“You learn spells with great ease,” Vineet said to Harry as they practiced at the end of a long Monday’s training.

Harry was feeling a bit proud of the Diamona Block he had learned that day but he was also sensitive to his new friend’s limitations. Aaron he didn’t mind beating out on nearly every new spell. “Not always,” he insisted. “Some things, Transfiguration for instance, takes me a long time to learn.”

“You are trying to be making me feel better, I think.”

Harry grinned but didn’t deny it. As Vineet used a Chrysalis to block Harry’s Figuresempre, Harry glanced over at someone entering the workout room and brightened when he saw it was Snape.

“You are late getting out,” Snape said. “I suggested Arthur not wait for us.”

Harry glanced at the clock. “Ey, sorry,” he said. “In that case, look at what I learned today.” To Vineet, he said, “Give me a Figuresempre this time.”

Vineet obliged and Harry put up his new block. “Sloppy, Potter,” Snape said. At Harry’s surprised look, he went on. “Wand at a 54 degree angle, flat to you not orthogonal to the floor. Focus more on the corners of the energy or it will not repel anything significant. Do it again.”

Harry adjusted his wand as best he could and nodded for Vineet to hit him again. The yellow crystal around him did look brighter this time and glowed with harder edges.

“Corners,” Snape reiterated. “Create only the nodes in your mind so they are points in the block they will become sharp corners and the rest of the crystal will form on its own. Your block is far too rounded.”

“Excuse me,” Rodgers said as he entered the room and stepped over. “But who are you?”

Snape turned to the trainer and gave him a close once-over. “I am Severus Snape.”

“This is our trainer, Mr. Rodgers,” Harry supplied, feeling static forming between the two men. “And this is Professor Snape, he teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts School.”

Rodgers expression zeroed in rather than relaxing.

“Are we released, sir?” Harry asked. “I have someplace to be.”

Rodgers waved him off without taking his narrowed eyes off Snape.

Harry glanced at Vineet to nod at him in thanks. “I’ll get my stuff,” he said to his guardian and left the room.

“I don’t believe it,” Rodgers said in a low voice. Then added in confusion, “Are you somehow with Potter? What are you doing with him?”

Snape crossed his arms. “I am picking him up. He is late for a dinner appointment.” He spoke as though the man might be dim.

Rodgers snorted. “You don’t remember me, I suppose. It was indeed a long long time ago.” He stepped closer to Snape’s long nose, spoke quietly. “The question I really want to know is: what are you doing free?” The other apprentices halted practicing and turned to listen.

Snape raised his chin, but didn’t respond. Aaron stepped over and said, “Sir, he does teach at Hogwarts. I can vouch for that.”

“I don’t care about that beyond a passing interest in who the idiot was who trusted him around that many children,” Rodgers said, still matching Snape’s challenging gaze.

Harry returned, book bag slung over his shoulder. He opened his mouth to say he was ready but paused. He hadn’t seen a face-off like this one since Snape and his godfather had pulled their wands on each other at Grimmauld Place.

With a quick stride Harry bodily intervened. “What’s wrong?” he asked, looking between them.

Rodgers turned to Harry. “Why is this wizard picking you up?” he asked with a dangerous edge.

Harry, startled, looked to Snape and back to his instructor. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I don’t know how he managed it, but I don’t want him in here again,” Rodgers said sharply to Harry before he turned back to Snape. “I also don’t know how you managed to stay out of Azkaban, but—”

“Wait a second,” Harry interrupted. Anger filled him as he stepped fully in front of Snape. “Where do you get off…?”

Rodgers grabbed the front of Harry’s robe and pulled him short. “You don’t know what he is,” he breathed quietly. “I do.”

Burning purpose flooded Harry like it hadn’t in a long time and he didn’t fight it. “Don’t be ridiculous—of course I know,” he snapped back at his trainer. Harry jerked his robe down to forced its release, but remained on his toes to meet Rodgers eye to eye.

“I will not have Death Eaters in the Auror’s training area,” Rodgers snarled.

Beside them, Aaron dropped his wand. He bent slowly to retrieve it.

“They’re all supposed to be in Azkaban, Potter,” Rodgers went on, each word like a whip.

“Why haven’t you caught them then?” Harry mocked him. “Why is one still free? Why did I have to help catch the last six?”

Rodgers jaw tightened.

Forcing calm over himself, Harry stepped back and added, “Severus isn’t who you think he is. Talk to Tonks, or Shacklebolt, or…Headmistress McGonagall. You’re jumping to conclusions.” With a frightening jolt Harry understood with complete clarity how tenuous things were.

“Harry,” Snape prompted from near the door.

Harry turned to him. As he did, Rodgers grabbed Harry’s robe sleeve. “Why are you defending him? What is he to you?”

Harry jerked his arm free. “My dad.” A wand hit the floor again.

Harry ignored Rodgers’ befuddled expression, shrugged his cloak straight, and headed for the door, his thoughts churning crazily.

“I don’t know how he came to be using you this way, but I saw him in seventy seven,” Rodgers announced in a newly calm voice, a voice of power and righteousness. “I am pledged to cleanse society of those such as him. You are too young to understand these things, Potter.”

Harry spun back, cloak flipping out behind him. He stalked over until he was level with Rodgers again. “How dare you?” Harry breathed. Pure white fury coursed through him now, washing away his alarm and filling him with raw purpose. “Did you share Voldemort’s thoughts for years? Feel every strong emotion he felt, frightened when he was angry and utterly terrified when he was joyous?” Rodgers leaned back as Harry went on, building in volume. “Were you taken over by him and used as puppet against every fiber of your will until everything you cared about was gone? Did you steep yourself in his snakelike mind to make him experience every last ounce of pain you’d ever felt until he was too incapacitated to fight back so he could be killed once and for all?”

Rodgers took a small step back. Harry immediately shifted forward to press him. “Did you inherit his inner vision of his servants?” Harry shouted and gesturing at himself. “I have a green world in my head with a black shadow for every one of his marked followers, and you have the gall to assume I don’t know when I am standing next to one?” Harry finally stepped back, breathing heavily. “How dare you stand there and judge him, and assume I don’t know who he is.”

After a long pause Snape said, “Harry, if you have left any bridges…at all…standing, you should perhaps not disturb them further.”

With a last disgusted glare at his trainer, Harry turned, glancing around the room as he did so. The other three apprentices stood stock still, eyes wide as they tracked him. Harry shook his head in frustration and stomped out, verifying that Snape was close behind.

The lift began to move upward into the next floor and Harry hit the lever to stop it. He knocked his head against the cage three times. “I lost it,” he said, still short of breath, heart rattling in his chest.

Snape sighed. “So I noticed.”

“I panicked,” Harry whispered. “The only person who can actually protect you is gone.”

Calmly, Snape said, “At the risk of sounding like my father, that is not entirely true.” He pushed the lever back and with a musical clank they started moving again. “Though I have no desire to see it come to that. Still feel up to the Weasley’s?”

Harry shook his head and said, “But let’s go anyway. They’re waiting.”

They stepped out into the relatively quiet atrium. Harry said, “Where did he know you from?”

“It took me some time to recognize him, but I believe he attempted to infiltrate the inner circle during one of the more chaotic times when it would be easier to do so. He was not adept at Occlusion and it was immediately obvious to me what he was doing. Someone at the Ministry must have also recognized his lack of ability, because he disappeared before anyone else suspected. This was before I had gone to Albus,” Snape added more quietly as he fished in his pocket for his small canister of Floo powder.

After a pair of witches went by, talking in low tones, Harry said, “This is something I’ve left lie and I wouldn’t ask except I feel like we are under attack, but how long was that?”

Snape held the open shallow canister out for Harry. “Five months,” he replied casually, though Harry could hear unease in it. “Go on,” Snape said to make him go first.

Harry stood inside the hearth and said, “The Burrow,” as he tossed the powder down.

Many turns later, Harry’s feet slapped the hearth at the Weasley’s. He stepped out quickly so Snape could follow, feeling stressed about leaving him behind. He relaxed marginally when the flare came again.

“Harry, dear,” Mrs. Weasley said in welcome as she came over and gave him a hug. She had on a wonderfully mismatched dress and apron and held a self-stirring spoon still stirring the air and pulling her hand around. Harry apologized for their late arrival and gave her a hug back, feeling acutely the need for the external support and the Weasley chaos. She said, “The others owled that they would be late as well. So busy those two.”

Arthur Weasley stepped over from the dining table. “Well, there you are.”

“Sorry to be late,” Harry said. “Got, uh, caught up in something.”

“Have a seat. Have a seat,” Arthur invited, gesturing at the worn old, orange couch. “Hello, Severus.”

Harry gratefully plopped down and put his head in his hands as his emotions swung wildly.

“Have you something strong to drink?” Snape asked.

“Of course.” Arthur went to a crooked red bottle on the shelf running along below the ceiling. He took down three bright orange little cups and dusted them with his sleeve before pouring into them. Snape immediately handed the first one to Harry.

Harry shot him a pained expression as he took it. “My, my,” Arthur said, “Care to tell us what the matter is?” Cup in hand he sat down on the edge of the cushion beside Harry and considered him with affection.

Harry took a swallow, choked violently and immediately took another. He held his little cup out for more. When Arthur didn’t take the hint, Snape handed him his serving with the admonishment, “Slower this time.” Harry sipped it but still coughed.

“What happened?” Arthur prompted again, looking between them.

“I yelled at my trainer after he threatened Severus,” Harry said glumly and then blinked. “Do you think I can get kicked out for that?” he asked, considering, only now, the broader repercussions. Ginny came down the stairs then and stopped on the last step in surprise at those words.

Snape looked searchingly at Mr. Weasley, who gave the tiniest of shrugs. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Can they?” Harry asked pleadingly of the two of them. “Can they kick me out?”

Snape methodically pulled over a rickety, straight-backed chair and placed it close facing Harry. Molly came close as well and crossed her arms to listen.

Snape lowered himself to the chair and ploddingly said, “In my experience with administrative matters…which is what any action to remove you would come down to…what is critical is how it would read if it were reduced to a memorandum.” He waited for Harry to look up before going on, “In this case the memorandum would read: Harry Potter, in parenthesis, THE Harry Potter, became incensed with his Auror trainer when the man questioned his judgment on a Voldemort-related issue.”

“He what?” Arthur blurted. Snape held up his hand and Arthur sipped his drink, hunched over like someone enjoying the theatre.

“In response to his expertise being questioned, Mr. Potter proceeded to detail for Mr. Rodgers, perhaps too forcibly but in his case, understandably, his personal experiences, mostly traumatic, with the aforementioned dark wizard. Mr. Potter should be familiarized with the rules for decorum and procedure regarding Ministry apprentices, etc.”

Harry peered up at him with a grateful expression and a small crooked smile.

“What did Reggie say?” Arthur asked, refilling his own cup, garnering a slap on the shoulder from Molly for doing so. “Easy day tomorrow, dear,” he pointed out as he toasted her coyly.

“Do I get one?” Ginny asked, taking a seat beside her father and resting her elbows on her knees. Her mother gave her a doubly sharp look.

Harry said, “He recognized Severus from his…real Death Eater days.”

“Uh oh,” Mr. Weasley uttered.

“Asked me why he was there looking for me. Said he should be in Azkaban. That even though he was my parent, he still should be.” Harry drank the last of his cup and didn’t cough this time.

Arthur shifted back and sunk into the old couch, cradling his drink. “Hm,” he murmured in thought. “I can see why that would upset you, all right. But don’t worry, Harry my boy, the public relations battle would be over in a week, tops.” Harry gave him a confused look, and he said with wise smile. “All you’d need is two interviews in the Prophet tearfully saying how the Ministry after all these years has decided now of all times to take away the only family you’ve ever known. Bam!, he’d be free on a dispensation. Guaranteed.”

Harry stared at him mutely.

Arthur poked him on the arm as he spoke. “You, my boy, have political capital to burn and you’ve studiously avoided spending even a Knut of it. It’s all sitting there, like King Midas’s riches, just waiting for you to need it.”

“You really think that would work?” Harry asked doubtfully.

“I know it would,” Arthur said with certainty giving Harry’s leg one last poke.

Harry gave Snape a pained look, making Snape look down at the floor between them.

The Floo flamed and Ron stepped out, brushing the ash from his hair. Behind him Hermione arrived as well. “Sorry we’re late, we—”

“Just in time, dinner is ready,” Molly said jumping toward the kitchen as though she had forgotten something.

“You missed hearing Harry’s troubles,” Ginny chastised her brother.

“Wha?” Ron prodded.

Harry summarized as they settled around the table and other than Ron’s suspicious glances at Snape, as though he may have been overlooking their old teacher’s past, they reassured Harry that Mr. Weasley was most likely correct.

Harry looked over the faces of his friends glowing in the candlelight, and felt grateful he had come tonight. “Thanks,” Harry said to Mr. Weasley as he picked up his fork.

Arthur leaned over. “Harry, any Ministry employee who questions your judgment about Voldemort deserves to get demoted to the job of medicinal snail wrangler.”

It was after midnight when they returned home. Seeing the dark, quiet dining room made Harry worry painfully about the immediate future and tomorrow’s training. He leaned his head against the mantel and waited for the hearth to flare again. Finally, it did and Snape stepped out of it.

“Are you all right?” his guardian asked.

Harry exhaled loudly. “I need to know what happened,” he said reluctantly.

Snape stepped to the table and laid his gloves upon it before leaning against the back of a chair.

When he didn’t reply, Harry said, “I know you have a meeting at Hogwarts in the morning, but I’m having a hard time imagining going back to the Ministry tomorrow without knowing what I’m defending against.”

After a long silence filled by the ticking clock, Snape said, “Sit down.”

Harry shucked his cloak and heavily took a seat at the table. Snape stepped to the hall and the steps down to the kitchen to ask Winky to bring tea. He returned and sat across from Harry, but didn’t speak right away, just examined his steepled fingertips, moving them slowly to touch and part the tips of them.

Tea arrived. Winky looked uncertainly between them before taking the tray away.

“I was a Sixth Year at Hogwarts,” Snape eventually began. “Theodore Nott was a Seventh Year I admired for his intelligence and because he was never, ever pushed around.”

Harry dropped his head and stared at his own hands as he listened. He heard Snape pouring two cups of tea, and reached out for his without looking up.

“Nott would not have paid me any mind had he not needed assistance in Potions. He needed help especially to prepare for his N.E.W.T.s. I spent a great deal of study time tutoring him, was honored to do so. While this was going on, I became aware that I had fallen under an aura of protection from him. Not an overt one, in fact, more powerful because it was not.”

Snape paused to sip his tea. “In the end he used Legilimency to learn Potion techniques from me when my tuition wasn’t clear enough for him. At the end of the year he suggested I learn Occlumency so no one else could do that. I had not known either existed until then.”

“I spent the summer studying both Legilimency and Occlumency. I had to practice on strangers which forces one to become adept very quickly. The prospect of returning for seventh year without his presence daunted me severely. I owled him to ask his advice. In his reply he asked how serious I was about making something more of myself. As an extension of this question, a week before Hogwarts restarted I met with him. The transformation he had undergone in just the months since the school year had ended was phenomenal. He had such confidence, such an air of power. I wanted that, like I had never wanted anything before. Your tea is cold.”

Harry shook his head at that transition. He topped up his cup and sipped it as he tried to pull himself back to the present. “I’m sorry,” Harry said.

“It was hardly your fault.”

“Still,” Harry insisted quietly, eyes glancing away at the stone wall to the right. “I know what it feels like to be under siege like that and to think and rethink about all the ways out of it, even the terrible ways out.”

“At least you recognize they are terrible. I somehow…did not. Or I willfully denied it.” He breathed out loudly and slowly rotated his cup.

“Nott introduced me to two others—a witch and a wizard who were reluctant to show their faces. It was clear Nott respected them though, despite this…quirk. I returned to school and almost forgot the introductions, until Nott owled me with a request for Veritaserum. It isn’t a difficult potion but it was obviously forbidden to students. I brewed it in an attic that weekend and owled it back to him. He asked me to meet him at the Hogshead on the following weekend. He brought me a potions manual full of forbidden recipes, asked me to mark off the ones I could make.

“I was eager to please, so anything I thought I could work out, even if I never had done so before, I checked off. He made a list of what he wanted. I told him I needed Galleons for ingredients. He gave me a purse-full. Told me to keep what I did not spend.”

Snape looked up at the dining room ceiling, gaze far beyond it. “I learned more about Potions in the east wing attic than I did in any class. I needed other equipment so I began doing poorly in class, so that I could convince Professor Beezel to let me do extra credit. I recall to this day how pleased she seemed at my eagerness to improve my marks. That was the first time I realized how ignorant they all were. Or perhaps more generous…how trusting. And ignorant.”

“Except the headmaster.” Harry grinned lightly and finally found Snape’s eyes.

“Never said a word,” Snape went on. “But I always sensed that he knew. Eeriest feeling in the world, that. You could never imagine what was going on in his mind because his motivations were utterly opaque. I know now that he simply trusted that it was all supposed to happen. Still eerie.”

Snape took a deep breath before continuing. “I finished school and, within a week, Nott paid a visit. My parents discovered the potions manuals and the Galleons and after a loud confrontation with them, they threw me out, which was a mistake on their part because it made my answer to Nott that much simpler. Nott treated it as automatic that I would be accepted into the Dark Lord’s organization, at some level. He groomed me for a few weeks while I stayed with him and then took me to the next Summoning.”

“In retrospect, it was rather comical. Nott had been promising I would meet the Dark Lord. I never actually believed him. Ludicrous, I had thought, to just be introduced like that to the living evil bane of the wizarding world. Nor did I actually want to meet the most reviled wizard alive. Who in their right mind would? Nott was either bragging or speaking of something far remote from in-person. So I never argued the point or asked when exactly that might happen.

“One night he came to my room at one in the morning, told me to change into the hooded robe he had brought, and took me to Voldemort.” Snape paused to refill Harry’s tea before going on, “Perhaps you of all people can appreciate what it is like to be so utterly terrified that you feel nothing.”

Harry nodded easily as he blew across his cup.

Snape laughed harshly. “I was praised later for my poise.” He shook his head. “At the Summoning, the Dark Lord approached me specifically. I remember Nott bowing and scraping, losing all that pride of his to groveling, which was the first beginnings of my doubt, if you can imagine that. I Occluded my mind and the Dark Lord asked me something and I answered—answered as though I were standing beside myself watching it all. They were easy questions to answer. Of course I wanted power. Of course I wanted to belong to something momentous.”

Snape stopped then. The teapot was empty. Harry swallowed consciously, unable to find any words.

Eventually, Snape continued, “I didn’t mind brewing for them, by any means. One can easily get buried in an interesting activity, especially a prohibited one, and ignore that the result, somewhere else, is extortion, blackmail, torture. And murder.” Snape’s tone fell darker, “There is no excuse for that, or forgiveness possible, for letting oneself be a pawn.” He lifted his empty cup and tossed it violently against the stone framing the hearth.

The motion and noise startled Harry, who gripped his empty cup fiercely as though to protect it. The air beside the table sparkled and Winky appeared.

“It’s all right, Winky,” Harry reassured the elf.

Snape growled at her to go.

She said, “Winky not allow anyone to be hurt.”

Snape’s look darkened even more at the challenging tone in her squeaky voice. Their gazes locked. “Go. Now,” Snape ordered her more clearly.

She hesitated, clearly troubled by her conflicting impulses.

Harry said gently, “He’s only angry at himself. Go on.”

Winky took a half step away as she twisted her tea towel in her hands. “That is worst, Master Harry,” she insisted. “Worst of all angers.”

“Don’t concern yourself,” Harry said. “Don’t try to help.” When Snape’s dark look redirected toward Harry, he explained. “She’s offered before to intervene.”

“In what way?” Snape asked dangerously.

“I don’t know. I simply told her not to.”

Snape heaved to his feet and faced Winky down as she was backing away toward the door.

“Severus,” Harry said. “Please. Her instincts are to deal with someone like Barty Crouch Jr. You have to take that into account.”

Snape straightened and spun away from her with a snapping motion. She hovered in the doorway. “Winky not allow Master to hurt another or himself,” she insisted quietly.

“We understand that,” Harry said. “It’s not going to happen. Go on.” He motioned her away. She finally slunk away, drooping unhappily.

Snape dropped back into his chair. “Where was I?” he asked in annoyance as he rubbed his forehead.

“Pawns.”

“Yes,” he said tiredly and pushed his hair back and stared at nothing for a time. “At the next Summoning, I gave myself over.”

“Why?” Harry snapped in disbelief, pained at the thought.

“I was utterly defeated by the situation, by the universe. I did not see a choice, which was clearly not true. One always has a choice, even if the alternative is death. It is still a choice one freely makes.” Snape paused, looking pained also.

Snape shook his head, looking equally defeated now in the present. “After that I was trusted completely and given much more to do. I followed Nott and Malfoy as they went about their task of bringing down what was left of the Ministry power structure. The alarming little of it that remained. No ordinary witch or wizard understood how dire things were. Ordinary paths of justice and administration had been hollowed out and were merely shells to be manipulated for the those with old influence who weren’t necessarily directly evil, but would always look the other way when it wasn’t their concern because a hollow Ministry was to their advantage. Or for our organization when needed.

“I was impressed with how careful everyone was about remaining invisible, even when it cost them dearly. Nott frequently commented that if the Ministry were so weak it deserved to be torn down. That sounded absolutely reasonable, in its own twisted way. The weak don’t deserve much consideration, after all. Or so I agreed at the time.”

Snape fidgeted before he went on. “Malfoy and Lestrange were another thing. They enjoyed their roles most when someone bravely held out.” Snape swallowed hard, looking unwell as he remembered. “Power and the right to torture those they saw as beneath them were all they wanted. They cared little for larger goals, especially ones that got in the way of their pleasure. The intricacies of the politics were easy for them but only a distraction.

“I was sent out with them one night to encourage someone to see things our way. I stood by and did nothing. Nothing. Except absorb the hatred and loathing of two perfectly ordinary people who had a thousand times more honor than I did.”

Harry bit his lip. “That wasn’t the Longbottoms, was it?” he asked with great reluctance, only because he knew the question would haunt him until it was answered.

Snape shook his head. “But it might as well have been,” he replied. “The next chance I had in Hogsmeade, after an ordinary drop, meaning giving money or something valuable to someone in exchange for something they’ve collected that we wanted, I went up to the castle.” He laughed lightly. “The doors were spelled against me. They would not allow me entrance.”

Harry held his breath. “What did you do?”

“I went around to the gamekeeper’s cabin. Realize that at the time I did not know Hagrid beyond his name. But he answered his door quickly enough, considering the late hour. I told him I needed to see Dumbledore, which was dreadfully difficult to say because it meant I had failed at every aspect of my life.

“Hagrid said he would try his best, which was not the most reassuring at that moment. But presently he returned, told me to follow him, and took me up to the headmaster’s office. I was shocked to gain such easy entrance. What if I had been sent to do him harm?”

Harry broke in with a laughing scoff, “You couldn’t have touched him.”

“At that time I did not accept how very powerful he was reputed to be. I assumed no truly powerful wizard in their right mind would settle for such a position. In any event, he listened to my story and then simply waited, for what I wasn’t certain. I filled in more details and still he remained silent, and so bloody patient it was downright aggravating.”

Harry grinned lightly.

“I finally simply apologized for having to be there, for being too bloody stupid to have fallen into the whole thing, for needing help at all. And he smiled.” Snape shook his head at the memory. “He asked me if I really wanted to defeat Voldemort…threw his name out, just like that. When I replied, yes, he told me to unOcclude my mind.

“Having decided that the last time I had given myself away was an unforgivable mistake, it was too painful to do so again. He told me that he understood and to return when I felt ready. I could not do that. I could not leave without some hope. So I did as he requested.”

Snape clasped and unclasped his hands rhythmically before continuing.

“It was different being suddenly beholden to someone who had no desire to have anyone be so. He said he would be in touch. I insisted he make some request of me right then and I will never forget what he said. He told me to preserve what was left of myself and hold it dear because I was going to need it.”

Harry flipped the teacup around in his hands nervously. Eventually, turning it upside down to let the dregs seal it to the tabletop.

Snape went on, “Over the next month, he asked a few small things from me, informational things, which I willingly provided. Then that autumn he suggested I seed the idea with Nott of planting a Death Eater within Hogwarts, which was a bastion they could not penetrate. Have something befall the current Potions teacher.”

When Harry’s eyes went wide, Snape said, “With Beezel complicit in the scheme, since she was considering retirement anyway. She mysteriously fell ill before the next school year and a replacement was sought in a hurry. It was made to appear that rather a lot of convincing was required to secure my place. At first I was a temporary fill-in and only after exemplary performance was I made permanent. Always I complained to my fellow teachers about Dumbledore’s lack of trust, always I acted my part: rebuffing any friendly approach that could be construed as corrupting of my mission, overtly coddling my dark associates’ children, stridently questioning on some made up grounds otherwise solid plans that could possibly hinder Voldemort. Only McGonagall had been informed otherwise, although I knew she doubted me, nonetheless.”

“How long did she keep distrusting you?” Harry asked out of pure curiosity.

“I am not certain. She was always grudging about granting me any leave, even after the Dark Lord’s apparent demise after attacking you years ago.”

“She’s still grudging, I think,” Harry commented, feeling the need for some lightness.

“It was considerably worse back then,” Snape said forcefully. He stared at the far wall for a long time, deep in thought.

New uncertainties were haunting Harry now but it was nearly two in the morning.

“You have more questions,” Snape stated without looking at Harry.

“They can wait.”

“I would prefer to get this over with,” Snape said, voice methodical.

“Then they aren’t that important,” Harry said. He worried how much Snape had been forced to do in the spirit of remaining above suspicion, but at the same time, was afraid to know.

Snape broke the silence by quietly observing, “It is ironic that this should be coming back to snare me now.”

Harry mulled that over. “You were putting it behind you?” he asked, hopeful that might be true.

In a surprised tone Snape said, “I have moments when I feel so—to which I credit you—so perhaps my mother was right.”

“If that works somehow, you may have it. I don’t mind giving it,” Harry said.

Their eyes met for a time. Snape finally said. “I have to admit, I sometimes feel as if I’ve won.” At Harry’s curious look he went on. “I cannot equalize the harm I did…it isn’t possible. I cannot get even with your father, because he isn’t here to confront. Nonetheless…” He breathed in and out. “I have been feeling free of it, as though I’m rising above it and it no longer matters nearly as much.”

“It doesn’t matter as much,” Harry confirmed.

“Is it possible I’ve won?” Snape asked, sounding as though he were addressing someone not present. “You, Harry, are in the unique position of judging if I have.”

“Only you can, I think,” Harry returned. “I can only assure you that it’s possible.”

Snape laughed lightly, but not in a sane way. “I adopted my enemy’s son and treated him as my own. What more could I possibly have done to prove I am beyond the trap of my hatred for him?”

Harry didn’t have a reply. That assertion was too tangled for him to dare address.

Snape went on, sounding exhausted now. “And if amendment were possible for what I did, you are the only vehicle for it.”

A little uneasy, Harry asked, “Is that why you adopted me?”

“No,” Snape replied firmly. “I did it because I surprisingly enough enjoyed your companionship and was tired of being alone. As if those are better reasons,” he added cynically.

“Also, fundamentally, I did it because you seemed to need it and I was perfectly confident that I could at the very least exceed your prior circumstances. But the biggest reason, which I confess I’ve downplayed to myself and you, is I did it because the foremost wizard of our time had absolute faith that it was the thing that needed to happen next. I’d spent two decades as his servant and certainly had not escaped that, even if I told myself his hold over me ended in the Entrance Hall that prophetic day.”

“That’s an okay reason,” Harry opined. “And I did need it.”

Snape fell silent as though he had emptied himself of speech. Harry rubbed his eyes. His brain begged for quiet and rest. He stood, set his teacup upright on its dish and bit his lips. He wanted to say something about his determination to protect Snape, but he couldn’t find a way to do it without further hitting his guardian’s pride.

Instead, Harry put a hand on Snape’s shoulder as he stepped by him. “That’s enough for me.”

“You have some potion remaining, if you need it?” Snape asked without moving.

At the doorway to the hall, Harry replied, “Yes. Good night, Severus.”

Snape turned his head in Harry’s direction so it was in profile. “Good night, Harry,” he said, sounding empty.

In his bed, Harry finally managed to slow his twisting thoughts and relax, although he didn’t really sleep, nor did he feel like taking any potion since he wanted time to think.

He must have dozed lightly, though, because he came to a half-sleeping awareness of an approaching shadow in the green haze. Harry lay still, pretending to sleep soundly, mostly because he didn’t want Snape to think he had found his story disturbing enough to keep him awake. Eventually, Snape departed after hovering for a time.

When he was alone, Harry rolled onto his other side, wishing there was something he could do to change everything.

Harry rushed to get ready the next morning, even though it was early. His temper had put his future at stake and not knowing how it would resolve made him frantic enough Kali wouldn’t stay settled in her cage. Harry ceased his hurrying about and reached in to pet her again, letting her rub her tiny violet and sapphire blue fox head over his fingers until she tired of it.

Downstairs, his thoughts were a mile away, so he nearly ran over Snape standing in the cloudy-windowed dining room before the unlit hearth.

Harry dropped his shoulders and waited for his guardian to look at him. When he finally did, he didn’t look at all like himself. The eyes that considered Harry were raw and unguarded. Harry stood straighter, stepped up, and gave him a hug, then didn’t let go right away, not until Snape patted his elbow.

Harry stepped back, holding Snape’s sleeve in his fingers, longing to say something about absolution, but not wanting to say the wrong thing or worse yet, a superficial thing.

“I need to go,” Harry said, pasting on confidence that came to him easier than it should have.

Snape seemed to come to himself at that. “I do not mean to put you in this position.”

“I don’t mind defending you to the Ministry.”

Snape’s voice fell quieter. “I’m not referring to that.”

Harry bit his lips. “I don’t mind the other either,” he said, assuming Snape meant needing to provide him emotional support. “You’re the reason I’m strong enough to do it.” He checked for his wand and wallet, then stood with his arms at his sides. “I’ll do better today. And hopefully you and Mr. Weasley are correct.”

Snape nodded vaguely and opened the Floo powder and held it out for Harry.

Harry arrived before their first session and did some stretches rather than pace. The other three came in soon after, eyeing him with surprise and wariness.

Aaron sat beside Harry on the mat and leaned close. “Was Snape really…?” he started to ask when Rodgers stepped in.

The trainer looked Harry up and down once, and ordered with a frown, “Potter, a word. NOW.”

Harry followed him out and down to his office. It was a shared space and he gestured that he needed to be alone and his only present officemate, Rogan, retreated with a nod of hello at Harry.

“Sit down,” Rodgers ordered flatly.

As he obeyed, Harry replayed in his mind Snape’s concept of the memorandum as if it were a spell he were prepping to incant.

Rodgers was a long time in continuing, but finally he said, “I spoke with Tonks. And Kingsley, whom you apparently know as well. They supported your assertions.”

Harry didn’t react except to relax a little.

Rodgers flipped through a file that had Harry’s name in the top label line of some of the pages. “Mad-Eye, who did the background check for your application, was similarly unconcerned about your living arrangements.”

Harry wanted to read the notes Moody had scrawled crooked across the horizontal lines on the white sheet Rodgers held, but he didn’t want to obviously lean over to do it. Carefully, Harry pointed out, “Moody was in the Order of the Phoenix too.”

Rodgers looked Harry over before saying, “I am bothered by doing nothing—bothered a lot. I can’t believe the W.F.C. let him adopt you. They refused to give me a copy of your one year review unless I had an investigation number.”

“I can summarize it for you,” Harry offered.

Smartly, Rodgers replied, “Don’t bother. I can imagine you told them what they wanted to hear.”

Very calmly Harry said, “I told them the truth. I don’t have to lie to tell them I couldn’t be happier to have him as a parent. I wouldn’t be here in this program if he hadn’t helped put me back together.” Harry gave his trainer a intense look as he said, “I needed someone who understood for that. Someone who understood everything, including spending helpless years marked and haunted by Voldemort.”

Rodgers winced, seemed momentarily conciliatory, but then he shook his head. “I can’t just leave it. For one thing, I’m concerned he’s just using you and you can’t see it.”

Harry made a small noise through his nose. “He’s not. I’m positive of that. And even if you don’t believe me on that, try and imagine Albus Dumbledore going out of his way to convince Severus to go through with it if that was the case. He knew Severus better than I do even now.”

“It’s convenient for him, though.”

Harry shrugged lightly. “Believe me, I’d know.”

“What about a hearing—a closed one—before the Wizengamot? Let them hear his story and decide what should happen. I’d trust their judgement on this.”

Harry wondered at his trainer negotiating at all. Flatly, he said, “I was before them once. They were going to break my wand for defending myself and my Muggle cousin against two Dementors. At the last moment they moved the location of the hearing and the time, to try to keep anyone from coming to help me at it.”

Rodgers’ face twisted in a frown. “You have to work closely with them as an Auror, Potter, so try to dredge up a bit more respect than that. When was this?”

“The Umbridge Era.”

Rodgers rolled his eyes. “Oh,” he said with a frown of remembrance.

“What are you hoping to accomplish?” Harry asked, forcing calm through his voice to the point he sounded dull to himself. “Are you just trying to soothe your own conscience?”

Rodgers stared at him. “An annoying but fair question,” he huffed. “You know what is truly ironic, Potter? I tried to provoke that reaction out of you when you started. I thought it’d be easy, just be overtly harder on you, less understanding, a little unfair…and you’d blow up at me about it. I wanted to know what I was working with in regards to you. I expected you to be the ultra prima donna, that you were playing it nice and that facade wouldn’t hold up under any kind of pressure. I had finally admitted I was wrong, when out of the blue you hit me with that tirade.”

“You threatened my family. Something I care dearly about,” Harry said.

“You’re serious aren’t you? Someone like that?”

“How could that not be serious? I like having a father. All of my life, I thought it was impossible. I had to watch everyone else have one, knowing it could never be. Now I actually, honestly do have one and you threaten to take him away. Based on a misunderstanding.” Harry wanted to slap his own chest, but with great will he pointed delicately instead, to match his crazy boring voice. “Based on doubting me about Voldemort.” That especially came out better quiet and low. It cut like a knife rather than bludgeoned.

Rodgers considered that. Harry wondered if he should hint at the P.R. battle he’d start if necessary, but held back.

“And given a choice between this program and him?” Rodgers asked.

Harry let himself express surprise. “You have to ask?”

Rodgers tugged at his ring of hair. “I’ll lose if I take you on, I know that. You hang in the wings most of the time, but I have a sense you understand what power you really hold. I’d hate to lose you in any event. You’re a marvel with a wand, and when you talk about dark wizards you sound like one of the twenty-year veterans in this office.”

“I do make mistakes,” Harry said.

“Everyone does. Surviving to not repeat them is all that matters.”

After a pause Harry said quietly, “That’s what Severus did.”

“You know his whole story? And you can in good conscience live under the same roof? Apparently.”

“Yes,” Harry assured him.

Rodgers sighed in defeat. He sat back and one by one closed the open files on his desk. “All right, Potter. I really hate to say it, but I’ll let it go.”

“Thank you,” Harry said sincerely, not hiding his relief.

“You were way out of line, though,” Rodgers said stiffly. “You are on probation for a month. Don’t step out again or we will have a hearing. And I won’t hold back.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said obediently, then stood when Rodgers waved him off.

Rodgers grumbled, “Whenever it bothers me that he’s free, I’ll just remember that you of all people are there keeping a close eye on him.”

Harry paused with his hand on the door latch. “He doesn’t need it, but if it makes you feel better, consider that I am, sir.” It was true that Harry didn’t know everything Snape was working on. And Harry could be a little more insistent about knowing. Or maybe he should just trust his guardian like he just claimed he did.

Back in the workout room, drills had already started with Tonks in charge. Harry took up a pairing with Aaron, who gave him a questioning look.

“Did you work it out?” Tonks asked.

“Yep. A month’s probation for stepping out of line.”

“A month?” she asked in surprise. “Well, from what I heard, you probably deserved it.”

At the end of the day, Harry was tired, but the house would be empty when he returned. He hung around the small meeting room where they stored their book bags until Aaron and Kerry Ann left. “Do you feel like dinner, Vineet?”

The Indian looked up in surprise. “You are inviting me out?”

“Yep.”

“I am a vegetarian, do you mind Indian food?”

“Not at all. I’d prefer a Muggle place since it will be quieter,” Harry said.

“There is a wonderful tandoori place in King’s Court, but I am leaping ahead…”

“No, does sound wonderful.”

They arrived at the restaurant after a short underground ride and a longish walk, which Harry enjoyed as a chance to clear his head. As they took their seats, the waiter greeted them warmly. “Vishnu, good to see you. The usual?”

“Yes, plus something for my friend. The lamb?” At Harry’s nod, the waiter smiled broadly and departed for the kitchen.

The restaurant was sparsely populated and no one paid them any attention.

Vineet sat quietly for a long time. After their samosas and beers arrived, he broke the silence by saying, “You are a mystery to me.”

Harry bit into a steamy pocket filled with curried stuff and quickly drank his cold beer. “Me?” he asked in surprise.

Vineet nodded his head, looking grave. “Your parent of choice, whom you defended so powerfully, once served the Un-named One. I cannot understand this.” He sounded painfully disappointed as well as mystified.

“It was only for a short time and it was a long time ago,” Harry pointed out.

Vineet shook his shiny-haired head more solemnly. “To be Marked he had to give himself over. There is no path back from that.”

Harry put down his beer and smoothed the white table cloth with a brush of his hand. Equally solemn, he said, “There is if I make one for him.”

Vineet gripped his beer glass hard and gave Harry a extensively long look. “And you do this?”

Harry hesitated, thinking over the last year. “I have to,” he replied, feeling unsteady with the realization. He was experiencing a clarity that felt detached from this place of spiral carved wood and jeweled paintings of calm, contorted figures. “It’s the path I am using as well.”

In silence Vineet considered this at length. Harry waited for some kind of verdict from him, felt he needed one. The waiter brought shallow metal dishes of roasted eggplant, tandoori lamb, and chickpeas in tomato sauce. Harry thought he had lost his appetite to emotion, but the scent wafting from the table made his stomach growl.

As they served themselves, Vineet said, “You are doing too much in one turn of the wheel.”

“I don’t get that.”

Vineet shook his head. “It is not a Western notion,” he said evenly. As he tore the naan and used it to scoop up sloppy chunks of eggplant, he stated, “I hope you make your path well to carry two on it.”

“I’m not working on it alone, so I think it will be all right,” Harry said, feeling lightheaded with these notions.

This comment seemed to make Vineet curious, but he let the topic go in favor of eating with a serious expression.

At home, Harry studied in the dining room so he could greet Snape when he returned from Hogwarts. He felt secure after the panic and relished in it.

It was after nine when the hearth flamed green. “Hello, Severus,” Harry said in greeting.

Snape, looking worn down still, returned the greeting and sat across from him without bothering to remove his cloak. Like clockwork, Winky brought tea to the table.

As he poured, Snape asked flatly, “How did your day go?”

“I convinced Rodgers to let it go,” Harry replied, forced to cast his mind back that far in the day.

“Thank you, Harry.”

Harry took a chocolate biscuit off the tray. “You’re welcome,” he said easily before he bit into it.