Severus was seated under a tree that looked out over the lake. His long walk and serene surroundings had done little to dim his fury at Chen and Dumbledore. After a moment he mentally added McGonagall and Potter and Voldemort and the world at large to this list, since they were all presently adding to his anger.

He sat in miserable, furious silence for an indeterminable period of time. He was well and truly sick of having to bow to the whims of Dumbledore, and, by extension, Potter himself. He had been forced to give up his job, his quarters, his whole life, and his whole identity at Dumbledore’s behest, merely to get to know a sickening brat.

The quiet voice that insisted that Potter had not been so bad lately was quickly drowned out in a tide of resentment.

Severus glanced down at his- Eli’s- body and the clothing it was wrapped in. He had been denied even the comfort of his own body for the sake of bloody Potter.

And so the flow of his thoughts went. A flood of fury, occasionally flowing around a stepping stone that was the irritating, persistent voice that insisted on singing Potter’s virtues.

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t notice the passage of time, or anything else outside of his own head, for that matter.

So when Potter said, “Hey Eli,” Severus was yanked out of his thoughts, and only long practice at refusing to react to the Marauders kept him from jumping in shock.

Once he recovered from the shock, Severus barely managed to refrain from snapping or doing something worse like drawing his wand.

“Did you know that you missed dinner?” Potter continued, as if nothing was wrong. As if he hadn’t disrupted the one bit of solitude Severus had managed to find since he’d lost everything.

Severus quickly scanned his memories, searching for something to say that would get Potter to go away and leave him alone. Dumbledore be damned.

“I was wondering,” Severus began with a forced casualness, “if you knew what happened with the Triwizard Tournament. We heard an awful lot about it, over in Florida, but there was a… disturbing lack of details.”

Potter froze, his entire demeanor changing from the sickeningly bouncy state he had been in when he had approached Severus to something much stiffer, more fragile.

Severus suppressed a grim grin, pleased he had found a weakness. “You see, the tournament was called the Triwizard Tournament for a reason, was it not? Except, suddenly, there were four competitors, and one of them clearly did not belong. And then, the one that was so clearly out of place did oddly, suspiciously, well against his clearly superior counterparts. And this was all interesting enough but then-”

He paused, maliciously delighting in the way Potter had staggered a step backwards.

“But then the final task happened. Isn’t it odd how your only real competitor just so happened to die? I heard that he died pretty horribly, that you were there when he died.”

Potter made a horrible choked sound, lifting one of his hands to his chest and reaching out with the other, as if to plead for mercy.

“That both of you disappeared for a while and that you reappeared holding his body. That you were the only one there with a motive. That you got the whole prize, when he died. When you killed him.”

Potter’s arms dropped and he staggered back another step. He reached into his bag and pulled out a dinner plate and flung it at Severus, then he turned and sprinted back towards the castle.

Severus revelled in his triumph and return to solitude as he deftly caught the plate. He flipped it over and realized, with a sinking stomach, that it was carefully loaded with food and spelled to be secure.

He looked back up and stared at Potter’s fleeing form. Severus realized, with a mounting sense of horror what, exactly, he had done.

Harry tore across the grounds as fast as his legs would carry him, trying to outrun the accusation Eli had so carelessly, so cruelly, flung at him.

His lungs burned and his heart pounded and his legs throbbed. He relished in the sensations, focused on them, tried to think about them and nothing else. If he kept going and never let up, maybe the thoughts that had already plagued him would, in essence if not literally, fall behind.

For he already blamed himself for Cedric’s death. How could he not? If it were not for Harry, Cedric would never have died. He would have grabbed the Triwizard cup on his own and been respected and admired as a solo Champion. Instead. Instead, he’d taken the cup with Harry and been discarded as though he were a useless nick nack that needed to be thrown out.

And to hear that word of the Tournament and Cedric’s death had spread to the States, that they knew he was involved with his death-

Harry tore his mind away from that train of thought as he darted right past the castle, unable to contemplate going inside and seeing someone. Anyone would be able to tell that something was deeply wrong with him with a single glance and he didn’t want to burden anyone with unnecessary concern.

His thoughts returned to Eli. He wondered how Eli had managed to live with someone he’d thought was a murderer for so long without saying anything. Why he had been so friendly, even after he learned who Harry was. Why he was so willing to spend time with Harry.

Then he thought of the timing of the confrontation. How it had only really been a weekend since Eli had joined them and that they really hadn’t spent all that much time together. Maybe Eli had been using the time to get to know Harry well enough to decide if he agreed with the rumors.

This would explain he’d started so slowly and tentatively, Harry realized. If he still hadn’t been sure what he thought of Harry’s guilt, then he’d probably not want to go in for the kill right away. But as he’d continued, Harry had reacted like someone who was guilty would, probably convincing Eli that he had murdered Cedric to win the Tournament.

And then once Eli was convinced of his guilt, he had known just what to say to cripple Harry.

He could admit that he deserved the scorn and the guilt since he was ultimately responsible for Cedric’s death. But it still hurt that the one person he had hoped would be unaware of his fame and infamy would be the same person to see through to his guilt.

He gradually came to a stop in a field bordering the castle. His muscles were protesting so loudly that he gracelessly fell to his knees, then into a prone position.

For a moment he simply lay there, face pressed into the grassy ground, headless of his present inability to breathe properly. Now unable to run, he turned to hiding to try and escape Eli’s accusations.

And it worked, for a little while. With his face pressed into the earth, his nose was filled with the scent of freshly trimmed grass, and below that, of damp dirt. He could feel the blades of grass digging into his face and his hands.

Eventually, inevitably, he ran out of breath. The limited air he managed to take in with his face buried in the ground was inadequate for his already oxygen-starved lungs. He reluctantly rolled over onto his back.

Harry was now able to see the sky, and he burned at the injustice of its serene beauty. The sun was setting and the sky was painted in soft hues of orange and pink when it felt like it should have been dark and stormy and turbulent.

He gripped the grass that lie underneath his hands as his thoughts now returned, involuntarily, inextricably, to what Eli had said.

Cedric…

Cedric had deserved so much better than to die as an afterthought. “Kill the spare,” Voldemort had said, but really, of the two of them, Cedric was the one with the right to take the Triwizard Cup and he, Harry, was the spare.

It had been Cedric’s name that the goblet had chosen to be the true Hogwarts Champion. It should have been Cedric who was featured prominently in the newspaper articles.

Instead, Harry and his stupid fame had taken that, too, from him.

As Harry dwelled on the injustice that had been Cedric’s final year alive, he remembered more and more of the little things that he’d suppressed the memory of for too long in an attempt to protect himself from the pain of remembering.

He thought of Cedric’s gratitude when Harry had desperately informed him of the dragons. He thought of the moment Cedric had helped him solve the egg for the second task. He thought of how Cedric had tried to stop the school from harassing him, from wearing those stupid badges.

Cedric had deserved better.

This thought echoed through Harry’s mind for a moment. And in the aftermath of that thought, Harry realized that the most painful edge of his guilt at Cedric’s death had lost some of its cut.

Because, Harry realized, Cedric probably wouldn’t blame him at all for his death. He’d be wrong, of course, but even though Cedric couldn’t possibly know for sure that Harry hadn’t cheated his way into the tournament, he’d still been friendlier than the vast majority of the people at Hogwarts.

Harry still felt a deep sense of loss at the thought of Cedric’s death, and still felt that he was responsible for it. But now he realized that Cedric wouldn’t want him to wallow in his guilt.

And thinking back on the way Cedric had helped him with the second task, he realized that Cedric was more the type to value independence, because he hadn’t just told Harry to listen to the egg underwater- he’d given Harry advice that had let him figure out the clue mostly for himself.

But Cedric was gone now, and whatever he would have thought about the circumstances surrounding his death and Harry’s reaction to them faded in the face of the very real accusations of his very much alive housemate.

This felt different from when Seamus had believed the worst of him last year, but Harry wasn’t quite sure why it did. Maybe because he found himself agreeing with Eli’s accusations where he had vehemently refuted Seamus’s. Because he knew better now, because he had realized, when Sirius had died, that without him, both Cedric and Sirius would be alive now.

He groaned and flung his arm over his eyes. His chest still felt tight with grief and he had no idea what to do about Eli. Maybe, if he lay here for long enough, an idea would come to him.

As soon as he realized the gravity of what he’d done, Severus had staggered clumsily to his feet, still unused to his new body. A distant part of his mind noted that standing from the ground was significantly easier than he could remember it being.

Regardless of Potter’s intentions, and Severus still had a hard time believing they were entirely innocent, his actions had been nice enough.

He pulled his feet underneath him properly and ran for the castle. Potter was long since gone which suited Severus just fine. He needed a game plan for how to explain what he’d just done, otherwise Albus would be disappointed in him. And he could not have that. Without the ability to spy, Severus held little value, and there were still countless people who, if Albus withdrew his support, would be more than happy to see Severus into a cell at Azkaban.

And if Dumbledore knew he had not only failed to befriend Potter, but had also flung blatantly untrue and clearly cutting accusations at the boy? Then the chances that he would withdraw his support skyrocketed.

He made it to the castle in record time, slowing only enough to avoid raising Filch’s ire, and made a beeline directly for McGonagall’s office. She would likely give him another earful for being so monumentally stupid, but she would also probably help him figure out how to fix it.

At least Severus had had the presence of mind to not bring up Black’s death. Besides that fact being knowledge that Eli, the American, wouldn’t have, if Cedric’s death was this painful for Potter he could only imagine that Black’s was even more so.

Severus cursed the size of the castle as he quickly ran out of breath on one of the many staircases he had to navigate to get to Minerva’s office.

Potter probably hated him now, and for good reason too. Eli, Severus corrected himself, Potter probably hated Eli now.

Because Severus had already ensured that Potter hated the real him, Severus. And now Severus had to hope that he could find some way to convince Potter not to cast him off completely. He hoped Minerva could think of something he could do to fix this.

He knocked on her office door, hopeful that she was here and not in her quarters already. It seemed he was in luck, because she almost immediately bade him to enter. He burst into her office and bent over to catch enough breath to be capable of speech.

“Mr. Hopkirk?” McGonagall said curiously.

“One moment,” Severus managed. He straightened up once he could breathe again and said, “I really messed up. With Potter, that is, and I have no idea how to fix it.”

Minerva leaned back in her chair and gave him a long look. Then she gestured at the chair in front of her desk and said, “Since this sounds like it’ll take a while to sort out, why don’t you take a seat.”

Severus did as he was told, and winced at the hardness of the seat.

“Now, tell me what precisely you did so I know what I’m working with.”

Severus averted his gaze somewhere to the left of McGonagall. He knew he had to tell her to get help, but he’d never manage to get the words out if he was making eye contact with her. “I was sitting out by the lake after classes and I must have lost track of time because the next thing I knew, Potter was,” Severus paused, trying to find the words to describe what had happened without unnecessarily denigrating Potter as he would instinctively do.

“Potter was standing next to me and I was so deep in my thoughts that the shock of being jolted out of them made me think of-” Severus suddenly remembered, in crystal clarity, his last conversation with Minerva and blushed with shame as he forced out, as quickly as he could, “-the Marauders. So I lashed out. Badly. I flat out said that Potter killed Cedric Diggory.”

For a distressingly long time, McGonagall simply stared at him. He could feel the burn of her gaze despite his desperate attempts to avoid it. He began to frantically think of what he could do on his own if she refused to help him. Maybe she wouldn’t tell Dumbledore if he swore he’d fix it and that would buy him time to actually figure out how to fix it and-

“That, Mr. Hopkirk, is possibly one of the stupidest things you’ve done.” She paused again and Severus nodded in shame into the silence she left.

“This is the only time I will help you like this. Do you understand? If you fuck up this badly again, I will not hesitate to inform Albus,” she leaned forward in her seat and pinned Severus with an icy look. “And you should know, he has been positively giddy with himself for coming up with this plan ever since, well, ever since he first came up with it. So you can imagine his disappointment if it came to an early end thanks to your stupidity.”

Severus nodded again, swearing silently to not let this happen again.

“I require a verbal response,” McGonagall said, with a hard edge to her voice that Severus wasn’t sure he’d ever heard before.

“Yes, ma’am. I understand,” Severus replied, making fleeting eye contact for good measure.

“Thank you. I’d also like to remind you of our last conversation. I can hardly force you to go through your own memories, but I firmly believe that you would not be in this position if you had.”

Severus lifted his arms in a brief shrug. What-might-have-been’s hardly mattered now, and he really hoped she had an idea and was not simply wasting his time with a lecture.

She sighed and said, “Very well. Am I correct when I say that several hours passed between when you hurt Mr. Potter and when you last saw him?”

Severus nodded.

“Then here’s what happened: you were headed out for the lake when you were hit from behind with an unknown spell. You didn’t feel any different, so you brushed the incident off and continued on your path. When Potter spoke to you, you felt as though your mind and body disconnected and that when you said what you did, it was as though you were forced to watch it happen,” Minerva paused and thought for a moment.

“When Potter left, you came to your senses and realized what you’d done, and came to me. You told me about being hit with the spell and performed a diagnostic to try and see what it was. I discovered that it was an old prank spell twisted to be more malicious, it’s intended use was to make the victim comically, but personally, insult the first person the victim came across. Instead, the spell made you lash out at the first person you came across, and in a deeply personal way. Mr. Potter was just unlucky enough to be that person.”

When she finished, Severus’s first thought was that she had really, truly, been spending far too much time around Albus. When he’d gone to her for advice he’d thought- well, he hadn’t been thinking much of anything beyond his panic. But if he’d taken any amount of time to consider what he expected to get from her, he’d have thought it would be coaching on how to apologize or something like that, not this convoluted tale of a prank gone wrong. Although it would probably get the job done better than any apology could manage. And would have the added benefit of maybe making Potter defensive on his behalf.

“How did you even think of that?” Severus eventually managed to ask.

Minerva waved her hand airily, “The spell I mentioned is very real and was all the rage during my own school days- the less malicious version was, at least. It was simple enough to come up with the rest from that.”

Severus raised his eyebrows skeptically before he remembered that he was still in the doghouse.

“Wait,” Severus said, “what should I say if Potter asks what’s being done to find the perpetrator?”

“Oh, tell him I’m doing my best to figure it out, but without any witnesses, it’ll be hard to pin down on anyone.”

“I should probably go and sort everything out with Potter,” Severus said, rising from his seat.

“Yes. You had. And Severus?” Minerva said with that hard edge back in her voice.

He stopped in his tracks, but neglected to turn back around.

“Remember what I said. Harry is not James, and if you ever do something like this again, forget Albus’s wrath, you will answer to me.”