“You alright, Harry?”

The teenager opened his mouth to snap a retort, then paused: he’d just managed to patch things up with Ron so perhaps it might be wisest not to let on about the accidental legilimency. “Yeah, just tripped. It’s well dark in here.”

“Right” Ron muttered, backing out of the dark sitting room. Harry followed his friend back into the Headmaster’s office, where, to Harry’s shock, Dumbledore was kneeling beside an ashen faced Severus Snape, dabbing firewhiskey onto his lips. 

“You-Know-Who was… um… a bit rough…” Ron whispered to Harry, looking slightly nauseous. “Used the Cruciatus curse on him. A lot.”

“Harry,” Dumbledore said, suddenly standing up “I need to take young master Weasley to the infirmary. If you would stay with Professor Snape?”

“Er, doesn’t Snape need the infirmary more, Sir.” Harry asked, concern flickering in his eyes.

“Professor Snape, Harry, and no, he is in no danger, merely exhausted.”

Harry nodded and silently reached out for the alcohol seeped handkerchief.

“Good boy" Dumbledore said quietly. "I will return shortly.”

“Bye Harry” Ron said, his expression perplexed as he watched Harry gently move a lock of greasy, black hair away from the Potions Master’s face.

“Oh, bye Ron.” Harry replied, looking up with dazed green eyes. “Catch you soon.”

As Dumbledore and Ron disappeared through the floo, Harry turned back to Professor Snape who had fallen asleep.

“Oh Sir,” Harry sighed, scrunching the handkerchief in his fist as tears, unbidden, filled his eyes “What have you done?”

oOoOo

Harry was half-expecting to be called into Professor Dumbledore’s office throughout the weekend. At first, Harry grew irritated, thinking it scandalous to waste even a second before getting down to work on a plan, considering the seriousness of the situation.

On Sunday, Professor McGonagall entered the Gryffindor Common-room and blandly requested that Ginny, Fred and George accompany her to her office. Ginny, her proudly raised chin belying her pale face, leapt to her feet and followed the Deputy Headmistress, with Fred and George walking behind her, sombre eyed and silent. 

As Harry watched them leave, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Hermione clasp her hands in her lap, brown eyes boring into Professor McGonagall as if she wished to legilimize her. Torn between running away and blurting out the truth, Harry gritted his teeth and put an arm around his best friend’s shoulders.

When the Weasley children entered the Common-Room half an hour later, a hush fell, saved only from total silence by the forced conversation of a few groups of Upper Year students.

A firecracker blazed around the room, popping and crackling merrily. Everyone looked across to the trio, whose red-rimmed eyes formed a stark contrast with their relieved smiles.

“Now we have your attention…” started Fred,

“Not that we don’t appreciate…” continued George,

“You tactfully ignoring us...”

“Ronniekins is over the worst…”

“And ready for visitors!” Ginny added, to general laughter.

As Dean ran upstairs to grab a bag of ‘Liquorice Allsorts’ his mum had sent him, Ginny wandered over to where Harry and Hermione were sitting.

“Come on, you two. Ron’s finally decided that life’s too short” the pretty red-head grinned, rolling her eyes.

Hermione glanced hesitantly at Harry, hope and fear merging in her brown eyes. Smiling, Harry stood up “Yeah, hoped he would. Accio Chocolate Cauldrons!”

OoOoO

Standing outside the Infirmary, Harry listened sympathetically as Hermione nervously discussed Wit Sharpening Potions. Madam Pomfrey, in Harry’s opinion, was taking the pretence a fraction too far; the Mediwitch was only allowing Ron two visitors at a time, at this moment Seamus and Dean, and only for five minutes. As far as Hermione was concerned, five minutes was no way long enough to sort out the past month and Harry longed to tell her that all was well, that Ron had already made amends with him.

Harry felt a great deal of empathy for Snape; being a proper spy must really suck.

When Madam Pomfrey bustled Harry and Hermione over to Ron’s bedside, however, Harry began to wonder if his optimism had been somewhat premature. The Weasleys, with their celtic colouring, were pale at the best of times but, now, Ron’s countenance was the whitish green of sour milk. The dull, inward looking eyes, pox scarred cheeks and forced smile rounded up to a impressively convincing picture, in Harry’s opinion. He’d never thought that the forthright Ron would have any acting ability whatsoever.

“Oh Ron!”  Hermione sighed.

“Hey mate,” Harry said, in what he hoped was a convincing tone. “Glad to see you’re feeling better.”

“Don’t have to pretend” Ron sniffed miserably, turning a red-rimmed eye on Harry “Was a git to you. Surprised you came at all.”

Forcing his incredulity behind his occulmency shields, Harry scrubbed at his messy, raven hair. “Yeah, you were but I recon I can’t let you die without forgiving you ‘cos, according to Skeeter, I’m at least the Second Coming, so you’d probably go to hell or something” he added with a cheeky wink. “You look like shit, mate.”

“Harry!”

“Feel like shit.” Ron groaned. “Infirmary must be the worst place to be sick; nothing to distract you from the damn itching. Even Potions would be better.”

Ron sneezed and, to Harry’s surprise, green smoke poured out of his nostrils.

“Don’t worry, I’m not infectious or anything” the miserable red-head replied.

“You’ve had your five minutes, Mr Potter, Ms Granger!” Madam Pomfrey intoned, her robes rustling as she approached with a tray full of potions.

“Okay. Well, here are some chocs.” Harry said, placing the box on Ron’s bedside. “A good cure all, according to a werewolf I know.”

“Thanks Harry, Mione.”

As Harry walked away, the insalubrious sound of Ron gagging down potions made him wonder just how far Dumbledore was willing to go with this pretence.

oOoOo

In hindsight, it was impossible to say when Harry began to realise that something was off about Ron’s behaviour. Sometimes, Harry thought he’d been suspicious from the first day, which always led him to wonder why he’d taken so damn long to work it out.

Another week passed and, despite expecting the summons to Dumbledore’s office every moment (and, more than once, rushing from the breakfast table to read his letter under the privacy of his invisibility cloak) the invitation never came. 
 
The worst of it was that, right now, Harry no longer had daily contact with either Headmaster Dumbledore or Professor Snape; the teenage boy arrived in his Tuesday Potions class to find the iron haired, steely tempered Professor Grubbly-Plank chalking up instructions for a canker-cleansing solution. This change of tutor, combined with Dumbledore’s continued silence, evolved Harry’s incredulity into a simmering fury; the Headmaster wasn’t going to involve him at all!

Harry’s first thought, when he realised that Dumbledore didn’t intend to include him in his discussions, was to break his silence and tell Hermione, in the hope that the usually astute girl would know how best to approach the Headmaster or, better yet, be able to see something in the situation that proved Dumbledore was just biding his time. However, as angry as he was, Snape’s life was on the line. Moreover, Harry’s temper wasn’t tempted because, as Hermione was so busy looking up dragonpox symptoms and treatments in the library, she barely noticed her friend’s distraction.

Although Ron’s condition was slowly improving, he had, in what, to Harry’s mind was an impressive bit of acting, been bemoaning the ice green tinge of his skin, managing to appear so miserable that, had Harry not known what he did, he felt sure he’d have been convinced.

On Friday, Professor Grubbly-Plank mentioned that Professor Snape would remain absent for another week and, although this announcement was joyfully received by the Gryffindors, Harry’s mood plummeted: without the hope of a Saturday lesson, the teenage boy could scarcely have endured such a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

When Harry, in what he hoped was an offhand manner, mentioned this to Ron during a visit that evening, he was surprised by his answer.

“Alright for some! By the time I recover, the greasy git will be back" the red-head harrumhed. "Probably dock me points for being ill or something.”

“Oh, Ron! Grow up!” Hermione snapped. “Have a little sympathy, won’t you; from what I’ve heard, his aunt is dying.”

“Wish he’d catch whatever she has” was the vindictive response.

As Harry lay in bed, later that evening, he replayed the conversation over and over in his head, those words, the way Ron’s mouth twisted as he said them, the cold, hard look in those blue-grey eyes.

The hatred was genuine, Harry’d stake his life on it; Ron actually loathed the man who had bartered his life, made an unbreakable vow, to save him.

Even Ron, as petty and blind as he could be, couldn’t be that ungrateful, could he?

For a moment, Harry entertained the thought that Ron might resent Snape, believing the man was going to hand him to Voldemort. However, that idea made no sense: surely Ron would have told him? Harry knew his friend had neither known nor suspected that he’d been legilimised. Hell, Ron didn’t even know that Harry’d been having Occulmency lessons!

Harry sat up, hauling his invisibility cloak from under his pillow and around his shoulders. As he swivelled his legs around, toes searching for and insinuating their way into slippers, Harry’s leg knocked against the Potions text on his bedside table.

“Always make a note of significant events” Snape had once said “After all, wizards can delete and insert memories.”

Deciding that safe was better than sorry, Harry grabbed his quill and notepad, found a spare line between his scrawlings on potions for magical creatures, and wrote; “Snape saved Ron from V, unbreakable vow to deliver me to V by midnight, Yule.”

Carefully raising his trunk lid a fraction of an inch, Harry slipped his closed notebook inside and locked it, before slipping out into the night.

oOoOo

The sun filtered through the velvet hangings of Harry’s bed, onto his closed eyelids. Yawning, the teenager sat up and looked at his watch; ten o’clock already. Too late for breakfast.

Stretching, Harry stood up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and wandered over to his trunk where, through force of habit, he always kept a few chocolate bars and bags of crisps.

Slightly surprised to find the box locked, Harry pressed his thumb against the panel and opening the lid, dug around the arm-deep debris for his tuck-box. As he tugged a bag of crisps loose, Harry’s eye alighted on his Potions note-book. Might as well make a start on Grubbly-Plank’s homework.

Sitting down, munching a handful of crisps, Harry flicked through his notebook, finding a clean page. Riffling through, the word ‘Vet Spells, written in large, block capitals, caught Harry’s attention.

“I don’t remember writing all this?” the teenager muttered, flicking through three pages of close script. He glanced over at his potions book, which was lying on his bedside table, and shrugged. “Must have gotten bored during the night.”

Thanking his somnolent self, Harry grabbed a roll of parchment and started writing his essay on the differences between potions intended for animals and those made for human consumption. The teenager had just started a paragraph about which ingredients, while being safe for humans, could poison animals when he read something that made his quill punch a hole in his essay.

“Snape saved Ron from V, unbreakable vow to deliver me to V by midnight, Yule.”

OoOoO

Swallowing, Harry read the words again, forcing his swimming vision to focus on that deadly sentence.

Forcing himself to take deep breaths, Harry pushed his wayward, dark hair away from his pale face. Right, first things first, there was no way Snape would just hand Harry over, not in a million years. The guy had more than proved his allegiance, firstly by choosing Lily’s safety over his loyalty to Voldemort and, secondly, by protecting her son from mad broomsticks, werewolves, suspected murderers, Dumbledore and even from Harry himself.

So, Snape must have a plan, he wouldn’t have taken such a step without knowing how to wriggle out of it. Unbreakable Vows were deadly serious: the Potions Master had told Harry about them a while ago, on the basis that forewarned is forearmed. If you broke an unbreakable, you’d die.

Harry stared at his writing: there was no mistaking that messy scrawl, he’d definitely written it and, as the essay had only been set the day before, he must have written that snippet of information last night.

At the very beginning of Occulmency, Snape had warned Harry to always record important memories, lest someone fiddle with his mind. The teenager had nodded, noted it down and promptly forgotten.

Until, it seems, last night, when something had prompted him to write down that memory. It didn’t take a genius to work it out: he’d gone to talk to someone about this and they’d wiped his memory.

Lying back on his pillows, Harry drew himself back into his mind, feeling around the familiar contours for something unfamiliar, alien. The colour of Harry’s magic was a pale, peridot green, sparkling in the folds of his memories; another person’s magic would be a different hue. First, Harry found a strange greenish-black clot, small and calcified into the fabric of his mind. Focusing his flames, Harry scorched the lump, cauterising the surrounding tissue and burning the dark material away. However, although Harry immediately felt better, cleaner, the memories did not return; if anything, the teenage boy felt something leave.

Frustrated, Harry resumed his search for the bound memories, half afraid that he’d just destroyed them. The teenager was about to give up when he noticed the mortar of his stone wall; it sparkled with lilac magic. Growling, Harry set about dismantling his carefully constructed defences, brick by metaphorical brick.

oOoOo

Ron had been reading a magazine when Harry entered the hospital wing yesterday evening, hidden under his invisibility cloak. The bed bound boy had looked up as Harry approached, perhaps hearing his muffled footsteps, and Harry had looked into those flinty eyes and seen no trace of his kidnap or incarceration, no recollection of the tiny monstrous form that Voldemort now inhabited, Peter Pettigrew or even his rescue; Snape being tortured, the unbreakable vow. Ron’s recent memories were merely of illness and the hospital wing.

He’d been obliviated.

Furious, Harry had turned on his heel, ran through the school to Dumbledore’s office. And there he had learnt the truth.

There was a plan but it was neither ingenious nor daring; Snape had refused, point blank, to countenance taking Harry within fifty miles of Voldemort. Harry would stay at Hogwarts, ‘Moody’ would be arrested, Voldemort and Pettigrew mopped up by a taskforce of trusted Aurors.

And Snape would die. He was resolute, Dumbledore had said, wiping a tear from his eye. The Headmaster had tried his best to persuade Severus, even pleading that, if the wards prevented anyone else from accompanying them, Snape and Harry had every chance of success. Pettigrew and Nagini were no real match, Snape and Harry could despatch both within a second, leaving the weakened Voldemort a sitting duck. However, Snape had sneered that a second was long enough for Voldemort to kill and, even if they did, by some miracle, survive, Severus’s deception would be uncovered. That, if he could not be of use as a spy, there ended any point or purpose for his life.

Harry had sworn and yelled and smashed Dumbledore’s silver machines, demanding that a loophole be found, that Snape had to be persuaded, via the imperius curse if necessary, even howling that they should sacrifice Harry because, surely, a spy and warlock was more valuable than a teenager who’d only survived due to sheer dumb luck.

Dumbledore had listened in silence and, when Harry had screamed himself hoarse, calmly said that this was why he had obliviated Ron, inserting false memories of the Infirmary and infecting him with a mild strain of Dragonpox.

Then the Headmaster had pointed his wand at Harry and everything faded to black.
OoOoO

Betrayal, guilt, fear and grief clouded Harry’s mind like toxic smog, smothering his half-formed thoughts. Digging his nails into his palms, the teenager forced his mind to clear.

Right. Option one, doing nothing, wasn’t even worth considering, so Harry could dismiss that idea right away.

Option two, finding Snape and trying to persuade him into fulfilling his vow was very risky. Okay, Dumbledore’s word had proved somewhat unreliable; it was even possible that the Headmaster had obliviated Snape, preferring to sacrifice him rather than endanger Harry. However, Dumbledore seemed genuinely fond of his Potions Master and, besides, the old man had let Harry try his strength against Voldemort plenty of times before. Moreover, the Prophecy said that Harry was going to defeat Voldemort or vice versa, so it was going to come to a confrontation eventually. Harry shook his head; the Headmaster’s story rang true and, therefore, running off to tell Snape would end with his memory resembling Swiss cheese.

Ditto with bells on for Dumbledore. Harry liked to think of himself as the patient type but he didn’t think he could talk to the Headmaster without yelling- or hexing- and, unless he could prove that Snape would be willing to give his currently non-existent plan a go…

Hagrid, while loyal and unfailingly honourable, spent at least one night a week down at the Hog’s Head and, well, he was a chatty drunk: while Harry would trust his adoptive father with his life, it’d be dangerous to tell him such a deadly secret. Especially considering that, in this instance, 'success' meant Hagrid's adoptive son being able to walk into a battle with Voldemort.

Sirius, on the other hand, honestly loathed Snape and it didn’t take a degree in psychology to work out that his Godfather’s first instinct would be to protect Harry, even if it meant throwing an innocent man to the wolves. In his anger, Harry spitefully thought that it wouldn’t be the first time, then the teenager immediately felt guilty. Sirius wouldn’t betray him. Not without great difficulty, at least.

Ron was as bad as Sirius and, although Harry knew that Hermione would help all she could, knowledge had already proved to be a dangerous thing.

Then inspiration struck: fast, accurate and powerful as a serpent.

Myrridin.