“So let me get this straight: Wands don’t work for you. You can’t do magic.” Severus’s voice was without emotion because he was feeling too many.

“Nope. I think I must be a squib.”

“And you don’t care?”

Potter looked genuinely confused. “My relatives would stop hating me. And Hermione and Neville would still be my friends. I wouldn’t lose anything by not having magic.”

You might even gain something by it, Severus thought, watching him.

“He grew up not knowing about magic,” Granger elaborated, “and he’s never been able to do it. It would hurt me to give it up, but...”

“How can you miss what you never had and what only brought you pain?” Potter asked simply. “Magic killed my parents. Magic’s why they hate me.” He shrugged. “Besides, if I can’t do it, I can’t do it. There’s no point in worrying about stuff I can’t change.”

Every time Severus learnt something new about Potter it meant more work. “Very well, show me.”

Unfortunately, the children hadn’t been mistaken. Potter could do no magic. At all.

“How has no one noticed?” he asked incredulously. They were all sitting down, Potter and friends on one side of the bench and Severus on the other (trying not to put his head in his hands). “Surely one of your teachers must have realised you’re incapable of casting a spell!”

“We do spells for him sometimes,” Longbottom said.

“They think I’m slow,” Potter said, smiling as if that was a great joke, “but they haven’t noticed I just can’t.”

“You do spells for him,” Severus repeated slowly. “How can you do that without someone seeing?”

All three children just shrugged. “It’s not so hard,” Granger said. “We learn the spells beforehand and then if we do it right Neville or I can cast the spell so it looks like Harry’s doing it. Neville’s better at it than me, I’m not sneaky enough. Potions is easy, of course. Harry’s good at prep so he mostly does that and Neville or I can do the parts that need magical infusion.”

Severus blinked, but managed to keep his surprise from his face. The magical component of true potion brewing wasn’t even mentioned until second year when (theoretically) students had learned enough basic brewing skills not to make magically-infused potions (so much more dangerous) explode, not to mention when they actually had some manner of control over their magic. But he shouldn’t have been surprised, of course. Not by these three. Normal rules clearly did not apply.

He abandoned that line of thought for another: “Why did you tell no one?”

Granger met his eyes calmly. “You don’t tell teachers about problems.”

That would have flummoxed most of the teachers; a teacher learnt to quickly size up children and Granger already had a reputation for following the rules and respecting adults. But Severus nodded. He remembered that. Never tell the teachers about bullies, never tell the teachers about the things that are really wrong, because that never helps. It usually just makes things worse.

“Very well. Let me think about this.”

The children sat in silence, respecting his mood of abstraction. He couldn’t let Potter be sent away from Hogwarts for the very same reasons he had already had to convince the boy to come. If he had no magic then he would need the protection even more. Voldemort was back and Severus knew very well the threat the Dark Lord posed, even if he couldn’t reconcile it with the brother he knew so well. To Severus there were two Voldemorts, the one feared by even his own followers and the brother who had only ever healed his hurts; in Severus’s head the two just did not match up, as if they were separate, unrelated entities.

So Potter had to stay, that was inarguable. But if Albus found out he might search for a new hero or he might send Potter back to Muggle society with the idea of trotting him back out at need; Severus didn’t know exactly what was going on in Albus’s head but he did know Albus expected Potter to be a hero in the future.

If Albus was to learn his Golden Boy had no magic, had no ability to be the hero he was intended to be... Even Severus, who had spent two decades trapped in the man’s orbit, had no idea how Albus would react. But whether his decision was made for the greater good or for what he saw to be Potter’s best interests, Severus had no doubt the man would make the wrong choice. Especially for this boy who was nothing Albus could possibly comprehend.

“Very well,” he said abruptly into the silence, making Longbottom jump. “I will help you and I will tell no one. Does that suit?”

Longbottom gaped at him; Granger surveyed him with approval. Potter looked at him speculatively, then glanced at his friends. The three of them shared looks, and then Potter nodded slowly. Granger said, “Yes, Professor, that would suit us. But...”

He almost smiled. “Why?” All three nodded. “You seem quite capable of dealing with this matter. Why should I upset your plans? But I offer my assistance. For example, I can provide you with timed spells to aid in your deception.” He respected their decision to make their own way in the world; he respected the way they were working together. Unlike Albus, he was content to let children find their own limits without forcing them to conform to his expectations.

Granger’s eyes lit up. “That would be very helpful! I haven’t quite managed to get the hang of those yet.”

“Considering that it is NEWT-level magic, that is hardly surprising,” Severus said dryly.

“Yes, but—”

“Hermione,” Potter said, rolling his eyes, “you’ve got to learn to walk before you can run.”

“And crawl before you can walk,” Longbottom added. Apparently this wasn’t a new complaint of hers.

“Are we agreed?” Severus forestalled any response on her part. “I will allow you to determine your own course of action in this matter, but you will allow me to assist.”

“Why would you help us?” Potter asked, still wary. Adults weren’t, in his world, prone to assistance. Severus realised he’d have to be a bit more open.

“You remember the reasons I gave you that made your presence at Hogwarts necessary.”

“Yes.”

“They remain, whether you have magic or not. And should it become publicly known that you have none...”

“They wouldn’t want me here any more.”

“No. I cannot allow that. You must be kept safe.”

Potter frowned. “Why do you care?” It was a genuine, confused question.

“Because I am an adult and I am supposed to protect you. Because I have no desire to see someone harmed when I could prevent it.” Potter was still looking at him. “Because, Potter, having you around is proving far more interesting than I anticipated.”

Potter laughed.

-

It wasn’t so bad having Snape know about Harry’s magic. Neville had thought having an adult know would be bad, that was why they’d worked so hard to make sure no one found out, but Snape wasn’t like a normal adult. And he helped them, just like he said he would. It was lots easier for Harry to pretend he had magic when Snape had put a spell on his wand so that at the right word it would release a stored spell.

Neville thought that Harry might even win the bet. They’d taken bets on how long it would take for teachers to figure out Harry couldn’t do magic (Snape didn’t count, because they’d told him). Neville had said everyone would know before the end of the first term, but he was starting to think he’d been wrong. Hermione had decided they could probably hide Harry’s magiclessness until Christmas, but not long after that. Harry had declared that no one would guess there was a problem until the end of the year at the exams (though now Snape was involved maybe they could even fake the exams? that would be funny).

Mostly it was because Neville didn’t want Harry to leave Hogwarts that he’d been so sure they shouldn’t tell anyone. Harry was his friend and it was way better to have his friends nearby, Neville had decided. And it was kind of like a game, to see how well they could trick the teachers and whether anyone would ever catch on. It was fun to giggle together after class at the comments the teachers had made.

“Acceptable, Mr Potter,” Harry would mimic Flitwick, “but you need to sharpen up your flick.” And they’d all fall about laughing because it was so silly that Harry had been corrected for magic he hadn’t even done.

Snape’s involvement didn’t change that at all, to Neville’s surprise, it just made things easier. Harry and Hermione had decided Snape was probably trustworthy – Neville even thought Harry almost liked him – so they didn’t mind him knowing. Neville actually was a bit scared of Snape, because he wasn’t used to scary people, but Snape was never actually mean to him and Neville thought he could like the man too.

After all, there were nastier people at Hogwarts.

-

“Potter! Hey, don’t you walk away from me!” The angry voice echoing through the corridors snapped Severus into a run. “My mother’s in prison because of you and the vermin you protected!”

He whipped around the corner, wand raised, to see a Ravenclaw sixth year send an ugly purple curse at Potter and Granger. His shield spell was too late to stop it, but Granger’s Protego was up in time and flared angrily as she and Potter tumbled to the floor in their attempt to escape. The spell dissipated on the shield and before the Ravenclaw girl could follow up on it Severus had her wand from her hand with a silent Expelliarmus and bound her with magical rope. When she began a stream of vitriol he absentmindedly Silencioed her before turning worriedly to the children she’d attacked.

Longbottom came running up, shoving his way through the shocked and staring crowd to throw himself to his knees beside his friends. “Are you okay? Hermione? Harry?”

“Fine,” Potter said as he and Granger disentangled themselves.

“We’re fine,” Hermione agreed, sounding a little shaken.

“Nice shield, Hermione,” Potter added as Longbottom helped them to their feet.

Severus in fact had his own thoughts about that shield, but that could wait. Assured the girl’s victims were none the worse for wear (save possibly a few bruises), he turned his attention to the Ravenclaw. Despite her righteous fury she shrank under the force of his glare.

“What’s her problem, sir?” Potter asked quietly, coming to stand at his elbow. The girl struggled, glaring viciously at Potter. The boy met her eyes unflinchingly then turned away, as untroubled by her malice as by Malfoy’s attempts at rivalry, and looked up at Severus as his friends flanked him.

Ignoring them, Severus frowned ominously at the Ravenclaw. “Miss Ashby,” he said, and his voice was arctic, “I would be very interested to know why you felt it necessary to attempt to murder your fellow students.” Gasps sounded in the watching crowd, for few students would have recognised the deadly nature of that curse. But Severus did. No more deaths, not on his watch.

“Ashby,” Longbottom said quietly. “Her mum was a Death Eater.”

Severus remembered the Silencio and took it off, but Ashby stayed obstinately silent. “I am waiting, Miss Ashby.”

“He killed the Dark Lord! He put my mother in Azkaban! He deserves to die, the little—” A prudent Silencio left her to rant in silence.

“For attempted murder, Miss Ashby,” he said coldly, “you will be lucky not to join your mother. Come with me. And you three,” he added in an undertone to Potter’s group, “will see me this evening at seven.”

-

Potter and friends turned up promptly as ordered, which was frankly the one thing to go exactly as it should since he’d left them. Ashby had been expelled, but only because Severus had fought for it. Minerva and Filius had backed him up, appalled at a murder attempt in Hogwarts’ halls, but Albus had been difficult to convince and in the end they had failed to make him understand their position, they’d only worn him down to agreeing to their terms. Albus wanted to keep her at Hogwarts and give her a second chance. Between sherbet lemons and kindly grandfatherly talks, his eyes said, surely we can convince her not to follow her mother’s path.

But Severus had seen the murder in her eyes as she fired that spell. Possibly had she been raised in a different household the girl could have been a fine and upstanding citizen... but she hadn’t been. She had been raised in a pureblood household by people who supported the Dark Lord’s ideals and Severus was not giving her a second chance to kill Potter. Albus’s attempts to convince him a second chance was proper made him feel sick; it was Black’s attempt to sic Lupin on him all over again. It was being half dead from shock, trying to recover from the horror of nearly dying, and then seeing the boy who’d tried to get him killed let off with a month’s detentions. Not this time. Never again. Ashby had tried to kill an eleven-year-old boy and she would pay for that.

Severus thought she should go to Azkaban, but without Albus’s support that would mean dragging Potter into the courts and he was loathe to do that. And there was no chance of Albus’s support. The only way they’d managed to convince him to even expel the girl was by Severus announcing that if Ashby stayed at Hogwarts he would personally go to the Daily Prophet with the story. Boy Who Lived Attacked! That would be a huge story that they’d gladly take up, and Albus would be forced by public opinion to pillory Ashby.

As he’d known it would, that finally wrung grudging acceptance from Albus. The man’s clear disappointment in him was a small price to pay. Frankly, Severus was starting to forget why he’d ever thought the man worth any sort of reluctant respect. On their way out Minerva gave him a quiet “Well done, Severus” that meant far more than any praise of Albus’s could and far outweighed all of Albus’s disappointed looks that he’d get over the next few weeks.

The children were waiting for him outside his office when he arrived. He nodded a greeting and unlocked the door, ushering them in. “Do you know why I wanted to speak with you?” he asked after relating Ashby’s fate (Granger was disgusted she’d gotten off so lightly).

Longbottom and Potter shook their heads, but Granger bit her lip. “Because of my shield?” she asked.

“What was wrong with your shield?” Longbottom asked in surprise.

“It was far too powerful a spell for a first year to cast.”

“Hermione’s pretty clever,” Potter pointed out.

“Mental ability and scholastic attainment have no bearing on the matter. I will concede Miss Granger is a prodigy, but no matter how mentally remarkable she might be, her magical power is limited by her physical development and cannot be any more than that of a child.”

“Oh.” The boys looked at Granger. “Then what...?”

Severus looked at her as well. “How did you do it?”

“I don’t know!” Wringing her hands nervously, she shot a look at Potter. “I don’t—I think Harry gave it to me. The power, I mean.”

“But I don’t have any magic,” Potter pointed out slowly.

“I know. That’s why I didn’t say anything. But... it wasn’t me. I know what it feels like to use my magic to do a spell and that wasn’t it. But it was my spell. So I don’t—” She looked at Severus. They all three looked at Severus.

He sighed. “Did I say having you around was interesting, Potter?” he asked. “I must have meant exasperating.” Potter laughed. “Very well, let’s have a look at you. Drop your wand and anything else you might have that’s magic on the table and stand over there. You two, stay seated.”

Granger and Longbottom twisted around in their seats to watch as Severus subjected Potter to an extensive battery of spells designed to test magical levels and pathways, stopping every now and then to consult yet another book to look up a poorly-remembered test. This kind of magic wasn’t Severus’s forte, but he was an intelligent man and he could see the signs.

Sitting down behind his desk again as Potter retrieved his things, Severus sighed heavily and ran his hand over his face. “Potter, you have a remarkable ability to complicate things,” he said without rancour. The boy just grinned, but Granger looked like she was about to explode with questions. “The main difference between wizards and Muggles,” he explained, “is not the presence of magic within them, but pathways that allow them to access that magic. Potter has no magical pathways. This means he can’t access his natural magic and therefore he can’t cast spells. But he has far more magic than any Muggle would be capable of containing. Frankly, he has far more magic than any child should be capable of containing. And yet he must have provided you with power, Miss Granger, because I can detect the traces of the magic on his skin. I just don’t know how it got there.”

Potter didn’t have magic, he just had power. He was a well with no bucket, a reservoir with no outlet, a pipe blocked at both ends. By himself Harry Potter was about as magical as an electric torch, as Muggle as his relatives. Except...

“Can we test it?” Granger asked eagerly. “If we can recreate the circumstances perhaps we can do it again.”

“What circumstances?” Longbottom asked. “Someone trying to kill you?”

“I think one murder attempt a day is quite enough, thank you,” Severus said hastily. “Do you have any idea what might have allowed the power flow?”

“Don’t look at me,” Potter denied. “I didn’t even know I’d done anything!”

“Maybe... We were touching,” Granger said thoughtfully. “And we were probably thinking the same sort of thing.”

“What, like help?” Potter asked.

“And it probably helps that Harry trusts me. I mean, if it had been Malfoy or someone you wouldn’t expect it to work.” She frowned. “But we’d have to test that, that’s just an assumption based on some of the books I’ve been reading.”

“I hope you’re right,” Severus said, frowning in turn. The idea that Potter could be used to boost anyone’s spells whether he wanted to or not wasn’t appealing.

“Me too,” Potter said with feeling. “So how can we test it?”

Since the pair couldn’t remember having done anything special they decided to work with the assumption that it was skin contact that had allowed the power transfer and see what happened. If it didn’t work they’d have difficulties, but one hypothesis at a time.

Since Granger was the one to have successfully borrowed Potter’s power, she stood with him in the middle of Severus’s office, wand in hand. Potter let her take his hand and watched her raise her wand. “Protego.” (Severus was interested to note that unlike most children under fifteen, Granger seemed to have worked out that shouting didn’t increase the power of your spells.)

The shield spell flared around the two children, so brightly white that for a moment they were hidden by it and definitely too strong for a child. Potter’s eyes were wide when it faded away. “It was me!” he said in shock. “I didn’t know magic felt like that. It was just... Last time I didn’t expect the shield but I wanted Hermione to be safe. This time I knew there was supposed to be a shield so I was thinking about it and... and I felt it. Like a shiver through my bones.”

Severus cocked an eyebrow at him thoughtfully. “Miss Granger, try a spell without letting us know what you’re going to do. Mr Potter, see if you can still boost her power.”

She aimed her wand at the chair she’d been sitting in and, to Severus’s mild surprise, transfigured it into a rocking chair. Potter shook his head as she said, “No, Harry didn’t do anything that time.”

“Interesting. That would suggest you can only amplify a spell if you know in advance what you’re assisting with or if you’re hoping for a similar outcome. We shall, of course, have to test this.” Granger nodded emphatically. Longbottom looked a little surprised, but as a pureblood he wouldn’t have been trained to test hypotheses. “Mr Potter, would you be willing to see if this ability can be used with people other than Miss Granger?”

Potter nodded. “Okay, sir.”

“It would interesting to know comparative benefits as well. If we were all to try the same spell, something simple like Wingardium leviosa. Do you know it?” he asked Longbottom and Granger. The latter, unsurprisingly, nodded.

“I—I don’t,” Longbottom said.

“You will,” Granger said, unconcerned. Severus stood back to let the children handle it. It was an illuminating experience. Granger was the one with the knowledge, but it was Potter, even unable to do the spell, who had the ability to translate her instructions and teach it.

Severus was the first to try, awkwardly taking Potter’s small hand in his and casting the spell on a quill placed on his desk. He felt the power flow into him from the boy, a truly startling amount of power that sent the quill shooting up into the air like a rocket. “Impressive,” he said in understatement, letting go of Potter’s hand and directing the quill back onto the desk. “Thank you, Mr Potter, that was most educational.” Potter offered him a smile.

Longbottom wasn’t too comfortable with taking Potter’s hand and he definitely wasn’t comfortable casting a spell while people watched on, but Granger and Potter’s unwavering certainty in his ability had remarkable effect and despite his nervousness he cast the newly learnt spell with skill. His efforts didn’t result in the quill producing quite the rocket effect of Severus’s spell, but Potter’s assistance definitely loaned him power. Severus watched Potter’s face thoughtfully.

Granger, her face alive with interest, bounced forward to try her turn. “Gently,” Severus warned. She nodded and cast the spell. The quill tried to embed itself in the stone ceiling and fluttered back down, crushed, when she dropped the spell in shock. They stared at the mutilated quill.

“Fascinating,” Severus said dryly.

Granger stared at it. “But I only gave it a tiny bit of power.”

“It may be that your magics are more compatible than ours with Mr Potter’s.” Or it could even be something to do with the degree of trust he felt with the person he was giving the power to. Who knew? Severus had never encountered anything like this before.

Over the next few days they played around with this strange magic, trying to understand it. Experiment determined that Severus and Longbottom got about the same amount of boost, though Severus’s superior skill meant he gained more apparent power. Granger got by far the biggest boost, putting her, even untrained, easily on a par with Albus despite the fact that Albus’s reputation for power wasn’t unearned. One point Severus noted was that Granger not only gained more power, but the strain on Potter was noticeably less. The power sharing took its toll on the boy just as any magic did on a magic user.

It was just that his magic wasn’t like anything Severus had ever seen before. Because Potter was a Muggle, there was no doubt about it, he just had this additional ability that Severus couldn’t find mentioned in any book he searched through (and he searched through a lot).

A conduit, that was the word. He had no ability to do magic, he only channelled it into those who did. Severus had never heard of magic acting like this before. But then no one had ever survived the Avada Kedavra curse before either.