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Notes: I drove a stake through the heart of the contribution fic I've been writing for the lovely and generous cindyjade, who requested Snarry. Cindyjade, if you requested any other particular details, I'm very very sorry if I omitted them. This one kind of took off on its own. It is 28,940 words. Again, I'm very sorry.

Anyway, with apologies to moosesal, whose Clex has been on hold for the holidays and for the creation of this Frankenstein's monster, I present more Snarry. Thank you to everyone who contributed to Jolie's anti-leukemia fund. I know there are still some contribution fics unwritten, and I promise most will not be this long or take this much time to crank out. I hope y'all like some Snarry.

 

Sanctum Sanctorum part 1

The most irritating aspect was that Potter couldn't remember anything useful. He sat hunched like an wet owl in his chair, the corners of his mouth turned down, circles under his eyes, giving off that peculiar, novel flatness that was like a faint bad smell in the nose. Snape had never paid much attention before to Potter's magical signature; he'd been too busy being annoyed by the boy himself. Now that it was gone, its absence was subtly but profoundly bothersome, like drinking from a glass of supposedly sparkling water and finding that it was still.

"Do you remember what the man looked like?" Albus asked again, as if Potter hadn't already said several times, in several ways, that he didn't. "Did anyone call him by name?"

"Death Eaters are not in the habit of announcing their identities," Snape said, running a thumb over the lip of his teacup. "If they were, we would find this a much easier war to fight."

"I don't know," said Potter. "I didn't see anything. It was night, he just popped out of nowhere. There was just a flash." He'd pinned his hands beneath his thighs and was bent forward as if he had stomach cramp. "Then I woke up and..." He shrugged. "Neville had to give me a lift back on his broom."

Albus sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. "And you've tried every branch of magic since then? Not just your wand, but potions, divination...?"

"Everything," said Potter miserably. "Nothing works. I can't even get on Buckbeak. He just looks at me funny and walks away."

"I see."

"We'll sort this out, Harry," said McGonagall. "There must be a countercurse. And I believe I recall an anecdote from Bufwulder's Lives, of a wizard from Tintern whose magic came and went--"

"Which will be very interesting to revisit, I'm sure," Snape interrupted. "But it is not a question of Potter's magic coming and going--it is simply gone, and if we do not know why it is gone, I see very little chance of our success in restoring it."

There was a silence, during which they all looked at him as though he had said something in extremely poor taste, which was how they generally responded to inconvenient truths. How he controlled his urge to hex at times like this was sometimes beyond him.

"I am merely saying," he said, standing up and gathering his robes around him, "that in our current straitened circumstances, sentimentality will not help us. Mr. Potter has lost his magic--duly noted. I have potions to brew, and no insight to offer. My suggestion--" he stepped heavily on the word, "--is that Mr. Potter make himself useful in whatever non-magical ways he can. We are at war, and he is a good deal more able-bodied than many."

Without waiting to hear what they thought of that--cruel, cold, snakelike Snape-- he turned and walked out. Before he closed the door, he heard Albus say quietly, and with unaccustomed dryness, "Thank you, Severus."

 

It might have been snakelike, but it was sense. Snape specialized in sense, particularly of the pragmatic and unpopular variety. It had got him through his regrettable childhood, through his studies, through countless unpleasant and best-forgotten negotiations with powers greater than himself, both dark and light. It had been his experience that Albus was not a senseless man either, so it was little surprise to receive a summons from him a day or two later, asking Snape to visit him in his office.

Snape sat in the same chair Potter had taken, crossed his legs at the knee, and waited.

"You know why I've asked you here," Albus said, dispensing with preliminaries. He was looking older, if such a thing was possible. He'd given up much of his infernal twinkling, and spoke more directly. "Harry's loss of magic is a serious danger to him and all of us."

"Agreed."

"I've already heard of minor incidents here in the school--Slytherins mainly, I'm sorry to report. Bullying." Albus paused to deliver a hard look. "Apparently one of Draco Malfoy's lot cast a zippermouth hex on Harry."

Good choice, thought Snape, careful to keep a still face. "I'm not surprised."

"No. I imagined you wouldn't be." Albus turned to the fire and reflected a moment. "I think it unsafe for Harry to remain at Hogwarts."

That was unforeseen. Snape said nothing.

"We could be attacked at any time," Albus went on. "You know as well as I that the Death Eaters have eyes and ears everywhere--if not inside the school, then close enough to be a danger. As long as he is here, they can find him. And if they find him, in his current state..." Albus spread his hands, a faint smile on his face. "You see my point."

"Indeed. Where are you suggesting he go?" For the last few seconds, Snape's mind had been cataloging all the magical boltholes he could think of. The shack in the North Sea. Inaccessible, too remote. Too great a risk. The traveling alleyway in Sheffield--but there was no way of securing it. The subbasement of the Black Watch tower, if it hadn't been flooded yet by that year's rains. David McDavid was no doubt still too cheap to invest in a workable pump. Plus, there was the question of whether Potter, now essentially a Muggle, could enter any of those places at all.

"Harry has no magic," Albus said, as if he thought Snape might have developed sudden senility and forgotten the fact. "I think it best if he go somewhere where he will not stand out. Where he can..." He paused, and there was the threat of a twinkle. "Blend."

Snape raised an eyebrow.

"London," Albus said simply. "I think he should go to earth in London."

 

 

It wasn't a completely stupid plan, Snape had to admit. London was the largest immediately accessible city the Muggles had to offer--a city of ten million teeming, anonymous, magic-less, deplorable souls. London was an anthill. The thought of setting foot in it, let alone setting up residence, made him almost physically ill. He therefore expected to feel some measure of joy at the notion of Harry Potter, The Most Irritating Boy Who Lived, dropped off at a wind-swept bus terminal in the dead of night, with his duffel and a set of scribbled instructions for getting to the flat that had been hastily arranged for him. But joy, as always, was elusive.

"I'll write you every day," sobbed Miss Granger, half-throttling Potter in the front hall of the school. "By post, I mean. We're not allowed owls."

"Dumbledore said no owls," confirmed Weasley, standing nearby with his fists in his pockets. "They could be followed."

"By post," Potter said, extricating himself from Miss Granger's clutches, and finding himself immediately embraced by Weasley. Snape rolled his eyes.

"Sometime this century, Mr. Potter," he said, from his waiting spot on the front step. Miss Granger muttered something that, if he had been in the mood, would have taken fifty points from Gryffindor.

"All right." Potter shoved free, wiped his face, and slung his unwieldy, un-miniaturized bag over his shoulder. "Every day, okay?"

Miss Granger nodded, and Harry took a last look at the looming grey face of Hogwarts--Nothing to miss there, you fool, Snape thought--then squared his shoulders and staggered down the steps to where Snape stood.

"I'm ready," he said, as if he were going before a firing squad. His eyes were veined with red and there was a faint unshaven scruff on his chin.

"Good," said Snape. He took the portkey from his pocket, then gave in to some unnameable impulse and took out his wand as well. It was a second's work to miniaturize Potter's bag. He held out the portkey while Potter was still staring at his kit, now the size of a pack of cards. "If you please."

When Potter touched the portkey, there was a moment in which that odd, resounding flatness worked its way into Snape's mind, and he frowned in distaste. Then they were gone.

 

 

Potter's flat was in something called a "tower block," which was apparently a kind of aboveground dungeon for the containment of the criminally insane. They arrived in a concrete courtyard, strewn with rubbish and abandoned metal trolleys, its walls decorated with razor-sharp coils of wire. Potter let go of the portkey at once and rubbed his head, squinting around. It was early evening, dark already, and there was nobody in sight.

"Are we...here?" he asked, his tone expressing a clear desire for a negative answer.

Snape wasn't immediately sure what to say. Surely this wasn't the safe haven Dumbledore had had in mind for the wizarding world's greatest hope. Not a concrete block that stank of piss and invited him, via numerous messages painted on its walls, to have sexual congress with himself, his long-deceased mother, and someone named "Blair."

Still, an appearance of certitude was a defense against most things, so he shrugged his robes over his shoulders and started confidently down the concrete hall, into the bowels of the building. After a moment, Potter followed.

Through trial and error, Snape found a lobby of sorts--or at least, an interior room with a plate affixed to the wall, offering names and numbers. Flat numbers, he deduced, reading around the hand-lettered exhortations to call numbers, visit flats, and have sexual congress with himself.

"Muggles are fond of the autoerotic," he murmured, perusing the list.

"What?"

"Nothing." He turned and found Harry already consulting, doubtfully, the slip of paper McGonagall had given him. "What is your...flat numbered?"

"Twelve-oh-two."

"I see." Snape turned back to the list. "I assume that places you on the twelfth floor. The stairs appear to be this way." He led the way to the door marked Stairs noting again that he was invited to have still more sexual congress with himself on the way up. "I can hardly begin to imagine the logistics."

"What?"

"Nothing." The stairwell smelled horrific. He restrained the urge to cover his face with his sleeve. "Follow me."

Neither of them spoke, the whole way up.

The light in the twelfth floor landing was out, so Snape muttered a covert Lumos and cautiously opened the door to the hallway. The light in the hall was out too. The walls were concrete, and litter lay piled along the sides of the floor. From somewhere came a deep, booming sound that it took him a few moments to recognize as a kind of music.

With a sense of increasing foreboding, Snape led the way down the hall to the end, where he found a door labeled "120." The final number seemed to have fallen or been wrenched off, but it was directly across from doors labeled "1201" and "1203," so he assumed he was in the right place.

"Your key," he said, turning back and lowering his wand as a courtesy. Potter looked thin and stricken, staring at the door. "Before my centennial, please."

"Oh. Right." Potter fished in his jeans pocket and brought out a key. Snape stepped aside, and Potter moved hesitantly forward and tried the key in the door. It made a gritty clicking sound, but it turned. Potter's whole body radiated disappointment.

They stood there for a few seconds, as long as Snape had patience for. "If you don't mind, Mr. Potter, I would appreciate not having to Disapparate before an audience of your knuckle-dragging Muggle neighbors. Inside, if you please."

Potter gave him a sideways look--not churlishness, not arrogance, but clear apprehension. Snape felt an absurd sensation in the center of his chest.

"It's only a room," he snapped. "It isn't going to bite you, for God's sake."

Potter's face closed and he turned away at once, pushing the door open with the fingertips of one hand. Snape followed him in, drawing the door closed behind.

The flat was very small, he realized. No more than two rooms at first glance, with the kitchen reduced to a small sink, refrigerator, and hot plate along one side of the main room. Potter flipped a switch on the wall, and after a brief pause and a crackling sound, a hideous, buzzing green light came on. Snape squinted, putting up his wand.

"Well." He looked around. There was some kind of atrocious, deep-pile carpet on the floor. The walls were bare, grubby and disheartening. Potter was poking his head through the open door on the far wall, and after a moment's hesitation, Snape glanced in too. Inside was a small room with an empty closet and a mess of electronic cables jutting from the wall.

"I guess that's the bedroom," said Potter faintly.

The lavatory was a grimy closet off the other side of the main room--no bathtub, only a stand-up shower with a horrifying stiff plastic door that extended from the wall. The mirror, cracked, gave Snape's expression back to him. He hastily smoothed it over, before Potter saw it.

When he came back to the main room--a matter of a few steps--he found Potter standing in the middle of the wretched carpet, looking toward the large glass windows on one wall. They were in fact doors, Snape realized after a moment. Outside was a concrete balcony, three or four feet deep, upon which one might presumably retire at the end of the day to savor one's good fortune. The view was one of motorways and unspeakable, sprawling industry.

"Very well." He had trouble keeping his tone neutral in the face of such ridiculous squalor. Albus had said that the arrangements had been made hastily, and that for lack of hands a few of the house elves had been given the job. Clearly, whatever advantages Albus might have over the rest of the wizarding community, a deep intimacy with the Muggle world was not one of them. Against his own better judgement, Snape added, "This is a temporary arrangement, of course."

"Of course." Potter's voice still sounded weak. Snape frowned.

Potter's kit was on the kitchen counter, so he dropped it onto the carpet and returned it to its normal size. "A few things from the Headmaster." From his pocket, he took out the miniaturized bed and chairs, the sacks of food from the kitchen, the books, and the rest of it. "This will be your bedroom?" He went to the other room and surveyed it. The frame wouldn't fit, but perhaps the mattress. He un-miniaturized it, almost filling the room. There was bedding too, which he added. When he turned back, he found Potter standing in the doorway, one hand lightly braced against the frame.

"Um, thanks."

"Please don't mention it." That one was all in the tone. Congratulating himself absently, he went back to the main room and un-miniaturized the rest of it, leaving it in piles on the egregious carpet for Potter to sort out. "There is Muggle money in that envelope. McGonagall estimates it is enough to support you for at least a week. I'll be back at that time, or sooner if I have reason. You'll be good enough to keep, as they say, a low profile."

"No owls," Potter agreed, reaching down and picking up a book at random, studying its spine.

"No owls, no attempts at casting, no potions, no wands." Snape glanced around the room; the light was giving him a headache. "For the time being, Mr. Potter, you are a Muggle."

"No, I'm not." Potter looked up from the book, his mouth a downward curve. "I'm a Squib."

"That is an unpleasant word, and I suggest you refrain from using it. You might also remind yourself that you're a good deal better off than Bertram Woodsell, whose left arm was blown off over Huxley yesterday."

Potter's eyes flattened. "Right. I know."

"I will be back in a week," Snape repeated, then upbraided himself for the needless repetition. "That is, assuming I am still our best option for traveling beneath the enemy's notice."

"Assuming you're still alive, you mean." Potter's tone was sullen, but Snape supposed there was a kind of compliment in there. As long as he was alive, he was their best spy.

"Indeed." He gathered his robes and felt for his wand. "Next Thursday, then."

Potter nodded, unconsciously hugging the book to his chest, turning back toward the windows.

Snape left.

 

 

The week passed quickly, as they all did now. As a student, Snape had trained himself to function on very little sleep--three or four hours was generally sufficient unto the day, he found. It was a characteristic that came in handy in wartime. He spent upwards of sixteen hours a day in the Potions laboratory, overseeing and correcting the work of the few sad acolytes he'd been allotted, and himself performing the more complex decoctions. His remaining waking hours were spent trying to maintain some semblance of order in the school, and answering to Albus's bizarre notions of wartime preparedness.

"Harry is safely ensconced," Albus prompted, in a closeted interview, as soon as Snape returned from London. "You saw him there yourself."

"I did, and he is."

"Did the location seem secure to you?"

Snape thought of the broken glass in the corner of the downstairs lobby, the loops of razor wire, the stench. "It will serve for the duration."

"And you delivered supplies to him--the books and furniture, and so on?"

Snape leveled a deadly look at Albus, who raised his eyebrows warningly. "Harry has lost his magic, his friends, his entire life, all in the space of a few weeks. If we can do nothing else, we can give him some small creature comforts."

"Perhaps we can do the same for that boy whose face was burnt half off on Tuesday. What was his name? Snavely?"

"Severus--" Albus broke off and turned away, apparently unable to trust his responses for once. Coolly, Snape counted a point for himself.

"Harry Potter is perfectly well," he said, rising from his chair. "And now, if I might be allowed to go, I will get back to overseeing the creation of the mood-lifting draughts you ordered in such great quantity."

"Morale, Severus," Albus said, a trifle grimly. "Never underestimate the importance of morale."

"I assure you," Snape returned, smooth as a snake's tongue. "I am intimately acquainted with the consequences of its failure."

 

 

The week fled, and before he knew it he was due to check in on Potter. Contemplation of the task gave him no pleasure. Indeed, when he Apparated into the same grim courtyard he'd entered before--judging it common courtesy not to simply appear in Potter's room without warning--he felt his spirits sink immediately, impossibly lower. The trudge up the stinking staircase did nothing to raise them.

Potter's hallway resonated with the same rhythmic, primitive thumps he'd heard the week before. Perhaps it wasn't music at all, but some sort of debased communication between the tenants. Snape stood outside the door and knocked.

There was a lengthy pause, during which he was able, to his chagrin, to make out a semblance of lyrics accompanying the din--an invitation to slump my hump, humpy hump, slump my dumpy hump, it seemed--and then, just as he was raising his hand to knock again, the door opened a crack. Potter stood behind it, eyeing him warily.

"If you please, Mr. Potter." He raised an eyebrow, and the door swung open. Potter stood back against the wall to let him enter.

The flat was somewhat furnished now--the two chairs, the stack of books, and the small coffee table had been arranged to suit a single reader in the main room. There was a bowl of apples on the kitchen counter, and a kettle on the hot plate. And yet it was no less desolate than when it had been empty; in fact, the sparse furnishings seemed only to have added a new dimension of pathos. Snape looked it over in silence, then turned to Potter himself.

He'd closed the door and was standing by it, wearing the absurdly revealing, undignified clothing that Muggles favored. Jeans and a T-shirt, his feet bare. His hair was standing up from his forehead, as if he'd been tugging at it. Snape glanced at the table, and noted a Muggle novel face-down, halfway finished.

"I see you're wasting no opportunity to neglect your studies," he said, turning back.

Potter, who had been looking at him with an expression equal parts wary and expectant, deflated. He pushed off the wall and brushed past Snape to sit in the chair he'd obviously just been occupying. As he passed, Snape felt the eddy of deadness that he now associated exclusively with Harry Potter. If irony has a savor,he thought, that is it.

"I didn't think you'd come," Potter said, picking up the book and starting back into it, as if Snape weren't even in the room.

"And as usual, you were wrong. Professor Dumbledore sends his regards, Professor McGonagall her ardent assurance that she is hard at work on resolving your unfortunate condition." Snape walked to the bedroom door and glanced in, ignoring Potter's hot, proprietary glare. All looked in order. "In return, I will assure them that you are in good health and spirits. As you no doubt are."

"Fantastic," Potter muttered. "Never better. I'm sitting in a tip in the middle of nowhere, waiting out the war I was supposed to help win. My magic's gone and I'm barely allowed to leave the house. And the bloody hot plate's dead."

Snape glanced at the hot plate, which looked, now that he noticed, none too reliable. He twitched his wand at it and the kettle gave a little jump, then started boiling. "Make yourself a cup of tea, Mr. Potter."

"I don't want tea," Potter snapped, slapping the book back onto the table. "I don't want you coming in here waving your wand at things, either. Can't you just bugger off and leave me alone?"

Snape gave Potter a look that said exactly what he thought of outbursts like that. After Potter looked away, Snape walked to the table and withdrew the envelopes from his robe's breast pocket. "From Miss Granger, and from Mr. Weasley. And another allotment of funds from Professor McGonagall. Has the amount been sufficient?"

Sullen, barefooted, slump-shouldered, Potter regarded the envelopes. "Yes." After a pause, he added, "Thanks."

"I am only the messenger, Mr. Potter. Do you require anything else?"

Potter seemed to chew over several possible answers, then swallowed them all. He looked up, pushing his glasses up his nose. "No. And..." He toed one of the envelopes, the height of civility. "Thank you."

"In a week, then."

"Right."

Snape gave the room another hopeless look, sighed, and got the hell out.

 

 

"Is it...nice?" Miss Granger was possessed of one of the more extensive vocabularies he'd encountered, measured not merely against that of seventeen year-old former students, but against that of the population at large. And yet, she stood before his bench with her hands twisted behind her back, her eyes searching him anxiously, barely able to string syllables together. "I mean, is he happy?"

Snape thought of the circles beneath Potter's eyes, the lengthening scruff on his chin. "I'm sure I couldn't speak to his state of mind, Miss Granger."

"But he's..." Again, she seemed to grasp fruitlessly for words. He cocked an eyebrow at her.

"By all means, Miss Granger, let us stand here and further dissect a matter of which I admit absolutely no understanding. I imagine if we apply ourselves, we can waste the time of two people for at least another half hour."

She flushed. "How can you be so hateful all the time?"

He allowed the faintest smile to kiss his lips. "Practice."

 

 

 

Thursday again, and again he found himself in the grim little courtyard. Someone had been at one of the walls with a new color of paint--if he ever gave a thought to racial slurs, he might have been offended. As it was, he was merely cold and irritable. It had been a miserable, wintry spring, and the coming summer months looked to be no better. He climbed the stairs to Potter's floor in a dark frame of mind.

He rapped once, peremptorily. The music, apparently perpetual, was still thumping away from its hidden location. How one lived in a place like this without going completely around the bend was beyond him. And it was also none of his business, thank Merlin's beard.

The pause was drawing out unnecessarily, in his opinion. He rapped again, harder this time.

The lock turned, and the door opened slightly. Inside, the room was dim and he could just make out Potter's form behind the door. He frowned.

"If you please, Mr. Potter--"

The door swung open and he strode in, scowling at the small reading lamp--a new fixture--situated atop the coffee table. The green, buzzing overhead light was out, thank God. It always threatened to give him headache. He turned, his wand raised. "Lumos."

Potter was just turning from the door, having closed and locked it. The light from Snape's wand fell directly on his face, which was bruised purple down one side. His eye was black and swollen, and he squinted and raised his hand automatically to cover it.

"What in Merlin's name--" Snape raised his wand for a better look. "What happened to you, Mr. Potter?"

"Nothing." Bizarrely, ridiculously, Potter seemed to consider that an answer. He shuffled to the hot plate, moving slowly and carefully, as if he were sore. "Tea?"

"An explanation would be better."

Potter shrugged. "I was mugged."

Snape stood waiting. Apparently that was all there was. "Speak English."

"I am. Mugged, you know." Potter was busying himself with cups and teabags, his back definitively turned. "Beaten up, robbed."

Snape let that sit for a moment. "I was not aware," he said at last, "of the existence of such a term."

"Well, now you are." Potter turned to take up the kettle, giving Snape a small, unpleasant smile over his shoulder as he did so. "You learn something every day, I guess."

Snape thought of the dark hallway outside, the wretched stairwell, the courtyard scattered with cigarette ends and empty aerosol cans and broken glass. Thus far it had struck him simply as piglike squalor; he hadn't given a thought to any actual danger it might present. It was a habit of thought better suited to an accomplished wizard than to a thin, brash seventeen year-old with no magic at his command.

"And how did you incite this attack?" Snape asked, reaching for firmer footing. "You were asked, if I recall correctly, to keep a low profile--"

"I am." Potter banged the kettle onto the ring. "I didn't incite it, it just happened. There's nothing you can do about it, around here. It just..." He raised his hands in frustration, then dropped them to his sides. "Happens."

"Please don't ask me to believe you were an innocent victim," Snape returned, putting years of teacherly cynicism into his tone. "That you were going meekly about your business, and out of nowhere--"

"That's exactly what did happen. Two blokes punched me in the head, took my money, and ran."

"I find it hard to believe--"

"That's because you don't know what you're talking about." Potter turned to face him, his shoulders rigid, his cheeks pink. "You haven't got the faintest idea what the Muggle world is like--you think the whole world is a Potions laboratory. And you probably think I'm due a punch in the head, it's good for me, it'll take me down a peg and stop me prancing around like the bloody King of Kings."

Snape raised one eyebrow, very slightly. He neither confirmed nor denied.

"Oh, fuck off," Harry said, flipping the ring off and pushing past Snape. He disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.

Snape stood still, listening to the little ticks of the kettle winding down. Through the walls he could hear the insistent rhythm of the music. Slump my hump, hump my slumpy dump...

He laid the envelopes down on the coffee table and left.

 

 

When he knocked again the next day, there was an even longer pause before Potter opened the door. And then it was only a few inches, as if the hallway might be swarming with thick-necked ruffians wielding brass knuckles. When Potter recognized Snape, he swung the door wide at once, his face draining to white under the untidy scruff he was growing.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." Snape strode in, glancing around cursorily and noticing that the flat was indeed just as depressing as he recalled it. "I said I would return sooner if I had cause."

"Is it V--You Know Who?" Potter had closed the door and was hugging his chest tightly with both arms. He looked unslept, unkempt, and if possible, more bruised than the day before. "Has there been an attack?"

Snape frowned. With a flick of his wand, he had the kettle boiling. "Bring me a cup of hot water. The cup should be clean, if such a thing is possible." He sat down on the edge of one of the chairs and took the bundles from his robe.

"I don't understand." Snape glanced back over his shoulder; Potter was standing in the middle of the room, staring at him. "What are you doing here?"

"Wasting my time, so far. The cup, please."

Potter watched him open the bundles and lay them out on the table in a neat row.

"What are those?"

Snape sighed, and barely restrained the urge to Accio the damned cup for himself. "Those, Mr. Potter, are the ingredients for a basic healing potion. Which you would know if you ever opened a book or paid attention to your lessons. If you will please bring me a cup of hot water, I'll prepare the potion, administer it, and get back to any of the several hundred more pressing matters awaiting me."

There was a brief pause. Snape spent it assessing the grade of the pennyroyal, and making a mental note to excoriate one of his assistants as soon as he got back to the lab.

"Oh," Potter said. He took the kettle off the boil, poured a cup of hot water, and brought it over.

"Thank you," Snape said, taking it with elaborate courtesy.

Potter said nothing, but only sat down on the chair opposite and watched the process as if he'd never seen it before. Which he may not have, if his grades in Elementary Concoction were to be credited.

"In this order," Snape narrated grimly, plucking from the dittany, water-palm, and poppy. "This much of each, no more."

"What is that?" Potter asked, leaning forward with a frown and sniffing the pulverized snake melon.

"Honestly, Mr. Potter." Snape studied the color of the mixture as it steeped. "If I had any expectations of you whatsoever at this point, I would despair." He held out the cup. "Drink this, go to bed, and sleep as long as you can. When you wake up, make another dose and take it. That ought to do it, unless the damage extends beyond a blackened eye and an extremely colorful cheekbone."

Potter took the cup and looked at it doubtfully. Snape waited.

"Well?" he asked after a minute. "Does it?"

Potter gave him a mulish look. Snape shrugged.

"Then I consider my obligations, negligible as they are, to be discharged." He reached into his robe and withdrew an envelope, laying it down on the table beside the herbs. "McGonagall sent a small supplement to your weekly allotment. I trust you'll take better care of this batch."

Potter glanced at the envelope, swirled the cup, and bolted it as if it took nerve. His throat worked like a knuckle, white and thin. When he lowered the cup there were pink circles in his cheeks, and his eyes were watering.

"It's not like it matters," he said, a little hoarsely, wiping his mouth with his hand. "It's only Muggle money--you can make it out of any little bit of paper."

"Correct," Snape said, careful not to reveal his surprise at such a Slytherin-worthy assessment. "I can, and you cannot. You would therefore do well to take care of what little you have."

Potter put the cup back on the table and sat back in his chair, his defiant slump all too familiar. Snape stood up and took the miniaturized books from his robe, set them on the table, and returned them to size. Potter looked at them in confusion, then dismay. The potion was already beginning to weight his eyelids, Snape noticed.

"Those are textbooks." In Potter's mouth, the word sounded like anathema. Snape allowed himself a thin smile.

"Very good, Mr. Potter. Perhaps all is not lost."

"You want me to study?" Potter squinted up, a dull poppy shine to his eyes. "I can't do magic anymore, remember?"

"You may not be able to cast, but you can learn the forms and study the history. You will not spend your time reading Muggle cartoons while we fight this war on your behalf."

"I'm not--you're not--" Outraged on multiple fronts, Potter tried to sit up straight and canted sharply to the left. He grabbed the arm of the chair, his eyes wide. "God, what did you give me?"

Snape sighed. "A soporific, among other things. Go to bed, Mr. Potter."

"I'm not--" Potter swiped his hands clumsily over his face, weaving in place in the chair. "I don't want to."

"Then you ought to have studied Potions a little more closely," Snape said, watching Potter slump back in the chair, his eyes fluttering shut and his mouth falling open. "Or at all."

He waited a minute or two to make sure Potter was under, then got up and leaned across the table for a closer look. The dose had been high, maybe a little higher than he'd intended. And Potter had lost weight over the last fortnight--his cheeks were taut and there were circles beneath his eyes. Fortunately, the damage to his face looked superficial enough. With two fingers, Snape plucked up the hem of Potter's shirt. His chest and belly were pale, thin, lightly haired, and bruised impressively over the ribs. The bruises looked painful but not life-threatening, and after a moment's contemplation, Snape let the shirt fall and leaned back.

It struck him as extremely ironic, not to mention depressing, that he was sitting across from a boy who couldn't defend himself or his possessions against the basest kind of Muggle. That this boy, with the purple marks of Muggle fists still on his face, was the Savior of the Wizarding World. And that this boy, who couldn't be bothered to learn basic Potions and who now couldn't cast a simple charm, was their best hope for defeating the monster that Riddle had become. It was really too pathetic for words.

It was also, Snape realized, extremely irritating. Because he had a policy of scrupulous honesty with himself (if with no-one else), and sitting here, watching Potter's brow unknit gradually into deeper sleep, watching his lips soften and his throat fall lax, he had to admit...he felt a creeping, insidious liking for the boy.

"Shut up, you wretched old git," he muttered to himself, hauling his bones out of the chair. Then, turning his attention rapidly away to something more familiar and less disturbing: "That pennyroyal was sub-par, I'll have it out of that Wiffleton boy's hide."

He intentionally did not allow himself to consider covering Potter with a blanket; he simply Disapparated and got on with the rest of his day.

 

 

A week later, Potter answered the door without a pause, the faintest smile at the corner of his mouth. His face had healed and he was clean-shaven. The flat had been tidied, and the textbooks were aligned neatly on the little table, a couple of bookmarks protruding from their pages. Snape gave them a suspicious look.

"I'll make tea," Potter said, closing the door and locking it, then starting for the hot plate. "How is everyone?"

"I couldn't say," Snape said drily, depositing Weasley's and Granger's envelopes on the table. "The war leaves me so little time for socializing."

Potter's smile tightened, but he bit his lip and didn't snap back. After a moment he said, "That potion you gave me was brilliant. I'm completely better."

"I'm glad to know I can still prepare elementary draughts."

"Well, thanks. For making it at all. I mean, you didn't have to."

"I'm aware of that." Snape leaned down and flipped Grotwyk's Chrestomathy open to the marked page. "You're reviewing the origins of the Tarantallegra."

Potter looked up guiltily. "Actually, I was just getting around to that."

"I see."

"I've been meaning to read more, I really have." Potter got two cups down from a cupboard that seemed to hold nothing else, then pulled a small paper box from a drawer. He fished inside it, then paused and looked up apologetically. "There's only bags, sorry."

Snape raised one eyebrow.

"Um, actually, there's only one."

Snape sighed.

The tea Potter made with his sole teabag was bitter and so weak the sides of the cup showed. Snape drank it standing up, gazing out the glass doors at the filthy Muggle world while Potter asked a series of silly, increasingly hesitant questions about his friends at school. At last he stopped, and there was an awkward silence.

"Look," Potter said at last, putting his feet up on the table and sinking lower into his chair, a familiar frown beginning to crease his forehead. "Thanks for bringing all this stuff, and thanks for the potion, but if you're just going to stand there being a git when I try to be nice to you--"

"Nobody has asked you to be nice," Snape said smoothly, carrying his cup to the nasty little sink. "To me or to anyone else. What I have asked you to do is to study."

"I don't see what the point of studying is, when I can't--"

"Then I take it you've given up completely on regaining your magic?"

"No." Potter set his cup down with a bang and glared around the flat as if it were personally responsible for his situation. "God, no. If I thought this was what the rest of my life was going to look like, I'd top myself."

"If I agreed, I'd happily save you the trouble."

"Thanks." Potter poked morosely at Best's Worst. "I'm not good with books. I'm a doer."

Snape allowed a delicate pause. "I'm not familiar with the term."

"I just mean, I like to do things, I'm good at Quidditch and flying. I'm not good at just sitting and reading. I can't remember half of what I've read, as soon as I've read it."

"You're seventeen years old and you don't have an ounce of self-discipline. I assure you, you're not special."

Potter gave him a look from under his brows. "I'm not good at lessons. You, of all people, should know that."

"It's not a question of aptitude or inclination, Mr. Potter. You are not, by nature, a scholar. Duly noted. Can you get on your broom and fly into battle?"

Potter's lips tightened. He shook his head.

"Can you cast healing spells in the infirmary?"

"No."

"Then perhaps you can use Legilimency to decipher the plans of captured Death Eaters, or Divination to gain a sense of what lies ahead for our forces?"

The pink spots were growing in Potter's cheeks. To his own dismay, Snape realized he'd been watching for them. He turned away and heard, rather than saw, Potter's tamped-down anger.

"You know I can't."

"Very good. Then perhaps you'll agree that your time in hiding would be well spent doing the bare minimum to prepare for the return of your magic."

Silence. Snape turned back. Potter was chewing his bottom lip, staring at the books.

"Yes," he said, leaning forward and pulling one of them toward him as if he meant to start reading right this second. "All right, I agree."

"Good." Snape took his wand from his robe. "When I arrive next week, I want a summary of chapters one through sixteen of Best's, together with a short essay on the historical connections of the Malfoy and Riddle families."

Potter stared at him, open-mouthed.

"Legible and in ink, if you please," said Snape. And Disapparated.

 

 

He was late the following week, delayed by a minor explosion in the laboratory. No serious damage was done, but the din caused a furor in the school, and several of the more highly-strung and exhausted students needed nerve-calming draughts. The smell of singed eyebrows was still in Snape's nose as he strode down the hall to Potter's door. It was only slightly more tolerable than the smell of the hall itself.

Potter opened to his rap, and stood back against the wall in a manner that might, in anyone else, have been deferential. Snape strode in without a second look.

"What's that smell?" Potter asked, locking up.

"Burnt Wiffleton." Snape gathered his robes, took the least uncomfortable chair, and picked up the sheaf of lined paper titled The Malfoy & Riddle Families: Six Centuries of Royal Gitdom he found neatly squared on the table. "Not a word," he said, producing a pen from his robes and crossing out Gitdom with a red slash. "Tea, please."

"I'm making it," Potter groused, then jumped when Snape floated the sachet of Temple of Heaven Gunpowder to his side. "What's this?"

"Tea. Unlike the pencil shavings you served last time."

"It's not my fault Muggles drink crap tea."

"Dangling participle," Snape said, making another slash with his pen. "Warm the cups first, please."

Potter made tea in silence while Snape read through the paper. When he was finished he shuffled the papers together, wrote a neat D- at the top, and dropped it back onto the table. Potter, sitting opposite him now, craned his neck and looked at the grade. His expression went from hopeful to outraged to resigned to depressed in the space of seconds.

"You were expecting something else?"

"I worked all week on that essay."

"An admission both saddening and all too credible."

Potter blew out a gust of frustration. "I told you I'm not any good at this stuff."

"And I agreed. Still, you can learn."

"I tried." Potter shoved Best's across the table, scowling. "It's all dates and bloody who married who and how many people were killed at the reception. It's impossible."

"It's history. If you want to fight You-Know-Who, you should understand him."

"What, by learning that his great-great-grandmother eloped with a Banshee, and his great-uncle-twice-removed was found in fragrante with Draco Malfoy's great-grandfather, a hundred years ago?"

"In flagrante."

"I don't care how they smelled, I just want my magic back."

"Delicto," Snape added. "An interesting story, but...another time, perhaps." He picked up his cup and leaned back, studying Potter, who'd devolved to his habitual slump. "I would have given you an F, but I made an allowance for the distraction of that perpetual thumping coming through your wall." He nodded in the general direction of the slump my humpy dump, which was still and forever ongoing. "Also, you noticed something many scholars miss in Best's--the connection between Cardox Malfoy's virgin daughter Sepultra, and the elder John Riddle."

Potter smiled wearily. "He played Quidditch."

"Ah."

"I'd actually heard of him before. He was the Ravenclaw Seeker for a while. Supposed to be really good."

"He went on to take a prominent position at the Ministry of Magic, until his assassination."

Potter straightened. "I missed that part."

"Understandable, given that it didn't have anything to do with Quidditch. Someone placed a leopard hair in his wine, and he strangled at the dinner table. His murderer was never brought to justice."

"Oh."

"His death caused a shift in the balance of power in the Ministry, and began a half century of so-called 'Purity Sentiment.' Which you will find a familiar concept, if you consult Best's index under the related term 'half-blood.'"

Potter was silent. After a moment he reached out and pulled his paper to him, frowning at the D-. He flipped through it while Snape drank his tea. Once Potter had gone through the whole thing, he sighed and reached for a pencil.

"Okay," he said. "What's a dangling participle?"

 

 

For the next several weeks, Snape came to Potter's flat bearing letters and Muggle money and packets of tea, and settled himself to teach. At first he spent half an hour, no more, and part of that was given over to marking Potter's latest egregious safari into the darkest thickets of the written language. Gradually, though, he found himself staying longer. The tea was decent, since he brought it himself, and while the flat was horrendous, it was some relief to be out of the school, away from the constant, almost palpable anxiety of those who remained. He was no longer offended by the aura of deadness that surrounded Potter; in fact he'd almost completely stopped noticing it. He justified the time away from the school by telling himself he was ensuring Potter didn't slip into complete laxity and self-indulgence during his exile. And he pruned ruthlessly at the growing pleasure he took in their time together.

"Right," Potter said, gesturing with his dunked digestive biscuit, "but that Liviana woman--"

"Livina."

"Livina, right, the one who was married to that Muggle priest, or bishop, or whatever he was--"

"She used to dye doves," Snape said absently, trying to remember whether her folly was still intact, and if so, whether it was worth putting on his list of magical boltholes. "Pink and blue, apparently."

"Really." Potter paused to consider this. "Anyway, after she divorced the priest, or bishop, or whatever he was--"

"Annulled."

"Annulled, whatever, didn't she end up going to France?"

"She did indeed."

"So there are Malfoys in France too."

"Have you given no thought whatsoever to the meaning of the family name?"

Potter looked blank, then uneasy. "I'm being stupid again, aren't I?"

Snape sighed and drank his tea.

They worked through Best's and covered the key points in Grotwyk's, then started in on the Potion Master's Compendium, A through Z. At any other time, Snape would have said their progress was tortuously slow. In his more reflective moments, he found it disturbing that the pace did not, in fact, bother him.

"Asafoetida," Potter said, staring hard at the back of the Compendium, as if he thought he could read through the boards. Snape grunted. "Um...that's the one that smells."

"Very good, Mr. Potter. Now limn for me, if you would, its actual properties and indications."

"Um..."

The time passed. Sometimes, sitting in the tortuous chair in the dingy flat with the wretched thumping coming through the walls like the drubbing of a giant heart, with a cup of cold tea in one hand and a dusty textbook in the other, with Potter volunteering seven wrong answers for every three he got right...sometimes, Snape was almost content.

 

 

part 2

"I think I'm actually starting to get this," Potter said, studying the notes he'd made. "Tincture of cockscomb works as an antidote to freeze hexes, but only if it's injected in the form of a bolus."

"Correct."

"Because if you're frozen, you can't drink it."

"Indeed."

Potter paused, tapping his pencil against the paper. "Where do you inject it?"

"The carotid artery, if the hex isn't severe. If it is, the heart."

Potter winced. Snape glanced out the window. It was almost dark--he'd been there over an hour.

"You have to go," said Potter, noticing the direction of his gaze. He almost sounded regretful. But then, Snape was the only person he saw now, and that only once a week. Anyone would be glad of the company, given the circumstances.

Snape stood up and arranged his robes. "For next week, cover the Ds up through Devil's Tongue, if you please."

Potter said nothing. He seemed to be doodling on his paper, gripping the pencil tightly with his mouth pinched to the side.

"Your money," Snape said, remembering the envelope still in his robes, and laying it on the table. Potter glanced at it, then cast a strange furtive look up at Snape's face.

"You don't want to go for a pint, do you?" he asked suddenly, in a rush.

Snape paused, still in the act of putting the envelope on the table. He had the unpleasant and extremely rare sensation of being completely taken by surprise. He had no answer.

"Never mind," Potter muttered, scribbling furiously at his pad. There was pink in his cheeks, hot and uncomfortable-looking.

Snape straightened, adjusted his robes, then bent again and picked up his cup. "I'm needed at the school," he said, and carried the cup to the sink. "And you're not allowed out."

"Right," Potter said after a moment, dropping the pad and standing up, wiping his palms on the backs of his jeans. For a moment Snape was afraid he was going to walk over and offer to shake hands, or God forbid embrace, but he stayed put. He was wearing a strange, fixed smile. "Say hi to everyone for me, please."

"I...expect I shall see Miss Granger later this evening. I'll pass your greeting along." It was more than he'd ever offered to do, and he wasn't sure why he was offering it now. He felt hemmed into the awful little kitchen. "Until next week, then."

"Right." Potter's smile looked painful.

Snape had never felt more relief at Disapparating, and he'd left the scenes of several murders and family reunions that way.

 

 

Later, in the Potions lab, Snape mismeasured a jigger of squid's ink, used pink convuculus instead of white, and knocked a jar of pulverized mock toad clear off a counter, covering the floor in broken glass and pulpy green strips. It was the work of a moment to clear it up, but for the rest of the evening, it wore at him. It had been years since he'd felt so off balance, so...jostled. Sternly, he told himself to shape up. He was a spy, for God's sake. Small hope for him if a seventeen year-old boy could throw him off his game with an invitation to drink.

As for the invitation itself... Potter was lonely, that was all. Anyone would be, in his situation. And the teacher-pupil relationship, which lately had been going rather well, or at least substantially better than it ever had when Potter had actually been his pupil--Snape was not unaware of the occasional overtones of such a relationship. He'd felt it himself, for some of his own teachers. There was a fondness that grew up between two minds at work on the same matter. It was natural, it meant nothing. It would pass.

He made it through the evening's strategy meeting--Voldemort's forces seemed to be massing to the north, although intelligence suggested a strike from the south--and retreated as soon as he could to his room. There, he poured himself a short whiskey, took off his outer robes, and sank into the comfortable leather chair beside the fire. It was much more amenable to the human frame than either of Potter's chairs, he reflected, studying the flames. Perhaps he should suggest new furniture to Dumbledore. The temporary arrangement was wearing on longer than any of them had foreseen, and McGonagall had yet to produce any hint of a cure.

Privately, Snape was beginning to doubt there was one.

He drank sourly for a while, dwelling unhappily in some of the more cramped corners of his memory. At last he raised a hand to unbutton his inner robes, and realized there was still an envelope in his breast pocket. An overlooked letter, he thought--Granger and Weasley still sent them every week. But upon extraction, it proved to be Potter's weekly allotment of Muggle money. Snape stared at it. In his confusion, he must have put the letters down on the table, and left the money in his robe.

"Fuck." He considered his options: take the money the following day. But he was scheduled all day in the laboratory, overseeing the creation of another batch of healing draughts. If he left that halfwit Wiffleton in charge, they'd get orange juice instead. He could just ignore it, forget it until he was due to go back the following week. But he'd seen the inside of Potter's cupboards; they were bare. Until Snape had started bringing tea with him, Potter had been hard pressed to produce two tea bags. Clearly, he needed the funds.

"Fucking hell." Wearily, he got to his feet and pulled on his outer robes. It was late, Potter was probably already asleep. It would be a short trip, no need for conversation. He'd be back home, and in bed himself, within ten minutes.

"Bloody fucking hell," he muttered for good measure, got out his wand, and Disapparated.

 

 

He Apparated in the hallway, rather than in the courtyard, because he didn't want to walk up the stairs. At some point a light bulb had been put in, but it did no more than illuminate the strewn rubbish and cast disorienting shadows along the walls. Unbelievably, the slumpy slump was still blasting away.

Snape pocketed his wand, walked down to Potter's door, and rapped. He waited.

After a minute or two of no response, he rapped again. Again, he waited.

When the door still didn't open, he took out his wand and Alohamoraed it. It opened grudgingly, with a squeak, onto darkness.

"Lumos." He walked in. The books were still on the table, the Compendium open, he noticed to the Ds. Quietly, he went to the bedroom door and glanced in. The bed was empty.

He turned on his heel, walked to the lavatory, and glanced in. He already knew it was empty, but he had to make sure. When he'd done it, he came back and stood in the middle of the main room, his wand aloft, his heart beating hard and fast. Potter was gone. It was going on midnight, and he was nowhere to be found.

For what felt like a very long time, Snape stood where he was, summoning sense. There was no sign of a struggle, or of sudden flight. Potter's clothes, few as they were, were hung in the bedroom. His wand was under his pillow. His toothbrush was on the sink in the lavatory. If it had been anyone else, at any other time, Snape would simply have said: he's out.

But Potter didn't go out. Potter was in hiding, keeping a low profile. Potter was the hope of the wizarding world, and he had no magic, and he was an idiot. If one of Voldemort's lackeys caught up to him while he was drinking a pint in some tawdry pub, he was as good as dead.

Snape considered all of this, while his heartbeat steadied and the taste of whiskey soured his mouth. Then he put out his wand, pulled his robes more closely around his body, and sat down on the least uncomfortable chair to wait.

 

 

It was almost two when he heard footsteps coming down the hall. Two pairs, walking together. Or rather, half-walking, half-stumbling. They sounded uneven and hurried, and for a moment he was ready to rise up, wand raised, and start blasting spells at the still-closed door. Then he heard a muffled laugh, and sank back down with a bitter twisting in his gut.

There was a scrabbling at the door, a clumsy fumbling at the lock, together with more stifled laughter, some sighs, and a particular tone and quality of near-silence that he knew meant sex. Potter had gone out and found some woman, a whore or a one-night stand, or worse yet, he had a girlfriend. How in God's name one got a girlfriend when one was cloistered in such a tip, Snape had no idea. But knowing Potter, he'd found a way, and he was standing on the other side of the door, kissing her. The sounds were all too explicit.

Snape looked away, and found himself staring at the books on the table in front of him. Potter's notes, the paper he'd scribbled on earlier in the day. The Compendium, open to the Ds. A tight, curved pain slid through Snape's chest.

There was a scuffling sound at the door, the sound of boots tripping over each other, and then the key turned in the lock. Snape turned to face the door as it opened. Framed in the weak light of the hallway were two bodies. One was Potter, pushed up against the doorframe, his shirt rucked up out of his jeans, his pale taut belly exposed, his hands tight in the denim jacket of the person kissing him. Who was not a woman. Who was another young man, someone Snape had never seen before. A tall, black-haired boy with a silver earring and a packet of cigarettes stuffed into his back pocket. He was leaning into Potter, embracing him with one arm, fumbling at his belt with his free hand.

Snape cleared his throat.

Potter jumped a foot, saw Snape, and staggered halfway back into the hall. The other boy stumbled back, wiping his mouth.

"Oh, fuck," said Potter, grabbing for his loosened belt. He looked absolutely terrified.

The other boy looked uncertainly at Potter, then back at Snape. He had blue eyes and heavy eyebrows, and he was, Snape realized, fairly drunk. They both were. "Who's that, your dealer?"

Potter had his back turned to them, furiously buttoning. He turned his head and snapped, "You have to go."

"Whoah, hey--"

"I'm sorry, you just have to go. I can't--" Potter turned back around, looking as if he wanted to be the one to leave. "Not tonight. I'm really sorry."

"Okay, but you sure he's--"

"Obliviate," Snape said. The boy blinked at him, then at Potter. A slow smile started across his mouth.

"I'm really sorry," Potter said again, digging in his pocket and taking out a couple of bills. He thrust them into the boy's hand. "That's for a cab. There's a phone up the street, by the petrol station."

"Oh." The boy looked at the money, smiled amiably, and started back down the hall. Potter stood in the doorway, watching him go. When Snape heard the door to the stairwell swing closed, Potter's shoulders sank. He turned and stepped into the flat, closed the door, and locked it. Then he stayed where he was, saying nothing.

"Turn on the light, please," said Snape.

Potter turned on the light. He was hunched against the door, in jeans and a T-shirt, a light windbreaker tied around his waist. His face was red, his hair was a bird's nest. He stared resolutely at the floor.

Snape said nothing.

After a minute, Potter asked quietly, "Is everything all right? At...the school, I mean?"

"Yes," said Snape.

There was silence.

"Why are you here, then?" Potter asked.

Snape took the envelope from his robes, held it up, and dropped it onto the table. Potter glanced at it, then looked away. The red in his cheeks looked painful.

"Thanks," he muttered.

"Sit down, Mr. Potter." Snape leaned back in his chair and watched while Potter tiptoed across the room and sank onto the edge of the other chair. He smelt of cigarette smoke and beer. There were rough kiss marks on his throat and jaw. "We had an agreement, did we not?"

Potter stared hard at the hideous carpet.

"Part of that agreement," Snape went on, "was that you would keep a low profile. Perhaps I didn't explain that concept clearly."

Potter shifted. "You did," he said. His eyes were still fastened to the floor.

"Then please explain to me how it is that at two o'clock in the morning I find you staggering home in the arms of a drunken Muggle boy." He could have left the boy off, could have left that completely out of it, but his heart was clenched tight--adrenaline, the aftermath of confusion, he told himself--and he took pleasure in emphasizing it. Potter cringed.

"I'm sorry," he said, wiping his palms on his jeans. They left dark marks. "I know that was stupid, I'm sorry."

"You're sorry," Snape repeated. "Excellent. Unlike Albus, I am not going to offer you a lemon drop and send you on your way. Who was the boy?"

"Nobody. I don't know."

"You don't know his name?"

"Clyde something. I don't know, I just--" Potter seemed to cast about helplessly for an answer, and found none. "I just met him."

"You met a strange boy and brought him home. Really, Mr. Potter, I've underestimated you. Is this the first time?"

Potter hesitated. Snape leaned forward, eager to catch him in a lie. Potter saw the movement, and his shoulders shrank. "No."

"How many?"

"I don't know. A few."

"Different boys?" A thought occurred to Snape. "All boys, Mr. Potter? Or do you bring young women back here as well?"

Potter looked up from the carpet at last. His face was beetroot red, and there were tears standing in his eyes. "No," he said, with a kind of forced, wretched fierceness. "No girls."

"I see." Snape leaned back. "The Headmaster would be fascinated to know the uses to which you've put this hiding place, Mr. Potter. I know I'm riveted."

The mention of Albus tripped a tear from Potter's eye, and he wiped his face furiously, staring at the far wall.

"I said I'm sorry," he gritted. "I won't do it anymore."

"You were never supposed to do it at all."

"I know. Look, I'm sorry, I don't know what else you want me to say. I've been stuck here months now, I never see anyone, I'm bloody lonely--"

"And the next time you pick up some beer-soaked delinquent from the local pub, he'll be one of Voldemort's Muggle toadies--"

"It's not like that--"

"Whoever he is, I'm sure he'll be happy to do whatever it is you want done, and when you wake up you'll be tied to the bedframe and you'll have half a dozen Death Eaters loosening their trousers in a line outside. That ought to cure you of loneliness, Mr. Potter."

Potter stared at him. His eyes were red, punched-looking.

"God, you're an arsehole," he breathed.

"And you," said Snape, rising to his feet and taking out his wand, "are a liar and an idiot. You've put good people in danger. Expect to hear from Dumbledore tomorrow."

Potter put his head in his hands.

Snape left.

 

 

He didn't sleep. He sat awake by the fire, thinking and rethinking, until dawn. Over the course of the hours he regained his calm and his innate, inevitable, snakelike sense. Potter was a liar and an idiot, but with the sunrise glowing pink in his window, Snape was prepared to admit that the situation was not, perhaps, as dire as he had cast it.

He could also admit the presence of extenuating factors. Potter was young, Potter was headstrong. A leaper, not a looker. He'd said as much himself. They'd been foolish to think he could go to earth for such a long period without betraying himself in some way. And there was also the fact that it had been a boy, that for Potter it was boys and not girls, and that it was all too likely he'd felt some need for subterfuge about that, separate from the general need for caution. There was nothing new about that kind of shame--in fact, it was depressingly old. Snape could admit that much.

He washed, noticing that in the mirror he looked no more fatigued than he did every other day, now. The lines of his face had grown long, like a portrait carved into a tree a hundred years ago. He ate a cold, standing breakfast from the tables laid out by the house elves. Then he went to the Gryffindor wing and caught Miss Granger coming down the stairs, her hair still wet and straggling about her collar.

"I need you to oversee the laboratory," he said. "Healing draughts, a gross at least. See that Wiffleton doesn't blow the place up."

"But--" She stared at him, worry pinching her brow. "I'm supposed to divine today, with Trelawney."

"Professor Trelawney can conduct her hucksterism without your assistance. I'll be back as soon as possible."

"Is it You-Know-Who?"

"It's none of your concern, Miss Granger. The Potions laboratory, if you please. I want those draughts finished, bottled, and labeled by noon."

"But--"

He turned on his heel and left her standing there, one hand on the newel post.

 

 

Potter had given up his right to common courtesy, Snape decided, Apparating directly into the wretched little living room. No more knocking at the door, no more pretense at civility.

The flat was silent and dim; for a moment Snape was seized with the conviction that Potter had left again. Perhaps for good this time, driven out by fear and humiliation. The view beyond the tall glass doors was of a grim, grey network of motorways and factories. He might be anywhere by now.

Snape turned and walked to the bedroom door, which was ajar. With one finger, he pushed it open.

Potter lay on the bed in a snarl of sheets, curled sideways with his knees pulled to his chest as if his stomach hurt. His cheek was mashed into the pillow, his eyes squeezed shut in a kind of intense, frowning repose. He wore a pair of white cotton shorts, nothing else. His legs were longer than Snape had noticed before, and thin.

There was a clock in the kitchen, next to the hot plate. Snape considered it as he put the kettle on to boil. Half past six. Well, if he didn't get to sleep, neither should Potter.

When the kettle boiled he let it shriek for a few seconds before taking it off the ring. In the bedroom, there was a grunt and a muffled thump. Snape, measuring tea, didn't turn around.

When Potter emerged, Snape was already seated in the least uncomfortable chair, drinking a cup of Temple of Heaven. A second cup stood on the table before him. Potter stood in the bedroom door, wide-eyed, practically naked. He seemed afraid to come any farther out.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, his voice hoarse and uncertain. His eyes were swollen, Snape noticed. He looked, not to put too fine a point on it, like hell.

"Get dressed." Snape sipped his tea. "Then sit down. We need to talk."

Potter gaped.

"Today, Mr. Potter."

There was some satisfaction in having honed a tone of voice so commanding that it could make hungover adolescents jump. Potter leapt back into the bedroom as if he'd been stung. Snape smiled thinly into his tea.

 

 

"Rule number one. You are never to do this again."

"Yes. I mean, all right."

"Rule number two. Assuming you don't want me to take this to Albus, you will be completely transparent in your responses to me. In other words, you will not lie."

Potter swallowed. "Okay." His eyes shifted slightly left, and Snape frowned.

"What."

"It's just..." Potter drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. He was wearing jeans and a hooded jumper, but he was obviously cold. "If you want to make sure I'm not lying, you can just use Legilimency."

Snape raised his eyebrows. "I don't need to read your mind, you nitwit. All I need to do is look at your face."

Potter blushed, and Snape rolled his eyes.

"Besides," he went on, crossing his legs at the knee. "This venture depends on you taking some responsibility for yourself and your situation. If I wanted a puppet, I could enter your mind and lay waste to it at any time. So, for that matter, could You-Know-Who."

"Right."

"The point I am trying to make, Mr. Potter, is that either you undertake, honestly and sincerely, to sort this out, or I drop it in Albus's lap."

"I see." Potter took a deep breath and hugged his knees. "I get it."

Snape let the silence draw out.

"I will," Potter added, when he realized something else was called for. "I mean, I promise to tell the truth."

"The whole truth," Snape corrected him. "Hold anything back, shade in your favor, and I'll know it."

"I know."

"Good. Rule number three, you will continue your studies."

"Um...okay."

"Rule number four, you will absolutely not leave this flat except to buy what is necessary to survive."

"All right."

"Rule number five, not a word of any of this to Granger or Weasley."

Potter stared. "Are you nuts?"

Snape paused. "They don't know about your...habits, then?"

"God, no." Potter sank down behind his knees again, his fists against his temples. "It's not exactly the kind of thing I want to write home about."

Snape considered his tea.

"How many boys?" he asked.

"Four."

"Including that one last night?"

Potter paused. "Five."

"Potter..."

"I'm trying, all right?"

"Did you ever bring the same one back twice?"

"No. Never."

"Why not?"

"It wasn't like that. It was just..." Potter looked away at the far wall, and seemed to steel himself. "It was just sex, that's all."

"You didn't like any of them?"

"I liked them. I mean, they were fine."

"But you didn't invite them back."

"I'm not supposed to be seeing anyone." Potter had the grace to look chagrined, or perhaps it was just hangover. "I couldn't exactly go out and make friends."

"Are you implying that the Headmaster coerced you into having meaningless sex with strangers?"

Potter flushed. "No! I just meant..." He chewed his lip. "Forget it. I didn't see any of them again, no."

"Did any of them show any particular interest in your background? Your family life, how you live. They must have asked."

"I said my parents were dead and I was on the dole."

"The what?"

"The dole. Money from the government. For poor people. It's what everyone's on, around here."

"How shall I master my astonishment."

"Nobody asks questions about that kind of thing. It's just how it is."

"You've hidden your wand, I hope?"

Potter nodded.

"And the books?"

"Nobody looks at books."

"A Muggle working for You-Know-Who certainly would."

"None of them did."

Snape sat back in his chair, letting his eyes narrow. "Did you ever see any of them hanging about?"

"No. You don't hang about here, or if you do, you get mugged."

"I'll thank you to restrict yourself to the English language."

Potter scratched his chin and said nothing.

"How long?" Snape asked, sinking even further back into his chair.

"How long what?"

"How long have you been doing this? When did you start?"

Potter took a careful breath and let it out. "A couple weeks after I got here. Maybe three."

"And why?"

"I told you, I was lonely." Potter gnawed at his thumbnail fitfully, then clamped his arms around his shins again. There was a brief silence while he stared at the wall. Snape waited. "I was...look, I know you hate all that Boy Who Lived shite, but I swear, sometimes I hate it even more than you do. It's not like I asked for it."

"Rule number six. No whingeing."

"I'm not." Potter's gaze was fixed on the far wall, as if it housed something rare and fascinating. "But...honest to God, sometimes I feel like I'm going to explode. I just get so furious." His fists were clenched now, the muscles of his forearms standing out in thin ropes.

Snape waited.

"Nobody wants," Potter said at last, "a queer savior."

They sat for a moment in silence. Snape turned his cup in his fingers, and studied what remained of his tea. It was cold.

"Then I suppose," he said at last, "that they're going to be very upset when you defeat The Dark Lord."

He had many years of practice in seeing without appearing to look. He didn't miss the expression of surprise, and then of gratitude, that passed across Potter's face.

 

 

part 3

For the time being, that was the end of it. Snape did not go to Albus's rooms, pull a chair to the fire, and draw poisonous warmth from revealing just how tarnished the golden boy really was. Potter, for his part, applied himself frantically to his studies, and made surprising gains in mastering the Compendium, E through M. He was quiet and measurably more polite, if a little distracted at times. And he barely left the flat at all. Snape knew, because he made spot checks. He'd warned Potter that he would.

 

 

Pop

Two o'clock, Thursday afternoon: Potter, seated on the least uncomfortable chair with the Compendium on his lap, jumped and spilled his tea.

"Very good," said Snape. "Carry on."

 

 

Pop.

Eleven o'clock, Monday evening: Potter, standing over the struggling kettle, wearing two jumpers and scarf, re-reading an old letter, breathed a white puff of surprise.

"All right," said Snape. "But turn the bloody heat on."

"It's broken."

Snape rolled his eyes and cast a warming charm on his way out.

 

 

Pop.

Six o'clock, Wednesday morning: Potter, gasping behind the bedroom door, then stopping suddenly, the ensuing silence more damning than the sounds.

"Are you alone?" Snape asked through the wall.

There was a brief, mortified pause.

"Yes."

"You have a ten-page essay on theoretical decoction due tomorrow. If you have energy to spare, I suggest you put it to use on that."

Another pause.

"All...all right."

Snape allowed himself the thinnest of smiles, and left.

 

 

Snape restrained himself and Potter behaved himself, and gradually, over the course of several more weeks, they sorted it out. There were no more discussions of Potter's nighttime visitors, and no more moaning about what the general populace did or didn't want in its savior. As the war ground on, Snape began privately to form the opinion that the general populace didn't much care if its savior was gay, straight, or twisted three times to starboard. So long as someone won the bloody war.

It was taking its toll on him, like everyone else. He was tired. Hogwarts had begun to smell of disinfectant and cheap sausage; there were shortages of everything; his personal store of good whiskey ran out. Several former sixth-years were killed in an attack on a Muggle village, and a dozen more were badly injured. The Potions laboratory ran out of blasting fungus, then peasewort, then poppy.

"I cannot create healing potions if I do not have the ingredients to do so," Snape told Albus, en route to the basement stores, where Wiffleton was attempting to tap a two hundred-year-old cask of joyfruit brandy.

"And we can't spare anyone to forage for supplies," Albus replied. "Even if foraging in the countryside were safe, which it isn't."

"Fine," Snape gritted. "Transfigure Muggle money and buy the stuff."

"Steal it, you mean." Albus paused at the door to the Great Hall, where he was going to deliver another of his rousing We Must Pull Together, All is Not Lost addresses. "We're not there yet, Severus."

"We seem well past it to me," said Snape, continuing on. "But what do I know? I'm only the bloody Potions master."

 

 

"Is everything okay?"

Snape looked up. Potter was watching him with a small frown, the tip of his pencil hovering over his paper. Snape glanced at the clock.

"You have three minutes remaining."

"Okay, but..." Potter returned his gaze to the paper and scribbled something down. "You keep sighing."

"I do not." Snape straightened in his chair and spent the next three minutes watching with hawk eyes while Potter finished his list. The moment the second hand crossed, Snape leaned forward and put a finger on the top of the paper. "If you please."

Potter kept scribbling, and Snape twitched the paper free. He ran his eye down the list, silently deploring Potter's small, crabbed hand. "You missed antimony."

"Oh."

"And myrrh."

"Bloody myrrh. I always miss that."

Snape took up the red pen, corrected the spelling of "convuculus," and handed the paper back. "Congratulations, Mr. Potter. If I were still your teacher, I would not have assigned this a failing grade."

"Really?" Potter's face lit with a smile, and he craned his neck to see the page. "Wow."

"It is a banner day."

Potter sat back, fingering the paper. "But not really, right?" Off Snape's look, he added, "Things are getting worse, aren't they?"

Snape pursed his lips and considered momentarily. "The war continues. Like most wars, it's tiring and expensive."

"And people are dying."

Snape said nothing.

"I don't guess there's any chance McGonagall's figured this out and you just forgot to tell me." Potter rubbed at a spot on his jeans with his thumb. "Sometimes I can't believe this is even happening."

"You're alive and able. You're a good deal--"

"Better off than a lot of people, I know. That's not really the point."

Snape acknowledged that in silence.

"I just wish there was something I could actually do to help," Potter muttered.

"Unless you have some deep understanding of the mind of You-Know-Who, or a secret store of vetiver, joyfruit brandy, or cannabis seed, or perhaps a larder crammed full of hams and jelly, I'm afraid the matter is out of your hands." Snape paused. Potter was looking at him oddly. "What?"

"I don't know about the rest of it," Potter said, "but I know where to get cannabis."

 

 

If Snape hadn't known the Potions laboratory shelves were bare, he never would have allowed the complex negotiations that followed. But he did, and so he listened while Potter made a doubtful case for being allowed to leave the flat and wander off, unaccompanied, for parts unknown.

"No. Absolutely not."

"You're not listening to me. This is the Muggle world, you don't know how it works. You can't just go out and buy cannabis at the chemist's."

"I fail to understand--"

"It's illegal, for one thing. And you're all..." Potter paused and gave Snape's robes a meaningful look. "Wizardy."

"I am a wizard, Mr. Potter. And you are forbidden to leave this flat except under absolute necessity."

"This is a necessity. Look, it's not a big deal, I'll be back in an hour."

"No."

"I'll be fine!"

"Give me the address of the shop, and I will go."

"They won't sell to you. They don't know you. They'll think you're a copper."

Snape raised an eyebrow.

"A policeman," Potter supplied. "Well...they'll think you're a priest, anyway. And you don't want to go there, it's not your kind of place."

Snape raised the other eyebrow.

"It's not dangerous," Potter added hastily, beginning to flush. "It's just a little...particular. They don't just let anyone in."

"You make such a convincing case."

"Look," Potter said, his cheeks pink as cotton candy. "You can't go alone, and I'm not taking you with me. So you have to let me go by myself, or there'll be no cannabis seed at all, okay?"

 

 

Five minutes later, they left together. Snape had cast a notice-me-not on both of them, but he still felt an uncomfortable creeping sensation between his shoulder blades as they walked down the stairs. He'd already failed to report on Potter's visitors, and now he was taking the boy out on a field trip. If anything happened, his head would fill Albus's laundry basket.

"Which way?" he snapped, the moment they emerged into the courtyard. Potter gave him a wary glance, and led off to the right. Snape followed, his wand tucked up his sleeve, poised to fall into his hand.

Outside the courtyard, the Muggle world was cold, the light four o'clock grey and dying. Summer, Snape realized with a start, was over. He hadn't even noticed it go by--it had seemed just a long, tiring progression of greyness and rain. There were a few pathetic yellowed grasses at the foot of the tower building, amid the rubbish and abandoned metal carts. Potter didn't seem to notice any of it; he just jammed his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker, pulled his head down into his shoulders like an owl, and started walking quickly over the broken slabs of cement toward the road. Snape paused just a second, hardly long enough to give the landscape its due measure of disgust.

"Filthy," he muttered, then carried on.

They walked up the side of a long, depressing road, while a cold wind blew in their faces. Once or twice a car passed without slowing. The second one came so close that Snape jerked around, his wand ready to deflect the collision. Potter just sidestepped a little further into the balding grass strip beside the road, and kept walking.

The road took them gradually uphill to an intersection, where Potter went left. They walked another half mile, past a series of abandoned warehouses and empty factory buildings. Snape's fingers began to lose feeling. He trained his eyes on the back of Potter's windbreaker, which looked far too thin to actually stop the wind.

It was another ten minutes before Potter stopped short, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and nodded at a small, ugly building set back from the road on their right. There was a single lighted sign in the window: apparently the place was called Heineken. A few cars were parked in front. Snape frowned.

"This is it?"

Potter nodded. "You should wait outside."

"No."

"I'll be two minutes."

Snape delivered one of his better withering looks, then sketched a mock half-bow. "After you, Mr. Potter."

Potter shifted from foot to foot, shivering. "But--"

"Before we both freeze to death, please."

With a look of complete misery on his face, Potter led the way. At the door to the place, he paused and turned. "You have to take the charm off, or they won't see me."

Snape hesitated, then took out his wand. "For two minutes. No side conversations, Mr. Potter."

"I know. I'll be careful."

Snape removed the charm, then fished in his pocket and withdrew some scraps of paper on which he kept old potion notes. "You need money," he observed, raising his wand again. Potter caught his hand. His fingers were icy.

"That's stealing."

Snape raised an eyebrow. Potter shook his head, digging in his own pocket and pulling out some crumpled bills. "I still have some left--the stuff McGonagall sends is real, right?"

"Yes." Snape didn't actually know, but given Minerva's ridiculous moral stances, he suspected so.

"Okay." Potter wiped his nose again--his fingers and cheeks were red with cold--and leaned on the door to open it. "Just...don't say anything, okay? Just wait here."

Snape promised nothing, and after a moment's frustrated wait, Potter gave up and pushed through the door. Snape followed.

It was, he realized, a primitive kind of pub. The light inside was dim and warm, showing a long bar in the middle of the room, with several pulls and a shelf of bottles. Some kind of simple, repetitive Muggle music filled the room--Muggles couldn't endure silence, apparently. Around the room were scattered several small tables, surrounded by bare wooden chairs. A few of them were occupied by Muggle men, all of whom had looked up to watch Potter walk to the bar. One or two of them glanced at Snape, their gazes assessing and speculative. For some reason, the scrutiny made him uncomfortable.

He stood by the door, waiting in silence while Potter leaned forward over the bar and spoke into the barman's ear. They seemed to know each other; the man was smiling, although he looked surprised at whatever Potter said. Then he, too, looked at Snape. He was perhaps in his fifties, with close-cropped grey hair and heavy, muscular shoulders. He didn't smile. Snape returned the courtesy.

There was a brief exchange at the bar--Potter elaborating, the barman clearly deflecting, shaking his head and busying himself with his rag on the bartop. At last Potter withdrew the money from his pocket and laid it on the bartop, in the way of the circling rag. The barman frowned.

"Please," Snape heard Potter say, through the music.

The barman sighed and gave Potter a look that Snape could only categorize as put-upon. Then he half-nodded and tossed the rag behind the bar. He pulled a mug from a rack over his head, drew a pint of something coffee-dark, and put it in front of Potter. Then he took the money off the bar and walked away to the back of the room, where there was a small dark door in the wall. He disappeared through the door.

Snape gave it a moment, then walked to the bar. Potter was occupied drinking the stout the man had given him, and jumped when Snape appeared beside him.

"God!"

"I fail to see," Snape intoned, "what a pub, even one so degraded as this, is doing selling herbs."

Potter sighed. "Just trust me." He took another drink, hesitated, then offered the mug. "It's good for the cold."

Snape took the mug, sniffed the contents, and handed it back. "No thank you."

Potter shrugged and drank. Snape looked around the room again, noticing the way the men's eyes had settled on the pair of them. Again, he felt the creeping sensation in the center of his spine. He'd done something very stupid, he realized. He'd endangered Potter, exactly as he'd forbidden Potter to endanger himself. And all for some wretched cannabis seed, which he was now sure he was not going to get.

"Potter," he murmured, careful not to let his expression change. "Take hold of my sleeve."

"What?" Potter lowered the mug and stared at him. "Why?"

"So I can take you with me when I leave, you idiot."

Potter blinked. "You're going to Disapp--" He cut himself off. "Don't be stupid, he'll be right back." He seemed, at last, to take in Snape's expression, and glanced around the room. "Oh, for God's sake." He edged away, leaning into the bar. "Just ignore them. And don't stand so close to me."

"Potter--" Snape turned to argue, and suddenly, understanding fell into place. They weren't just in a bar, they were in a particular kind of bar. The kind of bar where a particular kind of man came to drink. And to find company.

Snape drew himself up and stepped pointedly away from Potter.

"I told you not to come," Potter muttered into his mug.

"I recall that, thank you."

"You can wait outside if you want."

"It isn't safe."

"They're not going to molest you."

"For you."

"Oh." Potter took another swig of beer. "I'm fine. Len knows me, and everybody knows Len."

Snape glanced around again at the bare walls, the sad tables and chairs. "Len is the barman, I take it?"

"Yeah."

"The one who poured you that beer."

Potter made a face. "Nobody cares, Snape. And I'm eighteen now anyway. I turned."

Snape paused, a little surprised. The months had somehow slipped away. "Well, then. By all means."

Potter's expression, over the rim of the mug, was skeptical. "You should stand me one, actually. It's a tradition."

"It's also a tradition for young men of eighteen to be stripped naked, tied to tree trunks, and left to be eaten by wolves."

Potter stared.

"In the former republic of Moldogravia," Snape finished smoothly, tapping his fingers on the bar.

Potter opened his mouth, but before he could emit any pearls of wisdom, the small door opened and the barman--Len--came through. He walked behind the bar, glanced at Snape, and said, "You're Harry's friend." His tone suggested he didn't believe it.

Snape said nothing. Potter glanced at him anxiously.

"Um, yes," he said, when the silence had got too long. "Or, he's my...tutor."

"Your tutor," Len said, his gaze meditative on Snape's face. Snape, sensing judgment, drew himself up and returned it with interest. "What's he tutoring you in?"

"Um," said Potter, apparently at a loss.

"Gymnastics," said Snape.

"Thanks very much," Potter said, hurrying into the gap. "I really appreciate this, Len. I won't ask again, either."

"You'd better not," said Len, sliding a small plastic bag across the bar, barely hidden under the bar rag. "Fun's fun, but I don't want you doing a lot of this, all right?"

"I won't." Potter made the bag disappear into his windbreaker, gulped the rest of his beer, and turned to Snape. "Come on, let's go."

Snape let Potter lead the way out. Behind them, the idiotic Muggle music still played, but there was an underlying silence that felt distinctly unfriendly.

Outside, night had fallen and the wind was biting. Potter started for the road, and Snape grabbed his hood and yanked him back.

"What--"

"It's too cold to walk," Snape muttered, and Disapparated them both.

 

 

The cannabis seed proved to be fresh, pungent, and plentiful. Snape examined it in Potter's tiny kitchen, holding it up to the buzzing light strip and rolling the seeds between finger and thumb.

"I told you," Potter said, from his chair. He was on his second cup of hot tea, and his lips were still blue.

"So you did," Snape murmured, studying the seed on the tip of his finger.

 

 

He was not a young man; life held few illusions for him. Or rather, he permitted it almost none. To the age of five, he had been thin and weak, frequently ill--later it turned out that his paternal aunt Vindica had been dosing him with wrackblood drops, in an attempt to extinguish him before he reached a dangerous majority. At school he'd been beaten and humiliated, once almost sodomized, and generally abused until he learnt enough hexes to fight back. There'd been one boy, Fife, who'd liked him--but then Fife was sent down for cheating at Divination, and the ensuing years were bleak.

Falling in with the Death Eaters had been a strange kind of relief--here at last were people so much more hateful and craven than himself that he was almost popular. They admired his skill at magic and his smart, ruthless strategies; or they praised him for them, at least. They were cavalier about pain and suffering, indifferent to sexual preference, bored by sentiment. They were like him, he thought. At first.

Where that had led was not good, never good--he spent very little time thinking about that time. It was a hard, dark spot inside of him, a hidden twin of the black smear on his forearm. He wasn't a young man, and he harbored no illusions whatsoever about the time he had left. There was no point spending that time mooning over what was past, or pretending it hadn't happened.

And yet. For all that he knew exactly who and what he was, for all that he could stand naked and unflinching, aged and pale, in front of the warped old mirror in his room, for all that he would have answered with a killing smirk any accusation that there was light somewhere inside him, alongside the rotten black wound of years--for all that. He still woke to the silence of dawn, and stared at the ceiling, and thought of Potter.

 

 

Pop.

Past midnight, the darkest hour of Sunday morning. The Muggle world frozen solid outside the windows, the tower silent for once. The horrendous music had been shut off. It was so quiet he could hear the wind across the windowpanes, and the quiet turn of a sleeping body in the next room.

He went and looked, because it was his duty to do so. Potter was alone, asleep, splayed across the sheets like a dead man. His mouth was open and his face was slack and vacant. He was not particularly lovely. He was asleep.

Snape leaned against the doorframe for a long time, studying Potter's face. There was no tickle of magic in the room whatsoever, no sense of life behind the veil. The darkness felt leaden, the world felt empty, and Snape's heart seemed to have turned to ash.

 

 

Wednesday night, he felt ill and skipped the evening meal, retreating instead to his own rooms and his own small fireside. They were starting to ration wood now, and he sat close to the small blaze, wrapped in an old quilt, in a dim frame of mind. He had Potter's latest essay on Unforgiveable Curses on his lap, and was checking it absently, when there was a deep, bowel-shaking crump from somewhere downstairs. For an instant he sat still, staring at nothing, hardly thinking. The whole building was silent. Rain pattered at the window.

Then someone screamed, and someone else joined in, and after that there were feet running in the halls, shouting and orders and general panic. Snape, by then, was already out of his rooms, fighting through the crowd of bodies to get down the stairs to the Great Hall. Which was, he realized blankly when he saw the doors thrown open, somehow missing by half.

There was a dark stink in the air, of burnt air and stone and bodies. Students were howling and milling about like animals. No sign of Pomfrey or Albus. Snape grabbed the braids of the girl running past and snapped her to a halt.

"Get Pomfrey," he told her. "Tell her we need Healers."

"Wh--" She looked at him blankly, and he shook her sharply by her hair. When he stopped, she had color in her cheeks and more focus in her eyes. "Yes, right. Let go, that hurts."

He let her go and she spun away. Snape turned and pushed through into the Hall. The long benches and tables were overturned, broken, blasted to bits. Among them lay bodies, some moving, some still. The head table was nowhere to be seen. The wall against which it had stood was completely gone, replaced by a litter of broken stones and rubble. A cold rain fell on the steaming flags.

Snape jerked up his sleeves and headed in, his wand at the ready. Behind him, a couple of alums had found their brooms and were trying to get organized to take off. Fine, let them. He grabbed a Hufflepuff boy with a wet face. "How many injured?"

"I don't know," the boy gasped, staring at him as if he'd asked for the population of Mumbai. "It all just blew up--"

"I'm aware of that. Start finding the injured. And you." He nodded at another boy, house undetermined, who firmed his jaw and nodded. "Get the others together. Heal what you can, keep a count. Pomfrey is coming."

"Yes, sir." They scattered, grabbing a couple of others as they went, little birds cheeping and starting to flock with a purpose. Snape turned and found himself about to tread on a girl with blood all down her face. He bent; she was breathing. That was one, then. He Immobilized her and grabbed a Ravenclaw to stanch the bleeding.

Slowly, he picked his way forward through the hall, lifting tables from broken bodies, assigning the able to the disabled. A first flight of alums took off into the darkness, and dimly he heard the crackle of wands, laughter, yelling, sounds of retreat and pursuit. Still no sign of Albus.

"For God's sake," Snape muttered, shifting a broken tabletop off a white-faced Gryffindor boy. "You fucking old fool, you are not allowed to die at the dinner table."

"I have no intentions of it," said Albus, from behind him. Snape turned. Albus stood there, hatless and smoke-blackened, an ugly red scrape on his forehead. A pair of Slytherin alums stood behind him warily, looking ready to catch him if he fell. "Where is McGonagall?"

"Here," someone answered, and they turned to see a bluff-looking boy in a red jumper lifting up a shattered table. From beneath it crept a small grey cat. As soon as she was free, Minerva shifted back to human shape, and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder.

"I'm all right," she said, looking around. "How did they take us by surprise?"

"I have no idea," Snape replied. The presence of Albus, ridiculous but hale, had calmed him slightly. "I need healing draughts--get to the laboratory and bring as many as you can carry." The two Slytherins nodded and Disapparated. "Pomfrey has a store as well. Someone needs to check the wards--"

Albus stepped forward and took hold of Snape's sleeve. His eyes were wide and blue. There was fear in them.

"Harry," he said.

Snape jerked his arm free and Disapparated.

 

 

The flat no longer existed, in any meaningful sense of the world. Apparating into what had been the middle of the living room, Snape found himself perched dangerously on the tip of a chunk of concrete protruding out into open space. For a moment he was afraid he'd gotten disoriented and landed in the wrong place. Then he realized that the face of the building had been blown off, that the tall glass doors with their execrable view were gone, as well as more than half of the flat itself. The chunk of floor on which he stood creaked, and a bit of scorched concrete tumbled from the edge into darkness. He didn't hear it land.

He Disapparated and came back on the threshold to the hallway. The door was off its hinges, blown to smithereens in the hall. Everything had the same dark, nauseating, burnt hair and sugar reek of the attack at the school.

It must have just happened, or at any rate it couldn't have been too long ago. He told himself that--it was the sensible thing to think--and made sure his grip on his wand was tight. There was a minute chance that Potter was still inside. The blast could have missed him, if he'd been in the bedroom at the time.

"Potter." He stepped inside and craned his neck to see through the bedroom doorway. Its door was off the hinges too, thrown back against the wall with enough force to break the knob. "Mr. Potter. Are you here?"

No answer. He damned everything to hell and walked back in, far enough to see fully into the bedroom. It was intact, its one window blown to shards. The bed was up against the far wall, the floor covered in singed clothes and books. There was no sign of Potter.

Snape felt his throat go tight and hard, as if he were being throttled by an invisible hand. He turned and walked to the lavatory. The shower was standing open, water dribbling down the walls. Potter wasn't in it. Snape walked back to the main room.

He stood on the threshold, in the margin of safety, staring at the black hole where the two uncomfortable chairs had been. In the corner of the hall, close to his foot, a few pages of Best's Worst fluttered loose in the grit. The tower was silent all up and down its height, as if the blow to its midsection had been a killing one, and he was standing in the gut of an upright corpse.

For a moment he swayed, vertigo climbing his legs--then he grabbed the doorframe and tightened his grip on his wand. Now was not a time for histrionics. Potter might still be alive. He left the flat for necessities; he might have been out at the time of the attack. Or he might be dead.

"Don't be an idiot," Snape muttered to himself, stepping back into the silent hallway. He should go back to the school immediately, report Potter's absence, and start a search party. Potter wasn't a complete fool; if he'd escaped he would find a way to send a message. Under the circumstances, an owl or a floo would be an acceptable risk. Except Potter had no magic, probably no money, and if he was alive he was now lost somewhere amid the Muggle millions of London, a single ant in the hill.

"For the love of Merlin," Snape said, his grip tightening on the doorframe. He stared through the demolished wall into darkness. Not since he'd been a boy of thirteen, bruised and bleeding into the Slytherin sinks at three o'clock in the morning, had he felt so desolate.

 

 

The sensible thing to do was to go directly back to the school, but Snape didn't do that. Instead he found himself thundering down the fetid staircase and into the courtyard, hoping vaguely to find Potter hidden there. He did not. The courtyard was indifferent, even hostile with its invitations to bestiality, coprophagy, and incest. Snape stood in the middle, clutching his wand, trying to calm his brain. Potter was dead. That meant the war was over, Voldemort had won. How could they have been so stupid as to drop their supposed champion unguarded into the Muggle world? What had they expected to happen?

And what would happen now? For a moment Snape stopped thinking of Potter, caught unawares and fried to a crisp before he even had time to scream. For a moment his mind caromed away from that horrifying scenario, and visited instead his own probable future. He still had the Mark on his arm, he was still a Death Eater. He knew now which side was going to win, and sense and strategy had always been his forte. The sensible, strategic thing to do was to throw his lot in with Voldemort's army. He had everything Albus had ever told him, everything he knew about the school and its workings, everything he knew about Potter. Not that it mattered anymore, now that The Boy Who Lived was a small black scorch mark on a cinderblock. None of it mattered anymore, and if Snape wanted to survive the power shift, he needed to be sensible.

Abruptly he felt he was going to be sick. He pitched miserably forward, his hands braced on his knees, sweat popping out on his brow. His breath came short and fast, his legs trembled. The Mark ached. He was a shadow of a man, a mere outline where a man had once almost stood.

When the nausea passed he straightened and wiped his forehead, then considered his wand almost idly, as if he'd never seen it before. He'd heard of a wizard who'd Adava Kedavraed himself. Apparently it was possible. And now that he thought of it, it didn't seem all that foolish. A quick, decisive end by his own hand--there was more dignity in that than in toadying for Voldemort for another five or ten years, or in returning to the school to briefly prolong the inevitable for Dumbledore's sad remnants.

He closed his eyes, and without any effort on his part, saw an image of Potter sitting on the more uncomfortable chair, squinting at the pages of the Compendium as if it were written in an ancient tongue. It was a commonplace image, one he'd seen in reality many times. It made his chest feel intolerably hot and tight, as if he were being pressed to repent some secret sin.

When he opened his eyes, he saw a green bottle lying in front of him. It was part of the general rubbish of the courtyard--just another bottle, dropped by a careless Muggle hand. But it was lying on its side, the label facing him. He could read it clearly. It said Heineken.

Snape lowered his wand. The pain in his chest eased, the invisible boot lifted. He walked to the bottle and toed it around so he could read it right-side up. Heineken, it said again.

Snape ran a hand over his face, took a deep breath, and Disapparated.

 

 

The pub was closed, apparently--the windows were dark, the sign was out, there was only one car in front. Snape briefly considered blowing the door in, then knocked instead. At this point, there was nothing lost in courtesy.

To his surprise the door opened immediately. Inside stood a red-haired man who looked half giant, packed into a Muggle shirt and a pair of trousers poised to split at the seams. He had the ruddy skin of a day laborer, and the broken nose of a fighter. He gave Snape a sober look.

"You're the one, then."

Snape said nothing. The man sighed. "Harry's tutor. You're him, right?"

"I...am."

"You're late." The man pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and held it out. On it was written a street address Snape didn't recognize. "Len's got him home already. Someone roughed him up." The man leaned forward against the door jamb, his manner both menacing and inviting. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

Snape took the paper and stared at it, trying not to notice that his hand shook. "Harry was here? Tonight?"

"That's what I said. All bashed up, looked scared out of his mind. Like to know who did it."

"No you wouldn't."

"What's that?"

Snape frowned, raising the paper. "Where is this?"

"Shepherd's Bush."

"Where is that?" Snape heard the note of desperation in his voice, and clamped down hard. "I need to see a map."

"Central line on the bloody tube, mate."

"I need a map," Snape said, ignoring whatever had just come out of the man's mouth. "Show me where this is."

That earned him a long look, which he returned in silence. The man pushed off the doorframe and disappeared back into the pub. Snape let out a breath and studied the paper again. It was in Potter's terrible hand. 1116 Uxbridge Road. All right. Come soon, please. That last seemed redundant, but he imagined Potter writing it in haste, possibly in shock, and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the man was standing in the door with a small book in his hand, giving him a strange look.

"Show me," Snape said, leaning forward.

The man shook his head and held out the book, opened to a densely printed map. "Right, we're here. Uxbridge runs along here. Central line takes you right there, easy-peasy."

Snape stared at the pages intently, memorizing the layout and the scale. The man gave him another doubtful look.

"Len says you're all right," he said, "because Harry says you're all right, but to be honest with you, mate, I think you're a queerfish, and I'd just as soon not see you back again."

"That sounds like a fair trade," Snape said, stepping back. "You've been most helpful, thank you."

"Don't mention it." The man started to swing the door closed, and Snape held up his wand.

"One last thing, if you don't mind."

"What?" The man was staring at his wand hand, his huge brow furrowed in irritation.

"Obliviate."

He was gone before the man's eyes refocused.

 

 

Uxbridge Road was a nightmare of speeding headlights and metal-shuttered doorways. Snape stood on the corner, squinting at the numbers on the little row houses before him. Slowly, and then with increasing speed, he started to walk. 1116 was just like all the others, with its pathetic postage stamp square of garden and the iron bars over its windows. Snape took the front steps two at a time.

He knocked hard, scraping skin off his knuckles. The traffic behind him was too loud to hear whether anyone was coming, so he waited rigidly, his wand in one hand, the crumpled slip of paper in the other. After a long pause, the lock flipped. Then the door opened, and the barman, Len, was looking at him past a small chain. He didn't look impressed.

"I'm here for Potter," Snape said. The man's expression didn't change. Snape tightened his grip on his wand. "Harry."

There was a long pause, while Snape counted down the seconds until he Crucioed the man to his knees--and then the door closed in his face. He gaped at it. Before he could raise his wand to blast a hole through it, though, he heard the sound of the chain being fiddled with, and the door opened again. Len stood to the side, his face forbidding.

"Come on in," he said, in a tone that suggested he'd rather Snape didn't.

Cautiously, Snape stepped inside. The front hall was small and cramped, filled with shoes and umbrellas and a potted violet on a stand. The house was dim, and smelled of artificial lemon.

Snape's neck prickled and he wondered if he'd been incredibly stupid. Potter wasn't here. No-one was here but Len and the gaggle of Death Eaters waiting in the room down the hall, smirking in silence as they listened to the wary approach of Snape, the false one. Snape, the traitor. Snape, the fool who'd been found out. Mooning over The Boy Who Lived, poor sod--but not for long. They'd take care of that little issue for him, along with everything else.

"He's in the bedroom," Len said. "Second door on the left." When Snape didn't move, he added in a slightly defensive tone, "The guest room."

"I see," Snape said. Numbly, almost absently, he walked down the hall. Behind him, he heard Len flip the lock on the door, and put the chain back on. The sounds seemed unusually loud and final.

The second door on the left was pulled almost closed. He saw his own hand close on the handle, his skin bone-white.

"In there," Len confirmed. He hadn't moved from the front door. "Might want to let him sleep a while, though."

"I don't think so," Snape said, turning the knob. "I think he's slept enough."

He pushed the door open, and for a moment he saw the dark figures waiting inside. Smiling patiently at him.

Then his eyes adjusted and he saw a bulky wardrobe, a coat thrown over a chair, a blanket wadded at the foot of a bed. On which lay Potter, thin and still. His particular signature of flatness lay heavy on the air.

Snape's throat sealed to the roof of his mouth, and he stepped inside. "Lumos." The warm glow lifted the bruises and scrapes on Potter's face, the awkward plaster taped to his knuckles. Len must have done that. Snape made a mental note not to Crucio Len after all. Then he stopped making mental notes, because Potter rolled onto his back and squinted into the wand, his bandaged hand covering his eyes.

"What are--" His mouth seemed dry; he stopped and swallowed with some effort. His eyes focused, then widened. "Snape?"

Snape lowered the wand, and stepped closer. "Yes. Are you all right?"

"Oh, God--" Potter scrambled to sit up, and Snape reached out a hand either to stop him or help him, he wasn't sure which. Potter grabbed it. His skin was hot and dry, and his grip was deathly tight. "Snape--" He pulled hard, half-climbing Snape's arm, and suddenly they were in an awkward, crushing embrace. Potter's face was pressed to Snape's chest, and he was breathing in great, heaving gasps.

"Are you all right?" Snape repeated, at a loss, unsure what to do with his hands. Potter nodded. "Are you hurt?"

"No. I mean, a little. I'm all right. Fuck, I don't know." Potter pushed away, wiped his face with his forearm, and stared hard at the corner of the room, collecting himself.

"Let me see." Snape raised the wand close to Potter's temple, and studied the damage. Superficial enough--just bruises and some skin lost, a bit of a gash on the chin. He still had his glasses, though one lens was chipped. "Your typical undeserved good luck seems to have..." For some reason, Snape couldn't find the words to finish that thought. He had a strong urge to lay the palm of his hand on Harry's head. Touch his hair, feel the warmth and solidity of his skull.

There was a brief silence. Then Harry looked around, his eyes wet and full, his mouth turned down at the corners.

"I know this is insane," he said, "but I'd really like to kiss you, please."

Outside the window, cars whirred past like demons. Snape tried to think.

"You are," he started to say, then stopped. The light of his wand seemed to have dimmed. "I am hardly in a position..."

Harry's mouth tightened, and he looked quickly away, swiping his forearm across his eyes. "It's okay," he muttered.

Snape closed his eyes, then opened them. He reached out and laid the palm of his hand on Harry's head. Harry started, then held very still.

"It isn't safe," Snape said, his commanding tone restored. Then he bent down and pressed his lips to Harry's cheek, his jaw, his mouth. A shiver went through Harry, and he made a soft sound in his throat. Snape pressed his thumb to the skin there, noticing with some part of his mind that it was hot. Harry's lips were soft and wet. His beard scraped, his hands clung. He rose up on his knees and they kissed awkwardly, urgently, passing the tastes of blood and ash between their mouths.

There was a sound from the hall and Snape turned without thinking, his wand raised. Len was at the door, staring in. His eyes were on Snape's wand, his expression confused.

"Len," Potter said, wiping his face, trying absurdly for innocence. "That's just...it's a torch."

Len shot Potter a disbelieving look, and Snape frowned. "Where is the nearest inn?"

"Inn?" Len looked doubly confused. "What, you mean a hotel?"

Snape waited in silence until Potter said, "Um, yes, right, a hotel. Or a motel, I guess--is there one around here?"

"Sure, there's a few. Or you know, there's plenty in Leicester Square."

"Right, that's good. That's, um, busy." Potter's tone was significant, meant for Snape--he was catching on. "Lots of people stay there. Tourists."

"You can stay here," Len said, his gaze keeping the invitation strictly to Potter. "You should go to the police, Harry."

"Do you know how to get there?" Snape asked, turning back to Potter.

"Um, the police?"

"Leicester Square."

"Oh, right. Yes."

"Good." Snape turned back to Len, who had pushed the door open halfway and was reaching around to turn on the overhead light. "Thank you for seeing to Mr. Potter. Your services are no longer required."

"My services?" Len gave Snape a challenging look. "I'm not in bloody service to you or anyone, you--"

"Obliviate."

Potter slid out of the far side of the bed and stood up, wincing. "You didn't have to do that. He's been really nice."

"For the last time," Snape said, holding out his hand. "It has nothing to do with being nice. Help me take us to this Square."

He was careful only to graze Potter's mind, gleaning just enough to learn where they needed to Apparate correctly. As he'd said once before, he didn't need to read Potter's mind to know what he was thinking. It was all laid out in his nervous smile, the readiness with which he gave his hand, the damp heat of his fingertips. Snape took a deep breath and damned himself for an idiot, then pulled Potter close and got them moving.

 

 

part 4

"We need money," Potter said bleakly, staring at the hideously bright lights of the Muggle businesses in the square. They seemed to have landed in some kind of nightmarish carnival district, where the cobblestones were thronged with Muggles in various stages of intoxication and idiocy. "Mine's all gone."

Snape turned on his heel and walked to the closest phone box, where he began pulling down paper cards advertising the services of whores. Potter appeared at his elbow, anxiously jostling.

"Those are...tart cards. What are you doing?"

"Making money." He stepped into the booth with a fistful of crumpled cards, and stepped out folding a wad of Muggle bills. Potter gaped.

"But that's stealing."

"And this is how Slytherins fight wars." Snape handed the bills over. "Is that enough for a night in one of these hovels?"

Potter blinked, then flipped cautiously through the stack. "It's...yeah, it's plenty."

"Good. Then pick one and let's get off the street before one of You-Know-Who's lackeys appears and blasts us into small bits."

Potter stuffed the money into his pocket and hurried toward one of the buildings.

 

 

The room wasn't that bad, Snape had to admit. It was clean and quiet, and the lamps were subdued. As soon as they closed the door, he cast a warming charm and some wards. Potter, despite his heavy jumper, had begun to shiver.

"Sit down," said Snape, going to the window and warding it as well. "Will they bring food?"

"Only if we order it, I think." Potter sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, looking around. "I've never stayed in a hotel before."

"You should have tea. And something to eat."

"I'm all right." Potter rubbed his palms down the legs of his jeans, then toed off his shoes and pulled his knees up to his chest, hugging them tightly. "How did you know to come?"

"There was an attack at the school." Saying it reminded Snape that he needed to get back, or at the very least send word that they were safe. "Death Eaters. They blasted the Great Hall."

Potter went paler than he already was. "Are people...is everyone okay?"

Snape pulled the curtains closed.

"Miss Granger and Mr. Weasley are accounted for," he said, after a moment. He let a short pause follow that, on behalf of those who weren't. "Your flat was destroyed," he said, after a moment. "How did you escape?"

Potter was staring at the wall.

"Harry," Snape said.

"What?"

"Order tea and food, please."

"I was in the hallway." Potter's stare shifted to Snape. His eyes were blank, his knuckles white around his knees. "I was just coming back with groceries."

"I see."

"It blew up from the inside."

"From the outside," Snape corrected. "From the windows." He went to the telephone and picked it up with some distaste. "How does this work?"

Potter stared at him for a moment, then his eyes focused on the receiver and he frowned. "You're holding it wrong." He got up and came over. "Here, give it to me. I'll do it."

Snape relinquished the phone and sank into a chair. He watched through a weary haze while Potter ordered tea and sandwiches.

"Get in the bath," he said, when Potter hung up. "You're cold and tired. It will help."

"What about you?"

"I'm clean enough."

That got him a distant smile, which in turn gave him a small surge of warmth in his chest. When he was less busy, less weary, less occupied with trying to think through a hundred things at once, he'd worry about that small warmth. For now, he let it go.

Potter went into the bathroom and started the water running. Snape sank down into the chair and let his head fall onto his hand. Briefly, he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, Potter was bending over him. Still dirty, still dressed--it had only been a moment. His eyes were red and wet, and there was a tremulous but genuine smile at the corner of his mouth.

"Thank you," he said quietly, and kissed Snape's temple, and went to take his bath.

 

 

While Potter bathed, Snape strengthened the wards as much as he could. There was a knock at the door; he froze with his wand in hand, his heart kick-started to a gallop, then remembered the food. It came on a tray, carried by a bored young Muggle who picked his payment from the bills on the dresser when Snape told him to do so. He left, and Snape sealed the door behind him.

Potter came out of the bathroom in a towel, his hair slicked to his skull, sleek as an otter's. His glasses were filmed with drops of water.

"Was that the food?" he asked, heading straight for the tray. Being half-naked didn't seem to faze him--he grabbed a sandwich and a cup and sat on the edge of the bed with them, finishing half the tea in a go. Snape considered a remark, but didn't make it. There was a long red scrape down Potter's right side, and a small chunk missing from his shoulder, but other than that he seemed intact. The bath had put some color into his face.

"I'm going back to the school," Snape said, picking up his own tea, which was cold. Potter stopped chewing.

"But--" He swallowed with an effort. "I can't just stay here."

"You can indeed."

"But I have to come back with you."

"That would be the stupidest thing you could do, under the circumstances. Which explains why it was your first impulse."

"But..." Potter stared blankly at the carpet, then looked at his half sandwich as if he'd forgotten what it was. "But people are dead, Snape."

"People have been dying for months. If the school is attacked again you could easily be killed too. You'll stay hidden until we discover how this happened."

Snape put his cup down and took his outer robes from the chair, noticing that they smelt of smoke. His whole body felt made of lead, and his hands were clumsy. It was impossible, for some reason, to turn the robes rightways up and find the sleeves.

Potter put his cup and sandwich down, stood up, and took the robes from Snape's hands. "Here, let me." He shook the sleeves out and brushed the fabric with the flat of his hand, then offered the robes, the way a man offered a woman's coat. Snape hesitated.

"Will you come back?" Potter asked quietly, his gaze on the robes. Snape pressed his lips together tightly, and shrugged into the sleeves.

"Yes. It's not safe for you to be here alone."

"It's not safe for me to be anywhere, apparently."

"No whingeing." Snape pulled the robes closed, made sure his wand was in his pocket, and stepped back. "I've warded the room. Don't answer the door, and don't leave. I'll be back as soon as possible."

"Wait." Potter stepped forward, gooseflesh on his arms and chest, the muscles of his throat taut and hard. His hand fisted the front of Snape's robes. "Just, before you go--"

There was no deterring an eighteen year-old boy, not when he was lonely and frightened and wanted to kiss you. Snape didn't try. He leaned into it, felt Potter's tongue touch his lips, felt Potter's fingers clutch at his chest, and lifted a hand to graze the stubble and soft skin along Potter's jaw. Quiet filled his mind. The particular quiet of Potter's unmagical mind--not deadness or flatness, never unpleasant anymore. It had become so familiar now, so much a part of Potter himself, that it only felt like calm.

Snape pulled away first, after only a few seconds, because he wasn't so lovestruck as all that. He stepped back again, straightened his robes, and gave Potter an appraising look. The towel hid no sins.

"Come back, okay?" Potter said, his expression half dazed lust, half apprehension.

"Go to bed," said Snape. "I'll bring you a razor and some clean clothes. You're beginning to look like an inmate of Azkaban."

He Disapparated just as Potter lifted a hand to rub his own jaw in dismay.

 

 

Back at the school, he was surprised to discover he'd been gone less than two hours. In that time, the Great Hall had been cleared of the dead and wounded, and that entire side of the school had been put under wards. The students were housed for the night in the ground floor classrooms, with guards posted. All the lights in the hospital wing were on.

Snape found Albus and Minerva in Albus's office, with Trelawney trembling on the couch.

"Dear boy!" she cried, when he walked in. "I see a great darkness, a fiery blast--"

"Oh, shut up," said Snape, passing her and taking up the teapot on the edge of Albus's desk. It was still hot, and there was a cup almost empty, so he poured some for himself.

"Harry," Albus said immediately, not bothering to ask further.

"Alive. The flat was blown to bits, and he was barely scratched." He heard Trelawney's dramatic indrawn breath. "He wasn't in it at the time." She exhaled in disappointment.

"Where is he now?" Minerva asked, her eyes red-rimmed but steady. There was a white plaster on her temple; he hadn't noticed before that she'd been hurt. Albus, too, was bandaged, and smelled of liniment.

"In a...hotel room, in London. I warded it as heavily as I could."

"Woe," muttered Trelawney. Snape restrained the urge to throw the teacup at her.

"We don't know much," Albus said. "We're hoping one of our sorties will capture a Death Eater alive. There are still two groups in the air."

"Could they have tracked you?" Minerva asked Snape. He gave her a cool look over his teacup.

"Of course."

"Did they?"

"I have no idea."

"Treason," whispered Trelawney, almost to herself. Snape turned, his sneer already in place, but Albus beat him to it.

"There's no evidence of treason," he said firmly, standing up and leaning forward on his desk. "We are at war, Sybil. There are a hundred ways the enemy could have found Harry's hiding place. We're lucky he stayed hidden as long as he did."

"Still no luck on restoring his magic," said Minerva. "It bothers me, Albus, how we seem to keep losing ground."

"It bothers all of us," he agreed. "But for now we can only regroup. We have many injured; Pomfrey and her staff are exhausted. Severus, how are our Potions stores?"

"Dismal."

"Hagrid may have found us a supplier for dittany--will you stay to discuss that, please?"

Snape narrowed his eyes. "Of course."

"Some of the Hufflepuffs have been asking for you," Albus said gently to Trelawney, who looked worried, and got up right away. Minerva gave Albus a sidelong look, and stood up too.

"I want to check some of those wards," she said, and followed Trelawney out, closing the door behind her.

Snape put his cup down. Albus lifted the teapot, offering in silence. Snape shook his head.

"Is he safe?" Albus asked.

"As safe as I could make him. In imperfect circumstances."

A brief silence followed, in which Albus studied Snape's face closely. There was the faintest, gentlest sensation at the very far corner of Snape's consciousness. He frowned and stiffened. The sensation stopped.

"Before you storm out," Albus said, sitting back down, "I apologize. It isn't that I suspect you of treason, Severus. You know that."

"Do I."

Albus sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You do, although if you wish to verify it from my own mind, you're welcome to poke around. I have very few secrets at this point in my life."

"Lucky you."

"Indeed." Albus looked up, his eyebrows in disarray, his mouth crimped wearily. "Sit down, Severus."

Snape sat.

"Harry must be protected," said Albus. "That must be our first priority. You must keep him from harm."

"I have responsibilities in the laboratory--"

"No," said Albus, laying his hand down on the desktop, and looking Snape directly in the eye. "Enough, Severus. Enough of this. We both know what is going on here. I think we'd both prefer I didn't speak more plainly, just now."

Snape sat very still and said nothing.

"I make no judgments," Albus went on. "Of either of you. But it is essential that you understand--your job is to keep him safe. Now more than ever."

"You think I've forgotten that."

"No." Albus seemed momentarily overcome by frustration; when he spoke, he enunciated like a man mastering himself with difficulty. "I asked you to protect Harry not only because you are our best spy, but because you are perhaps our clearest thinker. You are a strategist, Severus. You play the best end game I have ever seen." He smiled ruefully. "Until recently, I also think it would have been fair to say your mind was completely unclouded by any positive emotion for Harry. You were practically the only person here who didn't harbor some degree of sentiment, or hero-worship, or soft feeling for him. It made you unpleasant at times, but it also made you reliable."

Snape shifted in his chair. "And now?"

Albus sat back, the rueful smile still in place. "And now."

The clock on the mantelpiece struck a quarter till the hour. Snape glanced at it; it was getting on to midnight.

"And now," Albus said, kindly enough, "you're in love with him. Don't let that cloud your vision, Severus. You need your wits about you."

"I have never kept them anywhere else." Snape stood up. "Am I to understand you want me to return to guard Mr. Potter in his room?"

Albus nodded slowly, his eyes on a handwritten report on his desk, but his expression abstracted. Then he looked up, sharp again. "If we capture a Death Eater, I'll want you for the interrogation. Have Minerva give you one of her bells."

Snape nodded, and turned to leave.

"And you'll want some space cleared in the Potions laboratory, I think. Hagrid's dittany supplier sells in bulk."

 

 

Minerva gave him a small bell, charmed to ring when he was wanted. It was a convenient system for calling one's dog, he reflected, packing a small satchel in his rooms. He took some bread and pumpkin juice, a mild healing potion, some clean clothes, and the promised razor. As an afterthought, he added a copy of Quidditch Through the Ages. Then he took it out, tossed it across the room, and thrust in Fauntleroy's biography of Riddle instead. Albus was right--he had to keep close watch on himself.

That was a difficult thing to remember when he Apparated in the dim, warm hotel room and found Potter curled naked in the bed. The faint Pop of Snape's appearance was enough to rouse him--he lifted his head and looked round in confusion.

"What--Snape?"

Snape laid the satchel down on the dresser, and began unbuttoning his cloak. "The situation at the school is in hand. Go back to sleep."

"Oh." Potter blinked. His glasses stood on the nightstand, glinting in one corner where they'd been chipped. He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, then winced and fingered the gash in his chin. "Are you staying?"

"For now." Snape turned and went into the lavatory, closing the door behind him. In the awful glare of the Muggle light, he rinsed his face and hands and studied his face. He'd aged another ten years. He closed his eyes and erased the image of Potter sitting up in the bed, his chest pale and naked, the sheets fallen to his waist. It was several minutes before he opened the door and went back into the room.

Potter was still in the bed, sitting up with his eyes closed, apparently half-asleep again. He turned when Snape closed the lavatory door, though. Snape said nothing. He went back to the dresser, took out the small bundle of potion and food, and laid out the clothes in a neat pile.

"These should fit you." He laid Fauntleroy down beside them, closed the satchel, and opened a single button of his collar, in deference to comfort.

"Oh, thanks. Mine are a mess." Potter was squinting at the pile of clothes; when he saw Snape looking at him, he smiled and shifted to one side of the mattress. "I've got trousers on, just so you know."

"Thank you for that information." Snape sank into the armchair, propped his head on his hand, and closed his eyes. "The light, please."

There was a silence. Snape kept his eyes closed.

"You're sleeping in the chair?" Potter asked, after a minute.

"No. I am sitting in the chair listening to you speak."

Another silence.

"That's stupid," Potter said at last. "You're exhausted."

"I'm fine."

"You look like shite."

"My natural state, Mr. Potter, I'm sure. The light, please."

"Snape."

"Mr. Potter."

There was a pause, then the sound of the covers being thrown back. Snape opened his eyes and found Potter getting out of the bed. He was indeed wearing trousers, which was a relief.

"What are you doing?" Snape asked, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. Potter took his glasses from the table, hooked them over his ears, and made a peremptory get up gesture with his hand.

"I'm trading you." Potter came and stood over the chair, his naked belly absurdly close to Snape's face. "Get up, please. I want the chair."

"Too bad," Snape said, closing his eyes again in self-defence. "You can't have it."

"Snape, stop being an idiot. You've been Apparating all over England all night, you must be tired. Take the bloody bed."

"Language. And I prefer the chair."

"No you don't." Potter paused, then blurted, "You just prefer not to sleep in a bed with me."

Snape opened one eye. Potter's stomach was breathing rapidly. After a moment's reflection, Snape nodded. "True," he said.

"Thanks a lot."

"It's nothing personal, Mr. Potter."

"No, it's just that you think I'd try something, and then you'd have to decide whether you wanted it or not."

Snape opened the other eye. "Mr. Potter..."

"You kissed me too," Potter said. "I'm not just making things up, Snape."

"I never said you were."

"Oh." That seemed to derail Potter's prepared tirade. "Well, then come to bloody bed, and I promise I won't touch you."

Snape took a deep breath. All of a sudden he was too tired to deal with this any longer. "This situation is completely ridiculous."

"It's worse than that," Potter said morosely, heading back to the bed and tossing his glasses onto the night table. "It's depressing the hell out of me."

Heaving himself out of the chair, Snape reflected that he'd rarely been enticed to bed with bleaker words. And that that was saying something.

 

 

He woke up feeling that something was wrong. He was in a dark room, warm and silent--then he realized, not silent. Someone was breathing, hard and fast, in the darkness right beside him.

His wand was on the mattress beside him; he found it in a second. "Lumos."

Potter was sitting bolt upright in the bed beside him, staring at the far wall, swallowing hard. Snape dimmed the wand.

After a moment, he asked, "All right?"

Potter nodded, wiped his mouth, and lay back down, turning his back. Snape considered it. There was a small circle of freckles under Potter's left shoulder blade. The hair at the nape of his neck was damp.

"Nox." Snape put the wand back on the mattress and closed his eyes.

For a while he drifted in the darkness. He thought of his laboratory, of the satisfying feel of a properly-cast charm, of the book half-finished in his rooms at the school. He thought of Potter's hand clutching his robes, of Potter's mouth on his. So strange, that they'd kissed. He liked Potter well enough at this point, which was bizarre enough in its own right, but Albus was wrong--he wasn't in love. What he felt was liking and desire. They were startling things to feel for Potter, but they were simple enough, in themselves. Love was something different, something he'd never experienced firsthand and hardly credited in others. Like divination, it seemed the product of a collective agreement to pretend things were other than they really were.

He was almost asleep again, lulled by the calm of Potter's mind, when the mattress shifted. Potter turned over and lay still again. After a long moment, Snape felt a light touch on the tip of one of his fingers. He opened his eyes.

"Are you awake?" Potter whispered. Snape sighed. Potter's fingers brushed his again, then interlaced and took hold. His skin was hot and damp. He tugged.

"You promised," Snape said.

"I've been hanging around a Slytherin," Potter said. "I lied." He shifted over the mattress until they were aligned, feet to feet and practically mouth to mouth. His breathing was rapid and light, like a rabbit's. His breath smelled of mint.

"You'll regret this," Snape said, without much force.

"No," Potter said, and kissed him. His fingers tightened in Snape's, pulling Snape's arm around him in a loose embrace, then letting go and finding the small of Snape's back. His fingers were strong and warm, and unaccountably clever. Snape underwent a last brief, violent struggle within himself, then felt something frayed and weary simply part company. He ran his hand up Harry's smooth warm back, bit his lip gently, and rolled on top of him.

It was the most natural thing in the world, for both of them. Harry lay splayed and smiling, his legs cocked open around Snape's hips, the strong thin muscles of his thighs tensing and relaxing.

"All right?" Snape asked again, still taking some of his weight on his elbows. Harry thrust his hips up and tugged at Snape's shirt.

"Take this off."

Snape frowned, but it was fair enough demand under the circumstances, and it was dark. He bent his head and let Harry pull it off.

"And these." Harry's hand was on Snape's trousers, first on the waistband, then falling lower and stroking gently. Snape tensed and pulled away abruptly, instinctively. "What's wrong?"

"This is insane." Reality settled over him, a familiar dead weight. Snape sat back on his heels and pressed the heel of his hand into his left eye. "I've lost my mind."

"No you haven't." Harry put his hands on Snape's thighs and lay still. "Snape." He waited out the silence. "It's okay, we don't have to do anything if you don't want to."

"Thank you so very much."

"Severus." Harry sounded very sober, very subdued. Snape took a deep breath and removed his hand from his eye socket.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm making an ass of myself."

There was a pause, while he sat with his head turned, staring into the darkness at the far side of the room. Albus was always right. Damn his withered hide.

Harry's hands took hold of his, just by the fingertips. "It's all right," he said. "You're sort of always an ass."

Snape turned his head, frowning.

"I am too," Harry added hastily. "So it evens out."

"What is your point, exactly?"

"Just..." Harry cleared his throat, then shrugged. Snape felt the movement against the mattress. "Just, can you please stop thinking so much? Just for tonight?"

"Thinking is what has kept both of us alive to this point."

"I know, but..." Harry dropped a hand to his own trousers, wriggled uncomfortably, and sighed. "Sometimes you have to let it go for a bit."

"Harry." Snape rolled heavily off to his own side of the mattress. His prick ached in his trousers, his chest was cold. He wanted to take his head off his shoulders and hurl it against the wall. "I wish I found this as simple as you do."

"I don't find it simple. I find it incredibly bizarre and frustrating, but that doesn't change the fact I want you to fuck me into the mattress."

"Sweet Merlin."

"I'll settle for less, though." Harry leant up on one elbow and kissed Snape's shoulder. "To be honest, I'll take whatever's on offer. I'm lonely and scared and I've wanted you for months."

Snape opened his mouth, then closed it.

"You miss a lot," Harry said. "I mean, I know you're a Legilimens and a spy and everything, but you miss a lot."

Snape took a deep breath. "Is there anything else I should know?"

"Just...I'm not easy, all right? I'm not just looking for a random shag."

"Lovely expression, that."

"You're a total git sometimes, and I'm pretty sure if I weren't locked in a room by myself I could probably pull someone who doesn't set me essays or call me by my surname, but I'm still..." He paused. "I still want more than just sex."

Snape considered pointing out that it was barely sex now, but the faint unsteadiness in Harry's tone deterred him. "I understand," he said.

"Right." Harry flopped back onto the mattress, taking his hand off Snape's arm. "Well, that's killed it for me. I'm going to sleep."

Snape lay on his back, staring into the darkness, for several minutes. Albus was always, always right.

At last, he turned toward Harry and put out his hand. Harry's arm was taut, and as soon as Snape touched him, he turned on his side as well. Not asleep, not even pretending to be.

"Here," said Snape, pulling them close, tasting the mint in Harry's mouth, feeling the warmth and hardness of that shockingly young, indestructible body. Insanity. But if he died for it, he didn't particularly care.

 

 

He woke to a faint, insistent ringing. There was a dim light in the room--the sun through the heavy curtains. Harry was just emerging from the pillows beside him, still curled in the crook of his body.

"What?" Without his glasses, he squinted like a lizard. His hair was on end, and a bruise had swollen up along his left cheekbone. Belatedly, Snape remembered the healing potion on the dresser.

"I'm wanted at the school." He closed his eyes, inhaling the warm fug of the bedclothes. There was a pleasant ache along the insides of his thighs, one he hadn't felt in years.

"At the--" Harry wiped his mouth, frowned, and fumbled for his glasses. "Is it another attack?"

"I don't know." After a moment, he opened his eyes and put his arm out from under the covers, reaching for his robes, which were piled on the floor beside the bed. Even in the faint light available, he felt no particular desire to display his naked body. "More likely they need potions brewed. Or they've got a Death Eater under the press, and want someone to turn the screw."

He dressed sitting on the edge of the bed, facing the far wall. Harry, eighteen years old and unburdened by physical shame, slid out of the bed and walked naked to the dresser, where he pulled on the clothes Snape had brought him. His skin was pale as eggshell in the dim light. The lines of his body were lean and sharp; he was, and probably always would be, a beagle rather than a mastiff. Snape allowed himself a moment of sitting uselessly with his cloak in his hands, watching. Harry, of course, didn't notice.

"I can't stay here forever." He pulled the ugly red jumper over his head and pushed a hand through his hair, to no visible effect. "Sooner or later I have to go back."

"Later," Snape said, thinking of the smoking, shattered stones of the Great Hall.

"Why?" Harry bit a chunk out of the bread, and unstoppered the juice. "What's the point? If I'm going to be killed I should at least do it with people I care about."

"The point is actually for you not to be killed."

Harry sat on the edge of the dresser and watched, chewing, while Snape closed his outer robes. "Are you coming back?"

Snape stood up and took his wand from the bedside table. It felt good in his hand, slender and potent, a tiny island of familiar territory. "Yes."

"Soon?"

Snape put out his hand. Without hesitation, Harry put the bread down and came across the room. When he was in arm's reach, Snape drew him in, kissed him, then studied the bruise on his cheek.

"Half that draught," he said, nodding at the potion on the dresser. "If it's not healed within the hour, take the rest as well."

"I don't regret it." Harry's gaze was steady. Green, Snape reflected, was an absurd and disconcerting color for eyes. "And you'd better come back."

"I've already said I will. While you wait, I think you'll find the first three chapters of Fauntleroy enlightening."

Harry winced and glanced at the tome on the dresser. "Is he the one that wrote that awful book on transfiguration?"

"Yes. You may skim the early years, if absolutely necessary."

Harry sighed and rubbed a palm up his stubbled jaw, producing a rasping sound that made Snape's belly tighten. He cleared his throat. "I'm...glad you have no regrets. Yet."

"Be careful," Harry said, stepping back with a frown. "And come back soon."

Snape nodded, and because he could think of nothing more fitting or conclusive or revelatory to say, left.

 

 

part 5 - the end

"We've got one," George Weasley said, hopping to his feet from the spot where he'd been sitting, on the floor just outside Albus's office door. "A real nasty bugger, too. Fred's still in the hospital wing, having his ear patched back on."

"I am delighted to hear it." Snape attempted to brush past, but Weasley didn't move. He'd filled out, the last couple of years, and now that he'd ridden a broom in battle half a dozen times, his flippant manner had gained a stolid, bulldoggish edge. It made him hard to shift.

"Where's Harry?"

"Safe." Snape reached for the door handle, but Weasley still didn't move. "May I enter, or are you going to ask me to dance?"

Weasley cocked his head. His eyes, Snape noticed, were reddened, and there were downward-curving lines at the corners of his mouth. He was twenty-one, perhaps twenty-two now. The lines seemed to have appeared overnight.

"Some friends of mine got killed," he said. "In the Great Hall, you know." His mouth twisted. "Eating bread and cheese."

Snape reached for the door handle again, and Weasley put a hand out to block him.

"Fred and me used to give you a hard time," he said. "When we were students. But I'd really appreciate it if you could let bygones be bygones, and rip his fucking brain out his ears."

Snape let his eyelids lower to half-mast, and reached for the handle again. This time, Weasley let him have it.

"There's a good Snape," he said quietly, drifting away.

Inside, Albus's office had been transformed into a temporary holding cell. The furniture had been pushed to one wall, and in the middle of the room was a heavyset man in dark clothing, tied to a railback chair. His face was red and there was a bruise on his temple. Around the chair was a circle of salt and chalk, widely and hastily drawn. The man looked up at Snape's entry, and smiled coldly.

"Snape," he said. "I always knew you were a traitor."

Snape turned and looked at Albus, who was sitting by his desk in a sideways-turned chair, the pair of the one holding the Death Eater. He had a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit, both untouched. There was a heaviness to his shoulders and head that Snape hadn't seen before.

"Severus," he said, nodding at the teapot beside him. "Tea?"

Snape shook his head. "This is one of the attackers?"

Albus nodded. "Do you know him?"

Again, Snape shook his head.

"But I know you," the man sang. "Severus Snape, toady extraordinaire. You'll lick any pair of boots you see, I guess."

"He's extremely tiresome to listen to," Albus said, picking up his wand. "In fact--" He pointed it at the man, who shut his mouth with a snap. "Professor Snape and I have work to do. I'm sure you won't mind waiting quietly while we do it."

Snape turned away from the man's struggling, furious face, and raised an eyebrow. "You expect him to have information we can use."

"I do." Albus poked morosely at his biscuit with one finger. "Apparently he's a man of some importance in Death Eater circles just now. He had some kind of a triumph involving The Boy Who Lived." Albus raised an eyebrow of his own, picked up the biscuit, and knocked it against the table. It made a hard, clacking sound. "In respect of that, he was put in charge of blowing the Great Hall to pieces. Fred Weasley caught him." Albus tried a tooth on the biscuit, and put it down with a frown. "He's in the hospital wing. I expect George told you."

Snape looked at the man again, trying to place him. There were plenty of Death Eaters he didn't know by name or face, but most were drones or foot soldiers. This one was important. This one might have had something to do with the attack on Harry. He'd certainly had a hand in blasting the school. There was still soot on his face, and he stank of bad magic.

"We could use Veritaserum," Albus said thoughtfully, "but there are still some loopholes that way, I fear. We'd have to know the right questions, and the right way to ask them."

"Yes." Snape unbuttoned his cloak, folded it neatly into quarters, and put it on the end of Albus's desk. His fingers were cold, and he flexed them. The man stared at his hands, then at his face. His eyes were hard and black.

"You know Professor Snape," Albus said, turning slightly, and with some effort, until he faced the Death Eater. "So I imagine you know his reputation as a Legilimens. Simply put, he's the best I've ever seen. One of the best living." Albus paused, reached for his cup, and sipped. He'd always been good at dramatic presentation. "My advice to you is not to fight. But I imagine you'll ignore it."

The man spat on the floor. A bit of spittle hit the salt, and sizzled.

"I thought so," Albus said, and looked at Snape. "At your convenience, Severus."

Snape took a moment to shoot his cuffs. Then he turned to the man, caught his eyes, and held them. It was like walking through the door of a house before the homeowner even knew you were on the step.

"Legilimens."

 

 

Hubert Marchand Dorris was an accounts manager at the Ministry, a husband (Grace Margaret) and father of two (Hubert the Younger, Charles for her father). He'd been a student at Hogwarts in the years Snape had been away. A Ravenclaw, not well liked by his fellows, and all but sent down in his fifth year for cheating on an Herbology exam. An intervention by a Ministry official had saved him. He'd continued through to seventh year, graduated, and taken a post that brought him into closer and more regular contact with that same official--Regulus Hacksmith, Snape realized, without much surprise. Favors were traded, Dorris's clever accounting skills were praised. His own parents had been cold--his mother distant, his father a brute--and Hacksmith treated him so well, and asked so little. A few digits here and there, a paper slipped from a file. It was easy, even pleasant, to do.

Snape turned away from that--useless ephemera--and felt for the deeper, heavier matter. Under the floorboards, in the locked cabinets. The hidden things. He felt the man's mind tense and buckle, trying to reject him. It was a poor attempt, and he ignored it, pushing deeper.

Virginity lost disastrously, to a girl who laughed at him. Betrayal by a friend. Later, botched investments, bad luck, and a household poised on the brink of financial collapse. Hacksmith again, offering money. A meeting, late at night, with other men. An abandoned house. The dark costumes came out. Dorris's first response had been revulsion, then fear. He'd wanted to run, to inform the Ministry. A long night spent walking along a riverside, contemplating his options. Tears. And at the end of it, predictably, a dark mark on his forearm. His wife still didn't know. His children had nightmares, sometimes, of Death Eaters coming to kill them in their beds. He comforted them with his sleeves pulled down.

It wasn't enough. It wasn't useful. There was weightier stuff in there, but the man was shielding it wholeheartedly; to shift him, Snape would have to use force. He gave a warning shove, and Dorris knuckled down like a man used to pummelings. No good. Snape pushed again, and uncovered the fact that Dorris was no leader, that he'd been terrified during the attack, that he'd had no idea what to do and that his clumsiness and quick retreat was why the Great Hall was still standing at all. By now, that wasn't surprising either. Snape shoved harder, and from somewhere in himself, Dorris found the wherewithal to shove back. Snape paused.

Legilimency was not a matter of minds speaking to minds, or at least not in the way that most students assumed. There was no wavery brain-speech, no lengthy conversations inside the skull. It was possible, however, to convey certain things. Ideas, emotions, images. The best practitioners knew how to exploit this to their own advantage. Snape suspended his efforts, long enough to draw Dorris's attention. Then he opened a door in his own mind, and with no compunction whatsoever, shared.

He was not a young man, and life held no illusions for him. He wasn't foolish enough to think that suffering came down to a numbers game: one rotten childhood against another, night terrors against depression, suicide against murder. He had no real expectation that releasing a tide of blood and tears would sway Dorris, however much it might hurt him--the man had had his share of pain, and he showed a remarkable tenacity in the face of it. Snape understood that. They had matching black wounds, after all.

But Snape had something Dorris didn't have. A recent memory of warm breath on his cheek, a warm body spilled willingly into his arms. Somewhere to return to. In the darkness, a spark of light. He shared that last, a silver dagger slipped between the ribs.

Dorris flinched and fell away, and Snape regarded what he'd been protecting. At first he mistook it for no more than the last pathetic shreds of the man's dignity. Amazing, what a dying man would cling to. Then he realized it was more than that, and began tracing it carefully, over and over, memorizing every detail of its construction.

 

 

Albus regarded him from his chair by the desk. His hands, the knuckles large with arthritis, were clasped neatly in his lap.

"Well?"

Snape walked to the chair and picked up his cloak. "I'll be back shortly."

"Severus."

Snape turned back, already halfway to the door, shrugging into the cloak. In the salt circle, Dorris sat weeping messily. Albus inclined his head.

"What about him?"

Snape glimpsed Dorris's sons, asleep in their small beds. Then a rosebush that had been Dorris's mother's--he'd dug it out when her house had been sold, and trained it to climb the back garden fence.

"Put him away until his trial. His name is Dorris. His family should be informed."

 

 

Hubert Marchand Dorris had not been a leader, or a warrior, or much of anything apart from a good head for numbers and a clever hand with the shells and peas of accounting. He'd been adept at ferreting out what was hidden, and at hiding what he didn't want found. Hacksmith had seen that, and put it to use.

It might have been Dorris who'd found Potter's bolthole, or it might have been someone else. That part didn't matter, particularly. What mattered was the first part, the part none of them had been able to figure out. How did you strip a powerful wizard of his magic, in no more than a moment?

It was night, he just popped out of nowhere. There was just a flash.

Snape Apparated into the hotel room, and found Potter sitting on the bed with Fauntleroy open on his lap, staring out the window. He jumped and grabbed the headboard.

"God. You're going to give me a heart attack." He dumped Fauntleroy unceremoniously onto the mattress and stood up, his eyes wide. He'd showered and taken the potion; the bruises and scrapes were mostly gone. It was amazing, possibly humiliating, how that loosened something in Snape's chest. "What's going on?"

Snape stayed where he was, saying nothing. The room was calm and still--there was no tickle of magic in it. It was as if Potter weren't standing there at all, as if there were no other wizard for a hundred miles. It was a familiar, restful sensation. Snape studied it, wondering how he'd gone so long without turning it over and examining its soft underbelly.

"What's going on?" Potter asked again, taking a step forward. Snape tipped his head and saw Potter's wand lying on the night table. Good.

"Sit down, please." He moved the armchair with a twitch of his wand, until it was facing the foot of the bed. Potter's eyes widened even further.

"Tell me what's going on first."

"Harry." Snape sat in the armchair, drew his wand from his sleeve, and laid it carefully across his lap. "Sit down."

Potter took a deep breath and sat, his hands in white fists on his knees. "I'm sitting."

Snape sighed. "The school is intact. There have been no more attacks, the students are safe."

Potter eyed him in silence.

"Do you need further reassurance, or is that sufficient?"

"Sufficient for what?" Potter shifted, sliding his hands under his thighs and hunching slightly, as if he had cramp. It was almost the same position he'd taken in Albus's office, months ago, when his magic had first been lost. "Is this the part where you tell me you've thought this through and decided to Obliviate me?"

Snape paused. "No."

Potter's shoulders released slightly. "Oh." He sat up straighter. "Then what the hell is going on?"

"I am attempting to explain that. I'd find it easier if you stopped interrupting."

Potter pinched his lips together and gave Snape a familiar stare: part defiance, part impatience. There was perhaps a third, gentler component there too, and perhaps it had been there for some time, but Snape chose not to dwell.

"Fred Weasley captured a Death Eater," he said. "The one who led the attack on Hogwarts, and the same man who robbed you of your magic."

Potter's gaze widened into disbelief, and his mouth opened.

"Albus asked me to interrogate him," Snape said quickly, before he could be derailed. "I did so. I saw what he did, and how he did it. And I saw how it might be undone."

Potter sat in silence, his mouth still ajar.

"Accio wand," Snape said, and caught Potter's wand in midair. He held it out silently. Potter looked at it. Slowly, he took it. It seemed to feel unfamiliar in his hand; there was no confidence in his grip.

"Do you trust me?" Snape asked, leaning forward and catching Potter's eyes with his own. They stared at each other for a long moment. Potter swallowed dryly.

"Yes."

"Good." Snape held out his hand, and after a moment of confusion, Potter put his into it, together with his wand. "That isn't part of it, just so you know."

"Part of what?" Potter asked, his eyes meeting Snape's nervously.

"This."

He stepped into Harry's mind and stayed where he was, very still, waiting for Harry to notice. There was a general tremor, a shudder like a horse plagued by flies. Snape didn't move. After a moment Harry calmed down and Snape had a quick look around. Superficial things, trivialities. The front foyer, messy with thoughts of Fauntleroy's Riddle and the feel of shaving, the school on fire, anxiety. Potter's mind was not a neat place, Snape reflected. Still, it felt familiar and almost comfortable, like a home in which he was sure of his welcome. He was careful not to touch anything unnecessarily.

He felt Harry relax further--a trembling, nervous kind of relaxation, but an effort nonetheless, and more than many could do. When they'd done this before, training in Occlumency, it had been a matter of guard and parry, attack and retreat. As far as Harry knew, that was what Legilimency was. A hostile intrusion, the same vicious grudge match Snape had just shared with Dorris. And yet still, he tried to relax.

Carefully, Snape looked around for a trail. He knew from Dorris's mind where he needed to go, and what he needed to do there, but first he had to find a way inside. Every mind was different, the loose threads unique, but a few things were universal. Sex was a good trace to find, it generally led quickly to deep things. Snape picked up a thread of sexual uncertainty, and began to follow where it led.

He felt Harry tense, and slowed his pace. The path led through pleasure, but also through fear of rejection and lingering shame. The night before lay electric and distracting across the surface of things. In Harry's mind, Snape saw himself astonishingly adept, subtle, and experienced. It would have been amusing if it hadn't been tragic. He paused despite himself, fascinated by the brief, disorganized jumble of images. That pale figure in the bed, in the half-light--the long, careful hands, the arresting shoulders--that was him. He hardly recognized himself. And he'd had no idea his back was that knobby.

Harry's anxiety was increasing, so Snape hastily shared a few of his own images in compensation--Harry's throat, long and exposed, the shallow cup of his belly, the sweet length of his upstanding prick. That last caused a minor panic, and he realized belatedly he could have chosen a less charged example. Still, it did the job. Harry's anxiety abated, and Snape took a moment to collect himself, then continued on.

Sex led to childhood, as it so often did. A small room under a staircase, over which giant relatives thundered. Thrashings. Further back, confusion and fear, abandonment. Sinkholes of guilt and anger, irrational convictions shoved out of sight. Cautiously, Snape picked his way forward. He could feel the way forward narrowing, growing less navigable. Voldemort killed Diggory, then turned the wand on Harry. Fear constricted everything, then shame rushed in.

Snape stopped and waited. He was very close to the center of things, closer than he'd ever been to the real center of anyone's mind, and it was uncomfortable for both of them. Worse for Harry, though, who could only wait and trust. Dimly, from a great distance, Snape moved his hand and pressed it against Harry's. After a moment, he felt an answering pressure. The way forward opened slightly.

What Snape had done violently before, now he did with immense care and gentleness. He opened himself just enough to show the warmth, the spark, and the inevitable darkness alongside it. Then he edged forward, feeling his way until he felt the faintest familiar tickle. When he pried at the door, something pushed back from within. There was another general tremor, this time of shock and pleasure.

Snape moved off and waited just long enough to feel the tickle grow stronger, and to be sure that it was emerging now on its own. Then he retreated, touching nothing, looking at nothing. In another moment he was out of Harry's mind, seated in an armchair in a hotel room in Muggle London, with a mild headache starting up behind his temples.

Harry was still sitting on the edge of the bed, a look of abstracted delight in his eyes, as if he were remembering a wonderful story he'd been told years ago. There was a tickle in the air, Snape noticed. It had been a long time since he'd felt it, but it was instantly familiar, and essentially unchanged. He took a moment to mourn the quiet he'd come to enjoy. Then he turned to Harry, whose hand was still clasped in his. They looked at each other.

"Lumos," Harry whispered, and between their clasped palms, his wand burst into light.

 

 

It took surprisingly little time to explain the trick in retrospect, but then sleight of hand was like that, Snape reflected. What looked like strong magic was sometimes no more than creative accounting. Dorris had simply shifted a column or two: Potter's magic had never been gone, only hidden so well that he hadn't felt it himself, or wanted to. Every man had a miserable bog inside himself, a dark place he never wanted to visit or remember. Hide something there, and it was as good as gone. Unless someone came along with some idea where to dig, and the skill and nerve to do it.

"I'm astonished," McGonagall said for the third time, gazing into the fire with her empty glass in her hand. "How could we have missed that?"

"Quite easily," Albus replied, using a fingertip to collect the last grains of sugar from the biscuit plate at his elbow. "Too easily, I'm afraid. We were misled, as we were meant to be. We all assumed a great deal about what we thought we were seeing."

"I feel a right fool." McGonagall in her cups was even more Scottish than otherwise, Snape had noticed. "Merlin's beard, when I think of all those that could have been saved--"

"Best not to yield to regret," Albus said, but he put a hand on her elbow. "It's not your fault, Minerva."

She stared into the fire without replying. After a moment, Albus patted her arm and took the glass from her. He stood with an effort, and looked at Snape. "Nothing for you, Severus?"

"No." Snape's tea was cold on his knee, and he had draughts to brew, but he had yet to remove himself from the room. He blamed fatigue. He was tired, and the laboratory was cold, and there was something about the warmth of the fireside, the company of the two annoying old fools he'd known for so long, that kept him. Albus went to the decanters, and came back with another inch of whiskey in Minerva's glass.

She glanced at it automatically, and then her eyes cleared and she frowned. "Are you trying to get me drunk, Albus?"

"No," he said. "You've done that on your own, I think." His tone was kind. She put her face in her hands, moaned, then stood up and pulled at her robes briskly.

"I'm going to bed," she announced. "I'm due in the Great Hall tomorrow at eight, to supervise the rebuilding."

Albus nodded, sank into his chair, and sipped her whiskey.

"Severus," she said, and Snape gave her a wary look from under his brows. "I just want you to know...that is, I think it only right to tell you...I mean, Harry is certainly capable of conducting his own affairs--" She faltered, put a hand to her forehead, then opened her mouth with an air of readying to charge bravely over a cliff's edge.

"Noted," Snape said, and went back to studying his teacup. She hovered, and he felt a brief, warm touch on his shoulder.

"Be...happier," she said, and seemed about to say something more, then turned on her heel and left.

There was silence, while Albus drank his whiskey and rocked his feet, in their ridiculous stockings, in front of the fire. Snape put his teacup on the edge of Albus's desk, and leaned toward the warmth.

"It's strange how things work out," Albus said, after a while. "I wasn't lying to Dorris, you know." He glanced sideways, a faint smile narrowing his eyes. "Well, you would know. You are the best Legilimens I've ever seen. It's what makes you such a good spy." He sipped his whiskey. "It's what makes so many here distrust you."

Snape studied his fingers, folded together between his knees.

"And it's curious to think," Albus went on, "that under any other circumstances, Harry's magic would probably have stayed locked up inside him until...well, who can say? It's not every day that a top-flight Legilimens happens around. And even if one did, what are the chances Harry would have let such a person so deeply into his mind?"

"I have no idea," Snape said. He kept his tone dry, to disguise the fact that he'd covered this ground several times already on his own. "I'm sure You-Know-Who judged them very small."

Albus gave a comfortable grunt, and sank deeper into his chair. His stockings were in danger of catching fire.

"You'll have problems with the other side now," he said, after a bit. "They'll know you freed his magic. It'll be hard to convince them you're on their side after this."

Snape had nothing to say to that.

"Well," Albus said, draining the glass and stretching comfortably, then folding his hands over his belly and tipping his hat over his eyes. "I need my beauty sleep. Take some licorice snaps on your way out, for Harry."

Snape frowned, rising to his feet. "He's not a child."

"Quite right." Albus opened one eye and gave him a steady, assessing look. "He's not, is he?"

Irritated at having fulfilled expectations, Snape stalked to the door. He was pulling it closed when Albus said, "Severus."

He looked back. Albus gave him a sleepy blink.

"Minerva's right, you know. You should be happier."

Snape stood for a long moment on the threshold of the warm room, feeling the chill of the hallway at his back. Then he pulled the door closed and walked away in darkness.

 

 

Harry was asleep when Snape got in, several hours and two hundred healing draughts later. The fire in the grate had burned down to coals. The lamp on the night table was turned low, and its light showed Harry's sleeping face, young and tired and lovely. Snape sat in the chair by the door and felt a thousand years old.

Albus was right, he was no spy anymore. How to explain having protected, restored, and re-armed Voldemort's greatest enemy? Sense and strategy couldn't help him with this one. He'd chosen a side, and by now, a full day after he and Harry had Apparated into Albus's office, the whole world knew what side that was. Some of them were still stuttering over it, like McGonagall. But others were well past that. By now, word must have reached The Dark Lord himself that Severus Snape was a traitorous catamite. It was both horrifying and savagely amusing to think of the reaction that news must have received.

The Dark Mark ached; it had been aching for the last day, as if Voldemort's displeasure were already biting into Snape's skin. He pushed up his sleeve and rubbed it absently. In the bed, Harry frowned and turned, throwing one pale arm above his head.

Best not to yield to regret, Albus had said. Impossible, Snape would have amended. He had no regret to yield to.

As if he'd spoken the words aloud, Harry's eyes opened. For a moment he looked uncertain, almost afraid. Then his hand found the night table and he raised his wand.

"Lumos." The gentle, pale light filled the room. "What are you doing?"

Snape stopped rubbing his arm, and let his hands fall open in a careless gesture. "Nothing."

Harry squinted, then rubbed his forehead and sat up, letting the blankets fall to his waist. He was naked this time. Snape could see the white skin of his hip through a gap in the sheets. "I had this horrible dream."

"Did you."

"Yeah. I dreamed you were an immeasurable git who was always mooning around sleeping in chairs instead of coming to bed like a sane person." Harry glanced at the clock. "It's three in the morning, for God's sake."

Snape stood up and walked to the bedside. "Unlike some people, I have responsibilities."

"Get in. I promise I won't touch you." Harry scooted to the far side of the bed and lay back. "Nox." That was a concession Snape appreciated, even while he wondered how long it would last.

Snape undressed quickly and got into the bed, closing his eyes and breathing in the warmth of the blankets, the warmth of Harry's skin and breath. Even the familiar, annoying prickle of Harry's magic was a comfort. It lessened the ache in Snape's forearm somewhat.

"I still haven't thanked you," Harry said, looking not at Snape but out the window above the bed, through which the quarter moon showed. Snape grunted. "Not just for my magic. For everything."

"I did what I was told to do."

Harry's hand, warm and gentle, found Snape's hipbone. Snape frowned. "Breaking your promise already, I see."

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No."

Harry reached across and put the lamp out. In the faint light from the coals, Snape studied his profile and tried to recall something he'd read once, about love's mysterious exactions. He couldn't draw it up, but it was a comfort and an amazement to realize that in its outlines at least, it was familiar. Others had been in this position before him, senseless and dumb, happy to be bludgeoned. Love was a master strategist, he realized. It took you when you least expected it.

Harry's breath was warm on his neck, then against his ear. "Thank you," he said softly.

Snape rolled them both over to face the window. The moon was a sliver of light in the darkness, marvelous and strange.

End

 

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