Harry put his hand to his scar, gasped and tried to double over. “Voldemort!” he breathed. Snape pocketed his wand and used both hands to keep Harry from collapsing.  “You have to go back and help him!” Harry insisted. He pounded on Snape’s chest once. The burning in his scar had eased but it still pulsed ominously. He rubbed it furiously and clenched his eyes shut against the tears forming in them.

“The headmaster can take care of himself,” Snape stated.

“No he can’t. He doesn’t try hard enough,” Harry insisted angrily.

Snape didn’t have an argument for that. Instead he pulled Harry against the grimy brick wall beside them and shushed him. Sounds came from down the alley.

“Thought I heard sumptin’,” a rough voice said. Another low voice grumbled but didn’t argue. A bottle skidded over the pavement and cracked against the brick as footsteps approached.

Snape pulled out his wand and transfigured the other bottles at their feet into long grey rats. The rats skittered down the pavement. Moments later, cries of disgust went up and the footsteps quickly receded. Snape let out a breath. Harry rubbed his scar one last time and let his hand fall.

“Does your scar always hurt so very much when you are near the Dark Lord?” Snape asked.

Harry scoffed. “He just has to think about me and it hurts that much.”

Snape’s brow furrowed at that. He leaned Harry against the wall and used his wand to tap the bricks in a pattern. An archway opened and Snape pushed Harry through it. It closed behind them, leaving them in a dark metal cage with only one small flickering globe lamp in the corner. “I have a casualty,” Snape stated.

The lift shuddered downward, unsettling Harry, who tangled his fingers in the metal mesh behind him to keep from falling. His legs quivered as he tried to get his feet back under himself. Snape bent and took his arm over his shoulder again and hoisted him up to hang limp at his side. After a moment’s deliberation, he simply bent and lifted Harry at the knees as well. The lift stopped. Snape carried him down a short dim corridor and out into the brighter, familiar waiting area. 

The welcomewitch saw them approach and urged the others queued up to move aside. “What happened?” she asked. Harry had his head turned against Snape’s arm, so his lightening scar wasn’t visible.

“He has suffered several hours of torture at the hands of two Death Eaters,” Snape stated.

The welcomewitch pointed to the lifts. “Fourth floor, Healer Shankwell,” she said. “I’ll inform him you’re coming up.” As she turned to the announcing tube behind her, Snape moved to the lifts. On the fourth floor, a middle-aged hospital wizard in lime robes, gestured from a doorway halfway down.

As Snape approached, the Healer took a quick look at the cloak-wrapped bundle in his arms. “Put him down in here.” Snape did as instructed, lowering Harry onto a hard, high bed in a small room down a side hallway. The globed candles floating at the ceiling gathered over them. The Healer and another witch closed in, stripped Harry and pulled a light coverlet over him, revealing for a few moments the bruising on his chest and a series of blistered narrow burns on his legs.

“I’ll get a burn plaster,” the witch said.

“What was used on him?” Shankwell asked.

Snape related the spells he knew then added, “And he was in the wash of a Killing Curse.”

The Healer shook his head and took out his wand. He held it over Harry’s chest and pulled his chin over toward him. “Great Merlin, it’s Harry Potter,” he said in surprise. Harry gave the man a vaguely disgusted look. At that, the wizard suppressed his surprise and tapped Harry’s chest. Tingles ran over Harry, racing to his fingertips and back to the wand. His arm twitched yet again, making him frown in frustration. The Healer put his hand behind Harry’s neck and touched each of his fingertips with his wand.

“Call Versa in,” the Shankwell said to the witch. She set down the cauldron of burn plaster she was stirring and stepped out. Snape eyed it before putting his hands behind his back and stepping farther out of the way.

A few minutes later, two witches returned. The new one was lithe with brown hair down to her knees. She pulled her hair behind her and bent over Harry a long minute. Their eyes met as she studied him closely, her hands skimming just above his skin. “What did you give him for the pain?” she asked.

“A tea of murdock, arrowroot, and new bark,” Snape replied.

“That needs to clear before I can work,” she said. “Get me a Grandine potion,” Versa said.

The wizard, who had been holding the cauldron while the other witch dabbed plaster on his burns, conjured a tray for it and departed. He returned a moment later with a clear liquid that fizzed. “You be needing to drink this,” he said as he stepped beside the bed. With a flick of his wand, the bed lifted Harry’s head and shoulders. Harry grimaced at the bubbles bursting in his face but he drank it all down, then swallowed hard as it bubbled up in his stomach.

Versa pushed him over onto his side. Harry didn’t fight her. Pain pulsed through his limbs so strongly now, he couldn’t consider doing anything beyond clenching his eyes shut and breathing. Fingers ran along his spine, making his arm jump yet again. Versa was talking to him in a low voice, meaningless words of encouragement and pleas for patience. A hand gripped Harry’s left just as the pain surged to the worst yet. He gripped it in return, trying to squeeze the pain out of himself.

A moment later waves of cold and warm rippled through him and what felt like numbness, but was really only normal sensation, settled into him. He sighed in relief. “It was almost too long,” Versa said. “It will be a few days before he recovers fully.” 

Harry thought he could manage if he felt like this. He opened his eyes and discovered with a start that he was clutching Snape’s hand. What he could see of Snape’s expression through his stringy hair looked dark and fierce. Harry pulled his hand free and rolled onto his back. The other witch was dabbing plaster on the last burn on his ankle. They felt much better as well, although the dried mixture tugged uncomfortably when he moved his feet. Another potion was pressed into his hands. As Harry, relieved to have full control of his hands, pulled it toward him, Snape leaned close and looked into the wooden cup.

“Draught of Palidyn,” Shankwell explained. Snape stood straight and didn’t comment. “He’s been very interested in the potions,” the wizard mentioned to Harry.

“He is the Potions Master at Hogwarts,” Harry said between sips of sharp lemony liquid.

“Ah,” Shankwell said. When Harry had finished, the Healer took the cup back and after eyeing Snape thoughtfully, left them alone.

Harry leaned back. He thought he had felt completely better before, but another tingle of relief passed over him from the second potion. Harry moved his feet under the coverlet, feeling the way the plaster gripped at the skin of his shins. “Heard from Dumbledore?” he asked suddenly. 

“No.” Snape’s tone dissuaded further questions.

Harry did not want to meet his gaze and wished he would go away, but not with the same loathing as before, more out of mortal embarrassment.

“Can I leave?” Harry then asked. 

Snape tossed his hair back and raised a brow of surprise at him. “I do not think they can keep you here if you are able to depart under your own power.”

“I’m leaving then,” Harry said and swung his legs to the side, out into the cold air. “Um, do you know where my clothes are?”

Minutes later, after Harry used a crude expulsion charm to get the worst soiling out of his clothes and put them on, they walked down the corridor. He felt like someone had used a feather-light charm on him, so accustomed he was to the draining pain from before. Snape steered him into the room behind the floorwitch, who was dealing with a screaming young child with real rabbit ears that she clutched in her fists.

“Patient of?” the man behind the desk asked. He was pasty-faced with a large mole on his check. He held parchments very close to his eyes to read them.

“Shankwell,” Harry replied.

“Do you have his release form?”

“I’m releasing myself,” Harry said evenly.

The man looked up with a doubtful, derisive expression that turned to shock as he recognized him. “I suppose,” he mumbled, pulled out a parchment and began writing quickly and neatly upon it.

They walked out to the lifts. Shankwell hurried down the corridor toward them as they waited. “You are leaving?” he asked in concern.

“I’m going ho— back to Hogwarts.”

Shankwell huffed. “You Order wizards are impossible.” He stomped off.

Harry slouched. “Yeah,” he muttered, “we Order wizards.”

Snape watched the dial above the lift turn slowly. “You want more of this, Potter?” he sneered.

The lift arrived. A pair of Healers stepped out, deep in conversation. Harry and Snape stepped in. “I want to know what’s going on,” Harry snapped in frustration.

“I fully expect you will be allowed to join when you are of age.”

“Should I live so long,” Harry said.  The doors to the lift had not closed. He looked over the controls in annoyance.

“Why did the headmaster stop you from referring to the school as ‘home?’” Snape asked.

Feeling trapped by the damning requirement of the protective spell Dumbledore put on his Aunt’s house, Harry tugged angrily on the lever for the door. He huffed in frustration and said, “Figure it out for yourself—I always have to.” The doors finally closed reluctantly. Harry gazed though the dual gates as one slid past the other and the lift began to move. Frowning deeply, he murmured to himself, “It means I have no home.”

They used the Floo Network to get to Hogsmeade. The Three Broomsticks where they landed was dark and empty although morning light spread through the windows. The path up to the castle had never seemed longer. As they walked in silence, Harry refused to show any weakness at all which was extra difficult as Snape seemed to be watching him very closely.

By the time they reached the Entrance Hall, Harry’s vision was trying to tunnel in. He rested against the post at the bottom of the stairs. Snape came back down the steps and started to ask something. “Just give me a moment,” Harry insisted. The walk should not have left him so drained, he thought. He took a deep breath and pushed away and put a foot up on the first riser mostly to keep from falling. Snape put a hand out to catch him, should he fall farther. Harry stalked by him, annoyed with himself and the world in general.

The hospital wing was empty when they opened the door. Madame Pomfrey must have been elsewhere as she didn’t step out of her office as she usually did. “Do you have a favorite bed?” Snape asked snidely.

“That one,” Harry answered seriously, pointing to the third one on the right. It had a thicker mattress, he was certain. Beside the bed, he slipped off his shoes and crawled under the covers fully clothed.

“I will locate Madame Pomfrey,” Snape said and turned to leave.

“No hurry,” Harry said, thinking only of a nice long sleep. “But find Dumbledore, maybe?”

“Mr. Potter?” Pomfrey’s voice roused him, seemingly in the next instant. She sounded very concerned. 

Annoyed at being woken, Harry just murmured a greeting and curled up farther. The covers came away—the cool air made his arm spasm. He lay half dozing as she stripped, spelled, and bathed him, muttering about dark wizards and his unfortunate luck as she did so. With growing impatience, Harry ignored her—he wanted nothing more than to return to undisturbed sleep.

Pomfrey touched her wand to Harry’s shoulder blade, causing another spasm. She said, “The central nerve renewal spell didn’t cure the sympathetic damage.”

“Apparently not,” Snape said.

Harry forced himself not to react. He didn’t realize his teacher was still there. “Sedition potion?” Pomfrey suggested. 

Harry pretended that he had fallen back to sleep.

“Frenwaer elixir. It will require about an hour to brew,” Snape said. Harry heard his footsteps recede across the floor.

He must have drifted off then because apparently moments later, Pomfrey was urging him to sit up and drink something from a stone cup. Harry groggily obeyed. Pomfrey was the only one there now, for which he was relieved. 

Harry finished the cup she held for him. “Not bad.” Not only was it not noxious, the potion tasted vaguely like strawberries. Still tired beyond belief, Harry fell back on the bed and curled up on his other side, instantly asleep. 

He woke up to his stomach complaining. Stiff from his muscles to his bones, he sat up and stretched with a groan. Pomfrey came out of her office. “How are you feeling?”

“Famished.” He glanced at the clock above the doors which showed six-ten. “May I go down to dinner?”

She smiled faintly at him as though relieved by his question. “If you feel up to it.”

Harry peered under the bed stand, the usual place for personal things to be stored. A clean set of robes were there.

“Mr. Weasley brought those down for you,” she said as she folded the duvet back neatly into thirds at the end of the bed.

“Where is Ron?”

“He was here for a little while this morning, dear, while you were asleep.”

“Oh,” Harry said, disappointed to have missed him.

“He did not leave willingly. His father had to come and fetch him.”

Dressed, Harry made a good show of walking normally out of the wing. Out in the corridor, he leaned against the wall for a minute until a bout of dizziness passed. He went slower the rest of the way. 

As he stepped inside the Great Hall, Dumbledore looked up and smiled at him from the end of the Hufflepuff table. Harry stopped, wondering what the chances were that anyone would tell him what had happened the night before.

“My dear boy. Good to see you about,” Dumbledore said, gesturing that Harry should join them.

Harry returned the smile grimly and took the last seat on the near end, hesitating just an instant as it meant sitting across from Snape. It was, however, beside Hagrid, which almost balanced out.

An empty plate and utensils appeared before him as he stepped over the bench. Fiercely hungry, he pulled the platter of roast mutton close and served himself a healthy pile of that and cabbage. As he ate, he noticed Snape studying him far too closely. Harry looked up sharply at him and stared back. Snape ignored this and continued watching him between bites. With a growl, Harry completely ignored his teacher instead.

Dumbledore called Harry over as they all stood up when the meal was over. The old wizard put a hand on Harry’s shoulder and leaned down to say, “Madame Pomfrey wants to be certain you return to the hospital wing for the night.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how are you doing?”

Harry shrugged and realized then that his arm spasm had completely disappeared. “Well enough, sir. And how are you?”

“Well enough.”

Harry peered at the old wizard’s bright blue eyes. “How did you manage, sir? I felt Voldemort arrive.” Harry rubbed his scar. “Did you have to fight him?”

“I have many ways to avoid fighting, Harry. Especially a battle I cannot win.”

Harry wanted to repeat what he’d said to Snape about Dumbledore not trying hard enough. But to Dumbledore himself, he couldn’t say it.

Dumbledore patted Harry on the back and said in a voice that was half admonishment and half tease, “I don’t think I need to tell you to stay inside? There is always the bailey if you wish to get some sun. Do try to stay out of trouble.”