Running a hand through his hair he decided to try to stand. Another bad idea he decided as his legs almost gave way under his weight, but he was already up now, and alone. It was the perfect time to slip out unnoticed. He would have to go to Diagonalley to buy a book of potions he could use to obscure his identity, and then find another apothecary to get supplies, and then he would disappear again. Something tugged at Harry to stay put where he was, but he ignored it. He was meant to be alone, or at least he thought he was. It was the only way he knew to fit... to be safe.

Bag on his back, Harry tried the front door and found it locked. He was unable to get it open, and after the kindness he had received he didn't want to just bust the front window open to get out, so he went back into the small room and then through the door to the laboratory. There were many long benches and tables covered in neatly organized ingredients and instruments, along with a few simmering potions in cauldrons on the floor. Careful not to disturb anything, Harry made his way to the back door and had just found the handle unlocked when a voice from the darkness behind him startled him.

"I wouldn't."

Harry turned slowly so as not to agitate his head anymore. "I have to go. Thank you for the potion."

"You will need at least three more doses before you are well enough to go anywhere." Snape got up off the bench seat he had been occupying as he studied a book under a small lamplight. How Harry hadn't seen him and the light there, he didn't know.

"I can make it myself. I really should leave."

There was a pause, and then, "Why?"

Harry frowned. Because. Wasn't it obvious? This man before him, of all people, couldn't possibly want Harry to stay, could he?

"I- I have to."

"That is not an answer Potter."

"Are you saying I can't?"

"I'm asking why you think you have to."

Harry bit his lip. Why did this man want to know anyway? When had he ever cared to know Harry's motivations?

When Harry didn't say anything more, Severus startled him again with, "The world thought you had been kidnapped... taken by rogue death eaters. They searched for months... Albus nearly worried himself to death over you."

Harry's gaze dropped to the floor, suddenly ashamed, but not sure why. Severus continued in a careful voice, "And then there were others that thought you had killed yourself."

His eyes flickered up for a moment, and then back down to the stone floor. He couldn't say that he hadn't thought about it during those long nights spent awake wondering if he was even alive at all. He had thought of jumping from some high place just to have some certainty of his state of being.

"I can see that you already have."

Harry's eyes began to water as he looked up into Snape's eyes. Had he? Had he killed himself? Was he a ghost? "What?" His voice cracked.

"You have spent the last 14 months punishing yourself for something beyond your control, have you not?"

Harry shook his head. "No, I- I don't... I can't."

"Can't what?"

"I can't explain... nobody cared... I... nobody wanted me anymore." He lifted a hand helplessly and then dropped it again, dead at his side.

Severus waved up the light in the room with his wand, but only barely. Harry felt like squirming under the man's intense, searching gaze.

"What would make you think that, after all the chances you were given... after all the rules that were bent just for you." A little of the man's old bitterness seeped through into his words, and Harry flinched back at them.

"I-" he turned away a little, feeling another panic attack coming on, brought on by old memories and emotions stirred up when they ought not to have been. "No one would even talk to me... I tried telling them... nobody would listen. They only cared about me so long as I was their only hope to get rid of... him. Once that was over, they turned away. Nobody wanted to know what I was feeling... nobody cared. No one even noticed I was gone for three days."

Severus stood a little straighter at this, remembering that nobody had noticed. Everyone had been so caught up in celebration, even himself, that Harry had slipped out unseen.

"How do you know that?"

"I waited in the forest... waited to see if I was wrong. On the third day when nobody came for me, I started away. I watched the papers for weeks... there was never anything... because I did what they needed me to do, they didn't need me anymore; didn't care. Nobody ever did. I was just a pawn. I can't go back... knowing that no one cares." He heaved a heavy sigh, trying to free himself of the emotion gripping his chest so tight. He had tried so hard to feel something... anything these last months, and now he was feeling so much that it was overwhelming and he just wanted it to go away.

"I did not realize that no one had taken the time to talk to you about what you had been through. Nor that you were so... broken."

"I don't know what I am. Am I even alive? Did I die in the battle? I've wandered everywhere just feeling numb. I almost jumped... just to be certain. I tried to feel something, even anger, but I couldn't. I didn't know where to go, how to fit somewhere-" He broke off, unsure why he was even talking to someone who hated him so much for so long.

"It sounds like you've been in shock."

"I don't understand."

"There are many cases caused by Muggle warfare. Soldiers walk around dazed and confused. I believe the official term the Muggle doctors use is acute stress disorder."

Harry felt his knees shaking, unsure if it was from the sudden rush of emotions, or if it was the antidote making him weak.

"I don't know what to do... I never did. I never wanted any of this. I didn't want to be a hero."

As he stood there, feeling ready to pass out, he tried not to notice as Snape's eyes turned calculating all of a sudden. And then his legs went out and he finally hit the floor, blissfully unaware of anything anymore.

* * *

When he next awoke, Harry was back on the couch covered in the blanket again. His knees ached and he wondered for a moment with his eyes closed, before he remembered passing out in Snape's lab. He couldn't even muster embarrassment at it, or at how he had unashamedly spoken his mind and heart to somebody who didn't even like him.

He rolled onto his side and opened his eyes. He was alone again, although it was obviously daytime now because there was natural light coming in from the door out to the main shop area.

"Master Snape said you should take the next dose when you woke."

Harry let his eyes wander up to Draco, who had just appeared from the lab with another phial of the silvery liquid.

"How many more doses after this?" Harry held out his hand and took it. He didn't like feeling so weak.

"Three maybe. I don't know how you took so much of the inscrutability without dying."

Harry was about to say that he was probably already dead, because he still wasn't altogether sure about it, but held off, and instead said, "So you're his apprentice now?"

"I run the shop while he's at Hogwarts, and train in the summer."

"I didn't know you liked potions that much."

Draco bit his lip and said, "After the battle... this was the only place I was wanted."

"But you helped... you killed death eaters."

"I'm the son of one of them... the Ministry doesn't want me, and my father's kind considers me a traitor."

"Oh." Harry looked down. So Draco didn't fit anywhere either. But no, he had found a place to fit in with Snape, hadn't he?

There was silence for a few moments more before Draco said, "You'd better go to sleep before the potion knocks you out again. It won't work well if you're awake." Then he left to answer the bell above the door out in front announcing another customer.

Harry sighed. It was odd to be speaking to people again, aside from when he purchased things or had to inquire about rooms available at an inn. It was almost a nice reprieve from speaking to himself alone in his mind, and being left to his own devices to wonder with uncertainty about who and what he really was.