It was Harry’s turn to gape at Snape.

”How did you know? Did Dumbledore tell you?” he said.

”No, he wouldn’t trust me with the information,” Snape said airily. ”Didn’t want to put all the secrets in the same basket, he said. And he cannot, as a portrait, give me new information. But I too have been thinking in my solitude this winter and I am as able as you are to put two and two together. I am after all, known to have plunged in the Dark Arts more thoroughly than most wizards do,” he added drily. 

”So you figured it out,” said Harry. 

”I had heard of horcruxes. No details of course - there is very little written about them. But I know of the Dark Lord’s obsession with immortality and I had seen the ring that cursed Dumbledore and wondered why Albus went to such extremes as to actually cleave the object in two pieces. That indicated… some amount of Dark Magic built into the very core of the object. And then… there was something else that Dumbledore told me,” Snape added vaguely.

Harry suddenly started to breathe shallowly. With his eyes fixed on Snape’s face, the young wizard went straight up to him with a few staggering steps. His eyes were wide as he fastened them on Snape’s. 

”Did Dumbledore say something about me?” asked Harry hoarsely. ”Did he ask you to tell me something?” Snape was very still, observing the fidgeting young man in front of him and trying to hide his own mounting dread.

”What do you mean? What would that be?” he said slowly, holding Harry’s gaze and automatically shutting his emotions off with Occlumency.

Harry inhaled sharply and turned away. He started to walk aimlessly back and fro, stopping in front of the small balls of fire and staring unseeingly at them. 

”I cannot… I cannot take more of this uncertainty,” he whispered tightly. ”It’s unbearable… I need to prepare if… I need to… I need to… Maybe it’s better not to know? Is it?” Harry glanced at Snape who was rooted at the same spot as before. There was such pain in those green eyes that it shot like an arrow through Snape’s shields of Occlumency and pierced his heart.  

”Harry,” he said, trying but failing to resist the pleading gaze. ”What are you talking about?”

”Please tell me everything you know. Please,” said Harry.

”He… Albus… said not to approach you until Voldemort would start keeping Nagini under magical protection.” Snape tried to buy himself time. ”The Dark Lord has not, yet, started to do that.”

”Nagini…?” Harry looked confused for a second, before he inhaled sharply again. ”It makes sense, I guess,” he mumbled and tried to take a step forward but his legs gave way and he sunk down on his knees.

”Harry!” exclaimed Snape and rushed forward, kneeling in front of the crouching body that had started to tremble and gripped Harry by the shoulders. The green eyes were lifted up to meet his again.

”Did Dumbledore say…” Harry whispered in a deathly quiet, breathless voice, clutching the tissue of Snape’s sleeves so hard that his fingers whitened, ”…did he tell you that I have to die by Voldemort’s own hand? That I have to die… have to let him kill me… for all this to end?” 

Shocked by the realisation that Harry had reached this terrible insight on his own and was now asking for confirmation of his doom, Snape could not prevent his features from betraying the horror and outrage he felt over the same fact.

In response to Snape’s undisguised expression, Harry’s features crumpled up. He hid his face in his hands and bent over in anguish. Snape released him, not knowing what to do. Suddenly Harry thrust himself blindly to the side. He tried to scramble to his feet. 

”I need to go…” he said, ”I need to get out of here.” Snape launched forward and got hold of his wrist.

”No! Stay here, Harry. I won’t allow you to go anywhere in that state. You’ll splinch yourself if you try to Apparate or you’ll get devoured by some of the Forest’s magical creatures if you walk away by foot. Stay. Talk to me,” commanded Snape. 

”But… but… I’m a horcrux… I’m a horcrux… Don’t you see? I’m his vessel… He can use… It’s horrible! No one will want to be close to me. I should not be let near anyone,” stammered Harry.

”Nonsense!” exclaimed Snape. ”If you are a horcrux you’ve been so since you were a one year old baby. Didn’t keep you from being yourself all those years, did it? If it were so easy for him to emerge inside you, he would have done so during the thirteen years that passed from his curse backfiring on you until he recreated his body with the help of your blood. We know nothing for sure. Albus never mentioned the word to me  - just that you had to… that you had to let him…” 

Snape could not finish the sentence and Harry tried to jerk himself loose from Snape’s grip with a roar of crude angst. 

”Listen, Harry!” Snape cried desperately. ”Even if you are indeed a… horcrux… we know nothing about its implications. It’s a horrible word, a horrible concept, but the truth is, the equivalent of a human horcrux has never been heard of,” Snape spoke feverishly, holding Harry by both shoulders and trying to catch the panicking young man’s wandering gaze and make eye contact with him. 

”But it amounts to the same, don’t you see? I have to be killed to be freed from him,” shrieked Harry.

”Albus might be wrong. The Headmaster was not always right - he becomingly acknowledged so himself from time to time,” sneered Snape, falling back to his ironic ways as if to reassure himself. 

”But it plagues me…” Harry’s deflated voice expressed so much suffering and sadness that Snape’s instincts cried to him to run away, that this was too much to meet and to handle. But he knew he could not live with himself being such a coward. 

”I don’t think I can live much longer with that connection to Voldemort,” whispered Harry. His arms slackened and he inclined his head. He was crying silently.

”Then we must find a way to help you,” said Snape a little shakily. ”Let’s examine the problem… a little more rationally. Come here, Harry… back to these Muggle… pieces of furniture… blasted… pixie inventions of yours…” He scoffed. 

Harry started to laugh in the middle of the tears, a hacked, plagued laughter intermingled with sobs. Snape led him over to sit down by the fire. He never let go physically of the young wizard and seated himself close enough to keep a hand on Harry’s back which he stroked intermittently. 

Harry began to talk, a few sentences only at a time, in between new fits of angst and crying. Snape waited patiently and after a while the words poured out more easily. Harry told Snape about the visions, about blacking out during Voldemort’s feelings of anger or evil jubilation and about the excruciating pain that always followed. He told Snape about the hunt for horcruxes, about the locket and the other two unidentified objects that they must find, in addition to Nagini. ”And then me,” said Harry and another cramp of silent angst assailed him where he threatened to fall into the fire, but where Snape caught him, drew him towards himself and pressed Harry’s head against his shoulder. He stroked Harry’s hair until the attack subsided.

At this exact moment Snape realised that he would not be able to hide behind condescending or trivialising remarks. He must meet this wizard of exceptional fate with honesty and straightforwardness and withstand his emotions, not with the aid of Occlumency, but with a wide open mind, letting every soaring feeling of the boy touch him, showing Harry that he accepted everything, shunned nothing and thus baring his own soul. To his own surprise, Snape realised that he was prepared to do exactly that.

After an indeterminable amount of time, Harry had emptied his tears and forces. He slowly calmed down. After that, they fell into the kind of conversation that is only possible between two persons who are completely exhausted but who don’t want to part, don’t want to be alone and where the dialogue wanders aimlessly and is completely uncensured. 

For example Harry told Snape that he enjoyed a particular soup that he had created, made of several herbs and roots picked in the forests where they had been camping. Snape informed him that some of those ingredients had magical properties and that Harry just might have invented a weak fortifying potion. Harry laughed and said that it was the irony of fate that he should turn up an aptitude for potion inventions when he was miles from Hogwarts. 

Snape confessed to Harry that, although comforting at times and suitable for small talk, the presence of Dumbledore’s portrait in his office sometimes made him feel more lonely than ever. ”It is very much alike, you see - the eyes, the tone of voice, his phrasing - but it is still not him, you know. It’s a copy of the real wizard as he was when he died. He cannot think or speak anything really new. And sometimes it makes me so sad to realise that he is parroting himself…” Snape’s voice faltered.

Harry told Snape about Ron and Hermione, about their fights and about what had happened when they destroyed the locket. He spoke longingly about Ginny, wondered how she was and Snape hummed and mumbled that she was well as far as he knew and asked whether Harry and her were still an item. So Harry explained his decision after Dumbledore’s funeral when he split up with Ginny. ”But I still love her,” sighed Harry. Snape saw the red-headed girl before his eyes, so frequently with the Longbottom boy at her side. Displays of tenderness were forbidden at Hogwarts of course, but he thought he might detect some unmistakable signs of more than friendly closeness between those two Gryffindors, all the same. But Snape was not sure and did not tell Harry any of it. He contented himself with saying that: ”Miss Weasley is very much like your mother at that age.”

To the question: ”What was my mother like?” Snape answered hesitantly at first, but soon lost himself in the memories of Lily and presented them in bunches of unsorted glimpses of Lily’s life and personality. Snape seldom allowed himself to think about her. Grief was always lurching in order to engulf him in desperation, and guilt was there to plague him whenever he evoked the young woman during solitary hours. But sharing the memories with Harry was something else, it warmed him. 

When he finally trailed off - Snape had been staring into the fire while he spoke, like in a trance - he stiffened and glanced over at Harry apprehensively. He was not at all certain that the young man appreciated the apparent admiration displayed for his mother by a strange and ugly, formerly hated teacher of his.

But Harry smiled at him, so softly and forgivingly, that Snape felt himself blush.

”I have never heard any one describe her so… vividly,” said Harry. ”Thank you.” It sounded as if he meant it. Snape inclined his head. ”How long did you go out together?” asked Harry as an after thought. Snape had censured every romantic memory about Lily and opened his mouth to protest Harry’s assumption but closed it and resigned to telling the truth.

”We were together in sixth year at school, secretly,” he said. ”In seventh year one of our fights - because I’m afraid we had a lot of those, we were young, she was hot-tempered and I was… proud and easily offended - one of those fights led to our separation and she went out with James… for a while…” Harry looked up at him. 

”We got back together again after Hogwarts and stayed so… in secret of course because I had been stupid enough to join… to join Voldemort during our separation… devastating stupidity of mine… We were a couple until the summer before you were born. That fall I was sent on a mission, abroad, and when I came back… when I came back…” Snape drew a deep breath. ”…she had left me. I never knew why. They married. There didn’t seem any chance of having her back…”

”She never told you why? That was…” Harry frowned. Snape hastened to reply.

”She probably had her reasons. Maybe she was not sure about my loyalties in the war, even if I had promised her to leave the service of the Dark Lord and go into hiding that fall after my mission.”

”So it was all a rather sudden affair with James then,” said Harry still frowning.

”They knew each other from before. It was in the middle of a war… I guess… I don’t know…” said Snape.

They were silent for a long while until they started to talk about small things again. For no reason at all, because Snape knew how much Harry Potter loathed Draco Malfoy, Snape told Harry about his concern for the young Death Eater. 

”He’s my godson,” said Snape. ”And the teacher of Defence Against the Dark Arts, one of Voldemort’s Death Eaters that were forced upon me, has taken to tutoring Draco personally. And I know that the tutoring comprises Cruciating curses when Draco doesn’t live up to his expectations which in turn demand that Draco Cruciates his fellow students.”

”So he’s Cruciated or must torture others,” said Harry and shook his head. ”Why doesn’t he flee? Unless he enjoys to torture people?”

”He doesn’t. He’s not a bad person. He cannot flee, he has nowhere to go. You, at least, have your friends, but Draco would have no one,” said Snape.

”He’d have you,” Harry pointed out, feeling that Draco as usual got away with meagre excuses.

”He doesn’t know that,” said Snape bitterly. ”And I cannot inform him without betraying myself.”

”If you trusted him, you could,” Harry objected cautiously.

”Draco is not a strong person,” said Snape and turned his head away. They stayed silent for a while.

At the other side of the lake, a faint glow had started to light up the horizon and the contours of the surrounding trees became sharper. 

”I promised Ron to be back by the morning,” said Harry and stood up.

”We’ll meet again to plan for the horcruxes,” said Snape. ”I’ll help you find them.” Harry hesitated just a second. 

”Yes,” he conceded. ”We’d welcome some help.” With a flick of his wand Harry extinguished the entire circle of burning lights. Another movement with his wand put out the fire without letting away any smoke and restoring the ground underneath to its initial state. Snape lifted his eyebrows.

”How did you know that spell?” he asked. ”I’ve never seen anyone else use it. Most people need at least three different spells to achieve the same result.”

”Oh,” said Harry a bit perplex, ”I think I invented it, from an extinguishing spell that I found in one of Hermione’s books. It’s practical to do a single spell, if you need to move on quickly and leave no traces.”

”Exactly so, most useful,” said Snape.

”Who else uses it?” asked Harry. ”Does it remind you of my mother?” Snape shook his head.

”No… It reminds me of… me… actually. I’m the only one to my knowledge who do that spell the same way,” answered Snape. Harry looked surprised then smirked and said with satisfaction in his voice:

”Cool, the Half-blood Prince and I invented the same spell, independently of each other.”

Snape laughed softly.

”You’re good at visualisation magic. So am I. I noticed earlier that you managed to withdraw your magic by willpower,” he said.

”Yes, I guess I’m good at visualisations,” said Harry. ”I seem to have developed some new skills this year. My powers are increasing. It just seems so meaningless, when the only thing I need to do  is to have myself killed…” The desperation was back in Harry’s voice but he did not crumple up again. Snape put a hand on his shoulder. 

A pink and orange disk was rising over the treetops on the opposite shore. Harry and Snape stood side by side and watched its slow progress.

”I’m always so cold, these days,” Harry said in a quiet voice. ”Sometimes I wonder if it is because death is coming. I never seem to be able to get warm. I keep doing these clime charms and lighting all these fires, but nothing helps. The chill is inside me… I wish I could go there…” Harry pointed at the rising sun. ”And forget everything.”