turned and looked at Erin. “This will be the hardest on you, my dear, because I feel that the most efficacious course for us to take now is to get to the Burrow with all due haste, and the fastest way is Apparition. I know that we arranged the car journey partly so that we could avoid a magical means of transportation for you, but unfortunately, things did not work out as well as I had hoped.”

Erin sighed, but she nodded resignedly. “I can have more of that potion that knocked me out, can’t I? It worked well the last time. I had none of the side effects.”

Dumbledore nodded. “I took the liberty of raiding Severus’s stores and pilfering more of the potion and its antidote.” Severus scowled. He did not like anyone, even Dumbledore, fiddling around amongst his potions’ stores.

Severus knew there was no point in arguing. He retrieved the bags from the boot of the car and with a wave of his wand, he shrunk them and placed them in a trouser pocket.

“Where is the Burrow?” asked Erin curiously. She had never thought to ask exactly where they were travelling to.

“It is in Devon,” said Dumbledore and Erin realised that they would have had another full day of travelling ahead of them tomorrow. “I take it that it is not protected by the Fidelius Charm, because I can actually say the words.

Albus beamed at her. “Very good, my dear. You are a fast learner. No, it is not hidden by the Fidelius Charm, but its security is the most advanced that can be afforded a dwelling without benefit of Fidelius. The Fidelius Charm has its disadvantages, but if it should prove necessary, for Harry’s protection, then Molly and Arthur are perfectly willing to go down that road.

“And now…” Dumbledore delved into a deep pocket of his mink-coloured robes and withdrew a tiny bottle. He looked at Severus who was standing with his arms crossed, his habitual scowl back in place. “If you take Harry, my boy…” and Dumbledore waved his wand over the sleeping boy, levitating him into the air and placing his slight weight in Severus’s arms. “I will meet you at the Burrow with Miss Hanson.”

“You are sure you have the antidote?” asked Severus, more as a delaying tactic than a need for reassurance. He knew Dumbledore would have the second bottle. Albus chuckled and patted his pocket.

With no further excuse to linger, Severus looked at Erin and threw her a tight smile. “I will see you in a few minutes.”

She smiled back and watched as Paul Vale Disapparated, once again surprised that she had become used to the amazing things that witches and wizards could do as quickly as she had. She watched as Dumbledore twirled his wand in an intricate series of movements over the car, his lips moving but no sound escaping as he vanished the Ford Escort to whence it had come.

Dumbledore, smiled at her reassuringly as he broke the wax seal and pulled the cork from the bottle. “And I will see you awake again in very short order,” he said.

Erin took the bottle and downed its contents unhesitatingly. She stood as the colours surrounding her coalesced in a swirling kaleidoscope, and then she knew nothing else.