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Chapter Text

Severus had assumed that his life would become more difficult when Harry Potter came to Hogwarts. After all, he would have to see the living reminder of his own mistakes and Potter’s hatred and Lily’s choices every day. And Potter would probably dash into danger as a brave Gryffindor so often that Severus would have to—

“SLYTHERIN!”

Severus wasn’t the only one staring as Potter took the Hat off and looked around uncertainly before trotting over to join the Slytherin House table. He sat at the very end, not responding to what looked like a sneer from Draco, and kept his head down as he picked at his robes.

Well, Severus thought, and tapped his wand against the side of his goblet to conjure water, then again to change it to Firewhisky, completely ignoring the disapproving stare from Albus as he did so.

Difficult in a way that he had not assumed.

*

“When were you going to tell me about this, Mr. Potter?”

Severus would have liked to sound unpleasant or scolding. Anything but resigned, as he stared at Harry Potter wearing robes that had been slashed almost to ribbons by precise applications of the Cutting Curse.

Severus knew the boy had not done it on his own. Severus himself could not have used magic like that as a first-year, and Potter’s son was a long way behind Severus in strength and studiousness.

Potter looked up at him, blinking. There was no one else in the corridor outside the Slytherin common room, and his face looked odd in the low-burning light of the torches. “You said not to bother you with minor matters, sir. And Malfoy said—” He cut himself off.

“Yes? Mr. Malfoy said what?” Severus asked, as he traced his wand in the precise motions of a silent Reparo. The wonder on Potter’s face as the slashes began to repair themselves made something in his chest clench. Who had raised the boy, that such minor magic was cause for this emotion? Severus could not personally think of anyone who had been that strict about underage magic.

“He said that you were friends with his father and you wouldn’t do anything no matter what he did to me.”

“Mr. Malfoy did not cast these spells, Mr. Potter.”

Potter’s eyes flashed once, and then his face smoothed out. “No, sir. I was practicing, and I accidentally put too much power into my spells. I don’t know why I said that Malfoy cast these spells. Sorry, sir.”

Severus stared at him. Of course, Potter’s eyes were an open book, and he skimmed easily through the boy’s mind to find Marcus Flint casting the spells—where was the boy’s application in classes, Severus wondered—and Draco laughing at Potter about it.

“Do not attempt to lie to me, Mr. Potter.”

“I’m not, sir.”

“You are. Badly. Why did you attempt it?”

Potter stared at him in turn. His voice was silent, but his mind told the truth: once Severus had said that Draco hadn’t actually cast the Cutting Curses, then Potter had decided that meant Severus disbelieved him entirely.

Severus sighed. “I was not saying that he did not taunt you about it, Mr. Potter, merely that he was not the one who cast the actual spells. You can rest assured that Mr. Flint will be punished and Mr. Malfoy will receive notice of my displeasure.”

“What? Why, sir?”

Severus paused and looked at him. Potter blinked, and his mind was full of flashes of what must be Muggle teachers shaking their heads and turning away from Potter, who stared at them with mute eyes.

“Because it is what I do as your Head of House,” Severus said, and then added, so that the realization of who Potter must have been raised by didn’t show in his voice, “Remember that you are not to take advantage of my good nature. And it will be up to you to make peace with your roommates, ultimately, so that they do not do this.”

“Yes, sir.”

Severus wondered about the tone in Potter’s voice as he sent him back to the Slytherin common room. He hadn’t heard the relief he would have expected Potter to have at knowing a professor was on his side.

Later, Severus knew he should have taken warning from that.

*

“Do you know why you have this detention, Mr. Potter?”

“Yes, sir.”

Severus waited, but Potter simply stood in the middle of his office with his head bowed a little and his eyes darting to the cauldrons and the potions and the preserved, pickled remains on the shelves. Severus sighed and gave in to the inevitable. “Then tell me why, in your own words, you believe you have this detention, Mr. Potter.”

“Because I got caught dumping that Bubotuber pus in Malfoy’s cauldron.”

Severus paused. It wasn’t entirely the answer he had expected. “Because you put the pus in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That is not what you said. You said that you got caught putting in the Bubotuber pus.”

“Yes, sir.” Potter’s head rose, and his eyes were so big and innocent that Severus could see in an instant why Pomona thought he was “such a nice little boy,” a compliment she didn’t often bestow on Slytherins. “If I hadn’t been caught, you wouldn’t have known about it, and you wouldn’t have assigned me a detention.”

Severus leaned back against his desk. “So you think that doing such things is fine as long as you don’t get caught?”

“Why wouldn’t it be, sir? You didn’t get upset last week when Malfoy put doxy eggs in Weasley’s cauldron. He didn’t get caught, or you chose to ignore it. In fairness, the way Weasley’s potion turned out wasn’t that different from the way it would have without the doxy eggs.”

Severus pinched his nose. “Mr. Potter, you should not adulterate other students’ potions.”

“Yes, sir. Did you give Malfoy that same speech?”

“That is not—Mr. Potter, you know the expectations for you are different. You know that the eyes on you are different.”

“Yes, sir. It means that I need to be a lot more careful about what I get caught with.”

Severus shook his head. In truth, he had no desire to give Potter a speech about morality. “You got caught. Next time, choose some ingredient that doesn’t make the potion foam over the lip of the cauldron.”

“Yes, sir.”

Potter made no objection to doing the lines that Severus set him to writing, which were about not injuring fellow students. Only later did Severus realize how literally Potter had taken his words, when he was confronting the massive boils all over Lavender Brown, who had been the loudest about how Potter’s Sorting meant he was “betraying” his parents.

Severus was far more disturbed to realize that he hadn’t seen Potter alter Brown’s ingredients at all.

He wondered if he should also be proud.

Chapter Text

A knock on his door woke Severus far too early on Christmas morning. Albus only insisted that professors staying at the school attend the evening feast, so he gleefully skipped the morning meal. Now he rolled to his feet and made his way to the door, growling under his breath. It was probably Albus, with some ridiculous idea about “Christmas cheer.”

“Good morning, sir.”

Severus blinked as Potter ducked into his quarters. Potter halted and looked around, and Severus waved his wand to shut the door that would have let Potter see into his bedroom. That didn’t need to happen. “Why are you here, Mr. Potter?”

“I got a suspicious Christmas present, sir. And I know that you said after the troll, someone might be trying to kill me…”

Severus scowled. Two first-year Gryffindors had taken on the troll for idiotic reasons, and it had been only by the intervention of the luck that attended fools that they’d wound up in the hospital wing with nothing worse than a broken arm. Severus had thought Quirrell had released the troll to distract people from the Stone, but once Potter had reported the headaches he suffered in Defense class, Severus’s suspicions had shifted.

“Did you get any indication of where the present came from?” he asked, as he held out his hand for it.

“There was a note, sir, but it wasn’t signed. It only said that it had belonged to my father and I should use it well.” Potter fumbled for a moment at his side, and then took out something that shimmered so elusive a silver color, Severus had trouble seeing it even when it was in his hand.

He stared at what must be the finest Invisibility Cloak he had ever seen, and tamped down his loathing at the mention of James Potter. Many things about the “Marauders” were now explained.

“Give me a few days with the cloak, Mr. Potter,” he said at last. “I can feel no pernicious enchantment, but it will need further investigation.”

“Yes, sir.”

Potter had turned back to the door before it struck Severus that Potter had not objected to leaving something that had apparently belonged to his father. “You are not concerned for its safety, Mr. Potter?” he called.

Potter paused and looked back at him, his eyes empty. “The only things I knew about my parents before Hagrid came and got me from my relatives were their names,” he said evenly. “Then that day, I learned about how they really died and that they were in Gryffindor, and what their wands were made of. And a few weeks ago, Professor McGonagall mentioned how my father was a real Gryffindor and would be disappointed in me.”

He slipped out again, and left Severus there, holding the cloak and something worth far more than it was.

Then he shook his head and turned his attention to the cloak. He brightened as something occurred to him.

Not only would he get a chance to look at the device that James Potter had used to play so many of his pranks, but he had a perfect excuse to skip the Christmas feast. Albus would want his Boy-Who-Lived kept safe before anything else.

*

“We missed you at the feast, Severus.”

“You know how it is, Albus. The Slytherins who remain over the holidays always present so many challenges.”

*

“It’s clean, Mr. Potter.”

Potter gave him a swift glance before he reached out and carefully took the Cloak from Severus’s hands. He stared at it, swishing it back and forth, and then looked up at Severus. “Do you know who gave it to me, sir? Who my father would have trusted enough to lend it to?”

There was only one answer that made sense, but it was one that went right to the heart of Severus’s divided loyalties. He temporized. “Very few of your parents’ friends would have access to you now, Mr. Potter.”

“You do know.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. That kind of instinctive perception of the truth—and that was what he thought it was, not merely the wariness that obviously made it difficult for Potter to trust adults—often caused the people who possessed it to be good at Legiilmency. Severus was not sure he wanted to see what Potter would become if trained in the art.

But there is no reason for him to become good at it, or even to hear of it. Why should he?

“I suspect, Mr. Potter, which is not the same thing as knowing.”

“And you’re not going to tell me?”

Severus studied how stiffly Potter was standing, and hid a sigh. It was already apparent that the boy trusted almost no one else in the castle. While his conflicts with Draco seemed to have stopped, it was because Potter had warned the other boy off, not because he had made friends with Draco or anyone else who could have increased Potter’s strength in numbers. And the other professors either fell for the mask he wore or compared him unfavorably to his parents.

There was no reason that the disclosure should cause Potter to distrust Albus, Severus reassured himself. Why? If anything, the boy should adore the Headmaster for giving him a family heirloom back.

“I believe it was Headmaster Dumbledore,” Severus said in a reserved tone. “Your parents were close to him during the war.”

Potter stood still for a long, long moment. Then he nodded and said, “Thank you, sir,” and slipped out the door of Severus’s quarters.

Severus stared after him for a longer moment.

*

“Ah, come in, Severus! Thank you for making time to see me. Lemon drop?”

Severus shook his head, as he always did, and sat down in the chair across from Albus. The office was filled with even more whirring silver instruments than had been there the last time he had visited, and Fawkes’s perch was larger. Severus concealed a sneer. It would do him no good with this audience.

“Ah, my boy, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

Severus said nothing as he watched Albus close his eyes in enjoyment of the sweet. Then Albus opened them and sighed. “I wanted to speak to you about Harry Potter.”

Of course. Severus just nodded.

“He seems to have settled in just fine, but I must admit that I am worried about him. Other than the youngest Mr. Weasley from Gryffindor, he doesn’t seem to spend time around the other students. I wanted to know if you knew why that is?”

“Mr. Potter, naturally, does not confide in me about his friendships,” Severus said smoothly, and watched Albus nod. It meant nothing. For all that Albus had been Head of Gryffindor when he was still the Transfiguration professor, that was not like being Head of Slytherin. “But I believe that some of his Housemates have rejected him because of his blood and the expectation that he would Sort Gryffindor.”

“And…well, I believe I must confide in you, Severus. I gave Harry a rather important present for Christmas. He has not shown you that present? He has not used it?”

Severus looked Albus in the eye. Legilimency was feathering across his mind. Severus blocked it with a shield sharper than obsidian, so sharp that Albus couldn’t feel it cutting his mental hand apart, and only shook his head. “I do not have the kind of relationship with James Potter’s son that would permit of confidences about many important objects, Albus.”

Albus sighed. “As a matter of fact, it was one that belonged to his father.”

“Then I doubly do not have such a relationship.”

“Severus. Is it not time to let go of your irrational grudge against James Potter?”

“It is not irrational,” Severus muttered, and made sure that he sounded sulky.

“If you knew the way that that young man died—”

Albus spoke the expected words, and Severus made the expected responses. When he shut the office door behind him, he was reasonably sure that Albus had not picked up on Severus’s carefully-worded lie about the Invisibility Cloak.

Severus could not even say, for certain, why he had wanted to keep the secret. Except that he would have to choose between keeping Albus’s confidence and keeping Potter’s, and he had chosen Potter.

He could blame it on his Vow, if he chose.

But Severus simply preferred not to think about it.

Chapter Text

“Professor.”

Potter was lingering after class. Severus bit back his exasperated sigh—that was the kind of thing that would drive this particular child away forever—and simply nodded. “Mr. Potter. Did you need something?”

“Hagrid has a dragon.”

Severus stared at Potter. “I beg your pardon.”

“Hagrid has a dragon,” Potter repeated. As usual in the last few months, his eyes were cool and calm and still as a sacred pool, and he stood with his hands clasped behind his back. “Or a dragon egg, at least. He claims that he won it off a stranger in Hogsmeade. And they were asking questions about the Cerberus.”

At this point, Severus wasn’t even surprised that Potter knew about the damnable dog. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then asked, “I take it that Hagrid would not surrender the dragon egg willingly?”

“No, sir. He really seems to think he can raise it in his house.”

“Very well. I will see to it, Mr. Potter.”

“How? Will Hagrid get sacked?”

Severus looked closely at Potter, hearing the tremor in his voice. He didn’t waste time asking why Potter was worried about Hagrid getting sacked, however. Obviously Potter was friends with Hagrid, since he knew about the dragon egg, and Severus prided himself on not asking obvious questions.

“No. The Headmaster has a soft spot for him. I will simply represent to the Headmaster the desirability of moving the dragon egg off the grounds.”

“But—how will you tell Dumbledore you learned about it?”

“I will say a concerned student brought the matter to me.”

“But you won’t tell him my name?”

Severus leaned towards Potter. Familiarity with and concern for Hagrid he could understand. The desire to avid the Headmaster was—unexpected. “Why would it concern you if I did, Mr. Potter?”

Potter fidgeted in silence. But Severus had been a master of this game before Potter took his first breath, and at last Potter muttered, “Hagrid said—he said he took me to my aunt and uncle on Dumbledore’s orders.”

Ah.

Well, who better to establish the fate of the orphan son of two Order members than the leader of the Order? There had been no one else, with Black in prison, Pettigrew dead, and the wolf absolutely and obviously unsuitable.

Severus simply nodded. “I will take care of it, and keep your name out of it.”

“Why, sir?”

“Because you trusted me enough to bring the matter to me.”

Potter gave him a wild-shy glance that said as clearly as words that he didn’t really understand that, but he nodded and moved towards the door. When it shut and Severus was alone, he bowed his head and rubbed his hand across his left arm.

Then he became aware of what he was doing, and snatched it back.

He would simply have to make sure that he could take care of the matter without getting involved too deeply. Vow or not, there was little more that he was willing to do for the child of James Potter.

And the child of Lily Evans?

Severus exorcised the words from his brain, and left for his office, where he reached for the Floo powder that always stood ready on the mantel of the fireplace. “Hogwarts Headmaster’s office!”

*

The matter was taken care of. Hagrid seemed disappointed for a few days, but he would get over it.

Potter made eye contact with Severus in the corridor the next week, as he was on the way to Charms, and gave him a small smile. Because it was more than Severus had seen him offer anyone else—although he wasn’t often out on the grounds where Hagrid was—he nodded back, and continued walking.

This much will I do, and no more.

*

Severus pounded grimly through the remnants of the traps that were supposed to have “protected” the Stone, taking out a vial of the potion that would let him pass through the fire into the room with the Mirror of Erised. He had brewed extra despite Albus insisting that he could not understand why Severus would need it.

He ignored my warnings about Quirrell, and this happened.

He burst through the fire in time to see Quirrell stagger away from Potter, moaning. His skin was blistering and cracking, as if he were a fishhook nut plunged too suddenly into a cauldron of boiling water, and Potter was standing in front of him, eyes wide and surprised.

A second later, Potter’s face wrinkled in a snarl, and he lunged forwards and grabbed Quirrell’s wrists, where the damage was not as severe.

Severus’s mouth fell open as he watched the cracks spreading up Quirrell’s wrists and joining with the ones that already reached down from his shoulders. Then he shook off his shock and grabbed hold of Potter.

The boy turned and thrust his hands into Severus’s face. Severus recoiled, not sure if it was accidental magic or something else that was affecting Quirrell, but knowing that he had to avoid the effect. “Potter!”

Potter jerked, and his blazing eyes seemed to dim. Then he slumped in Severus’s hold.

“You have not defeated me, Harry Potter.”

Severus whipped around, crouching low over Potter, and watched the stream of darkness that uncoiled from the back of Quirrell’s head. The wraith had only distant, burning holes for eyes, and the voice sounded different than it had when Severus had served the Dark Lord in his youth, but he knew it for who it was.

“Harry Potter. And Severus. I will remember.”

With that unnerving threat, the wraith fled.

Severus closed his eyes and held Potter still for a moment, without attempting to bring the boy closer. That would be bad for both of them. Then he set Potter on his feet and brushed off his shoulders. “What happened?”

Potter might have explained, but Albus burst in and brandished his wand, and the boy fainted.

Severus caught him and sighed.

“What happened, Severus? I saw the wraith of Lord Voldemort fleeing. Tell me what happened!”

I would, if you would stop shouting.

Severus explained what he had seen and how Potter’s hands had affected Quirrell. He left out the way that Potter had deliberately tried to hurt the man and simply emphasized the boy’s desire to defend himself.

Some things Albus needed to know. Some things he might only want to know.

“I see.” Albus looked at Potter and sighed. “I am sorry that you had to bear witness to this, Severus. It seems that Voldemort knows you are a traitor now. We will have to work out a different strategy for your atonement when he returns.”

Severus said nothing. That aspect of the wraith’s acknowledgment of him had not previously suggested itself. But now that he thought about it, Severus could only see it as appealing, not appalling.

“I will take young Harry to the hospital wing.”

“It is no trouble, Albus. Since I am holding him already.”

Albus started and peered at Severus. Severus maintained his bland expression, and finally Albus nodded, his expression bright and wise.

“As you wish, my boy. It seems that you have truly overcome your hatred for James Potter.”

Now who is mixing up the father and the son? Severus wondered, as he shifted Potter into a more comfortable position and Levitated him. It occurred to him that the boy might not want other people seeing him be carried.

He left Potter to Pomfrey and her fussing, went back to his quarters, and selected a large bottle of Firewhisky. The only reason he would have held off would have been if he had thought Albus would come to him and apologize for discounting Severus’s suspicions of Quirinus, and he knew that wouldn’t be happening.

*

“Professor.”

Severus looked up. He hadn’t seen Potter close to since the day he had taken him to the hospital wing. Now Potter stood in the doorway of his office, and his eyes were—strange.

“Yes, Mr. Potter?”

“Headmaster Dumbledore told me that you saved my life. Thank you.”

“I am not entirely sure that I saved your life, Mr. Potter. It seems likelier to me that you saved yourself.”

Potter paused. His eyes were stranger than ever, and Severus wondered, impatiently, what he wanted. If Potter turned away from him, Severus could understand that. Albus had said that he’d explained the circumstances behind James saving Severus’s life, and it would make sense for Potter to decide that he didn’t want to associate with someone this obsessed with his father seventeen years later.

But what Potter whispered, unexpectedly, was, “You told the truth.”

Severus blinked. “Yes. I told Headmaster Dumbledore about the wraith that fled—”

“No. You told the truth about saving my life. I remembered the way that you were there, and that you pulled me back from Quirrell, and that you stood with me while the wraith fled. But Dumbledore said that you shielded me from the wraith and you were the one responsible for Quirrell’s death.”

Severus started. He could understand Albus’s motivations—to keep Potter from feeling responsible for a death, since he was a child—but he felt old and tired hearing about them. It seemed that Albus’s lying was simply an ingrained habit.

“The circumstances were as I have told you,” he said at last.

“Yes, they were. Thank you for being honest, Professor.” Potter turned away, and Severus thought that would be the end of it, but he paused. Then he turned back. “Do you think it’s wrong of me not to hate him?”

Severus was at a loss. He finally said, “You do not have to hate Professor Quirrell if you do not want to, Mr. Potter. Your emotional reactions are your own.”

“Not Quirrell. Voldemort.”

Severus flinched from the name, and Potter blinked. “Sorry. I keep forgetting that I probably shouldn’t mention that name.”

“It—I can live with it,” Severus said, instead of telling Potter that it didn’t matter. It did. He cleared his throat. “Again, your emotions are your own. And the Headmaster has just given you an object lesson in what happens when one clings to hatred long past the time when the creator of it is dead.” He gestured at himself, not without bitterness. “I would not blame you if you wished to avoid that.”

Potter widened his eyes. They stood there in silence for a moment, and then Potter said, “I see what you mean, Professor Snape. Thank you for what you did do.” He nodded and turned around, leaving.

Severus sighed, sitting back. He would not have to see the boy for the summer, and perhaps he could use that time to settle several matters in his mind.

Not the least why Potter would not hate the Dark Lord.

Later, Severus knew the answer was Because he hated someone else more.

Chapter Text

“Well, Mr. Potter.”

Severus used the flat neutrality of his tone to hide his shock as he stared around the bare room—well, bare except for the dust and the broken toys—that Potter had been imprisoned in. Bars on the window. A flat mattress with one blanket and no pillow. The locks on the door. The cat flap.

The utter blankness on Potter’s face as he stared up at Severus.

“I thought I would not see you this summer.”

“Technically it’s not summer. Sir.”

Severus grimaced. That was true enough. When the boy had not boarded the Hogwarts Express on the first of September, Albus had sent Severus to Petunia’s house to look for him.

Petunia.

She was still as hateful as ever, and she had screamed at Severus when he stepped through the door. Severus had stopped her mouth with a conjured plug of clay that he’d nearly grown large enough to fill her throat and suffocate her. She was still downstairs, trying to pull it out.

“You did not send me a letter to me suggesting that you needed help, Mr. Potter.”

“I sent Hedwig with one, sir. But it turned out that a house-elf was stealing my post and didn’t let it through. Or the letters that a few people sent me, either.”

“A house-elf?”

“Yes, sir. Named Dobby. He said that there was some kind of evil plot at Hogwarts this year, and that I shouldn’t return. When I refused to say I’d stay here, he caused a commotion that made my relatives lock me in here.”

“Well.” Severus hid all his emotions as he flicked his wand. “We will soon pack your things—where are they, Mr. Potter?” The wand motion that ought to have summoned all of Potter’s belongings in the room had done nothing more than create a slight breeze to ruffle the clothes he was already wearing.

“My relatives locked them in the cupboard under the stairs, sir.”

“Including your wand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Potter, why did you permit this?”

Potter’s eyes glinted. “The Headmaster sent my aunt a letter the day before I came back from school, sir. He said that I’d used so much magic I had to rest and she should make especially sure I didn’t try to use any during the summer. So they took my wand.”

Severus only shook his head. He wanted to say many things, but it was for the best if Potter did not hear Severus disparage Albus. “Very well. We will go get them, then.” He stalked out of the room.

“Can I be the one to open the cupboard door, sir?”

Severus stared at Potter, but he looked back with calm eyes and a stubborn set to his mouth. In the end, Severus sighed and nodded. “If that is what you want to do, Mr. Potter, that is what we shall do.”

Besides, Severus wanted to speak to Petunia more himself.

When they came down the stairs, Severus turned to do that, along with the furious, purple-faced husband who immediately began to shout at him. Severus put him under a Silencing Charm, pulled out the plug of clay, and ignored the sound of the cupboard opening behind him. “Well, Petunia? Why did you keep him from Hogwarts?”

“The boy doesn’t deserve any kindness from us.”

Severus leaned close to her. “If his mother could see what you have done,” he whispered, “she would hurt you.”

Petunia’s face turned the color of withered daisy petals. Severus shook his head and turned his back. She would know nothing, would learn nothing.

Potter was waiting. He gave Severus a curious glance, but it wasn’t until they left the house behind and reached an area where they could Apparate that he asked, “You knew my mother, sir?”

Severus drew a long breath and held it. Then he said, “We were friends, many years ago. Now, Mr. Potter, as I assume you have not Apparated before, you should be prepared for an unpleasant sensation in your stomach…”

And neither of them said anything more about it.

*

“Your presence is required in my office, Severus.”

Albus had said nothing more than that, and so Severus was incurious as he walked in. It was probably another attempt to find out something about Mr. Potter, or scold Severus for not spending enough time with the other professors.

As it was, Severus came to a halt when he saw Potter sitting in one chair in front of Albus’s desk and Lockhart sitting—well, standing before—the other. He was covered with what appeared to be intricate weaves of silver wire, binding his arms to his sides and cutting into the skin.

Severus stared at him, then at Albus. Albus’s eyes were grave, and he made a gesture towards Lockhart with one hand.

“Have you ever seen a spell like this, Severus?”

“No,” Severus said slowly. He wondered if Albus thought he was teaching Potter dangerous Dark Arts. Probably. It was the sort of thing Albus was likely to suspect of him. “I do not know what it is.”

A fleeting frown traveled across Albus’s face. Of course. Severus’s statement was bald enough that Albus, an accomplished Legilimens, would not be able to think it was a lie.

But he obviously dearly wanted to.

“You are sure, Severus? You do not know the way to counteract it?”

Severus drew his wand, with a glance at the Headmaster for permission, and spent a few moments casting on the silver wire. It sparked angrily at him and didn’t disappear. Severus snorted under his breath as he put his wand away.

“To me, it looks like a consequence of accidental magic, Headmaster.” He was not sure that it was so accidental, but it could have been.

“There is no accidental magic that powerful!” Lockhart bleated, struggling.

“How would you know? Your expertise is in Defense Against the Dark Arts, not in accidental magic.”

“Severus, please.”

Albus didn’t like it when Severus baited the fool. But Severus could still let his eyes glitter at Lockhart, who continued to look massively uncomfortable in his wire prison.

“You truly cannot dissipate it, Severus?”

“I assumed you had already tried Finiite Incantatem on it,” Severus said, at his blandest, and glanced at Potter. “Perhaps you could ask Mr. Potter about the circumstances under which the wire manifested?”

“I already have.”

Albus sounds gravely disappointed. That was the only thing that made Severus face Potter and lower his voice to a mimicry of the gentle one he had used in the past with Potter when they were alone. He didn’t want Albus to start thinking Potter was Dark or evil or anything similar. “Mr. Potter, will you tell me what happened?”

Potter eyed him, as if wondering whether Severus was going to turn on him. Severus maintained a calm, pleasant expression, and Potter finally nodded and muttered, “He said that he was going to put me up in front of the class and have me play a werewolf he would hex.”

Severus controlled his reaction to the word “werewolf” with long practice, and nodded back. “And you did not volunteer for this?”

“I don’t like being hexed.”

“As would anyone of any sense,” Severus said, and won a fleeting smile from Potter. “How many times has Professor Lockhart asked you to volunteer for this or similar roles, Mr. Potter?”

“He’s never asked me. Just had me up there.”

Ah. Severus turned back towards Albus and Lockhart and summoned his blandest expression. “It seems to me that this happened because Mr. Potter does not like feeling unsafe. You must accept, Albus, that he has been unsafe many times in the past. If Professor Lockhart would cease asking Mr. Potter to participate in these demonstrations, perhaps he would begin to feel safe, and the wire would disappear.”

Albus fixed Severus with his look of grave disapproval in turn. He obviously disliked letting Potter control the narrative—or a professor. Severus had to admit that he wasn’t sure which would displease Albus more.

Severus looked calmly back at him. Do you want to make this a bigger deal than it should be? Or do you want the wire gone?

He could not actually send the thoughts to Albus—that would take more trust than he had for the Headmaster—but Albus could interpret expressions as well as anyone else. He sighed. “Professor Lockhart will cease to require your participation in demonstrations, Harry.”

Harry glanced at Severus. Severus could see the way that Albus’s lips thinned out of the corner of his eye. Yes, Albus would hate Harry looking to Severus first.

“I promise that Professor Lockhart will not use you as a tool again if you remove the wire,” Severus said. He maintained his calm expression, his eyes locked on Potter. He kept his expression that said, You know I keep my promises.

For some reason, Harry blinked, as though he didn’t know that. Or maybe he just needed to think it over. After a tense moment, he nodded. He looked at Lockhart and frowned, and the silver wire puffed away into smoke and vanished.

Lockhart started chattering something about how of course he could have made the wire vanish, but he’d wanted to give the child a chance to be comfortable with him. Severus ignored him, and so did Harry. They were still looking at each other.

“I promise,” Severus said.

“Detention tonight at seven, Mr. Potter. With Mr. Filch.”

Potter nodded to acknowledge the Headmaster’s words, but his eyes were still fastened thoughtfully on Severus. After a few seconds, he turned and left the office, hopefully heading back to Slytherin.

“Why do you think the boy was so disobedient, Severus?”

“I think he told the truth,” Severus said as lightly as he could. “He doesn’t like being hexed.”

“That would not be enough reason to attack a teacher.”

“Perhaps we have had few teachers who taught like Professor Lockhart.”

That sent Lockhart off into another spiral of prattling, since he was too stupid to recognize danger when it was staring him in the face. Severus ignored the way he was talking. His eyes were fastened on Albus.

After a moment, Albus looked down and nodded. He had the ghost of a smile on his lips, as though he thought this was Potter’s version of the Marauders’ pranks.

You do not know what you are dealing with, Albus, Severus thought, turning around and leaving down the moving staircase. Just as well that the boy ended up in Slytherin, instead of another House. That was deliberate magic, not accidental, even if it started out that way. It was under Potter’s control.

Of course, if Potter had ended up in another House, perhaps he would not have had the experience, the power, or the control to make him use that kind of magic in the first place.

Severus shrugged off the thought. He had other things to think of.

Chapter Text

“Professor Snape? Can I speak to you for a moment?”

Severus concealed a frown as he saw Draco lingering behind his classmates. He almost never came to speak to Severus anymore. Severus had made it clear in his first year that he would not listen to baseless bragging or spite against other Slytherins.

But now, Draco looked almost frightened. Severus nodded and spelled the classroom door shut. He had lunch next, so he would be able to speak to Draco without interruption.

“Yes, Mr. Malfoy?” Severus asked, when almost a minute had passed and Draco had maintained his silent, pensive, wide-eyed stare.

Draco snapped up to his full height, unimpressive though that was at the moment, and took a deep breath. “I—I saw what Potter did to Professor Lockhart in class the other day. And he came back to the dormitory saying that it was accidental magic?”

“Yes, it was.” Did Draco doubt Potter? Severus could not decide whether that would be a good thing or not.

Draco shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. “He—he’s scary,” he said, so quietly that Severus almost could not hear him, despite listening intently. “Potter, I mean.”

Perhaps that will make you leave him alone. But Severus only asked, “Has he threatened you? Done anything I should know about?”

“No.” Draco bit his lip.

Severus simply waited. Draco had learned young that nothing and no one could ever truly threaten him. The privilege of being Lucius Malfoy’s son, a rich pureblood in a society that celebrated such things as worthy of protection.

Severus had thought once that nothing sooner than adulthood would shatter the glass Draco had been caged in. But it seemed that he was coming face-to-face, for the first time, with a Dark wizard more powerful than himself, and had the wits to recognize it.

That last part is perhaps the most unexpected.

Draco shivered again and lifted his eyes to Severus’s. “Professor Snape, can I ask you something as—as the Head of Slytherin?”

I thought we were already having this conversation under those auspices, Severus thought, but saying that would only discourage the boy’s unanticipated burst of intelligence. He nodded. “You may.”

“Do you think it would be a good thing to make friends with Potter? Despite his blood and his—reputation?”

It took Severus a moment to realize that Draco meant Potter’s reputation as the Boy-Who-Lived, rather than as a powerful wizard for his age. It had become so easy to forget that in the last year and a half.

But he took a step forwards now, looked down, and asked, “What do you think, Draco?”

“I think—I think this is sort of the way my father felt when he met the Dark Lord in school.”

Severus restrained his shock. Draco was making the comparison on the basis of Potter’s power, he reminded himself. It wasn’t because the Dark Lord had made a habit of tying up his professors in silver wire. In fact, all the stories of the Dark Lord Severus had heard when he was a student were about a polite, helpful young man who had managed to fool all his professors into liking him.

Except Albus.

“I would not repeat that to Potter, Mr. Malfoy,” Severus said, the only warning he felt he could give. “He might take offense, given that the Dark Lord killed his parents.”

“He wouldn’t like the implication that he’s powerful?”

Draco’s eyes were wide and wondering. Severus felt, for a moment, a jolt of amusement. Draco might be smarter than Severus had thought, but he was still very young.

“Yes, he would probably prefer to stand on his own and receive comparisons he found more favorable.”

Draco nodded studiously. “Thank you, sir. I think I’ll be able to share a bedroom with Potter without fear now.”

“I thought you said he had not threatened you, Draco.”

“Oh, he hasn’t. But being that close to that much power can be hard unless you’re able to flatter them, you know?”

Draco left, Severus unlocking the door for a moment, but Severus did not immediately proceed to the Great Hall. He stared after Draco, instead, and wondered whether he had simply made it possible for Draco to flatter Potter more effectively.

In the end, he shrugged off the suspicion. What of it? Potter was not the Dark Lord, and he had shown no sign of the ambition that would have responded to flattery such as Draco could give him by growing stronger.

Only later, long after, did Severus think that that simply meant Potter’s ambition had grown in a different direction.

*

“They all think I’m the Heir of Slytherin.”

Severus snorted, concentrating more on the potion he was brewing while Potter brooded in a chair in front of him than the boy’s words. “That is self-evidently ridiculous.”

“Why? Do you think I’m not powerful enough?”

Severus raised his head, blinking, and focused on the young man. Potter was leaning forwards in his chair, his green eyes ablaze, and there was a coiled readiness in him that made Severus wonder how often he had had to attack people to make them take him seriously in the Muggle world.

“I think that you would not Petrify a ghost, a cat, and a random Hufflepuff and Gryffindor,” Severus said dryly. “You would Petrify people who had caused you some irritation or hurt. Witness Professor Lockhart.”

There was a long moment when Potter stared at him and Severus did wonder if he should have spoken so carelessly. And then Potter relaxed and laughed despite himself.

“What do you think is happening, sir?”

Severus added a final stir to the potion and moved away from the cauldron. Merlin knew why Albus wanted the Draught of Clarification—it was only used, most of the time, to aid in clearing one’s mind, a task Albus had no difficulty with—but there were many sorts of questions he did not ask. “I think that a student has discovered their own blood connection to the Slytherin lineage and is attempting to avenge petty slights.”

“Petty slights?”

“Perhaps they are a Slytherin themselves, but I would tend to think not. If so, they could simply have revealed themselves as a Parselmouth and claimed their heritage that way. No, my bet is on someone in another House who knows they would have prejudice against them if they showed their Parseltongue and is doing this in some misguided attempt to show they are Salazar’s true descendant.”

“What’s a Parselmouth, sir?”

Severus nearly missed his reach for the stirring rod that he was about to pick up. But he managed to complete the gesture naturally and said, “Someone who can speak to snakes. It is a rare sort of magic, and supposedly carried only by those related to Salazar Slytherin by blood.”

“Supposedly?”

“Our House’s founder had to spring from somewhere,” Severus said dryly as he lowered the stirring rod to the potion and swirled it carefully. The Draught of Clarification would be perfectly fine if he brewed with split focus, but his mind was tumbling, turning over the conclusions, and coming to…

It would make sense of some things, and add a question mark behind others.

“Someone told me that the Dark Lord descended from Salazar Slytherin. Is that true?”

Severus nodded to Potter as he shook the last drops off the rod, making sure they landed in the cauldron. “It is.”

“And so it could be someone related to him who’s doing this?”

“It could. But as I explained, that does not mean they are in Slytherin House itself.”

He looked over his shoulder when he heard nothing other than the soft bubbling from the potion in front of him. Potter—Harry—was glaring at his clenched hands.

Severus followed his intuition, which had saved his life so many times when he was a spy. “Are you a Parselmouth, Harry?”

Silence, so deep and profound that Severus could hear the sound of Harry’s indrawn breath as clearly as a shout. Then Harry said, “I thought you didn’t believe I was the Heir of Slytherin, sir.”

A speech like that is as good as an admission. Severus fought back the gooseflesh that wanted to break out on his skin. “I do not.”

“Then why ask me the question?”

“From your tone of voice as you spoke. And it is true that I do not believe the Potters have any descent from Slytherin.”

“I—could my mother have been from that line?”

Severus swallowed. “I was not aware of it, if so. And we were close enough friends that I think she would have told me were she a Parselmouth, even if she had to keep it concealed from others in her House.”

Harry leaned forwards. “Will you tell me the stories of your friendship that you implied you have, sir?”

Severus straightened his shoulders. He had brought this burden, if burden it was, on himself.

And he would not turn away.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “For instance, the first time I met her, she was flying off a swing in the park, and ignoring the way that her sister yelled at her not to do such a freakish thing…”

The words were unexpectedly easy to find, to pour into Harry’s wide eyes and straining ears. And their discussion of the Heir of Slytherin passed into peaceful darkness, like so many of the discussions Severus had had with people who were not Lily.

Chapter Text

“Good morning, Severus.”

Severus glanced up from the exam he was marking, blinking a little. He couldn’t remember the last time Minerva had come to visit his office during the end of term. Usually by then, her charges were finished with detentions and punishments for the nonce. “Yes, Minerva?”

“I wanted to ask if you knew why so many people think Mr. Potter is the Heir of Slytherin.”

Severus smiled a little. There was an answer, one that he had confirmed for himself after the conversation in which Harry had revealed his Parseltongue, but she would not like it. “They hate those who are different from what they expect.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Many of the students in this school expected Mr. Potter to be a Gryffindor,” Severus said, watching her closely, and absorbed her wince as the bolt went home with satisfaction. Many of the professors had, as well, and she was one of them. “They expected him to be loud and brash and Muggle-loving. That he is not strikes them as suspicious. And what is the most suspicious thing happening in this school at the moment?”

“Surely that is not enough—surely there must be some inciting incident—”

Without meaning to, Severus laughed. “And what was the inciting incident for the Marauders to decide I should be bullied to death?”

Minerva glanced away, a flush making its way down her cheeks. “You will never know how sorry I am that I did not handle Sirius Black more sternly, Severus. If I had, perhaps we would have known about his treacherous tendencies long before the events that orphaned Harry.”

Severus snorted, but let it go. He knew that she would never apologize for not restraining James Potter, not when he had turned into a hero.

But it was soothing, in some ways, to know that the man had left his son to Severus’s charge, and would not be able to prevent the boy from relying on Severus.

So he managed to say, “I did some quiet observation of my own after I noticed that students were blaming Mr. Potter. No one could name anything that made them suspicious of him in particular. I did, however, foil an attempt by Miss Granger to steal Potions ingredients from me.”

Minerva stared at him. “For what?”

“Polyjuice Potion. Apparently she and Mr. Weasley had some idea of trying to Polyjuice as two of my Slytherins and spy on Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Potter to figure out if one of them was the Heir.”

Minerva rarely became more than surface-level angry, but Severus watched with some satisfaction as she achieved the deeper state, looking as though she was about to grow fur specifically to raise it. “The foolish girl! You did not report this to me?”

Severus half-shrugged. “In truth, it was more than a month ago and I had forgotten it. And the way she cried when I scolded her made me unsure of whose side you would take.”

“Yours, of course.” Minerva turned around with a swish of her robe. “Miss Granger is staying for the holidays. It seems that we are overdue a conversation.”

Severus rolled his eyes slightly and used magic to flick his door shut behind her. Yes, Miss Granger’s plan had been foolish, but discovering her in the midst of the attempted theft had paid off when Severus could peer into her mind.

There truly was no reason they suspected Harry, other than that they thought he should have been marching around talking about the greatness of the Muggle world and searching for the Heir of Slytherin to punish them, if he could not be in red and gold.

Severus swept the incident from his mind, and bent over the exam instead. It appeared that Mr. Flint had mixed up moonstone and obsidian again.

If only the boy paid attention to something other than Quidditch.

*

“If I might speak with you, Severus?”

Severus had assumed, when Albus issued the invitation to his office, that it was about the latest Petrification, of Muggleborn Gryffindor Colin Creevey. He did not expect, when he opened the door, to see Mr. Potter sitting there.

Severus stepped in, his hands held calmly at his sides. “Good morning, Headmaster,” he said, and sat down in the seat nearer the desk, since Potter had taken the one further away. “Did you have questions for me about the Petrification?”

“I wanted to know if you were aware that Mr. Potter was a Parselmouth.”

“Yes, Headmaster. He told me a few weeks ago.”

Albus stared at Severus. Severus just looked back. He owed Albus much, and he had debts to repay to Lily that went deeper. But he did not owe Albus a discussion about every discussion he had with Potter.

For one thing, the volume of time he would have to spend talking to Albus would quickly become unwieldy.

“Is something wrong?” Severus added, as the silence stretched longer and longer. Potter had pushed his back against the chair, as far as he could get from Albus. Severus wished he could angle his body to protect the boy, but that would be far too obvious.

“I am disappointed in you, Severus.”

“I am sorry for that, Headmaster. May I ask why?” Severus did notice that Albus was using his first name in front of Potter, when usually he would use the Professor title.

“The Heir of Slytherin must be a Parselmouth.”

Severus hadn’t planned on it, but in some ways, that made the gesture more valuable: he laughed aloud. Albus sat up on the other side of the desk, and Severus knew him well enough to realize he was reaching for his wand.

Potter stared at him. Severus simply continued laughing. Then he cut himself off and made a little gesture so Albus wouldn’t actually curse him, but he couldn’t stop the smile that tugged at his lips.

“You thought Mr. Potter the Heir of Slytherin, Albus? Truly?”

“The Heir of Slytherin must be a Parselmouth,” Albus repeated. “It is the one kind of magic that reliably identifies Slytherin’s line.”

Because Severus had done a little more looking around since Potter had revealed the shocking truth about himself, he could easily shake his head and say, “Not true. In fact, there are several Parselmouth families in France, Belgium, and India. I did not have time to look at other countries, but it is certainly not unprecedented that a student who was not the Heir of Slytherin could have the gift.”

“You call it a gift.”

“Yes, I do.”

Albus remained silent. Severus didn’t roll his eyes, but he did want to. Albus had no reason to hate Parseltongue so intensely, except for its close association with the Dark Lord. He had been reasonable on the subject, as far as Severus knew, until the Dark Lord’s ascent.

Now he seemed to think that anything associated with the Dark Lord was tainted. He had even removed books from the library that the Dark Lord had checked out as a young man.

“Why, Severus?”

“Because it is so for many people, including the ones I investigated.” Severus shrugged at Albus’s look. He was being informal, perhaps, not using the Headmaster’s title, but Slytherins paid their debts. “It can be used in healing, in brewing, even as the component of a ritual in and of itself. I understand that it may not be so in Britain, but if you are accusing Mr. Potter of being the Heir of Slytherin based on his possession of Parseltongue and not his actions, I must wonder why.”

“I am saddened that you did not tell me immediately.”

“I was not aware that you wished me to do so,” Severus said blandly.

Albus narrowed his eyes, but it was certainly true that he had never told Severus to report on the presence of Parseltongue in a student. Why would he have? There was only one Parselmouth in Britain, to most people’s knowledge.

Now there were more. But Severus did not intend to leave the office and announce that, and he did not think Albus would, either. He might think Harry was the Heir, but he would not want his boy hero damaged.

And as became clear with the way that Harry gave flat answers to Albus’s questions—yes, he had always been able to talk to snakes; no, he didn’t know it was special; no, he hadn’t even known it was called Parseltongue until Severus told him—he didn’t crave publicity for his gift. He only wanted everything to go back to the way it had been, with the Headmaster virtually ignoring him.

Severus did wonder, as the interrogation continued and Albus finally had to admit that Harry had satisfactory alibis for all the Petrifications, if he didn’t notice the flat way Harry was looking at him.

Perhaps not.

When they left the office, Harry started to speak, but Severus just stared at him with one eyebrow up, and Harry seemed to grasp the unspoken warning about eavesdropping spells. He kept silent until they had walked a good distance from the gargoyle and Severus nodded.

“Why did he act like such a git about it?”

Severus restrained his laughter this time. “He does not understand you, Mr. Potter. He would be happier if he did.”

“But I’m not that hard to understand.”

Severus half-shrugged, while thinking that that was a lie. Unconscious or not? It was hard to tell. “I think he expected a very different child from you, and he has not reconciled himself yet to reality not matching his perceptions.”

“What do you think he expected me to be like, sir?”

“A Gryffindor, certainly. More reckless, less inclined to be self-contained. Someone who has more friends. Not a Parselmouth. Not someone inclined to trust me.”

“Even though he claims to trust you?”

Severus turned to face Harry, who was staring up into his eyes with the same intense, lambent gaze he had used when he was confessing he was a Parselmouth. Severus had to swallow back a surge of discomfort.

Lily, when you look at me through his eyes, it’s so hard to master myself.

“Yes,” Severus said simply. “Given my rivalry with your father and his friends, and that the Headmaster thought you would be in Gryffindor, I know that he anticipated distance between us.”

“That’s stupid, sir. You’re the most like me of any of the professors here.”

Severus had difficulty swallowing this time. In the end, he inclined his head and said, “Perhaps those similarities are more difficult to see for someone more distant from the matter than—we are.”

“Perhaps they are. Thank you, sir.”

And Harry turned away and walked towards the Slytherin common room. Severus watched him for a moment before he shook his head and turned on his own heel.

He did not understand everything, either. If someone had told him—if Lily had told him—that someday he would understand James Potter’s son better than Albus, Severus would have laughed.

But it was true. As long as Severus kept in mind that he did not know everything, and that Potter was not showing him everything, either, then he should be fine.

Chapter Text

“Someone has to do something!”

“I’ve brought you to someone who might be able to do something—”

“No! He probably supports the Heir! We have to go to Lockhart!”

“Who would have done exactly nothing, given what he a fraud he is,” Severus said dryly, opening his office door to see the youngest Weasley boy and Potter standing outside it. “Now, what is it?”

“There’s a message from the Heir in blood on the wall, sir,” Potter said, his eyes hooded and dimmed the way they were when he was around someone other than Severus. “Saying that Ron’s little sister has been taken into the Chamber.”

Severus could feel his mouth stretching in a grim line. He nodded. “I will do what I can to take care of it. Mr. Weasley, Mr. Potter, return to your dormitories.”

“No!” Weasley put his hands on his hips and glared at Severus so hard that Severus felt the first flicker of respect for him that he ever had. “You could be supporting the Heir—you’re a Slytherin—I want to come—”

“It was a Slytherin who brought you here,” Potter hissed at Weasley, the sound of a sibilance under his tongue. Severus caught his eye in a glare. Potter nodded and bit back his anger with a frightening efficiency.

“Yeah, but—”

Severus interrupted by Stunning Weasley. As he sagged to the ground, Potter raced to catch him, and blinked for a moment at Severus. “Why did you do that, sir?”

“He would have been a nuisance and probably tried to tag along,” Severus said crisply. His mind was racing as he considered the possibilities. There was Dark magic that he could use to find the entrance of the Chamber, but Albus had forbidden him to use it before. Should he do it now? Would Albus still be too upset to justify the use, or would he find it different because it was a Gryffindor first-year who had gone missing?

“Do you expect me to come with you?”

Severus blinked and looked at Potter, whose eyes were blazing bright again. “No. Why would I? You are a student.”

Potter paused, then nodded. Then he looked down at Weasley. “Sir? Do you think you could conjure a stretcher so I can take him to the hospital wing? He should probably be there anyway when you come back with his sister or—”

Or the body.

Severus nodded, conjured a stretcher, and watched them out of sight before he raised his wand to cast his Patronus. In the end, he had to care more about Albus’s probable reaction to the Dark Arts than to anything else.

*

Severus stepped slowly off the last of the stairs that he had raised in the middle of the air. He hadn’t been able to open the sink that had a small snake carved on it, since he was not a Parselmouth, but he had cast a Blasting Curse that had broken open the sink and the wall behind it, and that had worked nicely. It had certainly been less time-consuming than the Dark Arts Albus had finally, reluctantly, authorized him to use to find the sink.

It had been easy, when he thought about it, to realize that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets must be near, or in, the bathroom that the Petrified Cat had been found outside, and that contained the only ghost of student age Severus had ever seen in Hogwarts.

He wished he could have discovered it earlier. But no one else had, either.

Not even Albus.

Severus walked slowly, layered in spells to disguise his scent and his footfalls and the Strongest Disillusionment Charm he could cast. Bones crunched beneath his feet. Then he stepped around the corner and went still as he stared at the skin that lay there—the skin only. He was fortunate.

Basilisk.

Severus grimaced. He ought to have guessed that, as well. Parseltongue, Slytherin’s Heir, Petrified victims who had seen their own reflections in water and film and the like—what else could the beast be but a giant snake?

He lifted his wand high and stepped slowly past the skin, walking on. The tunnel bent through a few more curves, and then ended in front of a pair of immense stone doors carved with writhing serpents that had emeralds for eyes.

Severus took a long breath, and deliberately relaxed his body and mind. Then he began layering more spells over himself, this time the strongest shields he could muster. He would have to open the doors of the Chamber the same way he had opened the passage, but he was sure that there would be protections here much stronger than the ones in the bathroom.

When he was sure he was ready, he conjured a huge piece of diamond in front of himself, so large that he had to aim his wand around the side to use the Blasting Curse. It didn’t matter. His breathing was calm, his heartbeat steady.

The wall of diamond, unlike a wall of stone, was less likely to break, and would ensure that he did not have to dodge splinters from his own protection.

“Confringo!”

The Blasting Curse hit the stone doors of the Chamber and reflected with enormous violence. Severus ducked back behind the diamond wall as it rocked. It shimmered, and he grimaced and added more spells to make it stable, despite how much magical energy that consumed. Conjured gems rarely lasted long, never long enough for someone to become rich from them.

A Blasting Curse would not work.

Very well.

Severus adjusted his position once more to make sure that he was fully shielded by the diamond and could still move fast if needed. Then he lashed out with a spell so deeply engrained in himself that he needed no verbal casting to increase its force.

Sectumsempra!

The invisible whip of his magic hit the doors of the Chamber and cut out the emeralds from the eyes of the snakes, individual pieces of stone from the bodies, the center part of the portal. There was an intense groan, and the doors rocked, but did not fall.

It did not matter. The hole in the center of them was low enough to the floor and large enough for Severus to climb through. He Transfigured the last of the diamond wall to a rooster that he immediately cast a Silencing Charm upon, and climbed through the hole with the struggling bird under his arm.

He did not know what he would find in the room beyond. But he knew that he was going to defeat it—or them.

Chapter Text

The Chamber of Secrets was disappointing.

At least, that was Severus’s first impression. He stared around the enormous stone room, dripping with water and emptied of whatever secrets it might once have contained and boasting a supremely ugly statue, and sneered.

It would have been good, in some ways, to be allowed to preserve his illusions about Salazar Slytherin being handsome.

Severus prowled slowly into the Chamber, snapping his head around from side to side. The silence and the emptiness continued.

Except for the floor at the feet of the statue. There was a flash of red and black. Severus altered his course, casting a Disillusionment Charm on the rooster as he did so.

Ginny Weasley sprawled on the floor, her school robes spread around her, her face deathly pale. The small black book beside her was a surprise, and so was the wave of Dark magic rolling from it, which made the Mark on Severus’s arm throb with pain. He clenched his jaw to avoid crying out, and studied Weasley narrowly.

She was still breathing, from what he saw. He wondered if the Heir was using her solely as bait, or as a sacrifice of some kind.

“You are not whom I expected.”

Severus turned his head as slowly as he could, given that he wanted to jump and snarl. No one could have sneaked up on him with all his senses straining to their full alertness, including his magic sense. He was in a plain stone room with no one except the increasingly drained Ginny Weasley around, and she was so weak that she barely felt of magic at all. Even if someone had managed to hide their power somehow, he should have felt the approach of another mind through his passive Legilimency.

But there was indeed a young man standing not far away from Ginny Weasley, his head tilted to the side as he regarded Severus. He was wearing black robes and a Slytherin tie. He was not familiar.

And that was impossible. Severus knew all his students.

“Do you have nothing to say for yourself?” the student asked impatiently when Severus simply remained silent. “Not even to ask how this happened?”

Severus squinted. He still couldn’t sense the stranger’s magic, which was equally impossible, or his mind. But he could see a faint transparency along the edges of his robes and body, as though he were a ghost—

A ghost made solid.

Severus hissed softly. He did not understand everything, but he knew enough. He had found the Heir.

It seemed that it had not been a student after all, not in the traditional sense. The ghost, or the being, had manifested from the book, and had probably possessed Ginny Weasley. There had to be a connection between them for the being to be growing more solid as he watched. Now Severus could pick up a faint shiver of magic from the boy, where he had not been able to before.

“It’s boring that you’re not saying anything,” the boy complained.

Severus inclined his head. “I presume I address the Heir of Slytherin?”

“Yes, I am.” The boy smiled as if at a private joke. “My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle.”

The name rang a faint bell for Severus, but he could not say that he could recall the context in which he’d heard it. “And you are gaining life by draining the girl on the floor?”

“Of course.”

The Heir was watching him with the smug self-confidence of someone who thought that no one could stop him. Severus was not sure that he could win a duel, come to that, although that was because of the Heir’s non-solid state and the fact that the book on the floor was so Dark that he didn’t know how to destroy it. So he would keep speaking. “And I cannot convince you to reverse the flow of magic?”

Riddle laughed. “When I have been trapped in a diary for fifty years, a living memory without anyone to communicate with? I think not.” He spun a wand that was probably Weasley’s around his fingers. “I hope you will understand, and not force me to kill you. You might be of some use.”

A memory, trapped in a diary for fifty years…

Severus could not say that he had ever heard of such a thing, but he did think that it moved the diary into a class of Dark artifacts that could only be destroyed one of a few ways. He could use Fiendfyre.

Or basilisk venom.

Careful to keep his face as neutral as possible, he asked, “Why choose this girl, when you could have had more powerful victims?”

“You are curious. I appreciate that.” A vicious smile curled across Riddle’s face. “She was the one who wrote in the diary. Someone who was chosen by the book’s previous keeper.” Riddle shrugged. “Yes, I could have chosen someone more powerful, but only if I’d found my way into their hands.”

Something about the way he said it made Severus think that had nearly happened, but honestly, he wasn’t here to satisfy that curiosity. He nodded as if thinking deeply about the matter. “Why did you release the basilisk?”

“You know it is a basilisk? Good. That will save some tiresome explanations. I wished to consider my great ancestor’s noble work, releasing the beast to cleanse the school of Mudbloods.”

“Ah.”

“You do not have more of a reaction than that?”

“Only that it seems doubly odd the diary’s previous keeper gave the book to a pureblood.”

Riddle gave a soft laugh that fell on the Chamber around them like poisonous snow. “From what dearest little Ginny said, the previous keeper had a feud with the Weasley family.”

Severus held his face still, and he was fairly sure that as the half-solid being he currently was, Riddle could not sense the way his mind or magic might move with the information. But he knew what it meant.

Lucius.

And the diary was likely an artifact that had belonged to the Dark Lord.

Which meant—

Severus did not allow that particular realization to show on his face, either. Instead, he asked, “And now?”

“And now I walk out of the Chamber when dear Ginny is dead and resume my proper place in the world. A place that I count on you to help me attain, given that I can feel the magic on your left arm that tells me you belong to me.”

Yes. But Severus raised his eyebrows and let his voice convey polite disbelief as he said, “I belong to a great Dark Lord, the greatest that Britain has ever seen. You are telling me that you are him?”

“A part of him. A memory of him.”

Very well.

Severus let himself sneer. From the way Riddle blinked, it surprised him. “I do not believe you.”

Riddle bristled and raised his wand. The fiery letters that appeared in the air, spelling out TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE, twisted into I AM LORD VOLDEMORT a moment later.

Something in Severus’s stomach twisted as well. He had truly never realized how pathetic the monster he had bound to himself was.

“You are a memory,” he said instead. “That is not the same as the Lord to whom I swore myself. And there would be too many questions if I did not rescue Weasley.” He turned and walked towards Weasley.

“Stop!”

Severus did not stop, and was not surprised when a stream of unintelligible Parseltongue followed. He was a bit surprised when the statue’s jaw swung open like the jaw of a snake, but then, he was starting to think that Salazar Slytherin had been too obsessed with the snake motif.

As the rasping sound of scales came nearer and nearer, Severus dropped into a crouch and placed the rooster on the floor. From Riddle’s laughter, he had no idea what Severus was doing and might think he was simply frozen with fear. The Disillusionment Charm over the rooster must be holding, then.

There was a hiss that, to Severus, sounded mad with hatred and pain as the beast came forth. Severus swung his wand and ended the Disillusionment Charm and the Silencing Charm on the rooster at the same time.

The rooster swung its head back and crowed.

The sound seemed to ring through the Chamber and bring a flash of sunrise to the dim place. The basilisk crashed without a further sound, other than that of the rumble as its bulk shook the stones.

“No. No!”

Severus rose to his feet, and then dived and rolled. The Killing Curse that Riddle cast hit the rooster instead, and the bird went limp. Severus stood up and drew his wand.

“I am going to kill you.”

“Perhaps,” Severus replied, and began the duel.

The shade of the Dark Lord was very good at dueling. He was fast, he was fluid, and he wasn’t afraid to use Dark magic in the way that many children of that age would have been. And a few of the spells Severus used went through him because he was still not completely solid, although others struck.

But Severus was a far more experienced duelist than Riddle had been at this age, and he was not truly aiming to kill the boy. Instead, he was working his way towards the basilisk’s head, and when Riddle cast another Killing Curse, he stooped behind the snake.

“Do you think to use my own weapons against me?” There was the increasingly heavy sound of footsteps, altering between one moment and the next, as Riddle walked towards the corpse. “I am immortal! I am Lord Voldemort!”

Severus cast a silent charm that he often used in the lab to collect spilled potion, and the venom pooling next to the fangs in the gaping mouth rose in a green cascade. Severus whirled around and flicked his wrist, and the venom flew.

Soaking the diary.

There was a scream from Riddle that was worse than a dying thing, that went on and on. Severus resisted the temptation to cover his ears. He had heard worse. And there was always the chance that he would need to defend himself in the next moment.

But the scream faded away. And when Severus stood slowly and looked towards the place where Riddle had been, clutching his wand, there was no sign of him.

“Pro-professor?”

Severus spun around, crouching in place, and Weasley flopped back with a scream. Severus shook his head and moved over to her. He had recognized her voice, but it had been so unexpected for her to wake up so soon that he had almost attacked her anyway.

“Miss Weasley.”

“Where is—Tom! You have to stop him—”

“I have stopped him, Miss Weasley. I have destroyed the diary.”

Weasley stared at the diary, and then swallowed loudly. “Oh.”

“In the meantime, we will need to know everything you can tell us about Mr. Riddle and the diary. When you recover your magical strength,” Severus added, when he saw the wide-eyed way she stared at him. Albus would not forgive him for being too harsh with a Weasley. “I will take you back to the school now.”

Weasley nodded and then fainted, too quickly for Severus to do more than place a Cushioning Charm between her head and the floor. He shook his head and gathered her up, floating in the air between him. Then he surrounded her with bubble shields to keep her from being bumped or scratched on the way out of the Chamber.

He cast one long, careful look around the Chamber before he left. Perhaps there were more secrets here than he had thought after all.

He would have to come back.

Chapter Text

“And you are sure that the diary is completely destroyed by the venom, Severus? You did not think to bring it with you?”

Severus stared at Albus from beneath his eyelashes. He had been summoned straight to the Headmaster’s office once he had taken Weasley to the infirmary. “No. I was rather busy at the time, and securing Miss Weasley’s safety was a priority.”

“I have never known you to think the safety of Gryffindors a priority before.”

“I might say the same of you and the safety of Slytherins.”

There was a crackling, electrical charge to the air. Severus continued to sprawl back in his chair, while Albus stared at him and leaned over the desk, his hands fastening on either side of it.

“You will bring up ancient grudges against the Marauders now, Severus?”

“You will cast aspersions on me for not doing exactly as you would have wished me to without even instruction?”

Albus’s nostrils flared, but he sat back and shook his head. “I suppose that you would not have thought of preserving the artifact for further study instead of destroying it.”

“I can easily fetch the remains. So could you, for that matter.”

“Perhaps that would be for the best.”

Albus turned away, and Severus stood up, inclined his head in respect that he didn’t feel but which Albus’s sensibilities necessitated the pretense of, and swept out of the office.

He sincerely doubted that anything he could do would have been perfect in Albus’s eyes. If he had thought to spare the diary, he would have been admonished for preserving a dangerous magical artifact that might possess someone else before it could be properly contained. If he’d brought it along first, Albus would have harped on his lack of care for Miss Weasley. That was the way Albus kept him in chains, ensuring that there was fault found with everything Severus did.

This was well enough, Severus thought as he stepped off the bottom of the missing staircase. He had lived. Miss Weasley had lived, and Poppy thought she would recover with enough rest and potions.

And he had someone else to speak to, now.

*

“So she was possessed.”

“Yes.”

“And the boy in the diary was a shade of—the Dark Lord.”

Severus dipped his head, not taking his eyes from Potter. The boy had been unnaturally still ever since Severus had invited him into the office to hear the truth of the Chamber of Secrets. “Yes. His real name was Tom Marvolo Riddle.”

Potter—Harry—was quiet, his eyes glazed cold and green and focused on the far wall. Severus sat still and let him absorb it. In truth, Severus himself was shaking lightly as the reality of what he had confronted flooded him, but he had managed to keep the shaking entirely internal.

At last, Harry stirred and asked, “And that was news to you as well, sir?”

“In truth, I believe that I learned it at some point in the past and was then Memory Charmed.”

“The way that Lockhart was?”

Severus blinked. “What?”

Harry turned to face him, a grim amusement on his face. “Oh, yes. Lockhart came and got me while you were down in the Chamber. He was expressing some hope that I knew where the Chamber was and what the monster was. I told him I didn’t know, and I certainly wasn’t going to confront it. Then he tried to Obliviate me. But I had a shield ready, and it bounced back on him. He’s a drooling mess now.”

Severus stared at him, then murmured, “I am glad that you were able to handle that yourself. But it seems that I have been remiss in my duty.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

Severus took a deep breath and prepared to lay everything before Harry. He had already told what had happened in the Chamber, and that had meant telling Harry not only about the diary and Miss Weasley but about his ability to use powerful Dark Arts to locate the Chamber entrance.

It was time to tell him about the Unbreakable Vow.

*

When he had finished, Harry was so quiet that Severus feared the disclosure had damaged him. But then Harry looked up.

“So you swore to keep me safe,” he whispered.

“I did.”

“Safety is the most important thing.”

Severus raised his eyebrows. “There are those who would not agree, Mr. Potter.”

“But it is. If you’re not alive, you can’t do any of the rest of it! Learn things, or even just laugh and eat and sleep and—” Harry cut himself off. His eyes were flaring green, the most like Lily he had ever seemed, the most alive Severus had ever seen him look. “You have to be alive,” he said more softly. “You have to be safe.”

“Yes, I suppose that is true,” Severus said. Perhaps it was a simplistic view of the world, but simplistic views could be powerful.

“Thank you for swearing to keep me safe, sir.”

And if that simplistic view brought light back to Harry’s eyes, that had dimmed after Severus had talked about the danger from the diary and the basilisk…

Severus could see no harm in it.

(There was).

*

“You will be going back to Privet Drive for the summer, Harry.”

Albus had spoken those words in a meeting that he had called Harry to without telling him why he should come, and Harry had insisted on bringing Severus with him. When Albus had said that stupid thing, Harry had looked at Severus.

Severus only inclined his head, in a motion that could be taken for a nod.

He knew that it was an immense gesture of trust for Harry to accept Albus’s words on the surface and wait for Severus to intervene in a way that would relieve him of going to the Dursleys’. For the moment, Harry had given a sulky nod and departed the Headmaster’s office dragging his feet.

“What makes you think they will let him come back next year, either, Headmaster?”

“I have spoken with Petunia.”

Severus had been intensely sorry that he hadn’t witnessed that. And it did mean that he would have to let Vernon Dursley actually pick up Harry at the train station, so that he would know how to use either magic or words to get around whatever “safeguards” Albus might have installed.

But in the end, Vernon Dursley never appeared. Harry turned towards Severus when he removed the Disillusionment Charm that had shielded him from the view of Muggles in the station, and said, “Sir?”

Severus sighed noiselessly. “You sent them an owl months ago, didn’t you.”

“Very good, sir. Two points to Slytherin.”

Severus stared at the boy. Harry promptly drew into himself, his expression smoothing out into one of well-practiced contrition, and opened his mouth. Severus knew it would be an apology.

Which he did not want. It was another gesture of trust for Harry to have opened himself up enough to—tease. Severus would never tolerate such insolence from a student in Hogwarts, even one of his own House, but they were not at Hogwarts.

And Harry is not an ordinary student.

“You need not apologize. I was caught by surprise, not offended.”

Harry gave him a deep, long look that said he doubted that, but in the end, he only smiled and said, “All right, sir. So what now? Do you have another place that you could stash me? Someone you would trust to watch me?”

“Trust,” no.

So, in the end, Severus shook his head and murmured, “I do have a place that can never be searched, Mr. Potter. I will have to tell you the secret of it so you can enter, and once you are there, you can only leave the grounds during the summer with a disguise. But I will make sure that you are safer than you would ever be with your—family.”

Harry’s teeth flashed in a smile.

*

“Spinner’s End is located…”

Severus kept his eyes on Harry as he spoke the secret aloud for the first time since he’d put the house under Fidelius two years after the end of the war. He had always anticipated that he might be eventually forced to reveal it to another person, but he had never thought that person would be James Potter’s son.

He is far more than that, and you know it.

That much was true, so Severus put aside the emotions that the thought had churned up and kept his mind calm as he watched Harry’s eyes widen. It was probably the most surprise that the boy had shown in years.

Perhaps the most emotion.

“How did you do that?” Harry breathed, tilting his head back so he could see the house’s roof more easily.

“The spell is called the Fidelius Charm,” Severus said, ushering Harry inside with a hand hovering near but not touching him. “It hides a building or other place in the Secret-Keeper’s soul.” He paused with his hand on the doorway, watching as Harry looked around the small cottage as if it were a wonder. That said more about his deprivation than it did about the state of Spinner’s End, of course.

Then he thought of something else, and grimaced.

Harry turned around fast enough to catch the expression, of course. “What is it?” he asked, shrinking in on himself and watching Severus through his fringe.

Severus took a deep breath. “I just realized that you would not have known, because your relatives would not have known, either. The Fidelius Charm was what your parents were sheltering under just before they died.”

Harry went still, his eyes so huge that Severus thought he could find the deepest secrets in them if he used Legilimency. He did not, of course.

Harry coughed a second later and whispered, “If it stores the secret in your soul, what happened? Did someone torture the Secret-Keeper to get the secret out?”

Severus sighed. He was not looking forward to this conversation, and especially what he would have to explain about his own relationship with James Potter and Sirius Black, but he was the one who had started it.

“Come. I will make you tea, and we will speak of it.”

Chapter Text

In response to the story of Sirius Black and his horrific betrayal, Harry grew quiet and cradled the cup of tea Severus had made for him far longer than it would have been necessary. Then he whispered, “And you said that Black is in prison and he’s never going to get out?”

“That’s right.” Severus sipped from his own tea and wished that he had a subtle way of slipping Firewhisky into it. He had strained himself not in speaking of the incident but in trying not to make his antagonism towards Black and James Potter too obvious. “And he is surrounded by Dementors, who bring up all his worst memories over and over again.”

“Do we know that his betrayal is the worst of his memories?”

“No. But he grew up in a household that was not pleasant, according to his brother. So that is perhaps what he remembers.”

Harry paused. Then he said, “His brother?”

“Sirius Black was Sorted into Gryffindor. His family—the rest of his immediate family, at least—was Sorted into Slytherin. Regulus Black, his younger brother, was in the year below us and spent some time confessing Black’s secrets to me when he found out—”

Severus cut himself off, silently turning his fury on his own soul. It was a good thing he could not have Firewhisky after all, if he would do this kind of thing.

“When he found out what, sir?”

Severus stared at the young man on the other side of the table—young man for all that he was only twelve—and then set aside his cup. Yes, he knew he could lose Harry’s trust easily if it turned out that he was lying to him. He would have to speak of what he had been keeping hidden, and hope that he could do it in such a fashion that he could spare Harry’s feelings.

“Sirius Black was a member of a gang of Gryffindors who called themselves the Marauders, and who bullied other students. I was their particular target.”

“You wouldn’t need to hide that from me, sir. What more is there?”

Severus stared again at those green eyes. Not guileless, but one might think they were. Not innocent, but one might think they were. And for the sake of preserving what innocence Harry had left, Severus would speak.

“Your father was one of the Marauders as well.”

Harry made a sharp gesture with one hand. Then he pulled his fingers back, and rested them flat on the table. His eyes were fastened on Severus, but his voice was calm as he said, “What did you do to them in return?”

Severus swallowed against the overwhelming bitterness. Of course he should have assumed that Harry would think Severus was the instigator, or the worse person in the situation.

He held his voice and posture still as he replied, “I did hex them. I cursed them a few times.”

Harry paused, although how he did that without moving, Severus did not know. Then Harry said, “I didn’t mean that I thought you—deserved what happened. I wanted to know how you retaliated. No one should simply accept that.”

Severus blinked and stared. Harry kept staring without blinking. Severus was the one who finally looked aside and said quietly, “I did not keep myself from retaliating. In the end, though, I spent my spite on the person who least deserved it. Your mother.”

“What happened, sir?”

And Severus found himself telling the story of his worst memory to a boy who looked at him with Lily’s green eyes and only said, when Severus had finished it, “I would have done the same thing you did.”

It was lacerating. It was forgiveness.

*

“Do you think it’s strange that the Headmaster hasn’t found out I’m not with the Dursleys, sir?”

Severus blinked away the mist of research ideas in his head and looked up from his book to see Harry standing in front of him with his hands folded behind his back. “No,” he said absently. “I do not think he would go and look.”

“Why not?”

“Well, he never has, has he?”

Harry’s eyes widened for a moment, and then he smiled. It was a sharp, glittering, foxlike thing. Severus had to admit that he enjoyed the sight of James Potter’s son smiling that way. And if gradually he was losing that kind of pleasure and only thinking that it was good Harry could smile that way…

He need not admit that to anyone else.

“Good point,” Harry said, and sat down with his own book. It was a tome of Dark Ars spells from Severus’s private library.

It was not, perhaps, the kind of book Severus himself would have picked out for Harry, but then again, trying to keep knowledge from him was what Albus had done. Severus would let Harry choose his own path, and only act to guide him away from it if he proved he was doing harm to others.

Severus doubted he would. Harry was much more self-protective than he was interested in causing others pain.

Later, too, he would have cause to doubt that conclusion.

*

SIRIUS BLACK ESCAPED FROM AZKABAN!

Severus rubbed his forehead when he saw the headline. So soon after he had finished reassuring Harry that Sirius Black was imprisoned in Azkaban for the rest of his life, this felt like a mockery from the gods he had once believed in.

But at least Harry knew the truth, and would not be caught completely off-guard.

Harry did sit still for a long time when he saw the paper, his eyes locked on the photograph of Black with his hair tossing around him.

Then he said, “He looks even madder than I thought he would,” and laid his paper aside to eat his breakfast.

Severus sighed, and went back to eating his own.

*

“Can you teach me Occlumency, sir?”

Severus blinked at Harry for a long moment. He’d just come out of the little lab that he kept at Spinner’s End, and his mind was spinning through improvements he might be able to make to the Blood-Replenisher, which hadn’t been truly improved in all the years since it had first been created.

Then he snapped back to the present and frowned at Harry. He could understand being asked for Defense training with Black on the loose, but why Occlumency?

“Is there a reason that you’d like to learn that, Mr. Potter?”

“So you do know it.”

Severus shook his head, amused despite himself by the test in the form of a question. “Yes, I do. But you should know that it’s intrinsically difficult, and will involve months of meditation and simple exercises before you manage to even begin defending your mind.”

“That’s all right, sir. I don’t care. But I want to learn it.”

“Why?”

Harry’s face shifted and changed. He had been looking at Severus with his eyes unshuttered, but now he turned away and stared out the window.

“I read about it in one of your books,” he said, voice so soft that Severus had to strain to hear him. “And I realized that I would be vulnerable to anyone who knew it. I know you did. What about the Headmaster?”

Despite himself, Severus was impressed that Harry had figured that out. He nodded. “And also the Dark Lord.”

“So maybe Quirrell was reading my mind during my first year?”

“It’s possible.”

Harry tightened his spine. “Then I’d like to know it. My thoughts are mine. Sometimes they’ve been all that was. I’m going to protect them, and that means I can protect myself better from the enemies who matter.”

“I will teach you if you agree to keep up your physical training. Black is also an enemy, and will attack you in ways that have nothing to do with Occlumency.”

“Of course, sir. I promise I won’t neglect it. But if it comes to it, I would prefer to run away instead of engaging him.’

“Sensible. Very well.”

As Severus went to take down the book of simple Occlumency exercises that he had learned from when he first began to battle Legilimency, he was startled to see the triumph etched across Harry’s face. But he shrugged off his uneasiness.

Even if Harry had manipulated Severus into teaching him, it did not matter. Occlumency would be a useful skill for him to know against the Dark Lord, and it would grant him a clearer mind and stronger memory.

Severus could see nothing in it to do any harm.

*

“Would you mind fetching Mr. Potter to the train station again, Severus?”

The request contented Severus extremely. It meant that Albus did not know where Harry had spent the summer—or, what might be equally as likely, that he knew Harry had spent the summer with Severus but saw no reason to make a fuss about it. Either way, Severus could live with that.

He started when they appeared in King’s Cross and stared wildly around. Then he told himself not to be stupid. There was not—they could not be here.

“Sir? What’s wrong?”

Harry had noticed, of course. Severus turned towards him and told the truth, as he had been doing since the last days of last term. “I thought I sensed Dementors nearby. But surely the Ministry would have put it about if they intended to have Dementors ride the train. In search of Sirius Black, I presume.”

“Would they have? Are you sure about that?”

Severus frowned. No, he was not. Not least because the Ministry wouldn’t have wanted to deal with outraged parents and the owls that were sure to ensue.

And because he did not mistrust his instincts, even if the Dementors were approaching King’s Cross at the moment instead of here, or if they had recently been here and the echo of cold was speaking to him.

“Could you Apparate me to Hogwarts, sir?”

Severus blinked at the boy. It seemed to him that he did that far too often, and the only redeeming feature of this particular gesture was that no one was paying attention to them in the crowd around the train.

“Do you not wish to ride the train with your friends?”

“What friends?”

“I thought that Mr. Weasley was—close to you. And Mr. Malfoy last year seemed to be on better terms with you.”

Harry gave a bitter little laugh. It lit up his green eyes in ways that made Severus shudder to recall from his own memories.

“I still talk to Ron, but he didn’t—take it well that you were the one who went into the Chamber of Secrets after his little sister and I didn’t. And Malfoy is just a sycophant like so many people who want the Boy-Who-Lived to pay attention to them.”

A distant echo of sadness touched Severus, that the boy had had to learn this so young. Then again, it was better than him being taken in by people like Draco. Severus had some fondness for Draco, but he was too much the born sycophant, the user.

“In that case, I would be happy to Apparate you, Mr. Potter.”

Harry grasped Severus’s arm, and they vanished with a crack.

Chapter Text

“Dementors did attack the students.”

Severus nodded silently in response to Harry’s question. He had come to Severus’s office right after the Sorting, and it was obvious he had other things he wished to talk about than the presence of Dementors. He kept shifting his weight.

“Speak your mind, Mr. Potter.”

“That—new Defense professor. Remus Lupin. He was one of the Marauders.”

“He was.” Severus kept his voice as quiet and careful as he could. He had not quite dared to tell Harry about Lupin’s lycanthropy. That was something that could cause Albus to withdraw his protection, with how clearly he had announced to the staff today that no one was to inform the students.

Harry’s eyes grew bright with some emotion Severus didn’t know how to name. “And he never contacted me.”

“No.”

“Good. Then I don’t want anything to do with him, either.”

And Harry turned his back and walked away. Severus frowned after him. He had thought, if anything, that Harry would have wanted to seek Lupin out and confront him, asking after his parents and challenging the one remaining Marauder as to why he had not fulfilled the duties James and Lily would have expected of him.

But, well, Harry was a Slytherin, not the Gryffindor that Lupin might have been expecting. It was time for Severus to keep that in mind.

Along with Lupin.

*

“Severus, can I speak to you, please?”

Severus turned around with displeasure prickling down his spine. Being close to Lupin at any time—including meals and when Severus brought him the Wolfsbane—was unpleasant, and he had just sat through a staff meeting with the man. “Yes? What is it?”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t talk here?”

Severus raised his eyebrows, since the room was empty of all the other professors, but perhaps Lupin, with his sensitive hearing, was thinking of spies beyond these walls. He nodded. “Very well.”

They took an uncomfortable walk to Lupin’s quarters, during which he tried to chatter about all sorts of unimportant things, and Severus ignored him as coldly as he could. When the door was shut behind them, Lupin dropped the pretense and turned to face Severus in a way that made him reach for his wand.

“How have you poisoned Harry against me?”

“You did that yourself. What with your constant absence from his life.”

Lupin stared at Severus with slightly parted lips. Had he truly thought he should be able to get away with this? “What—what do you mean?”

“I did tell him the story of Sirius Black being his godfather, since no one else seemed interested in informing him,” Severus said. “And that meant—”

“I’m sure you gave him a fair and unbiased picture!”

“In fact, I tried to hide from that his own father was a bully. He was the one who sensed the lie of omission and demanded to know the truth.”

Lupin clenched his jaw. “You probably still told him the truth in a biased way.”

Severus shrugged. “I was the only one who would give it to him.”

“I—you know why I could not raise him.”

“And what prevented you from writing, Lupin? Does lycanthropy cripple the wand hand in a way I’ve never heard of?”

Lupin bowed his head, shuddering. Severus simply waited. He had little patience for Lupin. He guessed the man had already approached Harry and been reprimanded—unless he had relied on Albus for every account of Harry.

But despite everything, Severus had thought Lupin was smarter than this.

“If I had written to him,” Lupin whispered at last, “he would have started asking why I couldn’t raise him. And then I would have had to disappoint him with vague excuses.”

“Why not tell him the truth?”

“And expect a child to keep the secret?”

“It was more important to not tell him you were a werewolf than to tell him anything at all?”

Lupin looked away, his face painted with shame, the aggression draining off. Severus watched him in silence. He would accept that Lupin had reasons not to want to contact Harry, but he would not accept that it was the right decision.

“I simply wanted to—to not make him realize that I was a Dark creature,” Lupin whispered. “And you know it would have been difficult to interact with him in the Muggle world on a regular basis.”

Privately, Severus thought that lying to Harry about magic if Lupin had ventured into the Muggle world would have been the height of folly, but he knew his student better than Lupin did. He sighed. “So all you wished to do was ask me what I said of you?”

“Yes.”

“I did not tell him of your lycanthropy. I said nothing at all except that you had been one of the Marauders and had sometimes targeted me, as a matter of fact. I spent more time explaining Black and that utter mess.”

Lupin shut his eyes. “Thank you.”

Severus nodded curtly and then waited to see if Lupin would demand anything else of him. He did not, continuing with his face turned away. Severus turned as well and strode out of the room.

*

“How afraid should I be?”

Severus sighed as he stared downwards into Harry’s shadowed green eyes. They seemed to acquire more shadows every year. But Severus could hardly blame him, when he had faced the shade of the Dark Lord once and only avoided facing a basilisk because Severus was there.

“I don’t know.”

“You said he wouldn’t be able to get into the castle! With all the Dementors around—”

“I thought it unlikely. That is not the same as saying it is impossible.”

Harry bowed his head, his teeth clenched, and visibly gained mastery of himself. Severus was beyond impressed. The Minister himself had sounded more afraid of facing Sirius Black than Harry did, and Black was not out for his blood.

“I need to ask you something.”

Severus looked at Harry again, although part of his attention remained on the potions that had been simmering when Harry knocked on the door of his office. Two of them would be ruined if he didn’t properly attend to them. “Yes?”

“What would be better if Black captured me?”

“What would be—better?”

“Should I try to kill him? Could I even do that? Or should I try to just get him to drop me? Or should I kill myself, so I wouldn’t have to live through the torture he might try to inflict on me?”

Severus hissed as pain from the Unbreakable Vow flared to life in his chest. He had not known that Harry talking about possibly committing suicide would do that.

Then again, he had never pictured being put in this exact situation.

“You should do whatever you must to get away,” Severus said sharply. “Kill him if you must, wound him if you can.”

“You care that much about his life?”

“I care that murder is a means of splitting one’s soul. I do not know what it would do to someone so young who committed that kind of act.”

Severus was speaking the truth. All of the Death Eaters who had either killed someone or tortured someone in such a way that the victim had died had been older than sixteen, most older than seventeen.

Severus would prefer that Harry not take the risk for Black, of all people.

Harry’s eyes widened again as he stared at Severus. Then he said, low and fierce, “And you believe that I’m good enough to maim Black instead of killing him?”

“I saw what you did to Lockhart last year. Would you be incapable of doing it against Black?”

Harry shook his head. He was still watching Severus with those surprised, assessing eyes. Severus sighed. “Did you think I would tell you that you should not defend yourself, even in the name of saving your life?”

“I thought you would be more upset by it.”

“I am upset about your potential death, if that is what you mean—”

One of the potions spluttered, and Severus whirled around and cast a Freezing Charm at it. In seconds, the surface congealed, arresting the dangerous reaction that might have made it overflow the cauldron’s lip. Severus shook his head and turned back to Harry. “My apologies. I did not mean to interrupt our talk.”

“No, it’s all right.” Harry was smiling at him with a chill that went deep into his smile and which Severus relaxed at the sight of. Perhaps most people should not smile like that, but the truth was, Harry had to. “Thanks, sir. I’ll make sure that I can survive Black, no matter what happens.”

Severus nodded. “Good. Now, come sit down, and we’ll see how your Occlumency lessons are working for you. Then we’ll follow that with a lesson in dueling.”

In truth, it had turned out that Harry was a natural at both skills. Severus had asked him why he didn’t try as hard in Defense, and Harry had shrugged. “It doesn’t seem as though it’s worth it, with the quality of the professors we’ve had.”

Later, there was another reason. But Severus did not know it then.

*

“What do you want done with the broom, Mr. Potter?”

“Burn it.”

Severus stared at the boy. They were both in Severus’s quarters, and much as Harry had brought him the Invisibility Cloak during his first year, he had received another mysterious Christmas gift. This one was a Firebolt broom, however.

“You would rather burn such a valuable broom than sell it on?”

“You believe I could?”

Severus nodded slowly. It seemed obvious that Harry wasn’t thinking clearly, probably because he was rattled by the odd appearance of the broom in his dormitory. “Yes. I do think that there are people on your House’s Quidditch team who would pay a large amount for it.”

Harry smiled. There was a gleam in that smile and in his eyes that made Severus wonder abruptly whether Lily would even recognize her child.

And if he cared about that.

“Thanks for the advice, sir. Then I’m going to do that, and whoever sent this can be disappointed that I didn’t fall into their trap.”

“Why do you think of it as a trap, Mr. Potter?”

“An expensive broom, when I don’t even play Quidditch, and when Sirius Black is hunting me?”

Severus nodded slowly. He had cast a few detection charms on the broom, but he had no idea what kind of spells were normal for such an expensive piece, and so he couldn’t know whether he was detecting something that should be there or not.

“I believe Mr. Malfoy might pay you a pretty Galleon for it.”

“Then that’s decided, sir. Thank you.”

Long after Harry had slipped out of his office, Severus sat contemplating the fire, and wondering whether he should have tested the broom more thoroughly.

And what goal Black, or anyone else, would have accomplished by sending Harry the broom in a way guaranteed to make him suspicious.

*

“You’re well?”

“Yes, of course, sir. He wasn’t even in my dormitory.”

Severus inclined his head. That was true enough, and now he only had to convince his rapidly pumping heart of it.

It was the morning after Sirius Black had apparently tried to break into Gryffindor Tower again, and had managed it this time. Ron Weasley had woken to see Black standing over him with a knife and woken most of the Tower by screaming his head off. Severus thought the reaction extreme, but if it meant that Weasley had warned others, it had served its purpose.

Harry, meanwhile, was frowning into his teacup.

“Drink it. It is good for you.”

Harry started a little and drank some. “Yes, sir.”

“What is it?”

“I just—it seemed like Black was just mad at first, trying to force his way into Gryffindor Tower when I wasn’t there.” Harry sipped some more from his teacup and put it down, staring into Severus’s face with no evidence that the Calming Draught was having an effect on him. “But this second time—he had a knife, he went into the Tower even though he must know by now I’m not there, and he would have attacked Weasley? Why?”

“He could still be mad.”

“It just doesn’t seem like it, sir.”

Severus closed his eyes. Was that true? Was Harry mistaken, because he wanted so badly to attribute some sense to Black?

Or was Severus the one who was overlooking something obvious, because he didn’t want to believe that Black would have the strength of mind to survive with any of his sanity intact after twelve years in Azkaban?

“Sir?”

Severus sighed and opened his eyes. “I suppose we may have to accept the possibility that Black is less mad than the Ministry assumed,” he allowed. “I will investigate this, Harry. But discreetly. In the meantime, you might continue acting as you have been.”

“Yes, sir.”

Harry had put down his teacup and stood up before Severus thought of something he hadn’t noticed before. “I did not know that you called Mr. Weasley by his last name.”

Harry glanced over his shoulder. His eyes were deep and wild in the way that they had been sometimes during the summer when he was studying Occlumency and evidently coping with painful memories.

“We had a disagreement, sir. Last year.”

“Last year?”

“Yes, sir. At the end of term. He was upset that I didn’t go after Ginny myself.”

Severus stared. “You mentioned that, but I did not think it so serious. And you would have died. You could not have survived the duel with Riddle, or the basilisk itself.”

“Yes, sir.” Harry’s back was very straight, his arms down at his sides as if he were preparing to reach for his wand. “But Ron didn’t see it that way. He saw it as I was his friend, and she was his sister, and I was the one who had saved the magical world when Voldemort attacked. That meant I should go after her.”

Severus swallowed at the Dark Lord’s name, but simply shook his head. “So you are no longer friends?”

“Ron thinks we are. He nobly forgave me a few days after the start of last term.”

Severus hid a sigh and nodded. He could wish that Harry had friends he could confide in; Severus was not a substitute, no matter how comfortable Harry might feel with him. “Very well. I hope you will still get some benefit from his presence.”

“I learned from your example, sir.”

“Excuse me?”

“You ruptured your friendship with my mum pretty publicly, and in a way that caused you lots of problems later on. I’m not going to do the same thing.”

Harry left before Severus could question him. Severus kept staring after him for a moment, a sensation that was becoming distressingly familiar.

Then he closed his eyes and rubbed his hand down his forehead.

He would just have to make sure that Harry did not repeat his mistakes, if he was determined to pattern his life so closely on Severus’s.

At least he seems to need no help in walking that path.

Chapter Text

“Sir, sir, look what Potter sold me!”

Severus looked up with a smile as Draco stepped into his office, waving the Firebolt around. “I see, Draco. And I trust that you are going to lead the Slytherin Quidditch team to victory on that?”

“Of course, sir.”

Draco did, too. A few days later, Harry showed Severus a note he had received from an anonymous owl and thoroughly tested with his own string of detection charms before he accepted it from the bird.

I gave that broom to you so you could use it, not some poncey Malfoy!

Severus spent some time over the next few days revising Pensieve memories, and was able to tell Harry the truth the next time he visited after that.

“That is Sirius Black’s handwriting.”

Harry blinked. “I suppose that he must have thought I would simply hop on the broom and go for a ride after all,” he muttered. “Despite not being a Gryffindor.”

“Perhaps he is still basing it on what he would have done. He was somewhat Quidditch-mad.”

“Then he comes by his madness honestly,” Harry said dryly.

*

“Remus tells me that you have not been encouraging a connection between him and Harry, Severus.”

Severus blinked, looking up from the book he was studying on how to build wards that would keep out any wizard, no matter how well-trained or powerful. Albus’s head had simply appeared in his Floo without forewarning, and he was afraid that he looked rather stupid as he tried to drag his brain to the topic of the conversation.

“No,” he said at last.

“Why not, my boy? You know that Harry needs those connections to sustain him in his lonely life.”

Severus snorted. “Has Lupin himself approached the boy? I don’t keep track of every insipid thought in the man’s head.”

“You ought to call him Remus. You are colleagues.”

Severus didn’t bother to hide his sneer. Albus would probably think there was something wrong if he did, anyway. “Has he approached the boy himself?”

“He has not, other than a few offers to mentor him in learning the Patronus Charm. It appeared that Harry was worried about the Dementors around the school.”

“I would assume most of the students are.”

“Did he approach you about the Patronus Charm?”

“Remus or Potter? In either case, the answer is no.”

Albus frowned and spent a moment looking off to the side. Severus sat and waited. At least he had long moved past the time when he would feel anxious and uneasy in the Headmaster’s presence.

Harry was responsible for some of that change. Severus had had many conflicting thoughts and desires in the years before the boy came into his life, all of them rotating around the one great guilt at the heart of him. And now he had concerns that mostly made him feel tired when Albus called him for conversations like this.

“If you care for Harry, you should encourage his connection with Remus.”

“How would I do that without doing all the wolf’s work for him? I of course would not expose his lycanthropy. But I also cannot simply shove Harry in the wolf’s direction without telling him why.”

“I think you could, Severus. The boy trusts you.”

Severus sneered in a way that he was not far from feeling. “And he would not trust me again if I propelled him at—Remus without saying why. Do you really want to damage a trust so fragile for the sake of a man who is a grown adult and could speak up if he put his mind to it?”

“You know why Remus feels the way he does, Severus.”

Severus sat there and said nothing. Of course he knew that Lupin felt persecuted for his lycanthropy, but his stupid cowardice about approaching Harry made no sense. He was letting fear of disappointing the boy get in the way of establishing an actual connection with him.

Severus sat there, and Albus finally sighed and looked away. “You may go, Severus.”

Severus waited until his Floo shut, then stood and walked over to his desk with a crack of his cloak behind him. Albus might be hoping Severus would open the Floo to apologize, but he had no intention of doing so.

When he got back to his desk, Severus wrote a short note and summoned a house-elf. “Take this to Harry Potter in the Slytherin dormitories. Wait for a response if necessary.”

“Yes, Master Severus.”

Severus sighed when the elf was gone. There was some risk to using them, since they were under Albus’s control, but that he would question this one in particular was a slim chance. Albus never paid much attention to the elves, even after Sirius Black had sneaked into the school two times.

The elf returned less than ten minutes later, brining a tightly folded note from Harry in return.

Always good to have an explanation. And I did not approach Lupin about teaching me the Patronus Charm. He was the one who suggested it to me.

Severus nodded, tight-lipped, and burned the note with a flash of wandless magic. He was sure that Harry would have done the same thing with the one he had received.

If Albus thought that such methods would coerce Harry into doing what he wanted, he truly had no understanding of Slytherins.

*

“—should have been a Gryffindor!”

Severus paused. He had been about to step off the last stair that led down to the dungeons, on his way to dinner not far behind his students. But he recognized that voice, and he saw the way that Cormac McLaggen was pointing his wand at Harry, of all people.

Speaking of people who have no understanding of Slytherins.

“My parents died before I was two years old,” Harry said, in his calm, empty voice that too many people would see as only calm. “You should know as well as I do that they wouldn’t have influenced my behavior.”

“You should have been a Gryffindor,” McLaggen repeated with all the stubborn stupidity that Minerva should have trained out of him, and aimed at Harry amid gasps. He was most likely doing so much only because he saw no professor or prefect around, but it had gone far enough.

Severus stepped forwards with his mouth open.

And saw Harry turn his head a little, looking at the small group of Slytherins behind him instead of at the threat in front of him. He nodded.

A hex took McLaggen down, making boils break out all over his body. He howled in surprised pain and toppled over as the boils covered his eyes.

“Nott,” Severus said, in surprise as much as (feigned) displeasure.

Theodore Nott glanced at Severus with the flat eyes that had always made Severus wary of the boy. It was ridiculous, in more than one way, for him to be cautious around a student, except some of the reckless or skilled seventh-years. But Nott had blended the most frightening qualities of his parents into a quiet fortress of power.

And he had never shown any sign of following anyone before this. Severus had been half-convinced that the boy would never join the Death Eaters, because he didn’t care enough. He seemed to only act when someone threatened his books or his work or his privacy.

That he had acted on Harry’s demand—

“I’ll take my detention, Professor.”

Severus stared at him. That was another thing that had never happened before. Nott had never had a detention, because he attacked in private.

And now the boy was watching him, and the other students were turning to stare at him. Some of them included Gryffindors who could babble about the Slytherin politics happening here to ears that would be far too interested.

“So you must,” Severus said. “As well as thirty points from Slytherin.” He hated doing that, but this hex was simply too public.

“Severus! What happened here?”

Of course Minerva would intrude into the situation. Severus held in a sigh as he turned around. “Nott hexed McLaggen,” he announced. “I understand that McLaggen was taunting Mr. Potter about his House sorting, but that is not sufficient provocation.”

“It surely is not! Sixty points from Slytherin!”

The Gryffindors were beginning to look as though they might invent other incidents in order to get more points removed from Slytherin. Severus caught their eyes and stared, and they visibly gave up that plan.

“Mr. Nott,” Minerva said, shaking her head, apparently not able to believe any more than Severus originally had that Nott had sacrificed his hard-won reputation as a reasonable Slytherin. “Come along, then. We will discuss an appropriate punishment and the timing of your detention in my office.”

Severus watched Nott turn his head before he stepped towards Minerva, meeting Potter’s eyes. And watched Potter nod.

Only then did Nott go with Minerva.

Severus scattered the remaining Gryffindors with a glance, and then faced his Slytherins. They stared at him and said nothing. There was a faint smile on Potter’s lips—and he was truly Potter, not Harry, at the moment—but he only said, “Was there something you wanted to talk with us about, sir?”

“Only to remind you of the consequences of getting caught.”

He held Potter’s eye as he said it, but Potter just smiled and turned and led the Slytherins away.

Severus watched them go, wondering both how he had missed Potter becoming a leader among the Slytherins of his year, and what it meant that the boy had refused to refer to them as his friends when he had spoken to Severus.

Chapter Text

“I am taking lessons in the Patronus Charm from Lupin. It seemed like it might be useful.”

Severus just nodded. He knew he had a more profound connection with Harry than any Lupin could resurrect at this late date, and also that he would have to explain more than he felt confident doing if he demonstrated his Patronus for Harry.

It should not have been so, when he had told Harry so much about his friendship with Lily and how that friendship had ended. But so it was.

“Why did you want to see me, sir?”

Severus stifled a sigh as he looked at the young man in front of him—sometime in the last few months, he had begun to think of Harry as a young man and not a boy. He might not be as tall as even some of the second-years yet, but no one could look into his eyes and see a child.

Except for Lupin and Albus, perhaps.

“I wondered when you had begun gathering power to yourself, and why I did not notice.”

A small smile darted across Harry’s face. “You’re talking about the thing with Nott?”

“Yes.”

Harry took a long moment to answer. Severus went on gazing at him, and finally Harry inclined his head and spoke softly.

“I need to make sure I am respected.”

“Yes. But I thought your fellow Slytherins respected you already.”

“In a way. They know now that I’m not spoiled or adventurous the way they expected me to be, and that I’m not a Gryffindor in disguise. But they were content to ignore me for most of the last two years. I had to remind them of why they should do more than that.”

Severus frowned. “Did someone start spreading a rumor about you?”

“No, sir.”

“Then I confess myself at a loss for the reason.”

“You truly believe that the Boy-Who-Lived’s fame is enough to protect me for the rest of my life?”

Severus breathed out slowly. “Are you trying to become a new Dark Lord, Mr. Potter?” He wondered where he had gone wrong if that was the case, and if it would be so wrong. At least Harry wasn’t sadistic or mad like the Dark Lord. Maybe it would be all right if he wanted power.

He had simply seemed so uninterested in it before that this had taken Severus by surprise.

“No.”

Severus paused. Oddly, he believed Harry. The denial had been flat, and the look in his eyes was so truthful.

And there was Severus’s passive Legilimency, which did not indicate a lie.

“Very well,” he said slowly. “Then may I inquire as to the purpose?”

“Respect. And safety.”

Severus studied his ward intently. Harry looked back, and his eyes were as open and bright as they ever got anymore.

Severus finally nodded, conceding defeat. He supposed that Harry was looking to the future, when a Death Eater’s son like Nott might cause trouble for him when the Dark Lord returned. Severus could not blame Harry for being cautious about that, even if he thought that Nott was one of the least likely people to do so. Severus was no longer present in the Slytherin dormitories the way he had been when he was a student and seeing all the subtle interactions between people.

“Very well. Good luck in your actions, Harry.”

Harry smiled at him, and this smile seemed to go all the way under his skin.

“Thank you, sir.”

Severus hesitated, and then poured forth a part of his soul that he had never extended to any student. “If you wish, when we are in private, you may call me Severus.”

A pause long enough to make Severus wonder if he had misjudged the tenor of their relationship, and then Harry gave an even wider, brighter smile that made Severus remember Lily without pain or the twisting of a breath in his chest.

“Thank you—Severus.”

*

In the end, it wasn’t enough, all of Severus’s caution and attempts to make sure that Harry was safe. In the end, Black still sneaked into the castle and kidnapped Ron Weasley, and he grabbed Harry on the way.

Only later could Severus hear the story from Harry and piece together that Harry had been walking down a side corridor on the way back from “studying” with Nott and Draco and a few of the other, younger Slytherins. He’d been alone, Black had loomed up in front of him, and suddenly Harry was bound and Silenced and floating behind Black, along with Weasley, as Black fled through a secret passage.

The only reason that Severus was even out of his office was because he had been taking Lupin his potion, and Lupin opened the office door and then tried to run straight past him.

Severus flung a blast of wandless magic instinctively. Lupin went reeling back and into the far wall of his office.

That didn’t appear to faze him. He simply staggered to his feet, gasping, “Sirius!”

“Black isn’t here.”

“No—you don’t understand—I took a map of the school back from Filch that we made a long time ago, the Marauders—I saw Sirius on it—”

Severus contained the swell of hatred at the name of his most loathed tormentors. “I don’t care. You’re not simply dashing after him.”

“I don’t want to curse you, but I will if I have to, Severus.”

“Not until you take the potion.”

Lupin gave the goblet only half a glance, most unlike the reaction that he’d had all year. “There’s no time! Sirius has Harry and Ron, what happens if I’m too late—it won’t matter then if I transform—”

Severus Stunned Lupin with brutal efficiency and leaned him against the wall, then tipped up the goblet and cast a charm most often used by Healers to force the idiot to swallow. Lupin did, and looked furious when Severus cast Ennervate.

“You shouldn’t have done that—”

“Are we going to stand here and argue, Lupin, or are we going to go?”

Lupin shook his head, looking as if he did want to stay there and debate morality, but he did start running. Severus kept up with him easily. For all that Lupin had some gifts from his werewolf side, speed wasn’t one of them in his human form.

“Where is Black?” Severus asked, when they had emerged from the school onto the grounds and Lupin showed no sign of slowing.

“In the Shrieking Shack.”

Severus took a breath against the terror that surged through him, and merely nodded. He did ready his wand, since for some insane reason Lupin hadn’t drawn his yet. Lupin dropped to all fours and wormed in through the tunnel after he’d pressed the knot on the Whomping Willow, but Severus stood for a moment, feeling sick from the pace of his heartbeat.

Then he pressed forwards.

Chapter Text

Lupin barged straight into the room in the Shack. Severus, on the other hand, like a sensible Slytherin, stayed back, and cast a silent Summoning Charm that would disarm everyone in the room.

“Snivellus!”

Black was just as deranged as Severus had always pictured him, as the photographs in the Daily Prophet had shown him, with stringy, matted dark hair hanging around his face, and that terrible snarl on his lips. He moved closer to Severus, flicking his eyes for only a moment at Lupin. Severus found that more interesting than Black’s other actions, than his own fear.

“I’ve waited a long time to kill Peter, but longer to take care of you,” Black said madly.

Severus flicked his wand again, and chains appeared around Black, pressing in so close around his skin that they would break his bones if he tried to struggle. Black gagged and thrashed around. Severus rolled his eyes and sent him sprawling onto the bed that stood in the middle of the room, taking some delight in the dust that billowed up around him.

“Severus, no! Peter is here!”

“Perhaps you could explain what you mean, Lupin.” Severus was studying Harry. The boy looked shaken, but already calmer than any other child would have been.

“The map that we made of the school—it shows people’s names.” Lupin was staring at Black as he spoke, not even glancing at the boys he’d claimed to be so anxious to protect. Typical. He did always put his friends before all else, including obeying the rules or upholding the safety of others. “I saw the name Peter Pettigrew on it.”

Severus made an exclamation of disgust before he could stop himself. “Black dug up the body and brought it here?”

“There was no body,” Lupin said, quietly, intensely.

Severus frowned. He did recall reading that, not at the time, but in the Prophet articles about Black’s escape, which had repeated several times that nothing except a single finger was left of Pettigrew. “Then what—”

Black growled, and transformed.

Severus’s shock might have kept him still as he watched the giant black dog leap out of the chains, but he was a skilled duelist. His wand whipped up again, and he Stunned Black in a way that made him crunch into the wall.

“Severus!”

“Shut up, Lupin,” Severus said, as his mind drew the connections and realized that Lupin must have known about Black’s Animagus form. They would have never kept something like that from each other. Knew, and didn’t tell Albus. Had contributed to Harry being in danger when Black managed to slip past the Dementors, who would ignore animals.

Severus glared at Lupin viciously enough to make him cower, and then turned to Harry. “Are you all right?”

Harry nodded. His eyes were bright and quick, traveling over Severus and to Lupin and then returning to the Stunned Black. “Black grabbed me and Ron and brought us here. He was ranting about the rat and how the rat wasn’t dead.”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Lupin said, deciding his existence was important enough to assert again. “Peter didn’t die when Sirius attacked. He’s a rat Animagus, and he’s been in hiding since the end of the war. That explains things. Sirius broke free to get hold of him at last.”

Severus narrowed his eyes and aimed his wand at the room in general. At least he knew the spell would have one effect if Lupin was lying, mistaken, or delusional. He chanted the Animagus Reversal Charm silently, and then waited.

Black regained consciousness and howled, in a canine voice and then in a human one, as he was forced back into his birth form. And there came a similar shriek from the area of Weasley’s pocket, which tore as the rat inside fell to the floor and grew into a scrambling, panting, sweating man Severus recognized despite the passing of the years.

Severus Stunned him at once.

“Let me kill him.”

Most unfortunately, it seemed that Black had already recovered from the shock of his transformation. Severus didn’t bother discussing it with him, but Stunned and bound him again. It seemed that Black might be innocent, distasteful as the prospect was, but perhaps he had broken free to kill the man he blamed for the Dark Lord’s death or something equally stupid. The story would keep.

“Severus—”

“I do not know what the story here is, but I am sure we will hear it better in the hospital wing,” Severus said flatly, and turned towards the door of the Shack. He cast a spell that would reveal anyone hiding nearby, because at this point it seemed likely that that would happen, and nodded when nothing came back. He floated the Stunned Black and Pettigrew into the air, and tossed Harry and Weasley’s wands back to them.

Weasley still had his mouth open. He shut it with a click and grabbed the wand, scowling at Severus.

Harry only looked at him with shining eyes, and smiled. “It’s sure to be interesting.”

“Severus—”

Severus let the werewolf call him by name and babble most of the way down the tunnel and back up from under the Whomping Willow. The essence of his complaints seemed to be that he knew Black was innocent and that he knew Pettigrew had survived and that Severus shouldn’t have Stunned them.

But he wasn’t saying anything interesting, so Severus stepped out of the tunnel confident about his decision.

Until he saw the movement of the Dementors towards them, and the full moon shining from behind the branches. Lupin gave a gasp as his form began to twist.

At least he wouldn’t attack, but it did mean there was one less wand to cast the Patronus that might keep the beasts at bay.

Vaguely aware of the fact that he was revealing his Patronus in front of Harry after all, and more than vaguely annoyed about it, Severus raised his wand. “Expecto Patronum!”

His silver doe exploded into being, making Severus’s heart tremble for a long moment. Then he pushed it aside, locked everything behind the thick Occlumency shields that he sometimes needed simply to make it through the day, and moved forwards, directing the doe to charge the Dementors.

She did, and the creatures drew slowly back, their “robes” swaying around them. But they didn’t retreat further than a few dozen feet. They were still between the little ragged group that Severus was responsible for and the school.

Severus drew in his breath. So he would walk. That was all. He would simply press forwards.

He did it all the time.

“Expecto Patronum!”

Severus spun in place, his first, absurd thought being that Lupin might somehow have managed to reverse the werewolf transformation, and his next that Black had escaped from his bonds—

But Lupin had already cowered to the ground, whining as Weasley gaped at him, and Black and Pettigrew were still Stunned and bound. The Patronus was emerging from Harry’s wand.

Harry, who stood tall and proud, and just smiled a little when Severus gaped at him.

Severus shut his mouth and nodded. It seemed that Lupin’s lessons had been effective after all, or Harry’s private practice. Severus should have known better than to expect Harry not to master a useful piece of magic just because he didn’t like the professor.

“Towards the school,” Severus said.

His doe led the way. Harry’s circled them, pacing with a snarl on its face. Severus was not quite sure if it was a leopard or something else, but it was clearly a great cat, and it turned and bared impressive fangs when a Dementor got too close.

They reached the school at last—everyone except Lupin, who had bounded away into the Forest like the coward he was—and Severus managed to ask his Patronus to take a message to Albus. Then he leaned against the wall, utterly exhausted.

“Why did he turn into a werewolf?” Weasley was asking.

Severus didn’t say anything, partially because the words were so idiotic he didn’t know what would emerge from his own mouth, but he did take joy in Harry’s light, cutting, condescending answer. “Because he is one.”

At least that shut Weasley up.

*

“This is a tangled situation.”

Severus knew he probably shouldn’t, but he was enjoying the grave look on Albus’s face. Not so much because Albus was upset about Black’s innocence—a fact Severus was taking some time to absorb himself—but because for once, Albus seemed to have not expected things to play out this way and genuinely had no idea what to do.

Harry sat on the chair in the hospital wing, where they had gone to confine Black. Severus had thought it the best place, not least because there was a store of potions in the infirmary that would be useful to determine if Black was lying or under some kind of compulsion. Weasley had been given a Calming Draught and was half-asleep in the bed nearby. Pettigrew was under the Draught of Living Death, which Severus had forced down his throat the instant they came into the hospital wing.

Severus still couldn’t look at the man without wanting to kill him. It was best to make him as helpless and unlikely to escape as possible.

“Where is Remus, Severus?”

“He turned, but he was in his right mind. I assume he is on the grounds somewhere.”

Albus gave him a disappointed look. Severus ignored him. If the wolf was stupid enough to wander around and potentially let someone see him instead of curling up in the Shrieking Shack or sneaking into his office, it was not Severus’s problem.

“And you—would you mind repeating your story, Mr. Potter?”

“No, sir.”

Harry told the story as it had happened. Severus only listened with half an ear. As galling as it was, he did believe in Black’s innocence and that Pettigrew had been the Secret-Keeper.

He was more interested in observing Black’s reactions, and Albus.

Black had swung between looking crazed, looking hopeful, and looking stunned since he’d woken up from Severus’s literal Stunner. He glared at Pettigrew about half the time. The rest was divided between gaping at his godson, scowling at Severus, and staring at Albus.

A lot of the time he was staring at Harry, Black seemed to focus the most on Harry’s Slytherin crest and colors, which Severus had to admit was a source of endless amusement for him.

Albus was grim and quiet most of the time, other than asking a few clarifying questions about Harry’s recitation, and then asking him to go back over it. He had drawn his wand and cast a spell on Pettigrew that Severus didn’t know. He didn’t understand the blue glow it produced around the traitor, either, but he hoped it would prevent him from transforming.

“This is all most unexpected,” Albus said at the end. “But you may rest assured that we will keep Mr. Black from having his soul eaten by a Dementor. I will speak to the Minister myself.”

“Thank you, sir. I don’t think anyone deserves the Dementor’s Kiss.”

Albus gave Harry one more thoughtful glance, and then stood and left the hospital wing. Interestingly, he hadn’t said a word to Black.

Black struggled against the bonds that still tied him, loose, shimmering ones of magic that would tighten only if he attempted violent action against someone or himself. Madam Pomfrey came bustling to loosen them further.

“Harry,” Black whispered. “I—I’d love to be your godfather.”

Severus ignored the punch of loss underneath his breastbone as Harry looked at Black with shining eyes. Of course he would want to live with the mutt going forwards. And of course he would want to live in the kind of luxurious surroundings Black could provide him, rather than the small cottage at Spinner’s End.

It was for the best. Black should have been able to raise Potter anyway. And Severus could get more brewing done during the summer this way.

“I’ll have to think about it, Mr. Black. It’s bit of a change, right? But thank you for the offer.”

“Maybe you could stay here and we could talk about the details?”

Severus stood, drawing more attention than he had wished, with the way the legs of his chair screeched. But he only inclined his head to Harry, said, “I am glad that the evening has passed with no injuries to you or anyone else, Mr. Potter,” and then turned and left with as much dignity as he could muster.

“Snape thinks that?” Black asked behind him, in a ringing voice that he didn’t try to quiet. “Wow, old Snivellus has changed.”

Severus had more control than to slam the door of the hospital wing behind him, but not enough courage to stay and hear Harry’s response.

Chapter Text

Severus shook his head as he left the staff meeting. Despite all the care he and others had taken, Lupin had been spotted coming out of the Forest in wolf form, and the student who had seen him had run at once to spread the gossip around. And someone else had connected that to Lupin’s monthly illnesses and poverty, and now the secret was out.

Albus had expressed both gentle and sharp disappointment in Severus’s direction, but he hadn’t had anything to do with the curse or Lupin’s stupidity. He would only enjoy the results of it for once.

“Professor Snape, sir.”

It was Harry’s voice. No, Severus reminded himself, you must think of him as Potter now. He will turn against you, with all the information Black tells him. He turned around and nodded. “Mr. Potter.”

“Can we go to your office, sir?”

“Of course.” Severus escorted him along the corridors to his office, wondering as he unlocked the door how Harry would break the news to him. Would he explain that he could get more out of going with Black than he could if he went to Spinner’s End? Probably. That sounded like him.

I really must stop thinking as if I have anything to do with his decisions anymore.

Severus shut the door behind them and turned to Harry with the same determinedly bland and pleasant mask he used with Albus. “What can I do for you, Mr. Potter—”

“Oh, come off it.”

Severus blinked despite himself. Then he said in his softest, coldest voice, “Excuse me?”

“Sirius told me a lot about what the conflict between you and the Marauders was like.”

“Did he.”

“He told me about calling you that stupid nickname.”

“Did he.”

“Stop acting as though I’m going to abandon you because of what they did,” Harry said, and his eyes were as fierce as Severus had ever seen them. He leaned closer. “I knew you before I knew anything about them. You’re the one who cared enough to come pick me up from the Dursleys and teach me Occlumency. You’re the one who didn’t try to make me fit into some—some mold, and accepted that I was really a Slytherin, even before most of the Slytherins did. Stop being so stupid as to think I’m going to turn my back on you!”

Severus stared at him. Then he cleared his throat. “I thought—from the way you were speaking with Black about living with him during the summer, that you had changed your mind about being my—ward.”

“I’ll want to live with him because it sounds like he has a bigger house. And you found it hard to give up some of your privacy last summer. This is the better choice for both of us. But I’m still going to visit you and study with you on a regular basis. Unless you’re saying you don’t want me to.”

At that moment, Harry reminded Severus of nothing so much as a porcelain statuette that his mother had kept on a high shelf. His father had smashed it in a drunken rage, and years later, Severus was still finding pieces of it scattered into corners.

He could speak the words that would smash Harry, at the moment.

He chose not to.

“That would be welcome.”

Harry’s smile flashed. “Good. I’m going to let Black give me whatever he thinks he needs to, to make up for the years he wasn’t there, but he doesn’t understand me the way you do.”

Severus should not have treasured his words so much, but he did.

*

“Harry needs to stay with the Dursleys, Severus.”

“The people who put bars on his window and forbade him to come back to Hogwarts?”

“That was a misunderstanding. They believed that if they kept him from Hogwarts, he would eventually lose his magic altogether. That isn’t the case, and they are willing to accept him back.”

“I’m glad that Petunia told you so.”

“I wrote her a letter, and have had no response, but the owl waited to be sure she received it.”

“I see.”

“Severus, there are protections based on Lily’s blood magic around that house. You know it will be the safest place for the boy, safer than your home, particularly if your—old companions come calling.”

“I see.”

“I am grateful that you have managed to see past your grudge against James and your grief over Lily, Severus. Never think that I am not grateful. But Harry’s safety is more important than his happiness, and he cannot be safe anywhere other than at Petunia’s house. He was safer there last summer than he would have been living with a wizard or witch, and his relatives did not mistreat him—is something wrong, Severus?”

“I thought he was going to live with the mutt.”

“Sirius still has much healing to do, even after being declared innocent. And the house he intended to have Harry live with him in is filled with Dark Arts and the kind of artifacts that might prove irresistibly tempting to a young Slytherin.”

“I see.”

“I am glad that you do.”

*

“What did Black say when Dumbledore told him that he couldn’t live with you?”

“Allowed that Dumbledore was probably right, and said he had spent too much time in Azkaban to be a safe guardian for anyone.”

Harry’s face was blank, but his eyes were furious. Severus glanced away a moment to give him a chance to collect himself, then unlocked the door of Spinner’s End and ushered Harry inside. Severus had collected him at the train station in disguise and Apparated him straight here. Once they were behind the wards, not even the Headmaster could have seen them entering the house.

“I’m sorry to be intruding here and taking up your privacy, sir.”

“If I found the intrusion intolerable, then I would have asked for you to find some other place to deposit yourself.”

“Nott did invite me over for the summer,” Harry said, in a voice so bright and innocent Severus thought he could hear it ringing like a bell. “But I thought that his father might be a problem. He’s not convinced yet.”

“Not convinced of what?”

“Of my worth. Nott could follow me. His father follows someone else.”

Severus paused, then said, “Mr. Potter, look at me and allow me to test your Occlumency.”

Harry looked up with no sign of reluctance. Rather than battering down his untried shields the way Severus might have done with an enemy, he launched a lightning-quick, flickering probe.

Harry flinched, and Severus’s will shot into his mind and locked onto a memory related to young Nott.

Nott approached Harry in the Slytherin common room and said softly, “Is it true that you’re a Parselmouth?”

Harry looked at him, his emotions in the memory flavored with smugness, relief, pride. “And if I am? Where did you hear that?”

“Sometimes Draco doesn’t check to see who’s around before he talks about something.” Nott sat down next to Harry, staring at him as if he expected to see scales running beneath the surface of his skin or something else equally inhuman. “I might be interested in an alliance if you are. If you are—”

Harry pushed Severus violently out of his head then. Severus stood and looked at him in silence, wondering about the relief in the memory. It seemed that Harry hadn’t deliberately tried to attract Nott, but if there was anyone capable of lying to a Legilimens in the middle of watching a memory, Harry would be that person.

“You are trying to become a Dark Lord?” Severus asked softly.

“No! I don’t want to be one, and I would never try to be one!”

That, at least, was such a straightforward statement it could not be a lie, given Severus’s Legilimency. He sighed and nodded. “Then you should keep in mind how that might come across to other people, Harry.”

“I will. Don’t worry about that.”

And with that, and the knowledge that Harry had chosen him as guardian in practicality if not in name, Severus had to be content.

Chapter Text

“I’ve been having strange dreams, sir.”

“What kind of dreams?”

“The kind that I would expect Occlumency to help with. But it doesn’t.”

Severus looked up from his copy of a fascinating article that had just come out on ways to combine Dark Arts and Potions. He was in time to see Harry massage a circle on top of his scar, and the small drop of blood that welled there.

“Your scar hurts?” he asked savagely, and watched Harry’s head snap back in surprise from the force of his question.

But he answered without attempting to prevaricate. “Yes. And I have visions of—him. The Dark Lord. At least I think that’s who he is. He seems to be possessing someone named—Bartemius?”

Severus felt as though someone had fed him a poisoned apple. Of course Harry could have learned that name in his own research, especially when he’d begun looking into the officials of the Ministry who had imprisoned Black without due consideration, but it seemed too much like a coincidence for him to know that the man’s son was also a Death Eater who had died in a manner Severus had always thought of as suspicious.

He managed to keep his voice calm. “What is the Dark Lord doing in these dreams?”

“He’s telling someone else to help him build a body. A—homunculus?”

“Yes, that is the right word,” Severus whispered. “Who is the other person?”

“The Dark Lord calls him Barty.”

Even if Harry had done research into the Crouches, Severus could not see him knowing that the Death Eater son had favored the name Barty. The Prophet had called him by his full name in all their reporting.

“This is—bad,” Severus said, when he saw the way Harry was watching him. “Perhaps not the sort of thing that we should keep to ourselves.”

“You want to tell the Headmaster, sir?”

“He remains the only one that the Dark Lord has ever feared.”

Harry paused for a long moment as if thinking about that. Then he nodded. “We can do that, sir.”

“Good. Thank you, Harry.”

“You’ll pretend you got an owl from me about the dreams, of course?”

“Of course.”

A smile that might have looked sweet and innocent in other circumstances widened across Harry’s face. “I think I’m rather relieved I got Sorted into Slytherin, sir.”

Severus nodded, and wondered for a moment how Harry would have functioned in another House. Then he wondered if Harry would have had more friends there, and felt less like he had to fight for respect and prove himself the equal to the Dark Lord at so young an age, and stopped thinking about it.

He had a letter to write.

*

“Those are all the details he gave you, Severus?”

Severus rolled his eyes. He was sitting in Albus’s office, where he’d been summoned within what must have been ten minutes of Albus getting the letter. Harry was upstairs in his room at Spinner’s End behind the kind of heavy wards that would cost even Albus something to break them down, a second line of defense if he somehow managed to break past the Fidelius. “I think it a rather remarkable level of detail for someone not trained to recall his dreams, Albus. And I think we both know that it is no ordinary dream.”

“Yes,” Albus whispered. He looked ill.

Severus leaned back in his seat and found himself watching Fawkes, who had stretched his wings open and was bathing in a Sun Charm hovering above him as if outdoors. The phoenix chirruped at him.

The tug of peace and solace on his mind was one Severus had to reject. He needed to be more careful with his Occlumency around Albus than ever, now that he had more secrets than his own to protect.

“I want you to begin teaching him Occlumency, Severus.”

Severus turned around and stared at Albus. “I beg your pardon?”

“I meant what I said.” Albus dredged up a wan smile. “Do you believe that you have not overcome your hatred of James Potter’s son enough for that?”

“I worry more about what the Dark Lord would say should he return and find me teaching his enemy!”

“I know you, Severus. You will find a way to maintain your position as my spy and Harry’s Occlumency teacher, both.”

Severus argued a little more for the look of the thing, but in the end, gave his head a huffy jerk and left the office. He rode down the moving stairs with a massive scowl on his face, while inside, he felt as if he would collapse with relief.

Not only had there been no sign that Albus suspected Harry wasn’t with the Dursleys, but here was positive encouragement for him to know Occlumency, if Albus tried to test him during the coming school year.

*

“Why are you scowling so hard, sir?”

“I take it you have not seen the Prophet yet this morning?”

“No, sir,” Harry said slowly. He had looked fairly relaxed when he came down the stairs, but tension was already flowing into him in a way that would have made Severus unsurprised to see him reach for his wand. “Is something wrong?”

“Yes. Please read the article. You should have no trouble locating it.”

While Harry walked over to look at the article on the front page that detailed the events at the Quidditch World Cup, Severus scowled even harder and stared out the window. There was a tiny bit of sunlight this morning, although even that couldn’t make Cokeworth look appealing. But at least the sky was not filled with floating, screaming Muggles.

“You think the Death Eaters think the Dark Lord is returning, sir?”

“Not necessarily. But given your dreams, they could know something more than we do.” Severus tapped his fingers on the table. He had tried to investigate Bartemius Crouch Sr., but the man’s house was warded harder than Severus’s heart. He was also supposedly busy with something for the Ministry that was so huge and so secret, Severus couldn’t even get close to someone he could Legilimize.

“I see.”

Harry’s voice was quiet, emerging as if out of a pool of stillness. Severus blinked and turned to look at him. Harry was standing and regarding the wall beside the staircase as if it were the most interesting thing he had ever seen, his head uplifted.

“Harry?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Are you—well?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Just thinking about ways to survive the Dark Lord’s return.”

“You know I will protect you.”

Harry blinked and stirred out of whatever thoughts had been occupying him. “Oh, of course, sir. I never doubted that.”

He sounded so surprised that Severus said softly, “Remember, you may call me Severus.”

Harry stood straighter. “I thought maybe it was just for—really intense moments.”

“This would qualify as one. And after all, we spend the summers together, and I’m your guardian in reality even if it should be Black and even if we have to keep it secret. Use my first name.”

Harry stared at him with such astonishment that Severus began to wonder if Harry was more comfortable with formality. What if this wasn’t what he should have done? What if Harry had simply wanted him to maintain the role of a professor, no matter how much time they spent together, and retain the distance of a title?

“All right,” Harry said at last, and his smile was small, but pure. “Severus.”

Severus felt the loosening of something in his chest. It might not be the wisest move he had ever made, and it could have turned out badly.

But so far, it had not.

Chapter Text

“There’s going to be a Tournament at school this year?”

Severus made an irritable noise as he ate the last of his buttered toast. He and Harry were leaving Spinner’s End soon, because Harry had to appear on the King’s Cross platform from the Muggle side. And he had finally been able to tell Harry the truth about the event Hogwarts would be hosting, because the promise he had made Albus after learning of it had only lasted until “the day that the students returned to school.”

They would all find out at the feast that night, anyway. But Severus had wanted Harry to know as soon as possible.

“Why are they doing this?”

“Supposedly to ensure international cooperation and increase amity with the schools on the Continent.”

“And in reality?”

“Fudge wants to increase his popularity. The papers have been getting increasingly critical of him of late, and some of the bribes he received have dried up. He wishes to attract attention, perhaps new donations.”

“How do you know that?”

Severus looked calmly at Harry. His voice was calm, too, the same pitch of respect it had always been since Severus had allowed Harry to use his first name, but his eyes were burning and fixed.

“Many of those donors move in my former circles.”

“Former?”

“You know very well that I cannot be said to be a Death Eater while I teach at the school the Dark Lord’s nemesis works at. And despite Albus’s confidence that I can somehow cozen the Dark Lord and resume my place in his ranks, I defied him for your sake in your first year.”

“But your real allegiances?”

Severus stared at Harry in silence. Harry looked back in a silence just as stubborn, and didn’t appear to be thinking at all of the fact that they would need to leave for the train station soon.

Severus swallowed and gave the only possible answer. “Before he allowed me to teach at Hogwarts, Albus asked me to make an oath. An Unbreakable Vow, to protect the Dark Lord’s infant nemesis.”

“You told me about that.”

“It means my allegiance lies with you.”

Harry stared at him in a way that made it seem he hadn’t expected to hear that answer even though he knew about the Vow. Severus wondered what he had expected. A declaration of faith in either Dumbledore or the Dark Lord?

I thought I raised him better than that.

The next instant, Severus smothered that horrifying thought, and cleared his throat. “It is the truth.”

“I—didn’t know that,” Harry whispered. “That changes things.”

“How?” Severus asked, more sharply than he’d meant to. “You no longer feel comfortable staying with me?”

Harry’s mouth dropped open a little, and his eyes went wide enough to remind Severus forcefully of young Lily when Severus had first told her about magic. It was the first time he had seen Harry so shocked, or so like his mother.

“No, no, that’s not what I meant at all,” Harry said. “I just meant that I was thinking about one course of action, and now I need to think of another one.”

“Concerning?”

“You, and my guardianship, and the Dark Lord, and my place in Slytherin.” Harry frowned at the fireplace, and then shook his head. “Well. We should leave. We don’t want to miss the train.”

“No,” Severus said, although it felt as though the inside of his throat was dry. What was Harry thinking, when it came to the Dark Lord? “At least we can be sure that there will be no Dementors hunting fugitives on the train this year.”

“He’s written to me this summer.”

“Yes, I saw the letters.”

Harry hesitated with his hand on the wall beside the fireplace. Then he turned around and said, more directly than Severus had ever heard him speak, “He wants to be a good godfather, and sometimes I’m glad that he’s alive and out of Azkaban, but he couldn’t replace you.”

He’d tossed the green powder into the Floo and was gone before Severus could think of a response. Severus shook his head, shut his eyes, and froze the emotions behind the Occlumency barriers that had served him so well for the past fifteen years.

Then he followed his ward.

*

“I’m keeping an eye on you, Snape.”

“So it appears,” Severus said dryly, without bothering to look up from the cauldron in which he was brewing the Wolfsbane Albus still insisted he brew. Soon Severus would have to Apparate to the shack that Lupin was currently calling home. “I know you have more than enough gazes to spare.”

“What do you want with the Potter boy?”

Severus turned around to consider Moody, who stood with his wooden leg bracing him as he stared at Severus. When Albus had first announced his choice of Defense professor for the year, Severus had been disgusted, afraid, annoyed. Now, most of the time, what he felt was exhausted.

Perhaps breathing in the fumes of the Wolfsbane doesn’t help.

Severus sighed hard. “You know that I am his Head of House. It is my place to teach him Potions and to give him advice considering his choices in life.”

“Something like you?”

Severus stifled the wave of irritation that made dealing with Moody difficult. It still wasn’t enough reason to yell at the man. Moody would go to Albus, and Albus would scold Severus about “getting along,” the way he had last year with Lupin.

Always about my getting along with them. Never anything about their getting along with me, although I have given longer service to the school than either of them.

Then again, Moody might not know the meaning of “getting along” if he did hear it.

“Argue with the Hat, if you will,” Severus said, and tapped the stirring rod on the side of the cauldron to make the steam stop rising. He reached for one of the tough crystal flasks that he put the Wolfsbane in to make sure it would survive the Apparition. “There were many people who were surprised the boy didn’t go to Gryffindor.”

“Including you?”

Severus paused and studied Moody. The man stared back, both his eyes for once focused in the same place.

Severus felt the sting of his Dark Mark under his sleeve, and barely kept from grimacing. It seemed as though the Mark reacted more strongly in Moody’s presence. Severus wouldn’t put it past the man to have some sort of “Dark-detecting” device or spell that made it hurt.

“No,” Severus said. “At the time, yes. But not anymore.”

“And why’s that?”

“A true Gryffindor wouldn’t have been able to adapt to living with the serpents,” Severus said, and used his wand to funnel the last of the Wolfsbane out of the cauldron. “Potter has managed to do that.”

“Why?”

“He’s adaptable.”

“Not what I asked, Snape!” Moody barked, sharply enough to make Severus glad that all the potion was already in the flask, and that the flasks were spelled unbreakable. “I want to know what character traits the boy has to make you think he’s a good Slytherin.”

Severus sighed, more exhausted than normal. “What do you want me to say, Moody? He gets along with his Housemates. He knows how to deal with them, by now, after three years of doing it.”

“And is there any sign that he’s going Dark?”

“Define going Dark, and then I might be able to tell you.”

The man cocked his head, eyes glinting with the canny madness that had made him one of the most formidable Aurors. Severus could acknowledge the man’s skill at survival for all that he despised his self-righteous and erratic sense of “justice.”

“Does he hunger for the Dark Arts? Seem as if he would accept a classmate’s invitation home to get hold of their books?”

Severus snorted before he could stop himself. In truth, Harry had all the Dark Arts books he required at Spinner’s End. Severus had kept them there for years. Safer than keeping them in his quarters at Hogwarts, where Albus might intrude at any moment. “No. If anything, he has described himself as not having friends. He wouldn’t accept a classmate’s invitation home, least of all for that reason.”

“A loner?”

“Committed to his survival, yes.”

There was the fact that Theodore Nott looked up to Harry, but Severus was hardly about to share that with Moody.

“Survival, eh.”

Moody sounded so thoughtful that Severus kept a wary eye on him as he put the stopper in the flask and performed a last check to make sure it wasn’t cracked and none of the Wolfsbane could escape. He wondered if Moody was thinking Harry might be a good Auror trainee. The man had been a demon for recruiting before his forced retirement.

Of course, Harry was about the furthest person Severus could imagine from a good Auror trainee, but that was not something he would share with Moody, either.

“You’ve been helpful, Snape,” Moody said abruptly. “Not like you, but I appreciate it.”

He turned around and stumped away.

Severus shook his head as he made sure his office was locked and got ready to go beyond the wards to Apparate to Lupin’s. He supposed he would never understand a man who had chosen to become an Auror and serve the Ministry for no motive but arresting people. But if the man would leave Harry alone, any conversation with him was worth it.

Chapter Text

“Have you heard any rumors about the Tournament, sir?”

“You could call me by my first name when we’re inside my office, Harry.”

Harry smiled, an expression that darted across his face like a small creature running to hide in a burrow. “All right, Severus. I meant what the Tasks will be, or how the Champions will be chosen.”

“No.” Severus put down the deadly rose he’d been peeling and gave Harry his full attention. He didn’t want to either poison himself or miss something in his ward’s posture and tone of voice. “Why? Are people in Slytherin telling you something about it?”

“It’s more—what isn’t there.”

Harry fell into silence, but Severus was good at waiting games of all kinds, and sure enough, Harry sighed and gave in before long. “It’s more that no one in Slytherin refers to what happened at the Quidditch World Cup.”

“Perhaps they do not trust you enough to do so in front of you.”

Harry shook his head at once, firmly. “Nott would do it, and Malfoy, if no one else.”

Severus tilted his head. He wanted to ask why Harry was so sure of Draco when, as far as Severus knew, there was the gift of a broom between them and nothing else.

But in the end, he didn’t ask. Harry looked shifty enough that Severus was fairly sure his ward would lie about how he was handling the Slytherin politics, and, well. Severus didn’t want to force him into some kind of denial.

“I see,” he said. “So you think something else is coming? Something worse?”

“Something that might involve me.”

“I can say no one has said anything to me. The only odd conversation I have had was with Moody, and I told you about that.”

“Yeah. That he thinks I might make a good Auror recruit. Hilarious.”

Harry’s smile was hard, and so were his eyes. Severus gave him a smile in return and asked, “Would you like me to ask Albus about the Tournament? If he wants to keep secrets, he would not give me many, knowing I would pass them on to you, but he might still let something useful slip.”

Harry gave him an unexpectedly intense glance. “It’s your Occlumency that allows you to fool him, isn’t it?”

“You mean make him think that I believe different things than I do? Yes, it is.”

“Now you see why I wanted to learn it.”

Severus didn’t think he saw everything about that, because it still seemed to him that Harry had more than one motive for everything he did, but he nodded. “Occlumency will also be what allows me to survive what is coming.”

“You mean, if the Dark Lord returns and you have to fool him into thinking you’re still on his side.”

“Yes.” It was the only thing Severus could say without revealing more of Albus’s plans. Albus would be angry if he did so unless he knew Harry was already a powerful Occlumens and could hide that secret.

And Severus had no intention of telling Albus that.

“I know, sir.” Harry had retreated behind his invisible walls again, the polite mask Severus knew was all most of his other professors ever saw. “Don’t worry. I have no intention of doing anything that will allow you to get killed.”

“You have no idea how much that relieves me, Mr. Potter,” Severus said dryly, for the pleasure of seeing Harry’s smile flash like heat lightning before he slipped out.

Severus returned to stripping the deadly rose petals, determinedly putting aside thoughts of everything else for now.

*

“The Goblet of Fire!”

Severus grimaced as he stood in front of the Great Hall with his hands locked behind his back. Albus had let nothing about that slip.

As Albus discussed how the Goblet of Fire would choose the Champions, Severus’s gaze crossed Harry’s. The boy was sitting at the Slytherin table with his usual blank expression and his hands folded in front of him.

And his court around him.

Severus narrowed his eyes. He had not noticed it before, partially because he rarely looked at Harry in the Great Hall so that Albus would not see the depth of the connection between them. But yes, now that he was looking for it, he saw the way Draco and Nott flanked Harry, and a few unexpected others as well. Pansy Parkinson, Cassius Warrington, and Alicia Bole in the year above Harry.

He looked away before Albus could notice, but his throat felt a bit tight. Did Harry harbor ambitions of being a Dark Lord on his own?

Severus would have said no only an hour past. But the fact that he hadn’t noticed all the Slytherins gathering around Harry made him wonder what else he had missed.

*

“Nothing happened.”

“No,” Severus said quietly, as he made the final cut to a flobberworm and tucked the severed bits away in a tray with a Preservation Charm on it. Harry had slipped into his office and sat there with his head drooping almost ten minutes ago. These were his first words since. “Are you disappointed?”

Harry blinked at him as if wondering what Severus was talking about, and then gave a rusty laugh. “No. Relieved.”

Severus nodded. Yes, he could see that. Relief so profound would keep someone as silent as sadness. “Disappointed that the Hogwarts Champion is not a Slytherin?”

Harry gave another laugh, this one darker. “Who cares about the victor in a Tournament like this? They’ll be forgotten in a few decades anyway. And I have much more money than the prize Galleons in my vault.”

“I am glad that you are so sensible.”

Harry smiled at him, a smile that made Severus start; this one was more like the ones he saw so often in the mirror. “Is it sensible or is it making the best decision that I could have with my circumstances?”

“I do not know that there is a material difference.”

Harry seemed to think about that, and then nodded. “You’re right, sir. There’s nothing I want that the Tournament can give me, anyway.”

“Money you have. And you value safety above attention.”

“Above all attention.”

“Then you wish you were not the Boy-Who-Lived?” Severus asked. He had suspected that for years, but they had never spoken openly about it before this.

Harry gave him an ancient look. “Of course, sir. Of course I wish that my parents were still alive, and I had grown up someone ordinary and ignored. I can’t have that, but I can wish for it.”

“Wishes do little good.”

Harry smiled, and now his teeth were bared. They seemed sharper than Severus remembered them being. “Yes, they do,” he murmured. “I’ve reached the point where I don’t spend much time on them anymore, but I do still think about them. Maybe someday I’ll get to the point where I can purge those thoughts completely.”

“That would not be very human.”

“Being human is overrated.”

Severus blinked at Harry for a moment, and then lowered his head to concentrate much of his attention on casting the perfect Preservation Charm on the flobberworms again. He was shaken not so much to hear the sentiment as because it was something he had thought at Harry’s age.

But he did hope that he had preserved Harry from the kind of childhood he had had. Harry was at least not bullied in Slytherin, the way Severus had been, and if he had few friends either, he did not seem to want any. Surely it was—

Surely he was not destined for a path such as Theodore Nott would walk, such as the Dark Lord had trod.

Surely.

And if Severus was wrong, what else could he do to keep Harry from that?

Chapter Text

Severus hissed and clutched his left arm as Harry came around the corner. Harry gave him a look that was more than startled, and then his hand rose and closed about something round that hung on a thin silver chain around his neck.

“Sir? Are you all right?”

They were in the corridor with other Slytherins appearing behind Harry, and the distant rumble of Gryffindors arriving for Potions. Severus dared do no more than jerk his head down in a short nod and fling open the classroom door with a blast of wandless magic.

“Inside, the lot of you.”

They went, but Harry was giving him a desperately curious look, with more emotion than he ever showed in front of others. Severus shot him a tight smile and then turned and walked to the front of the room.

He did not touch his left arm. There were those who would have seen him do it and made assumptions.

He should not have touched it in the first place, but he had been startled.

That is what you cannot afford to be, with the Dark Lord returning, Severus thought, and turned to face the class, locking all of his reactions behind perfectly mirror-smooth Occlumency walls of ice. He knew his voice was without tone when he said, “We will begin the Maximal Strengthening Solution today.”

*

“Sir?”

Harry had lingered behind after class, doing it blatantly, without even the excuse of a spoiled potion. Of course, he had spoiled none since his first year. The other students were too afraid now to throw objects in his cauldron, even if they disliked him.

Severus sighed as he studied his ward. “Where did you get that necklace?”

“Professor Moody gave it to me.”

Why would he—

But Severus had the answer after less than a moment of thinking. Of course. Moody believed that Harry was in danger from “Dark” elements in Slytherin, and with the events at the Quidditch World Cup, it was unsurprising he had given him the kind of object that could detect Dark magic.

Or its remnants, in the case of the Mark.

“I was startled, in this case,” Severus said. “I should not be affected again.” The stinging in his left arm was continual, as a matter of fact, but it had only joined the general pain that had come with the Mark’s darkening. Severus would spend more time with his Occlumency distancing himself from the pain.

“But why would it hurt you?”

“It is doubtless a Dark detector,” Severus said, keeping his voice as remote as he could. If Moody had decided to be a mentor of sorts to Harry as well, he would not appreciate Severus interfering in that. Severus would not criticize the man in Harry’s hearing. “Moody has a variety of such devices. There are things I carry about my person that would trigger such a device.” He motioned to his left arm with his eyes.

Harry’s mouth and eyes both rounded. Then he said, “I’m sorry, sir! I’ll take it back to Professor Moody right away.”

“No, don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Because Moody is so erratic that he might take offense to your returning it, and then I would have to deal with the man’s grudge on two fronts.

“Because it is not often that Alastor Moody deigns to make such gifts. You should take advantage of his battle prowess.”

Harry stared at him, calm and motionless. Severus was unsure why, the same way he didn’t know what to make of Harry’s extreme surprise a few moments ago. There was a hint of an emotion to Harry’s stillness now that he didn’t understand.

Relief? Wonder?

Harry finally said, “I would place you above him, sir. I hope you know that. It wouldn’t matter how rare his gifts might be if they made you uncomfortable.”

Disappointment.

It was Severus’s turn to stare at Harry and feel his eyes widening beyond their accustomed width. He coughed and averted his gaze. Then he said, “I am sure I shall—grow used to it.”

“No. I’ll leave it behind and only wear it outside your classroom. Thank you for telling me the nature of it, sir.”

“It could still be valuable—”

“Who has hostile intentions towards me in Potions?” Harry’s smile this time was more familiar, self-satisfied and cold. “No, I don’t think I need to wear it here. I’ll just tell Professor Moody that. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

Before Severus could make another argument against this, Harry leaned in and slid a hand along Severus’s left arm, the first time Severus could remember that the boy had initiated a touch between them. “You mean too much to me, Severus, for me to want to cause you pain,” he added quietly.

Severus was silent. Harry gave him a smile with an edge of sadness and slipped out of the classroom. Severus stared after him, and wondered if the sadness came from Harry expecting him to know already how much he valued Severus.

(Later he learned: yes. And no).

*

“Young Harry has been spending rather a lot of time with Alastor, Severus, from what I understand.”

Severus blinked and looked up from the Christmas meal he had been contemplating, while wondering why he had not skipped it this year. “Yes, he has,” he said briefly. “The man has taken a shine to the boy.” He shrugged, wondering what reaction Albus expected from him. “I am glad. Perhaps Mr. Potter can gain an edge in Defense that he will preserve after Alastor’s inevitable departure at the end of the year.”

“You think he will inevitably depart, then?”

“In the sense of the curse on the Defense position, yes.”

“You know that Alastor only took up the post as a personal favor to me…”

Severus nodded absently in response to Albus’s rambling, his eyes straying to where Moody leaned an elbow on the table next to Harry’s chair and talked to the boy in a low, intense voice, interrupted by louder cackles and occasional pounding of the table. Harry listened with a faint smile.

Hm. Is he humoring the man for the sake of what he can learn from him?

Severus shrugged and took another bite of chicken. There was no way that a trusted friend of Albus’s would harm the boy, any more than Albus himself would. If anything, perhaps it would make Harry more conscious of his own safety, which he could use.

Not because he was unconscious, but because there was no way to keep him too safe, in Severus’s opinion.

*

“Happy Christmas, Severus.”

Severus blinked at Harry. He had known it was his ward when the knock had come on the door of his quarters, but he hadn’t anticipated this. Harry was holding up a large silver-wrapped box to him with a solemn expression.

“Happy Christmas, Harry,” Severus said after a blank moment. He waved his hand. “You may come inside.”

The box was large and heavy. Severus felt all the more awkward that he had only got Harry a set of crystal flasks for a gift. They would be useful, but Harry wasn’t passionate about Potions the way Severus had been.

This gift, Severus was certain, would be well-chosen and expensive. He shifted uncomfortably.

“This is—bare.”

Severus looked up. Harry was standing next to the open door into his bedroom, staring around. Although he had never tolerated even Albus looking into his most private interior space, Severus didn’t mind Harry doing it. He shrugged. “A bed, a table, bookshelves. What else would I need?”

“A comfortable chair? A large fireplace?” Harry turned those deep, wide eyes on him. “I would have assumed at least a fireplace in the bedroom, instead of only in the parlor.”

“That is the setup of every professor’s quarters at Hogwarts,” Severus murmured, ignoring the fact that he could have moved his bed into the front room and used the bedroom for a study. “I do not need more than that.”

“I don’t think you treat yourself well.”

Harry’s eyes now were sharp and assessing. Perhaps Moody was already teaching him to look beneath the surface. Severus ducked his head and shrugged rather than answer, then sat down in the rocking chair beside the fireplace and whipped his wand. Flames sprang up from the coals. He nodded to Harry. “You can sit down.”

Harry did, although on the very edge of the plain wooden chair that Severus preferred. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

“Of course,” Severus murmured, and slit the paper on the box. It was the first time in years that he hadn’t checked a gift with spells, but then, he didn’t tend to receive anything but prank gifts from Albus in any case.

He lifted the lid and gaped at the book that lay inside. It was huge and bound in covers of something softer than leather. Severus’s hands shook as he picked it up. He knew exactly what that softness was, and—

Of course Harry wouldn’t have been involved in gathering the ingredients for this book. For one thing, hunting unicorns wasn’t the sort of thing he would do. For another, this had been bound long before he was born.

“Do you like it?” Harry asked. He was leaning so far forwards on the edge of the chair that Severus had to resist the temptation to cast a Sticking Charm to keep him from falling off.

Severus cleared his throat and nodded. “Yes,” he whispered. “This is one of the rarest Potions books in the British Isles.” And illegal to create any more copies of, not that Harry needed to know that. Severus gently turned it over, brushing his fingers over the wavering title embossed in green ink that, supposedly, crushed emeralds had been placed into.

A History of Salazar Slytherin’s Potions.

“Good.” Harry beamed at him. “B—Professor Moody said you would like it.”

Severus stared at Harry. “Alastor suggested that you give this to me?” he asked, and then remembered his personal policy not to use other his colleagues’ first names around students. He cleared his throat and shook his head. “I mean—Professor Moody. Why in the world would he…”

“To make up for what his Dark detector did to the Mark on your arm.” Harry ducked his head, but not before Severus saw the corners of his lips twitching up into a smile, which seemed an odd reaction. “He didn’t mean to do that.”

“Alastor Moody does not apologize to people for anything.”

Harry shrugged and looked up. His face was sober again, the way it had looked when Severus was opening the gift. “He’s changed a little since he started talking to me. I don’t think he believed I was—like you described me at first. It took a while to convince him. But I talked to him about reevaluating some of his ideas, and he agrees that you’re different than he thought you were, too. That you deserve this gift.”

Severus closed his eyes. He could feel a churning in his gut, an uneasiness. Moody had always seemed to Severus too old to change his behavior. And the way that he acted towards Igor Karkaroff had not changed.

But then again, Harry wouldn’t have any reason to speak up for Igor. It had only been Severus, then. And perhaps Moody was flexible enough to bend for one person important to his talented protégé.

Important.

Severus cleared his throat and placed the book gently back in the silver paper it had come in. “Thank you. I shall treasure it. Did—Professor Moody say where he had acquired it?”

Harry was beaming all over his face. “He said he tends to collect old Dark artifacts from people he arrests, and sometimes he tries to destroy them—”

Severus hissed despite himself at the thought of losing so much priceless knowledge.

“Right?” Harry’s smile widened. There was a sharp edge to it, an edge that could cut. “So I’m glad that he never figured out a way to destroy this one. At the same time, he never wanted to sell it or give it away, you know, because what if people misused it? This is the first time he’s found someone he can really trust with such a Dark artifact.”

It was unworthy of Severus to immediately think of other ways he might be able to persuade Alastor to part with other objects like this.

But Harry read the thought on his face, and laughed a little. “Do you want me to ask him about other books? Other artifacts?”

“I—would not be opposed.”

“That means you think it’s a good idea and you like it.” Harry abruptly bounced to his feet and crossed the distance between them to fling his arms around Severus’s waist. “Thank you,” he said, muffled, into Severus’s robes. Severus sat there and stared straight ahead. “You’ve helped me so much. I wouldn’t have survived without you.”

Severus closed his eyes and stiffly wrapped his arms around Harry. This sounded like a farewell if he had ever heard one.

He supposed that Harry did not need him now that he had Moody. Perhaps he would even go to live with Moody during the summer, because the man probably had a more fascinating house than Spinner’s End.

“Severus? Are you all right?”

“Yes. Only overwhelmed.”

It was the truth, so Harry accepted it with a quick smile and slipped out, probably to go back to Moody.

Severus sighed. At least Moody seemed to be good for Harry. And Albus should be pleased with his old friend mentoring the boy.

Chapter Text

A letter came sliding out of the fireplace on a night in February when Severus had spent hours upset over the stupidity of second-year essays. That was the only reason he picked the letter up near-immediately. He would have let it lie there otherwise. An owl who couldn’t be bothered to fly to his door was not worth his time.

The handwriting on the envelope was familiar. Severus squinted at it until the memory abruptly unfolded in his mind.

His hands shook as he opened it.

My dear Severus,

I have heard interesting things about you from a friend who currently works at the fine institution you reside at. I invite you to pay a visit to me tonight at nine-o’clock, using the following Apparition coordinates.

It wasn’t signed, but it needed no signature.

Severus closed his eyes and sank into the pool of his mind, spinning coolness through the water. Many people envisioned Occlumency or other shields on the mind as stone walls, or metal. Severus had even heard of people who conceptualized them as forests, in which an invader like a Legilimens would become lost.

Severus had never thought of his as anything other than ice. When he Occluded, nothing was there but the cold that intruders would mistake for normal emotions—except ones that they could not touch, any more than one could touch fish that swam beneath the surface of a frozen lake.

When he was ready, he stood and tossed the Floo powder into the fire. He must let Albus know he had been summoned.

*

“Kneel, Ssseverusss.”

Severus dropped to one knee the minute he entered the large, strangely Muggle room where the Dark Lord was sitting in a chair with its back to him. The chair was in front of the fireplace, and the largest non-basilisk snake Severus had ever seen was coiled up along its back, raising its head to stare at him.

Thoughts like “oddly Muggle” and “largest non-basilisk snake” swished through his mind and froze. Severus knelt with his head bowed, noticing and dismissing the ache in his knee, and the chill around his ears, and the whimpering that came from a corner of the room.

“Rissse, Ssseverusss.”

Severus rose and waited, his hands clasped behind his back.

The Dark Lord continued to sit in the chair that faced the fireplace, with his back turned to Severus. “I have had doubtsss about your loyalty, in the ssschool around Dumbledore.”

“I have remained loyal to you, my lord.”

It was a bare, flat statement. It must be, to answer a Legilimens who could detect lies. Severus’s mind hovered in the middle of his Occlumency, shading his answer so that no matter what he said, it would come across as true.

“Would you show your mind to me? Would you be that daring, I wonder?”

“I will do whatever you command, my lord.”

“Then come here.”

Severus walked around the chair and dropped to one knee in front of it.

The Dark Lord’s body was a twisted thing, small and warped. Severus breathed lightly and let the emotions drain away, along with the knowledge of how the Dark Lord had acquired such a body, the ritual he would have had to perform to draw the fetus to form the homunculus from a pregnant woman’s body. The Dark Lord’s burning crimson eyes were the same, and the length of his fingers as he reached out and tilted Severus’s head.

Then his Legilimency struck.

Severus gave and froze before it, showing the memories of him sneering at the Gryffindors, his sense of ill usage at Albus’s hands, how he had asked again and again for the Defense post and been denied it, how he had touched the darkening Mark on his arm with hope and dawning wonder, how he had made sure to keep the child credited with the Dark Lord’s defeat close at hand so that he could destroy him on his lord’s command. Everything was there, everything the Dark Lord wished to see, glinting back at him from the ice of Severus’s Occlumency, which picked up and reflected the Dark Lord’s desires.

The Dark Lord was quite possibly the greatest living Legilimens in the world, or at least in Europe.

That meant Severus had to be the greatest Occlumens to match him. And because he must be, he was.

The Dark Lord pulled out of his mind at last. “Ssslytherin, for Harry Potter?” he murmured, with a hint of laughter in the back of his voice. Severus supposed he must enjoy the irony of it all. “I knew it, but I thought that Dumbledore would have more of a problem with it. Dumbledore is not upssset over thisss?”

“Albus sometimes seems puzzled over the boy, and sometimes disapproving,” Severus said. It was purely honest. “But in truth, I do not think he fears Harry Potter turning Dark in the way that I would have believed he would. He does approve of my overcoming my grudge against his father to watch over the boy, and he approves even more of the boy’s closeness to Alastor Moody.”

“Doesss he.”

Such laughter now. Severus wondered why, and then drained the wonder and simply knelt in place.

The Dark Lord gave a few thoughtful hisses, of the kind that he used when he was talking to himself. Or perhaps in this case to the great snake, who slithered around the chair and lay on the floor at his feet.

“Continue your guardianship over the boy,” the Dark Lord ordered at last. “I forgive your defiance against me in the passst. It would be mossst convenient to have you bring Potter to me if I decide to get rid of him that way.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And make sure that Dumbledore hasss no reason to sssussspect I have returned even asss much as I have.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The Dark Lord watched him in silence. Severus simply waited. Everything that came to mind—the pain in his knees, his despair, the flickering dance of the fire, his discomfort with the snake being so close—came to mind and was dismissed, because that was what he must do.

“I am sssomewhat curiousss over your loyalties, Sseveruss.” The hiss was more pronounced now. “You came promptly when called, and yet you have also ssserved Dumbledore all thessse years, have you not?”

“I have convinced him that I have served. It was simpler when he believed that I wished to reform after Lily Evans died.”

“The Mudblood you had a friendship with.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The Dark Lord twisted his head back and forth. Severus wouldn’t have thought his current body’s stumpy neck would allow for that, but it did.

“I did asss you assked.”

“Forgive me, my lord. I do not know what you mean.”

“I offered to let her ssstand assside. But she chossse to die in defenssse of her ssson.” The Dark Lord twisted his neck back and forth again, as if he did not comprehend it.

The blow did not shatter Severus, because he did not permit it. “My gratitude for what you offered, my lord. It is her own fault that she did not accept.”

“It isss.”

The Dark Lord studied him some more in silence. Severus did not know why. He did not need to know why. He knelt, and he waited, and the Dark Lord finally turned his head to the side and nodded, waving a hand in dismissal.

“Go your way. I will sssummon you again at a future time.”

Severus stood and bowed in full from the waist, although the Dark Lord was no longer looking. It did not matter. The Dark Lord would know every gesture he made without looking at him.

He turned and left, the snake looking after him.

Chapter Text

When he was back in his own quarters, Severus sat down and removed layer after layer of ice from his mind.

It was delicate work. On the one hand, he had to keep the memories of this evening sharp. That meant he could not blur or soften what had happened. On the other, he had to feed his emotions back into himself. Horror and dread and self-loathing and hatred were necessary to feel after he had held them at bay for so long.

Those who never understood this were unlikely to survive the intensive use of Occlumency.

When he was done, Severus sat and shook for a time. The hint that he should bring Harry to the Dark Lord was not unexpected; he had offered that himself. What had hit like a Blasting Curse was the Dark Lord having kept his promise to Severus.

Of course Lily did not stand aside. She would never do so.

Severus sat quietly in the company of his self-hatred, all the other emotions having faded away, and then stood and cast Floo powder into the fireplace. Shock or not, he would need to make a report to Albus.

*

“Are you all right, sir?”

Severus raised an eyebrow. Harry had lingered behind after his Potions class, and was staring at Severus so intently that Severus wondered if Moody was teaching him Legilimency.

On the other hand, Moody was unlikely to know it. He would have no use for such Dark Arts. And Harry had shown no interest in learning it from Severus, either. He only wanted to protect his mind, not lash out.

There was some motive there, something important that Severus only chased for a moment before he gave up on it. “You had something to ask me, Mr. Potter?”

“I asked if you were all right.”

Severus snorted a little, but shook his head in the face of Harry’s inquiring gaze. It wasn’t as though he intended to tell the child that he must spend his time spying on the Dark Lord, and all the intricacies of the web of vows and service that Albus had tied him in. “I’m as well as can be when I must spend time with dunderheads like your classmates.”

Normally, the word “dunderheads” would have made Harry smile, but now he just watched Severus with another bout of oddly intense silence. Then he sighed and dipped his head a little. “You don’t have to confide in me, sir, but I wish you would go take a Calming Draught from Madam Pomfrey, or—something.”

“What makes you think I am not capable of brewing my own Calming Draughts?”

Harry smiled at him. This time, it was a sad smile, something Severus had never seen on his face before. “All right, sir. But I just want you to consider that sometimes you need outside help.”

He turned and left before Severus could think of a reply. Severus continued staring after him, and then shook his head.

What Harry said might be true. But he did not know that Severus had closed all possible avenues of help for himself before Harry was born.

*

“Snape! A minute of your time.”

Severus hid a sneer as he turned around and met Moody’s gaze. The man was limping towards him with greater than usual speed. Severus leaned back on the wall with his arms folded. At least Dumbledore’s man hadn’t been intolerable in the last few months. He never acted to Severus the way he did to Karkaroff.

Perhaps he believed me when I told him that Harry was not so far gone, despite being in Slytherin.

Moody pulled up and huffed for a moment, then fixed his one good eye on Snape. The magical one was watching down the corridor. “The boy asked me to check in on you.”

There could be only one boy he would be referencing, but Severus still stared, incredulous. Then he said, “I am perfectly well.”

“Not physically, Snape. Mentally.”

Severus held back a sigh. Harry was—prying where he might be welcome, in some senses, but where he had no duty to pry. “That is also fine. As fine as it can be when I am around the dunderheads.”

He expected Moody to either berate him for how he referred to the students or bring up the Dark Mark. Instead, Moody leaned in and peered at him with both eyes. Snape stared back.

“You really do seem to be fine,” Moody muttered. “Huh.”

And he turned and left.

Severus shook his head. He would never understand the madman. That he would leave up to Harry, and welcome.

*

The Dark Lord summoned Severus twice more before the Second Task. Each time, he asked after Harry. He looked into Severus’s mind. He dropped a few hints about his servant at the school, which Severus obediently reported to Albus, but Albus’s suspicions were focused on Karkaroff, while Severus’s were more diffuse.

He was beginning to wonder if his Occlumency was as good as he thought it was, and if the Dark Lord had perhaps erased certain of his memories and planted commands in his mind that Severus did not know about and could not resist.

It was the only thing Severus could think that would make sense of the way the Dark Lord seemed to laugh at him and yet let Severus leave his presence without pain again and again. The hints about the servant.

What Harry had told Severus about the Slytherin common room buzzing with only muted excitement and speculation when it came to the events at the Quidditch World Cup, and casting glances at Harry that said they expected something else to happen soon, but nothing had.

Severus shivered as he wondered if the Dark Lord had set plans in motion that would force Severus to bring Harry to him, whether or not he wanted to.

He was nearly desperate enough to ask Albus to look for traces of such commands in his mind. Only knowing that those were not the only secrets Albus would discover stayed his hand.

Chapter Text

“Snape!”

Severus had been on his way to the lake to stare dismally at the surface of the water along with everyone else watching the Second Task, but the sound of Moody’s voice behind him made him spin around, hand going for his wand.

Moody was limping faster than Severus had ever seen him move outside some of the duels in the war. He came to a stop, huffing, and said, “Can’t find the Potter boy.”

“What?”

“I said, I can’t find him.”

Severus swallowed. Moody’s eye ought to have been able to see through any barriers that anyone could have set up to block Harry from sight, including magical ones, and through any walls if he was anywhere in Hogwarts. “Have you spoken to Albus?” he asked sharply, while he drew his wand.

“Boy wouldn’t want me to.”

That seemed strange to Severus. Surely Harry would want to accept help even from Albus if someone had kidnapped him or was holding him prisoner.

Or maybe not. Harry might consider that an unacceptable weakness, and not something he could entrust Albus with.

“Fine,” Severus muttered. “Do you know how to cast a Patronus?”

Moody grunted. “Don’t have a happy enough memory right now.”

“All right.” Severus aimed his wand and thought carefully of the way that he and Lily had sat on the lakeshore one afternoon in fifth year, laughing. “Expecto Patronum.”

The silvery doe blossomed from the end of his wand, gglanced around, and gave him a carefully polite look as she turned to stare at him. Moody sucked in a sharp breath. Severus ignored him. It wasn’t as though the idea that “Dark wizards” couldn’t produce a Patronus really held any currency, and it wasn’t his problem if Moody believed it. “I want you to carry a message to Harry Potter for me. Trot slowly in his direction until you reach the point where you would need to vanish, and then come back to me.”

The doe inclined her head. Severus cleared his throat, aware that more people were stopping to look at him and mutter. “You are not currently on Hogwarts grounds, and we are concerned. Respond if you are able.”

The Patronus turned and began to trot. Severus and Moody followed behind her. Moody was puffing, but Severus ignored him. If he had to, he could send the Patronus back to guide the other man to wherever the doe had indicated Harry was.

“Didn’t know—you could make a Patronus lead you instead of just disappearing,” Moody gasped.

“Variation of the spell that I came up with.” Severus kept his eyes firmly on the doe, who kept glancing back at them and tossing her head as if she had antlers. His Patronus had always had a personality that reminded him of Lily’s. He buried the grief and watched as the doe headed straight for the Hogsmeade gates.

Severus cursed beneath his breath. He supposed it was better than the Forbidden Forest, but it just confirmed his suspicion that someone had grabbed Harry and run to the first place outside the wards that they could Apparate.

“What—wait, Snape!”

Severus turned around and waited as patiently as he could. The doe came to his side and tossed her head again. Moody came to a stop in front of him, the gaze of both his eyes flickering back and forth between Severus and his doe.

“I have to rethink some things,” Moody whispered.

Severus sneered at him. They did not have the time for whatever crisis of conscience or morals the man was experiencing. “Will you be able to follow?” he asked sharply. “Or should I track Harry on my own?”

“Harry, is it?”

“I am quite sure he would not have hidden that from you, considering the Christmas gift I received from him with your help.”

A strange smile arched across Moody’s face. “Yes,” he breathed. “Well. It can be food for thought later.” He shook himself and seemed to resume the cloak of his gruffness that he’d put aside before. “Going to find the boy by Apparating? Will the Patronus lead you that way?”

“No,” Severus had to admit. Once his Patronus was out of sight, she would travel the same way all others did, by a spring through the air, or the ether, where someone Apparating could not follow. “I was going to do a series of short-term Apparitions along her trail.”

“That’ll leave you exhausted when you get there.”

“Not me.”

Moody stared at him again. Then he cleared his throat. “What about—taking me with you?”

“Side-Along Apparition in a series of short leaps would leave me exhausted.” In truth, Severus was not sure that it would, but he was sure that he would not risk Harry’s safety on the possibility.

Moody inclined his head. “If you found where Potter is, did one jump back to me, and then Side-Along Apparated me back to Potter?”

“That I could do,” Severus said with some reluctance. On the one hand, having help rescuing Harry was probably wise. On the other hand, with Moody there, he would have to limit some of his spells.

Moody nodded and leaned against the gate. Severus sighed and turned to follow his Patronus.

*

In the end, he didn’t need to make that many Apparitions, despite the fact that Harry was indeed a long way away. He had an intuition that made him leap through space after commanding his Patronus to do so, and yes, he stood outside the Little Hangleton house, where his doe impatiently scraped a hoof.

Severus stared for a moment, plans ripping through his mind and being discarded like twigs flying in high winds.

Then he Apparated back to Moody and said without pause, “We will be facing the Dark Lord if we enter the house where Harry is being held. Do you still wish to do so?”

“Thought you said he wasn’t back, Snape.”

Severus laughed bitterly. “I said no such thing. You never asked me.”

Moody eyed him for a moment, then grunted and nodded. “What kind of battle tactics would you advise?”

“For me to go in and try to remove Harry by guile if possible. For you to create a distraction by casting a spell on the outer wards.” That should remove Moody from the immediate area enough that Severus could use the Dark Arts if he wished.

Moody’s face split in his crazed grin. “I can do that.”

Severus nodded, and held his arm out.

*

“Ah, Ssseverusss.”

“My lord.”

Severus bowed from the waist and then sank to one knee. He had already seen Harry standing very still next to the Dark Lord’s chair, in a complicated spell that seemed to be made of woven silver magic, flowing back and forth in dangerous patterns right next to Harry’s chest and arms. Harry was watching Severus with wide eyes and slightly parted lips.

At least he didn’t look panicked, or as if he had been tortured. It meant that he should be able to move quickly when Severus managed to free him.

“I am sssomewhat sssurprisssed to sssee you here.”

“Yes, my lord. I apologize for coming without your leave.” Severus drew in a breath. “However, Alastor Moody alerted me that Potter was missing from Hogwarts grounds. He knows of my—closeness to the boy.” So much done with a pause, with a slight sneer. “It would have looked suspicious to refuse to search for Potter.”

“Or to refussse to find him?”

“My lord knows I am competent at whatever I do.”

The Dark Lord hissed in unison with his snake, a low, raspy sound that Severus could imagine was meant as a chuckle. “Yes, indeed.” He leaned forwards, and his stubby arms came to rest on either side of Severus’s face. “And now I offer you a choice.”

“I await my lord’s command.”

“You may attack me. Or you may learn the truth, and reaffirm your loyalty.”

Severus stared at him, understanding nothing. The first statement made it sound as if the Dark Lord knew of Severus’s true allegiance and expected Severus to attack, but in that case, why not meet him with a Cruciatus? Why did he sound amused?

“Your choice, Ssseverusss?”

“I do not understand what my lord means,” Severus whispered, while he began to gather his magic inside himself. Usually, magic would buzz around a wizard’s body like this and alert their enemies that they planned to cast a powerful spell to escape. Severus had worked long and hard to make sure he could do the same internally, without warning.

“I know that you changed your mind about my ssservice when I targeted the Mudblood.” The Dark Lord’s stumpy arms could not grip, as such, but he held Severus motionless with the power of his voice alone. “And I know that you could change back. You have come to my ssside when sssummoned. You have kept sssecretsss from Albusss Dumbledore. Above all, you have sssworn an Unbreakable Vow to protect the boy who isss now loyal to me.”

It felt as though Severus had been dropped from a great height.

He turned slowly, still on one knee, the Dark Lord’s arms falling away from his face, to stare at Harry. Harry looked back at him, a faint, sad smile working its way across his face. At the same time, the silver cords of magic that formed the cage fell away from him, so that he stood entirely free.

And not running.

“I’m sorry, Professor Snape,” he said, voice low and soft and earnest. “But I promise, everything’s going to be all right. You can come back to your real allegiance, the one you promised first, to the Dark Lord. I’m going to swear the same vow. And you can keep on protecting me.”

There was no movement in Severus. His gathered magic snuffed out as if it had never been. He stared in silence.

“You must make a decisssion.” The Dark Lord sounded almost compassionate. Severus knew he only ever sounded like that when he was sure he had won. “Choossse.”

Severus blinked and blinked, and then felt the question force itself out of him. It wouldn’t be denied even if the Dark Lord killed him for asking it. “Harry—why did you turn to the Dark Lord?”

Harry smiled at him. “It was partially your example, sir,” he said. “I came to understand that my real enemies were the people who caused me to feel unsafe. And, well, the Dark Lord was one of them, but Dumbledore made me unsafe for eleven years.”

My example.

Severus wanted to clear his throat. But he couldn’t say anything, because Harry was still talking. “I decided I had to be safe. No matter what. And Dumbledore wouldn’t stop trying to send me back to the Dursleys, and he couldn’t be opposed except by someone just as powerful as he was. He even made you a slave, and you’re one of the most powerful wizards I know. So I knew I had to appeal to the Dark Lord.”

“Harry,” Severus whispered.

“Dumbledore made you unsafe for years and years and years.” Harry’s eyes flashed, and Severus wasn’t surprised to see a blast of wandless magic sweep the hem of his robes. He was aware of the Dark Lord watching, but for the first time, Severus couldn’t keep his eye on the greatest threat in the room. “I had to watch you go through contortions to please him. Lying to him and pretending you didn’t like me and disdaining Dark Arts when I know you love them. Even being passed up for the Defense post again and again. Dumbledore’s warped and twisted all that you are. I couldn’t let him continue to do that to you. Or start doing it to me.”

Severus could say nothing again.

Harry took a step forwards and bowed to the Dark Lord, then turned to Severus with earnest eyes. “I started proving myself when people approached me in Slytherin. They mostly wanted to see if I was going to be a traitor to the ideals of the House, but I convinced them that I wasn’t. And then I started showing I could be a leader.”

Yes, Severus remembered his suspicions that Harry had wanted to become a Dark Lord. Accumulating power would have been one way to keep himself safe.

“So that I could prove my worth to the Dark Lord, and deliver some of my classmates’ loyalty with my own,” Harry said.

Severus wanted to close his eyes. It was an explanation he had never considered, but he should have. It made just as much sense with the fact that Harry didn’t seem interested in talking much about the Slytherins he had converted, and in fact, Severus had thought he rarely interacted with them.

“It’s all right,” Harry said, coming up and resting his hands on Severus’s shoulders. Severus looked at him, mute. “The necklace I was wearing before reacted badly to you because you didn’t have undivided loyalty to the Dark Lord, but I knew you couldn’t have that kind of loyalty to Dumbledore, either. I’ve set you free, now. You can follow the Vow to protect me because I’ll be with the Dark Lord and he’ll protect me, and you can choose one side.”

I chose my side long ago.

But it now seemed as though that was not, in fact, the case. Albus had had Severus swear to protect Harry. Not to be loyal to the Order of the Phoenix or feed Albus completely true and unbiased information. It was a net to slip through, to step through.

He killed Lily!

And gave her the chance to step aside.

Severus lifted his head. He had already come to his decision, really. Either he said that he would join the Dark Lord in full, or he would not walk out of here. The Vow he had sworn would not let him. The Dark Lord’s knowledge of what he had done in Dumbledore’s service would not let him.

The knowledge that the Dark Lord had tried to spare Lily was only what made him able to live with that choice.

“I choose,” Severus whispered.

The Dark Lord leaned forwards in his chair. Harry looked as if he might hop from foot to foot with anxiety. Severus knew a distant, bitter amusement. The only reason his decision mattered so much to a Dark Lord powerful enough to cheat death, and to James Potter’s son, was pure coincidence.

“I choose your side, Harry,” Severus said softly, holding Harry’s eyes. He turned and bowed to the Dark Lord in the homunculus’s body even though he was already on his knees. “I choose your side, my Lord.”

The Dark Lord’s smile was a shark-like thing, and he began to hiss a response, but Severus did not hear it. He was too busy being bowled over by Harry, who hit him hard enough to knock him to his back. He was hugging Severus again, the way he had when Severus had accepted the Christmas gift from him, and he was whispering something over and over again. Severus made his mind focus on it.

“I’m so glad. I’m so glad.”

Severus lifted his arms and hugged the boy back, stiffly. Then he turned to receive the Dark Lord’s praise.

Chapter Text

“It’s good to know that your allegiance is the right one.”

Severus inclined his head. After they had come back to the school, and Severus had walked the line between lie and truth about his rescue of Harry well enough to fool Albus, “Moody” had revealed himself as Barty Crouch, Junior.

It was still bizarre to Severus that Barty was the one who had survived, and the one who had taken Moody’s place. He was not used to thinking of Barty as the one who was most loyal to the Dark Lord. Bellatrix Lestrange, or perhaps Regulus Black, before his disappearance.

Not the still-young man sitting in front of him, who had spent a year in Azkaban and then twelve years under the Imperius Curse, as he had told Severus. Not the man who was giving him a piercing little smile as he sipped the Firewhisky that Severus normally kept for his own use, glittering, hard blue eyes not much less unnerving than the magical and real one he possessed in his disguise.

“I know that you didn’t make the right choices from the beginning. But that doesn’t matter now. Now, we’re comrades.”

Severus just nodded and sipped his own Firewhisky. He was still trying to comprehend how much his own world had changed, and there was no way he could do it yet.

“Why did you do it?”

“Which part of it?”

“Why did you betray our Lord in the first place?” Barty leaned forwards, his eyes roaming from Severus’s hair down over his severe dark robes, lingering on his left arm where his robes concealed the Mark, and finally coming back to his face. “I know that you love the Dark Arts and you’ve even kept asking for the post that would let you teach them here. Why become a traitor?”

“Because the Dark Lord targeted Lily Evans.” To no one who did not know it did Severus plan to reveal that he was the one who had brought the prophecy to the Dark Lord that had been the reason for that targeting.

Although perhaps he should have told Harry. Then the boy would have admired him less, and would not have become a Death Eater.

Likely.

“I don’t understand. You loved her more than you loved the Dark Arts? Our lord?”

Severus was silent for some minutes, searching his soul for an answer he could tell Barty that the man would accept, and that their Lord would also accept. Of course Barty was really asking these questions for the Dark Lord, and Severus’s response would make its way back to him. Severus had to be revealing but not too revealing.

He finally looked up and met Barty’s eyes.

“I grew up in the Muggle world, raised by the Muggle bastard my mother married,” he said, and didn’t have to disguise the bitterness that leaked into his voice. Barty blinked. Apparently he hadn’t known Severus was a half-blood. Severus held that amusement at bay and continued. “I saw Lily Evans display accidental magic. I was thrilled beyond belief. Here was someone to share the secret with beyond my mother, someone not subject to my father’s rages that made my mother hide her magic most of the time. So I bonded strongly to her.

“If I had met her under any other circumstances? If I had been raised in the magical world and known other children of my age who would have accustomed me to not feeling isolated? Then I doubt I would have bonded to Lily that strongly.”

Severus sipped the Firewhisky again and ignored Barty’s assessing stare. The truth was a good one, woven with glinting threads of deception that Severus was sure Barty would not spot.

Would the Dark Lord? That was the only real question.

“So you chose a life that was comfortable for yourself for the past decade, but you never abandoned your real allegiance, is that what you’re telling me?”

“My real allegiance was to what side might give me comfort and freedom.”

“And now it’s to the kid.”

Severus controlled the jolt that wanted to run through him and make him spill the Firewhisky. He lifted the glass in a short, ironic toast to Barty. “If you say so.”

“Yeah, I say so.” Barty’s eyes were wide and fastened on him. “And yet, our Lord accepted you back. Because to have the kid, he has to have you.”

“I am not of that opinion. I am, in fact, surprised that our Lord did not kill the child whom some call his nemesis.”

Barty laughed, leaning back in his chair. “He figured me out right away. I behaved differently when he came to ask me for private tutoring than I did in class, and he decided it was the result of Polyjuice. Apparently he’s been reading a fair amount of your books and decided that a potion was more likely than a glamour.”

“As he should have,” Severus murmured, watching the Firewhisky ripple in the glass. “A glamour would have been stripped by Hogwarts’s wards.”

“Why do you think I didn’t use one? He didn’t know exactly who I was. But he told me that he was pretty sure I was a spy for the Dark Lord, or at least a sympathizer. And—it’s the strangest thing.”

Severus watched in some concern as Barty’s forehead wrinkled. The “strangest thing” when it came to the Dark Lord’s most fanatical follower could be bad news for Harry, no matter how valuable Harry might be to the Dark Lord right now.

Severus should know as much. He had been valuable, once.

“I was—well, of course I was mad after Azkaban and the Imperius. Mentally broken. I only managed to take Moody’s place and get into the school because my loyalty to my Lord made me listen to him when he planned it out. But when Harry came near me, he steadied me. Broke through some of the mental fog that was covering my thoughts. Made me sharper and quicker.”

Severus stared at him. Barty snorted. “I actually thought it might have been something you’d done at first. One of the reasons I gave the kid that necklace that would hurt someone who was opposed to our Lord. But he doesn’t have that effect on you, huh?”

“No,” Severus said softly. He knew that he had changed his perception of Harry greatly since the boy was first Sorted, but he also knew himself well enough, and had good enough Occlumency, that he would have noticed if Harry were exerting some kind of magical influence on him.

If anything, he would have suspected Albus of placing some such spell on the boy, but Albus was too clever to have chosen something that would benefit a Death Eater, no matter how disguised or how close already to sanity.

Barty leaned back in his chair again and shrugged. “Well, I brought Harry to the Dark Lord for their first meeting, and the Dark Lord benefited from the same effect. He told me Harry brought him part of the way back to sanity.”

Something about the boy. Whatever allowed him to survive the Killing Curse? But I thought that was all Lily’s doing.

“I am surprised you are telling me this much,” Severus said, because that last revelation demanded some response.

Barty’s teeth flashed in response. “Well. The boy’s good as a chain on you. Believe me, I know that already.”

Chapter Text

“Sir? Do you have some time to talk today after class?”

Severus supposed that he should have known this confrontation would be coming. The time he had already spent talking to Harry in the Dark Lord’s presence was not sufficient for all they had to say to each other.

But it was still difficult to keep a bland expression on his face as he nodded. “I am at your disposal, Mr. Potter.”

No one else would have seen the anxiety that blazed in Harry’s eyes for a moment before he dipped his head and turned back to the bubbling Draught of Peace in front of him. Severus had started the class on a few potions that were normally covered during the OWL year. He had thought he might as well.

There was every chance that he would not be here next year.

Severus swooped about the classroom and took points from Gryffindor to make himself feel better. But in the end, nothing could compensate for the fact that the other students trooped out, bickering, and Severus turned to find himself alone with Harry.

The boy he had thought he knew so well. The boy he might have mentored into becoming a Death Eater.

“Can you lock the door, please, sir?”

It was more than an hour until Severus’s next class, given that it was lunch now. He nodded and did as Harry asked.

He wasn’t sure what he anticipated when he lowered his wand. Perhaps Harry giving him some instructions from the Dark Lord. Perhaps Harry apologizing for lying to him about “Moody.”

What he got was Harry hurling himself forwards and hugging Severus again.

Severus swallowed and rested his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry seemed to feel the difference, because he pulled back and stared into Severus’s face.

“You’re unhappy,” he whispered.

Severus sought a way forwards. He could keep this conversation secret from the Dark Lord, but Harry could not. And there was always the chance that the Dark Lord might harm the boy in his rage, no matter what Barty had said about the Dark Lord feeling more sane with Harry near. That might have been a lie.

“Why are you so unhappy?”

Severus stared into Harry’s eyes and decided to take the risk of speaking the truth. In the end, even if the Dark Lore was enraged with him for saying it, he was likely to kill Severus instead of the boy.

“I did not mean to turn you into a Death Eater,” he whispered.

Harry blinked. “But it’s the choice that you made.”

“Yes, when I was a teenager and foolish. Do you think—do you think I want to see you branded? A slave to the Dark Lord?”

“Oh, he’s not going to do that. He promised. He swore an Unbreakable Vow,” Harry added, before Severus could tell him exactly how much promises from the Dark Lord were worth.

“Why would he do such a thing?”

Harry smiled, and here was the dark expression that Severus had sometimes glimpsed out of the corner of his eye and mistaken for something else. Or thought wasn’t that dark. “Because I promised that I would do what he says unless it would endanger me or you, and he really wants me out of the war. I don’t know all the nuances of why, but I’ll learn. And in the meantime, I get what I want the most.”

I know the nuances.

Severus knew he should reveal the secret of how he had told the Dark Lord the prophecy, before the Dark Lord did so to drive a wedge between Severus and Harry. He took a deep breath.

“Safety.”

Severus blinked, having been so occupied by his thoughts that it took him a moment to realize how Harry’s word connected with what had gone before. Then he said slowly, “And you thought the Dark Lord would give you that, more than Dumbledore.”

“Dumbledore left me for ten years with people who would have killed me if they thought they could get away with it. I would still have been with them if not for you. Yes, I know who gives me the most safety.”

Harry’s eyes were blazing, and Severus wondered if this was the best time to tell him about the prophecy. But no, he needed to.

For him or whom? whispered a dark voice in the back of his head. Are you trying to protect him against the Dark Lord’s manipulations, or are you trying to make sure that he doesn’t hate you and render your service to the Dark Lord more intolerable than ever?

“There is something you must know.”

“Do you mean the prophecy?”

Severus couldn’t breathe. He stared at Harry and felt his breath stick in his lungs, and then he coughed and whispered, “You knew.”

“Of course I knew.” Harry’s face bore an expression that Severus couldn’t classify, even after so many years spent among Slytherins of all kinds. “I started suspecting that there must be a pretty compelling reason for the Dark Lord to attack me in my second year. And it was one of the first questions I asked Barty once I figured out who he was.”

“How exactly did you do that?”

“I smelled the Polyjuice on him.”

Severus swallowed. He had not done that himself, and he was the one who was supposed to have the sensitive olfactory sense and be good at Potions partially because of it.

Then again, he usually only noticed the smells of potions when he was in a place where he expected to smell them. In the classroom, he was on guard against anything that could go wrong with a student’s potion. But outside of that, he relaxed and didn’t pay attention to those messages.

“I have been stupid, it seems,” he whispered.

“No, you’ve been great.”

“I am the reason that you’re an orphan!”

“No, the Dark Lord is the reason for that, and I got past that because he promised me safety. Did you really think that I would turn on you, after all you’ve done for me, because of your part in carrying the prophecy to him?”

“You should,” Severus whispered, and sank down on the chair behind his desk. “Merlin, Harry, you should.”

Harry shook his head, the indefinable expression on his face. “Severus, you rescued me from that house. No one else has ever done that. I thought Hagrid would, at first, but he just sent me back to them the same day that he took me to Diagon Alley. You let me stay with you and lied to the Headmaster for me. I don’t know any other adult who would do that, either. You protected me and you would have become a spy and attacked the Dark Lord for me. Do you understand what that means?”

Harry raised eyes shining like stars to him. “I trust you. Nothing you can do would change that.”

“You stupid boy, you should know—”

“Nothing will change it, because the things that could, you wouldn’t do,” Harry said, and smiled at Severus as if that made sense and he should be comforted. “I know you inside and out. It’s one of the reasons that I knew you would follow me into the Dark Lord’s service instead of turning around and running back to Dumbledore.”

Severus swallowed because—he wasn’t wrong.

He should have been, perhaps. Severus should have felt more allegiance to the man who had kept him out of Azkaban and given him a path to redemption when he had been partially responsible for killing Lily, perhaps.

But that was not the way it was. All of Severus’s trust and loyalty and whatever capacity for affection he had left were tied up in the boy in front of him.

Albus told me once that love is the most powerful force in the world. I suppose he never thought that it would damn the world instead of saving it.

Chapter Text

“And Voldemort has never once brought up the fact that you defied him during Mr. Potter’s first year, Severus?”

“He brought it up once, yes. He seems to have decided that I was valuable enough to keep around in spite of that. Or he might not have remembered it as fully as it happened. After all, he was in a wraith state and half-insane at the time.”

“Ah. Well, remember that he is at least half-insane even now, Severus.”

“Of course, Albus.”

Severus stepped out of Albus’s office with enough bitterness to drown a Hufflepuff in his throat. Even now, Albus’s main concern appeared to be that Severus might find Voldemort’s presence attractive enough to return to his service.

Unless he is pretending. Unless he really does know everything and is letting this play out for some reason.

It would require Albus to be a better Legilimens than Severus thought he was, and more distrustful of Severus’s reports of the “nothing” that had happened when he was called to the Dark Lord’s service than Severus thought Albus was, and more ruthless and manipulative than even Severus had gauged him to be.

But maybe he was.

After all, Severus no longer felt that he could trust his own perceptions.

*

“Excuse me, Harry?”

“Barty’s been tutoring me in Dark Arts,” Harry repeated patiently, checking over his shoulder to make sure that the door of Severus’s office was locked and Silenced. Of course it was. Severus did that every time Harry came to visit these days, and let the fools in other Houses believe that Severus was screaming at the boy if they wanted to. “But he said you know more than he does. After all, he went to Azkaban when he was pretty young, and you’ve been free since then.”

Severus sighed. Of course this was another method the Dark Lord and Barty were using to trust Severus’s allegiances, and perhaps even Harry, although the boy might not realize it.

Then Severus looked into Harry’s eyes, Legilimency dancing light as a bird across Harry’s Occlumency, and realized it was both rougher and deeper than that.

Harry knew that Severus was unhappy, for various reasons, about the Dark Lord claiming his allegiance again. This was Harry’s test to see if Severus cared for him enough to keep following him into the darkness, and teach the kind of magic that had driven him away from Lily.

Driven, or drawn?

But it was at least indisputably true that it had driven Lily away, so Severus hid his sigh as he stood and nodded to Harry. “All right. Although you seem to command more powerful magic on your own than most Dark Arts.”

“What do you mean, Severus?” Harry took his position opposite Severus, practically bouncing on his toes. Severus wondered if the boy merely had a fondness for violent magic, and indulged himself with Legilimency again. That would—affect what Severus could teach him and how they associated in the future, if Harry was a sadist like Severus suspected Nott was.

But no. Of course not. Harry was aglow with joy at the thought that Severus was teaching him private and special magic that no one else in the school got to learn from their professor. It was the way that Harry’d been when they had practiced Occlumency during the summer.

Severus fought the temptation to put his head in his hands. He should not worship me so.

“You can command the allegiance and magic of others, when you wish,” he said, as he stepped back and readied his wand. “The Dark Lord has told me how many in your year have agreed to become Marked because you have.” It was a depressing number, including not only those who probably would have suffered that fate anyway, such as Nott and Draco, but also those like Millicent Bulstrode who might have done their best to avoid it. “And there was the magic that you used on Lockhart in your second year, with no tool but your will. What will the Dark Arts add to your repertoire?”

Harry stared at him as if he didn’t know what Severus was talking about. Severus stood there and waited. It might be that Harry couldn’t give an answer that would make sense to Severus, but he was nevertheless going to ask.

“I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That I don’t trust anyone except you.”

Severus opened his mouth, then closed it. He had known that, if he would not perhaps have put it in precisely those words.

“So—”

“I wouldn’t trust Nott and the others to defend me. Especially after they become Death Eaters. Then their first loyalty is going to be to the Dark Lord.” Harry’s eyes glittered. “I never wanted to become a Dark Lord myself. That’s a violent life, without any safety. I only needed to prove that I could make myself valuable enough for the Dark Lord to overlook what had happened on Halloween 1981.”

He has done that, and more.

But Severus was not sure that Harry would believe him if he told Harry what a boon it was to the Dark Lord simply to have Harry out of the war. And he was not sure that he should be trying to make Harry believe that, anyway. From now on, because of his choices, Harry’s foremost loyalty would have to be to the Dark Lord.

Because of the choices I made.

Severus cast that thought aside, however. He would have to live in the world that their hands had dealt them. “And your wandless magic?”

“It uses up so much strength I wouldn’t necessarily be able to run anywhere after I use it. Or Apparate, once I learn that.”

Severus decided some of their lessons would concern that. “You wouldn’t necessarily…”

“I don’t leave my safety up to chance, Severus. Or yours.”

Severus breathed out slowly. Yes, he was the one now who was ignoring the obvious. He ought to have been able to guess all this, with as much knowledge as he had always had of Harry’s mindset.

Perhaps he had not known quite how far Harry would go. But for now, he made the salute with his wand to Harry that professional duelists used.

Harry bowed, his eyes bright with excitement, and their tutoring session began.

Chapter Text

“The ritual is tonight.”

Severus had swallowed roughly when Barty, in his Moody guise, had halted him near the Great Hall for a “private word.” At least everyone had hurried by with only gleeful or curious looks. No one thought it strange that the confirmed Dark wizard catcher would want to talk to a confirmed Dark wizard.

Hopefully only three people know how confirmed it is.

Now they were deep in the dungeons, with privacy charms hovering around them, and could speak without fear.

“All right,” Severus said. “We are planning on using the Third Task’s chaos to cover any absences that might be suspicious?”

“Yes, of course.” For a moment, it was plainly Barty looking at him through those mad eyes. “And I really hope that you’re as devoted to him as you say you are, Severus. Because this ritual will need it. He’s already altered the ritual to call on your Potions expertise.”

Severus bowed his head. Barty might mean one “him,” but it was another Severus was thinking of.

And Barty need not fear. Of course Severus would be there and do his part. He had already let himself be bound by the chain.

“Yes.”

*

Severus couldn’t help his own flicker of excitement and pride as he stepped into the manor house where the Dark Lord had gone to ground. Despite everything, this particular potion to resurrect his Lord had been incredible to brew—experimental, challenging, finicky. He knew it would work exactly as he had thought it would.

He went to one knee and bowed his head in front of the Dark Lord, holding out the vial. The great snake, whom Severus had learned was called Nagini, flanked the Dark Lord’s chair on the left, Barty on the right. Harry was standing over near the east wall, watching with those hard, bright eyes he seemed to sport all the time lately.

The Dark Lord examined the vial by turning it back and forth in his stubby arms, perhaps sniffing it with a forked tongue; Severus didn’t dare to look up that much. “Ahhh,” he said at last, and there was a sense of satisfaction in his voice that Severus knew he shouldn’t be responding to, but that he was anyway. “You have shown me your worth once again, Ssseverusss, my sssubtlessst ssserpent.”

Severus thought Barty or perhaps Harry deserved that title more, but he wasn’t about to contest praise from the Dark Lord at this point. He bowed and held the bow, ignoring the way that his spine creaked. “Thank you, my lord.”

“We will proceed with the ritual.”

With incredible tenderness, Barty scooped the Dark Lord out of the chair and bore him towards the cauldron that stood cold in the corner of the room. Severus studied it with his expert’s eye. He would not have left it cold so long, given that it needed to be lighted at least five minutes before the potion began to heat, but perhaps the Dark Lord had wanted to be prepared in case Severus was late arriving.

Or did not arrive.

Severus layered his mind in ice as he thought about it. There were still so many things that could go wrong here. Harry might trust the Dark Lord to keep his promises, to be bound by oaths, but Severus did not.

For example, if one swore an Unbreakable Vow, was one bound that by that when disembodied? Or a wraith? Or entering a different body?

Severus settled himself. He knew what he would do in the event of the Dark Lord turning on Harry, and he would rather die defending the boy than any other death he could think of right now.

“Will you do the honors, Harry?”

“Of course, my lord,” Harry murmured, and he could sound truly deferential. Severus had misread his character when he’d thought Harry was aiming for Dark Lordship of his own. Harry went to his knees beside the pile of wood beneath the cauldron and aimed his wand at it. “Incendio!”

The spell might be a first-year one, but it made the wood catch on fire as well as any Dark Arts hex could have. Harry stood, bowed again to the Dark Lord, and backed away from the cauldron.

They waited in silence, watching the fire—or in Severus’s case, watching the way the flames flickered in Harry’s green eyes—until the five minutes had passed.

“Today,” said Barty, beginning his part in the ritual, “we come together as three servants to resurrect our Lord.” He nodded to Severus, who stepped forwards, uncorked the potion, and poured it into the cauldron. “We will resurrect him with blood, flesh, and bone, all willingly given.”

Severus reached into his robe pocket and carefully drew out his own rib. He had told Albus he was sick for the full day it had taken him to use the right combination of potions and spells to cut out the bone and then regrow it. Albus had inquired solicitously afterwards if Severus was quite all right. Severus had pretended to be hiding vulnerability behind irritation, and Albus had left him alone.

“Into the cauldron,” said the Dark Lord, his voice muffled, his red eyes gleaming so brightly that Severus felt stained by their light.

Severus placed the bone in the potion. There was a loud, muffled thump, and the bubbles began to rise from the cauldron.

“Now the flesh,” Barty said, and tucked the Dark Lord into the crook of his left arm as he drew his wand with the right. He cut off his right thumb without flinching, and dropped it into the potion.

Severus stepped forwards with the Blood-Replenisher and Clotting Charm. Barty nodded to him without taking his gaze from the cauldron.

“Now the blood,” Barty said a moment later.

Severus turned and watched, tense, ready for some treachery, as Harry sliced down his right arm with his wand. But nothing happened other than the blood pouring out and landing in the potion, which turned a dark purple flecked with silvery stars. Harry nodded in thanks as Severus Clotted the blood and handed him the potion to bring him back to full strength.

“And now the Lord,” Barty said, and stepped forwards and placed the Dark Lord into the cauldron.

Severus watched, his mind still frozen under ice, and wondered what he wanted to happen.

What he wanted was irrelevant, in the end, given how well he had brewed the potion and the care with which the Dark Lord had chosen the ritual. The potion popped and bubbled, and then threw up a long plume of dark green smoke. The color of the Killing Curse that had destroyed Lily, Severus thought.

The color of the eyes of her son, who watched his prophesied enemy’s rebirth with gleaming delight.

Then the Dark Lord rose from the cauldron.

Severus fell to his knees out of sheer astonishment at the magic beating around him. Cold and clear and powerful as the ice that made up Severus’s Occlumency. Sketching shadows in the air that fled as Severus watched. Melting away half his reluctance at being part of the Death Eaters once more.

His magic had never felt like this when Severus first served him.

“Ah, Merlin,” Barty whispered, and then he was bustling forwards with long black robes. Severus kept his head bowed as the Dark Lord was clothed. He had no desire to see more of him without clothes than he had.

Although he did shoot a sideways look at Harry and saw him with his head bowed, too, eyes on the floor.

He either feels it like I do, or has good self-preservation instincts. Or both.

The Dark Lord was silent for some time. Severus checked from beneath lowered eyelashes, and saw him examining his arms, turning them back and forth, running his hands up and down the pale skin as if he could not believe it existed.

Then he threw back his head and laughed.

The laughter brought back the howl of a werewolf at the end of a dark tunnel when Severus had been sixteen years old. He shuddered uncontrollably.

Harry caught his breath sharply.

Severus edged towards him without standing or looking at him. If he had to, he would snatch Harry and try his best to save the boy’s life in the moments before the Dark Lord or the Vow killed them. If Harry had changed his mind—

But Harry only said, bold and calm at the same time, “Welcome back, my lord.”

The Dark Lord turned towards him. Severus tensed again. Things might have changed now that the Dark Lord had his body back. Perhaps he would think that he had no more need of Harry Potter.

But the Dark Lord only considered Harry with a horrible, lipless smile—the potion and ritual had not restored his handsome face—and reached out to touch a finger into the center of Harry’s forehead, over his scar. Harry looked up at him and held his gaze, something Severus knew many adults would have struggled to do.

“It stabilizes me even now that I have this form,” the Dark Lord whispered, and then descended into Parseltongue.

Severus remained where he was, turning ideas over in his mind. Yes, Barty had said that Harry stabilized the Dark Lord and even affected Barty’s mental clarity, but why? Simply the remnants of the defensive magic that Lily had left on the boy? Because Harry had turned against the prophecy and was serving the Dark Lord now instead of fighting him?

“Rise, Severus.”

Severus did so, keeping his head bowed, and noted absently that the Dark Lord had lost the excessive sibilants that had haunted his speech in his homunculus form.

It was the kind of detached, wondering thought he had often envisioned having in the moments before his death.

The Dark Lord reached out and placed his hands on Severus’s shoulders.

He had never done such a thing, even the night that Severus was initiated into the Death Eaters. Shock kept him still.

Shock made him lift his head, and the Dark Lord’s Legilimency was waiting for him.

This time, it was a hand extended in invitation, something that Severus had rarely seen or felt. He accepted it, and the Dark Lord’s impressions and knowledge whirled into Severus’s mind, not invading, only settling like snow on the ice of his thoughts and spreading silent information that way.

The boy soothes me and clarifies my mind and my Death Eaters’ minds because of a mental connection between us forged by magic and prophecy. Dumbledore would try to kill him for it. You know your duty.

And whatever your allegiances may have been, welcome back.

The Dark Lord turned away while Severus was still reeling from that knowledge, and smiled at Harry and Barty. “Shall we celebrate? I have house-elves who will bring us food that rivals the feasts at Hogwarts.”

Chapter Text

A mental connection to the Dark Lord.

A connection to the Dark Lord’s mind.

That confession was still echoing like a distant bell in Severus’s head as he answered Albus’s questions. Of course they had been missed after the Third Task was done, but Barty had arranged for the discovery of Moody’s body to provide part of the explanation, and Severus had been able to tell some of the truth.

Yes, an impostor had taken Moody’s place, using Polyjuice Potion. Yes, he had planned to kidnap Potter. Yes, Severus had stopped him.

Harry played his part convincingly, too. He huddled with his arms wrapped around his knees and his head bowed, and answered Dumbledore’s questions in a mumble.

He was such a good actor that Severus might have believed him.

“I am sorry, my boy, that you had to be subjected to this.”

Last year, Severus knew, that would have gained Albus an incredulous stare as Harry reflected on why he had to be subjected to this. But now, he only nodded, his shoulders shaking as he stared at his knees.

“I know, Headmaster. Thank you.”

He can do this now because he’s assured of his safety. Because he trusts the Dark Lord in ways that he never trusted Albus.

Harry smiled at Severus a little on the way out of the office. Severus entertained himself with the thought of what Albus would say if he knew where the smile came from. Albus didn’t, of course. Instead, he just smiled himself and teased Severus lightly about how he had become so close to James Potter’s son.

James Potter’s son in blood, Severus longed to say. My son in spirit.

For all the good it has done the both of us.

*

“Given the way that Harry was almost kidnapped, I would have thought you would welcome the guard on him, Severus.”

“When one of them is Black and one of them is Lupin? You know what kind of trouble they got up to in school, Headmaster.”

“Nothing too bad, Severus.”

For a long moment, words stuck in Severus’s throat, and he could not speak. Then he took a long mental step backwards. What Albus said and thought no longer mattered, not at any level that Severus had to care about. He could let the words wash off his robes like the potions that his first-year dunderheads brewed.

And he already knew how he was going to get Harry out of being escorted to Privet Drive, guards or not. Barty had left behind almost a full cauldron of Polyjuice.

Theodore Nott drank a dose of the potion with Harry’s hair in it, Harry drank a dose with Nott’s hair in it, and they maintained the doses during the hours that it took the Hogwarts Express to journey back to King’s Cross. No one else bothered them. This was one of the times Severus could acknowledge it a good thing that Harry had made no true friends in Slytherin House, only those who would do as he told them.

“Harry Potter” walked off the train and into the escort of the Order of the Phoenix members. Severus met “Theodore Nott,” scowling, with his arms folded.

“Sir?”

It was bizarre to hear that low, gruff voice speaking and know it was Harry. But the look in Nott’s grey eyes grounded Severus.

“Your father could not come to fetch you,” Severus said, at his iciest, and watched people glance away and lose interest. “I will take you home.” He extended his arm.

“Nott” nodded stiffly and stepped up to him. Severus whirled them away in a flash of Apparition.

The minute they were in Spinner’s End—Severus had adjusted the wards to create a pocket that only he or someone he accompanied could Apparate into—“Nott” tossed his head back and gave Severus a very Harry grin. “The Polyjuice will wear off in twenty minutes. You gave Theo the stone?”

“I did.”

“You wouldn’t have managed to enchant it without the book Barty gave you.”

“No, I would not.”

Harry was studying him with his head on one side. Severus turned away so as to be able to ignore the oddness of the right gesture on the wrong body. “Let us have some tea, and then I will test your Occlumency again.”

The stone he had given Nott would project an illusion of Harry looking out the barred upstairs window of Privet Drive and sometimes wandering in the garden, which would be enough for the Order guards. It was, admittedly, something of a gamble that they would not knock on the Dursleys’ door and demand to see Harry, just as it had been a gamble that the Order guards at the station would ignore Vernon’s protestations about how Harry hadn’t been living with them for the past two summers.

But none of those guards included a Legilimens, and Albus had never actually checked on Harry the past two summers, either. It was a gamble Severus felt good about taking, along with the one that would allow Nott’s father to appear inside the house on Privet Drive and retrieve him. The protections on the house, whatever they might be, included no wards against Apparition.

“Yes, Severus!”

And watching the way that Harry, even in his Nott guise, raced up the stairs to the room that had been his for those past two summers, Severus could not regret his choices.

Not most of them.

*

“What’s this?”

Barty, who had been keyed into the Fidelius, had come over earlier to tutor Harry, and despite his desperate desire to be present, Severus had locked himself in the lab to brew Blood-Replenishers and other healing potions that the Dark Lord wanted to have on hand after raids. When he came out, it was of course to find Barty staring at a scroll of spellcrafting notes in Severus’s hand.

Fucking Ravenclaw.

“Work of my own,” Severus said repressively, waving his hand and snapping the scroll shut with wandless magic. Barty jumped, but turned hard eyes on him.

“The Dark Lord would like you to teach these spells to Harry.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know our Lord’s mind? I wonder.”

Severus gritted his teeth. “Some of them are easy to cast but require more power than he currently has. He might magically exhaust himself trying them.”

“It will be a good lesson for him to see that. And you can explain it beforehand. I can see how the boy trusts you. Hangs on your every word.”

Severus said nothing, but simply inclined his head. “Very well. I will teach him these spells.”

“What spells?”

It is a measure of my own trust that I did not consider Harry enough of a threat to jump, Severus thought, and turned to face the boy, who was yawning, one hand over his mouth. “Spells that I invented when I was younger. I have been refining them.”

“You can invent spells?”

Severus blinked. “I was sure that some of our previous lessons covered this. I believe I also told you I invented some.”

“Sure, but it involved esoteric Arithmancy, and I didn’t have enough interest in that to pursue it. And I thought you were just talking about spells that did something like move the stirring rod on its own, to make brewing easier. I didn’t know you were talking about curses.” Harry came cat-footed forwards to stare at him.

Barty shot Severus a smug look and mouthed Told you. Severus sighed and nodded.

“I will teach you these spells,” he told Harry, “but they are hard to master, and require so much energy to cast that you are likely to faint the first time you try them.”

“So put down Cushioning Charms, then.”

“Did the Hat consider you for Ravenclaw for even one moment?”

“No.” Now Harry’s eyes had taken on a harder glitter than they usually had. “It said that I would do well in Slytherin, and make my real friends there.” He laughed a little, quietly. “I thought it was mistaken or lying for the longest time, until I realized that you’re as close to a friend as I come.”

Barty feigned a wounded gasp.

“You don’t count for this discussion, you weren’t a Slytherin.”

And the relationship between them is not as trusting as the one between Harry and me, Severus thought, listening as they insulted each other. Barty still had a cruel smile for Harry; Harry matched it. Barty’s loyalty was first and foremost to the Dark Lord, even though he would protect Harry for the sake of his own mental acuity and their Lord’s.

But Harry leaned trustingly against Severus’s side when Barty was gone and yawned again. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Dry oats.”

“You’ll make something more than that,” Harry said.

He sounded childish. Sleepy. Absolutely and utterly trusting. It was what had damned the rest of the world, Severus thought.

Chapter Text

“Why did you create this spell?”

“Because I wanted one for enemies.”

Severus watched as Harry staggered forwards and leaned his forehead for a moment against the cabinet of Potions ingredients in one corner of the room. It had been reinforced with shields so that there was no way the Sectumsempra Harry was practicing could harm its contents in case he managed to bounce the spell from the dummy he was aiming at.

So far, it hadn’t been a concern. Harry hadn’t managed to cast the spell once.

Harry rested for a moment, then stood back upright and turned around to face Severus “I’m going to master this.”

“I believe that eventually, you will.”

Harry paused, regarding Severus with a stillness that he thought had grown since Harry had met Barty. “You’re not upset about the length of time it’s taking me to do this.”

“No. It’s a powerful spell, as I mentioned. The difficulty comes in building up the strength necessary to sustain it, not to spend that power all in one burst that fades before it hits its target.”

“And over time…”

“You will build up the strength, yes. Especially if you keep casting as many Dark Arts spells as I know you want to learn.”

“Why did you turn away from the Dark Arts in the first place?”

“Because I was the one who brought the prophecy to the Dark Lord. I could not stand the thought of Lily dying.”

Harry grew even more still. Severus had spoken strict truth, but maybe something the Dark Lord had said made Harry doubt that.

“You didn’t care about my father or me.”

“No. At the time, I did not.”

“Why did you care about her? She treated you badly by turning away from you.”

Severus drew a slow, deep breath. There was only one way that he thought he might reach Harry at the moment, and he used it. “I had few friends, and those who remained after my fifth year betrayed me in their search for power under the Dark Lord’s reign. I felt about her as you feel about me.”

“Anything,” Harry whispered. “It wouldn’t matter. Do anything to save her.”

“Yes.”

Harry stared at him, then shook his head a little. “I don’t really understand why, but I understand what you’re saying. What you feel about her.”

“Thank you.”

Harry bit his lip and looked as if he might say something else. Then he straightened and reached for his wand instead. “I think I’m rested enough to try Sectumsempra again.”

Severus nodded, and let the conversation drown.

*

“Severus.”

Severus had learned to recognize one Parseltongue word, and it was the Dark Lord speaking his name. He wasn’t surprised to hear it. He had been summoned. He dropped to one knee in what appeared to be a disused room in Malfoy Manor and bowed his head.

The Dark Lord was sitting on what seemed to be a throne he had Transfigured from one of Lucius’s ornate chairs. He had his snake, Nagini, coiled in his lap, and was idly stroking her. Severus spread ice across the surface of his mind and waited, calm and empty, for the command of his lord.

The man who was his lord again.

“I have things to speak to you about. Things we did not need the boy here as an audience for.”

Severus nodded. His mind was deep in repose. Part of him, the thinking part that lay under the ice like a fish under the surface of a pond frozen for the winter, thought that the Dark Lord might be going to kill him now. And part of that part recoiled at the thought of leaving Harry alone.

The rest surged forwards in eager welcome of death.

“Harry told me about the diary containing a shade of me that you destroyed during his second year.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Why did you destroy it?”

“It had possessed a student and used that student to open the Chamber of Secrets and release the basilisk.” Severus’s voice was perfectly even. He might die on his knees, but he would die with his mind intact, and with the Dark Lord hearing the truth—probably because of that truth. “Harry came to me with the student’s brother asking me to intervene. Until I entered the Chamber, I did not know that the diary belonged to you, my lord. I only thought to survive the ensuing confrontation.”

“What did the diary do? And how did you destroy it?”

Severus spoke the truth, how he had used the venom and how he had had a brief conversation with the shade before it had dueled him using Weasley’s wand. He waited in the darkness. He waited for the Dark Lord to raise his wand and speak the Killing Curse.

But the Dark Lord seemed deep in thought when Severus had finished speaking. His fingers caressed Nagini’s neck. Otherwise, he didn’t move. Nagini watched Severus, but she didn’t move, either.

Finally, the Dark Lord turned to face him. “You used basilisk venom because it was the most destructive substance you had access to.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You will create a potion that might defend priceless artifacts like the diary against basilisk venom or anything as destructive. Do you understand me, Severus?”

Severus nodded. It was not the task he had expected to be handed. Perhaps the Dark Lord only intended to kill him at the end of it, he thought, and would have earlier if he had had access to a brewer half as talented.

“You may have all the basilisk venom you need to experiment with.”

“Yes, my lord. Do you wish me to study charms that are stronger than the Disillusionment? Dumbledore will probably notice me disappearing down to the Chamber to retrieve the venom there.”

The Dark Lord laughed as he had done since he came back—the night of the resurrection excepted—his teeth bared and parted and his breath only whistling between them. “No, Severus. I will send Nagini to the Chamber. She can enter and leave without Dumbledore sensing her presence. You will have as many vials as you need.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

The Dark Lord remained silent for another minute or two. Severus continued to kneel. Part of him was still awaiting death, and resented the long, slow slide of it out of his reach again.

“Did you truly care for her, Severus?”

Severus did not need to ask whom the Dark Lord meant. There would only be one possible answer. “Yes, I did, my lord.”

“Enough to beg me to spare her years after the rupture between you.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And now you care for her son with the same depth and strength.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The Dark Lord smiled in a hideous fashion and reached out to lay a hand on Severus’s shoulder. It did not burn. Of course it did not, Severus thought, distantly. The Dark Lord was raging cold, not heat, the howling force of a winter wind.

“I shall have to hope that I can attract your true loyalty in time, Severus, not this shadow that I have now.”

Severus simply bowed his head. It would have been impossibly dangerous to speak any of the words he was thinking at the moment, and the ice of his Occlumency ensured that he did not have to.

“Go, my servant.”

Severus stood, bowed again, and backed away from the throne so that he was facing the Dark Lord on the way out. Nagini continued to watch him, but the Dark Lord had turned his head, his eyes locked on the far wall.

Severus suspected he should be glad that he did not understand all the thoughts passing through the Dark Lord’s mind.

Chapter Text

“It does seem curious that the Ministry’s appointment of Dolores Umbridge was blocked at the last moment.”

“It does,” Severus agreed, and touched Harry’s shoulder for a moment. “You have all your books that you need?”

“Yes.” Harry stared up at him with dazzlingly green eyes. Sometimes Severus thought the shadows in the back of them had sunk into his gaze and melded with the green, so that no one would notice that darkness unless they went seeking in the forest of Harry’s mind—which he was unlikely to allow them to do. “Do you have everything you need, sir?”

Severus smiled a little tightly. Of course Harry was not speaking about materials.

“Yes, I believe I do.” He glanced around Spinner’s End once more. “Please give Mr. Nott my regards when you see him.”

“I can’t believe they fell for it.”

Harry’s voice was deep with suppressed glee. Severus might have felt the need to repress it further if he had thought it would make Harry careless in front of Albus or other members of the Order, but as it was, he inclined his head with his own thin smile in return.

“I do not believe they expected you to do anything but stay in the house, so the illusion sufficed.”

“And those Dementors that sucked out that one Order member’s soul?”

Severus was the one who had to struggle with repressed glee this time. In truth, he had never cared for Mundungus Fletcher. “Undoubtedly part of the reason that Madam Umbridge’s appointment was summarily blocked.”

Harry’s smile widened, and then he unexpectedly took a step closer to Severus and stared up into his face. “I said that he would protect us, Severus. He promised.”

Severus just nodded, throat tight. It was likely that the Dark Lord had interfered in the Ministry’s choice of a Defense professor to get back at Umbridge for posing any kind of danger to Harry, however indirectly.

But Severus was not blind enough to think that the Dark Lord’s sheltering hand extended over him in the same way. As soon as he could present it as an accident, or do it in such a way that it did not distress Harry, the Dark Lord would eliminate Severus.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, only thinking of the past,” Severus said, and shook himself from the gloom. He must walk the road in front of him. It had been ever thus. “And hoping that the Auror the Ministry does appoint to the Defense position is at least competent.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if they weren’t? I mean, for our side?”

Severus studied him for a moment. “You do not worry for your Defense education?”

“I trust you to teach me.”

Severus had to work to swallow back his emotion at that. Do not show it, he reminded himself. Do not encourage him. Eventually, you will die, and Harry will be on his own. It would be better, since his attachment to you has caused so much trouble, if he were to be as free and cold as he can be.

“I am grateful for your trust.”

Harry smiled, but kept looking at Severus, as if he could see Severus’s caution behind his mask.

Severus was glad to pick up the Floo powder.

*

“And may I introduce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, John Dawlish!”

Severus applauded politely, although his hands faltered when he saw the Auror look up towards him and give a devilish wink.

That wink belonged to Barty.

How did he get in here? I would have thought Albus would tighten up the wards to sound an alarm in the presence of Polyjuice, but…

Perhaps not.

Severus hid his sigh in his goblet. It wasn’t as if he were going to betray Barty, since the vows and oaths he had sworn would not allow him to. But this was a complication to a year he had thought would be free from most drama, since the Dark Lord had blocked the Umbridge woman from being appointed.

Perhaps I should be used to chaos by this point.

*

“You like it?”

“It is clever,” Severus said, and he was even telling the truth. The amulet that the Dark Lord had fashioned for Barty hung around his neck on a simple silver chain. The amulet itself was a bronze disk with symbols of the moon and sun carved on it. It drew its power from those celestial lights, and would always be able to function as long as one of them was shining.

“What will you do on nights of the dark of the moon?”

“Keep to my quarters and plead a headache.”

“And you think that will not be noticeable to Albus?”

Barty looked offended. “I didn’t say I would adopt the same strategy every time.”

Severus held back the temptation to retort that Barty had implied it. He should not let himself become so comfortable with his fellow Death Eater. Precisely because Barty was one, in a way that Severus would never be.

“You’re still struggling against it.”

Severus thought about protesting that he didn’t know what Barty meant, or that Barty was mistaken. But if Barty had noticed it, the Dark Lord would have, and he had deigned to let Severus live in any case.

“I thought I had forsaken that allegiance.”

“I know. But now you have it back, and it can offer you so many advantages. If you invent the potion that I know our Lord has you brewing, you’ll have money and offers from lots of quarters. Why would you want to resist our Lord’s claim?”

Severus studied Barty for long moments. They were in Severus’s rooms, where Barty had come almost directly after dinner to show off the amulet and help himself to Severus’s Firewhisky. He wondered if the other man was drunk, but Barty was leaning forwards a little, and his eyes were intent and assessing.

“I don’t like not understanding things. Help me understand.”

Severus half-shrugged. He could believe those words, at least, when Barty had been a Ravenclaw and had the distinct air of someone enticed by “forbidden” knowledge. “I believe our Lord was an island of light in a vast grey sea for you. Someone who gave your life meaning and you a reason to stay alive.”

Barty’s hand paused for a moment. Then he said, “Yes.”

“Lily Evans was that for me.”

“But why? You had a terrible fight that ended your friendship—”

“And you spent a year in prison and years under your father’s control for the sake of our Lord.”

After a moment, Barty’s mouth lifted in a wry half-smile. He leaned back in his chair and raised his glass to Severus. “I see. I won’t ask anymore.”

Severus nodded and went to fetch his own Firewhisky. If it stopped the impertinent questions, he did not mind confessing that to Barty.

Even knowing that the knowledge would soon make its way to the Dark Lord.

*

He hated to admit it. He did not admit it. When he was outside the lab, he employed Occlumency so that he did not even need to think it.

But the truth burned behind those shields, floating in the center of Severus’s mind like a lotus in a fouled pool.

He enjoyed the potion that he was brewing for the Dark Lord.

It was so intricate, as a potion that had to be able to defend an item from basilisk venom and Fiendfyre and the Bone-Melting Curse and other spells and creature byproducts that fit the category of “extremely destructive.” It had to be brewed in such a way that it would not melt the cauldrons. The ingredients had to balance each other so that it could also survive an indefinite period of time in storage. If Severus had wanted to create only a potion that would be used immediately, then it would have been a simpler task. But he had to find something indomitable that would, in turn, not destroy crystal or glass.

The challenge intrigued him and allowed him to ignore even Neville Longbottom’s ongoing disasters in the Potions classroom and Albus’s little hints and insinuations. Of course, the latter could not be ignored forever.

“You seem happier than you have in some time, Severus.”

Severus shrugged in response to Albus’s insinuation. They were in the room set aside for professorial meetings, and Severus had been able to endure the brain-melting red and gold of the walls by thinking about his potion. “So far, nothing has happened this year to endanger the Potter boy. And nothing happened over the summer, either. I can hope that the agents the Dark Lord has employed to handle the matter are incompetent so far.”

“Or biding their time. You must never relax your vigilance—did I say something funny, Severus?”

Severus had actually almost laughed at the imitation of Barty’s Moody imitation. “You sounded like your old friend Alastor for a moment, Headmaster.”

“Ah. Yes.” Albus looked sad, although of course it was impossible to tell whether that was the reality or a well-practiced imitation itself. “A loss that will be felt by us all in the years to come, I am sure, as we continue the struggle against Voldemort.”

Severus ignored the burn in his Mark at the name. It had always hurt somewhat when someone spoke the word. Since the Dark Lord had returned, the sensation had changed so that it did not seem to go as—deep. There was no other way for Severus to describe it.

“Ah, Minerva! Come and sit down! We were talking of poor Alastor.”

“Yes, I hate to think about him. When I consider that we had an imposter living here all last year and we never knew—”

Barty, in the illusion-disguise of John Dawlish, entered behind her and gave an exaggerated eyeroll.

Severus almost choked.

Chapter Text

“I think I can manage it, Severus.”

Harry’s voice was so quiet that it took Severus a long moment to hear the confidence behind it. He looked up, blinked, and then stepped out of the way. “Can you? Let’s see it, then.”

Harry’s smile was almost shy as he lifted his wand and aimed at the slab of wood Severus had set up on the far end of the classroom. “Sectumsempra.”

The spell left Harry and collided with the door, and chopped a hole in it nearly as big as the one that Severus had created in the Chamber doors using the same spell. Harry didn’t stagger in exhaustion, either. He turned to Severus with a bright, expectant smile.

“Well done,” Severus said softly.

Harry’s smile flashed brighter, and he gave a little bow in Severus’s direction. Then he said, “You invented other spells, didn’t you? Can I learn them?”

“Most of them are just minor hexes and jinxes. Sectumsempra is the most powerful of them.”

“I still want to learn them.”

“Why?”

“Because you made them.”

Harry said that as if Severus should already know the answer, and maybe he should have. Severus quirked a smile that felt less joyful than it should have and nodded. “Very well. There is one that hangs the victim upside down in the air by their ankles, known as Levicorpus.”

Harry mouthed the incantation to himself, his wand twitching. Severus thought, as he watched, that Harry’s true forte was curses.

A forte that of course the Dark Lord would do his best to encourage.

“Why are you frowning, Severus?”

“The world is heading into a war. I fear for your future.”

Harry gave him a smile older, wiser, than any years he had spent on the planet. “That’s why I’m doing the best I can to defend myself, Severus. I know that our Lord has given me his promise, but maybe he’ll get disembodied again, or I’ll be taken prisoner by someone with no reason to listen to him. I have to be able to stay safe.”

Severus nodded tightly, remembering that conversation they’d had at the end of Harry’s second year about safety and how it was the thing that mattered the most. At the time, he had thought it a simplistic view of the world, but also one that would protect Harry.

It had ended up doing that, perhaps, but at the cost of everything else.

“And I know that you’re sworn to protect me, but you won’t always be here.”

Inexplicably, that soothed something in Severus, to know that Harry recognized it and was prepared for the possibility. He nodded again. “Very well. Let me conjure a dummy for you to practice Levicorpus on.”

“Thanks, Severus.”

Severus shook his head as he conjured the dummy. Albus had once predicted that Severus would find much of Lily in her son, if he could get past the idea that Harry was only James Potter’s child.

I doubt Albus thought betraying the master I once swore myself to was one of those things I would find.

*

“Sir? I need to ask you something.”

Severus could not recall that Theodore Nott had ever needed to “ask him something.” But it was not as though he could refuse the conversation, when both the Dark Lord and Harry would probably hear in an hour if he did.

“Wait in my office, Mr. Nott.”

Severus did not allow himself to take a long time cleaning up the spills from the fifth-years cauldrons, even though he wanted to. (One way or another, this was at least the last year of Neville Longbottom). Then he strode to his office and stepped inside, expecting anything from the Dark Lord to Harry waiting with Nott.

But it was just Nott by himself, his hands clasped behind his back in much the same fashion he had held them when they had talked about the plan to fool Albus into believing Harry was at Privet Drive. “I wanted to ask if you are loyal, sir.”

“I am exceedingly loyal. It is one of my redeeming qualities.”

“This isn’t a trap, sir.”

“It is unless I know to whom you are reporting, Mr. Nott.”

A ghost of a smile traveled across Nott’s face. Severus had to resist the temptation to blink and stare. The boy had never done that before, either. “This was one of several questions that Professor Dawlish told me to ask. He has interesting ideas about loyalty. More complex than I expected from an Auror.”

So Barty was testing Severus’s loyalty again? Severus felt an unreasonable prickle of irritation, given how much he had resented being trapped into the Dark Lord’s service.

But truly, Barty should know by now that Severus would serve the Dark Lord faithfully. Barty had said himself how effective a chain on Severus Harry was.

“I am exceedingly loyal,” Severus repeated. “It takes more than just a vague promise to earn my loyalty, of course. The arrangement must have advantages for me.”

“Like being able to research as much as you want?”

“Like that.”

Is this specifically a checkup on the progress of the potion? The Dark Lord could have summoned me himself.

Nott gave a thoughtful nod, his hands still linked together behind his back as they had been since the beginning of the conversation. “I see. I would also like to have an arrangement where the majority of my time is taken up by research.”

Severus blinked rapidly. Then he said, “You are asking me more about your own future prospects than about my own, Mr. Nott?”

“Of course. But I would welcome any insight you could provide.”

Severus wanted to plaster a hand over his face. He wanted to howl with something that would be only half laughter. He wanted a drink of Firewhisky.

He reminded himself that Nott had already been following Harry into the darkness, and said, “Of course it would depend on whether you could prove the value of your research to your—employer. If you want to study pure theory or the like, you would be better off joining the Unspeakables than finding someone who wants specific research.”

“Oh, don’t worry, sir. Pure theory doesn’t interest me at all. Only practical applications do.”

They had a stilted conversation that lasted a few more minutes, and then Severus nodded at Nott to get out and leaned back against the wall of his office. With his eyes closed, the urge to scream or laugh or howl was easier to resist.

I suppose I can spin this as career counseling for Albus, if he asks.

Severus straightened and shook his head. He had other things to worry about than Albus’s perception of a conversation he might never hear of. For one thing, the next step in his potion needed to be completed that night to take advantage of the full moon.

For another, the time when he could have changed Nott’s path had clearly already passed.

*

“I suppose you know nothing about this, Severus?”

Severus had been thinking about the golden color his potion had unexpectedly turned, and why it would have done that when its ingredients should have turned it any other color from yellow to red, and was slow to react to Minerva’s indignation. He looked up completely only when he realized the conversation in the staff meeting room had fallen silent.

“Know about what?”

“Cormac McLaggen was found in his dormitory this morning with pulsating sores all over his body. Madam Pomfrey can’t heal them.”

Severus stared at her blankly. “I certainly had nothing to do with it.”

“And one of your Slytherins? Mr. McLaggen does taunt Slytherins and has sometimes bullied them, but—”

“Then perhaps you should speak with Mr. McLaggen instead?”

“Severus.”

Severus ground his teeth. Trust Albus to get involved. He kept his gaze on Minerva, though, as he drawled, “No, I had nothing to do with it, and neither did any of my Slytherins that I know of.”

There. That was a straightforward statement and had the advantage of sounding as the truth to Albus because it was.

A small frustrated silence ensued. Pomona was watching both Severus and Minerva as if she thought this was prime entertainment. Severus sneered at her, and she decided to turn around and have a conversation with Bathsheda instead.

“But do you have any suspicions of who it might be?” Minerva pressed stubbornly.

Severus sighed in irritation. “None of my students have come to me complaining of Mr. McLaggen.” They usually would not when it was an upper-year Gryffindor. They knew it would do no good. “And none of my students have talked to me about working on a spell or prank like that, either.”

“Are you sure, Severus? You can remember accurately?”

Severus let himself shoot an irritated glance at Albus, too. He would know better than most people that Severus had a good memory because he was an Occlumens. “Yes, I’m sure. No one has been asking questions or bragging about that.”

“Hmmm.”

Severus couldn’t resist, for all that it might be a bad idea. “Just as no one has been asking about getting mauled by a werewolf,” he said. “And no one asked about it in years past, either.”

“That is enough, Severus.”

Severus gave Albus his thinnest smile, and leaned back to let others speak. It seemed that McGonagall had moved on to the novel idea that someone from Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw could have cursed McLaggen, and was questioning them.

Why not someone in his own House? Severus thought, and made his sure his disgust was especially prominent as his eyes swept past Albus’s, meeting them for a brief moment.

And then the meeting began, and he didn’t have to think about it any longer. Not that he had done much of that in the beginning, tucking the likely possibilities behind his Occlumency shields.

There were people he would have to warn when the meeting was done, of course. And for once, they did not include Harry.

Chapter Text

“You might tell your friend Mr. Nott to be a little more careful with the practical applications of my research.”

“He’s not my friend.”

“Even if he might soon become a Death Eater?”

Harry laughed a little, soft and cold like snowfall, and lowered his wand from where he’d been practicing the first motions of the latest curse Severus was teaching him for his Dark Arts studies. “He’s part of the people whose loyalty I brought to the Dark Lord to show that I was valuable. That’s not the same thing as a friend.”

Severus considered him in silence. Harry looked back, smile easy and gentle on his face. Severus didn’t know how he did that and made it look so natural.

The child who had been Sorted into Slytherin four years ago hadn’t been this cold, he was certain.

“I have a more interesting problem that I want your advice on.”

“All right,” Severus said slowly. He wondered if he would categorize Nott as an uninteresting problem, but it was true that Severus only cared about the boy as much as he had to, given his position as Head of Slytherin House. The position that Albus had forced him into and he never would have taken if not for that.

He had argued, once, years ago, that he could work as a researcher and brewer full time and then more easily slip back into the Dark Lord’s ranks because he wouldn’t have been under Albus’s thumb all that time. But Albus had refused. He had said that he needed to help Severus keep his Vow.

And all the time, I would have been better able to keep it if I’d tortured a few Muggles.

“Sirius invited me to spend Christmas with him.”

Severus blinked. Then he said, “Do you want to?”

“Of course not.”

“But you have a reason for at least pretending to agree, or you would not have brought it to me.”

Harry smiled in the way that lit his eyes the most, and which Severus thought would still have made Black try to run away if he’d seen it. “I thought that I might manage to spy on Black, and the Order of the Phoenix through him.”

“I have attended a few Order meetings, and reported on them to our Lord.”

“But they curate the information that they tell you. You know that Dumbledore doesn’t trust you as much as he used to.”

Severus nodded stiffly. It was a point of pride with him that no one in the Order had suspected his true (forced) allegiances so far, but they did distrust him and kept some things to whispers and meetings they didn’t share with him.

“Besides.”

Severus snapped back to reality and blinked at Harry. “Besides, what?”

“This way, I can be there with you when you visit during the holiday and be sure that they aren’t plotting to torture or kill you.”

Severus wrestled with his incredulity for a moment, and at last decided to show it. “They would not do so, Harry. They think of themselves as the good ones. They wouldn’t use the Cruciatus or the Imperius no matter what the temptation.”

Harry took a step backwards and raised his wand. He traced it in an arcane pattern through the air, one that Severus didn’t know. Despite feeling as though he wanted to run, he instead stood still, his eyes tracking it.

It looked a little like a diagnostic charm. But he could not understand why Harry would have focused on that. Basic healing spells, maybe, but only for himself.

A soft white light began to spread throughout the office. Severus looked around for the source of it, and finally realized it was himself. A chain of white light linked a collar around his neck to cuffs on his wrists.

“What is—this?” he choked, staring at the light. It didn’t weigh anything, and he wouldn’t have known he was wearing this—thing—if Harry’s spell hadn’t revealed it.

Which suggested it was nothing material.

“A visualization of the Unbreakable Vow they forced on you.”

Harry’s voice was deep enough that for a moment, Severus had the wild thought that someone else had Polyjuiced as Harry, sneaked into his office, and cast this spell. But no, Severus would have seen something off in their behavior before this.

Harry folded his arms, and his eyes were blazing. “All of them were complicit in this. In your being a slave to the memory of a dead woman.”

Severus could not bring his lips to form words. Finally, he said, “It was—Albus who made me swear the Vow. Not the other members of the Order. You know well enough that Black was in Azkaban for twelve years.”

“I don’t care. They still force you to do something you hate. I know that you want to study the Dark Arts and be a brewer and researcher instead of a professor. And I know that you’re doing something that’s still dangerous if Dumbledore finds you out, and they treat you like you’re worthless.”

Severus stared at Harry, who was staring at him with his eyes blazing with devotion now, and had no idea what to say.

He wanted to object that he was not chained to the memory of a dead woman. He wanted to remind Harry, again, that Lily had died to protect him, and that Severus had sworn the Vow in the first place and become the first adult Harry trusted because of her.

But he couldn’t get past the searing protectiveness in Harry, the way that he was leaning forwards a little as if he were willing Severus to agree.

No one has ever protected me like this. Lily couldn’t. It would have been against her morals. And—

He looked at the light encircling his neck and wrists again, and touched it without disturbing the sharp glow of it. “Where did you find the spell to make this visible?”

“I created it.”

Severus’s head snapped up sharply. “You had only begun to look at my notes—”

“But I knew what I wanted, and I have absolutely no reason to hold back.” Harry’s eyes were so bright, so overwhelming, so confident, so determined. “And I wanted to see exactly how thick the chains on you were.”

“This is only a representation.”

“The spell takes account of your thoughts when it creates the image. This is the way you think of yourself as being bound.”

“Can you conjure a mirror?” In truth, Severus could have done it, since the cuffs didn’t actually restrain his hands, but he was feeling strange at the moment and didn’t know that the spell wouldn’t misfire.

“Of course.”

Harry did it with a quick tap of his wand and not even a muttered incantation. Severus had been missing the extent of his training with Barty, it seemed. Or just whatever he might have been doing on his own.

Driven by that mad determination in his eyes, Severus was sure.

He stared at the reflection in the mirror. The collar around his neck was so thick that he was amazed his head didn’t bend forwards under the weight, that he could breathe under it. The chains that shot down to link to the cuffs on his wrists were nearly as thick. Severus could hardly believe that when he lifted his fingers to trace them, he didn’t feel the links.

“This is the way you see me,” he whispered.

“Because that is the way you see yourself.”

All this time, Severus had believed that he had gone along with the Dark Lord’s orders only because it was the best way to protect Harry. He had given up all thought of protecting himself long ago. It had seemed impossible.

And he had not been sure that he deserved to live after indirectly causing Lily’s death, in any case.

Now, to know that he thought of himself as chained, a prisoner…

Severus swallowed. He thought he knew why his own perception of himself had differed from Harry’s so radically.

He closed his eyes, reassured himself several times mentally that Harry was the only other person in the room, and lowered his Occlumency shields all the way for the first time in fourteen years.

He sagged to his knees as pain and resentment crashed through him like torrents of blood. He knew that he cried out, but he couldn’t hear it. He did feel, distantly, Harry clasping his shoulders and asking worriedly what was wrong.

Then even that feeling faded, and Severus had to confront what was inside his mind.

Things he had hidden even from himself. He had thought that he had been resigned to paying his debt back, that he had accepted a sort of unsteady friendship with Albus.

It was a shock to see the hatred, grey pockets of it puncturing his own self-loathing like islands in a dark sea. Severus swayed on his knees and perhaps crashed to the floor in the physical reality. Not that he could take his eyes from the vision stretching across the inside of his head.

He hated the Dark Lord for killing Lily. He hated Albus for enslaving him. He felt reluctant protectiveness for most of his Slytherins, but he would rather not have been in the position as Head of House at all. He felt a sort of affection for Barty, although he knew the man would also turn on him the instant that he knew how Severus felt about the Dark Lord. He felt loss and grief and rage regarding Lily.

He felt care for Harry, the one blazing star in the dark.

There was darkness all around him. He could yield to it. He could draft away into that darkness and never come back.

Perhaps he should, now that he knew he hated and resented both his masters.

“Severus!”

But there was one person who cared whether he lived or died. And whether Harry had started out caring simply because of what Severus could do for him, he did care.

Severus opened his eyes and tilted his head back with a deep gasp. He was in his office again, in the light of the torches and the fire, and Harry was gripping his shoulders, shaking him with frantic eyes.

“Severus!”

“It’s all right, Harry. I’m still here.”

Harry grabbed him and buried his face against Severus’s shoulder. He shook a little and then remained still. Severus stroked Harry’s back with numb hands, still chained with light, and wondered if the boy would ever be able to cry.

Perhaps it didn’t matter. Harry had created this spell so Severus could see the way he thought of himself, and had prompted much-needed self-reflection on Severus’s part. None of that had been pleasant, but it had been sincere.

He’d had every opportunity to turn on Severus. He never had.

Severus swallowed and waited until Harry’s shudders had faded a little. Then he stood. “Harry?”

“Yes, Severus?”

Already the sobs, or the almost-sobs, were being locked back behind that cold, placid mask that concealed more than Severus would ever be able to understand. However, if he didn’t understand it, neither would the Order.

Or…

Severus hardly dared let the thought float atop the surface of his mind. But no one was here except the two of them. And Harry had chosen to concentrate on Occlumency instead of Legilimency, despite his potential for the latter.

The Dark Lord might not understand how far Harry would go, either.

Holding Harry’s eyes, Severus said quietly, “It would mean much if you would accept the invitation to the Order’s headquarters and spy on them for me. But only if you are sure that you can do so without putting yourself in danger.”

“Severus, when do I ever do that?”

Severus smiled reluctantly. Yes, that was true. He held out his wrists. “Will you banish these chains?”

“I can banish the light that forms them,” Harry said softly, looking up at him through his fringe. “You’re the only one who can get around that Vow in the end, sir.”

Severus nodded slowly. “Very well. Then please banish the visualization, and I will think of the ways that I can break both of us free in the future.”

Harry smiled at him and touched his wand to the glowing, insubstantial cuffs around Severus’s wrists. In seconds, they dissolved into floating motes. Severus sighed and straightened, rubbing his neck.

“Did you actually feel the weight, sir? I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Severus looked at Harry with a long sigh. Harry was staring up at him with anxious eyes. Severus reached out, signaling every motion he made, and put his palm down on Harry’s shoulder.

“No,” he said. “I am only thinking of the weight they have in my mind and soul.”

Harry relaxed and smiled at him. “We’ll find a way around them, Severus. All of them.”

Severus met his eyes. And oh, yes, even though he wasn’t practiced in Legilimency, Harry likely knew what he was thinking. By this point, he knew what Severus was thinking better than anyone else in the world.

“There is a matter of many—oaths,” Severus said, with a flickering glance at the Mark on his arm.

“Of course. We’ll shed only the ones we don’t want.”

Severus had to close his eyes. Harry had gone to the Dark Lord and dragged Severus with him for safety, but he was willing to turn on the Dark Lord if Severus asked him to.

“Thank you, Harry,” Severus finally said, opening his eyes again. “You have given me much to think about.”

“Only returning the favor. You always do that for me.”

Harry gave him a quick hug and slipped out of the office. Severus closed his eyes and centered himself, letting the Occlumency shields fall softly back into place over the surface of his mind.

He could do this. He felt scoured, pained, exhausted.

And also more hopeful than he had been in many years.

Chapter Text

“Harry!”

“Hi, Sirius.”

Black didn’t seem to notice that Harry’s greeting lacked some enthusiasm. He snatched Harry up and swung him around, with strength that Severus frankly hadn’t thought he possessed; Harry was tall enough now to reach Black’s shoulder. Harry did stiffen up, but he was smiling and normal by the time he landed on the floor again.

Severus caught his eye, to make sure that Harry didn’t need him to intervene. Harry just shook his head a little and started talking to Black about the Arithmancy problems he’d been working on before he left the castle.

Arithmancy equations that let him invent his own spells already. And ones that he works on in the company of two Death Eaters’ sons.

“Severus.”

Severus forced a polite expression onto his face as he turned towards Lupin. “Hello, Lupin.”

“Surely you could call me Remus?”

“I’m going to call him Snivellus!”

Lupin closed his eyes for a moment. There was a deeper silence and stillness from Harry’s direction that let Severus know Black would regret this.

“Sirius, please,” Lupin whispered.

“A Snivellus is what he is!”

Severus brought up his Occlumency and froze his reaction to that hated nickname. He should have done this earlier, he thought. He detached from the scene and could watch how ineffective Lupin’s patting and clucking at Black was. It just allowed Black to go ahead and repeat his actions. Lupin didn’t want to “upset him.”

Everyone else can be upset, however.

“Why did you come here with Professor Snivellus, anyway?” Black asked, and turned back to face Harry.

Harry looked at Black with eyes drained of enough emotion that even the dog faltered. “I don’t like that name.”

“Did he tell you that you had to say that?”

“No. I don’t like it because it reminds me of when the Muggles called me a freak.”

Black faltered again. Lupin glanced at Severus, but Severus, wrapped in walls of ice, was able to stand there and say and do nothing.

“I—but it’s him, not you.”

“He’s my Head of House. And he’s been kind to me.”

“Kind? Do you know what kind of hexes he was using in school?”

“Yes. Did he try to feed someone to a werewolf?”

Lupin winced hard enough to make him go forwards and grab Black’s elbow, dragging him backwards. “Excuse us, Severus, Harry,” he said, and took Black up the stairs from the kitchen to scold him.

Harry looked up at Severus. The thought in his eyes would have been clear enough even for someone who wasn’t a Legilimens.

Severus shook his head slightly. Harry settled back, but unhappily.

Then Molly Weasley bustled into the kitchen, and there was a hug that left Harry looking like a leopard about to claw someone’s face off, and Severus had to intervene.

“He doesn’t know you, Molly,” he said, in the kind of quiet, hard voice that made the Order members pay attention to him whether or not they wanted to. “And he hasn’t grown up with much kindness.”

“Of course!” Molly stepped back and raised her flour-dusted hands. “My apologies, Harry, dear. I knew your dear parents, so I feel as if I knew you already!”

“Oh, I see,” Harry said. Severus also froze his amusement at how shyly Harry could smile, at how he could cast his eyes down. “I suppose that would explain it. No one’s ever hugged me like that before.”

“Well!” Molly cast Severus a glance. He wondered idly if she thought he should forgive it, or not notice it, or not understand it. “I hope that you’ll feel welcome here, Harry. Ron is here—and Ginny, of course.”

She looked uncomfortable now, as if perhaps she had heard from her youngest son about Harry’s “failure” to rescue her daughter. Severus gave her his blandest look and turned to Harry. “You’re to stay inside the house, Mr. Potter.”

“Yes, sir.”

Even with Severus’s Occlumency, he found it hard to resist the urge to laugh aloud. He nodded. “Good-bye for the present, Mr. Potter. I shall see you after Christmas.”

“Yes, sir.”

Harry turned back to Molly and started to ask her “shy” questions as Severus went back through the Floo. The last glimpse he had was of the melting expression on Molly’s face.

Severus shook his head as he landed in his quarters. Perhaps Harry wouldn’t have to spy, only appeal to the Order members as an innocent child, and they would treat him like someone who had to know everything.

They would never treat me like that.

But the thought was less bitter than it usually was, given that Severus now had an ally among the Order who could accomplish what he could not.

*

“Where is he?”

Severus sighed as he turned to the Floo. Barty’s head was floating in it. Well, John Dawlish’s head was floating in it. He shook his head. “Professor Dawlish, I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t welcome your company on Christmas Eve.”

Barty’s eyes narrowed in Dawlish’s face. Then he said, “My apologies, Professor Snape. I only meant that I can’t find Mr. Potter anywhere in the school.”

Severus nodded. He had the impression that Albus might have approached the real Dawlish at some point in the past about joining the Order, but Barty had probably ended the recruitment conversations as an unacceptable risk. “Mr. Potter is spending Christmas with his godfather.”

Barty’s expression became blank for a long moment. Then he nodded and said, “Right. Of course. I—forgot he had one.”

“I suspect many people did.”

“And—the most important person in the situation approves of this?”

It would sound like Barty meant Albus to anyone who looked at this memory in a Pensieve, but Severus knew the truth. He gave Barty a small smile and said, “I suspect that Mr. Potter would hardly leave the castle without informing him.”

Barty inclined his head, although his intent eyes said that he thought Harry might not have. “And you’re sure he’s safe outside the walls of the school?”

“Mr. Potter is rather an enterprising young man. And many students spend their holidays with their families, Professor Dawlish.”

“Of course.”

Barty gave him one more glance and vanished from the fire. Severus returned to the Dark Arts tome that he had received from the other man last Christmas, wondering idly if this had something to do with the way that Harry “steadied” the Dark Lord and Barty. Did they not want Harry so far away from them because of that?

Severus shrugged. Even if a day came when Harry broke free from the Dark Lord because it was what Severus wanted to do, Harry was not stupid enough to skip telling their Lord right now of where he was going.

Chapter Text

Just what I wanted for Christmas, a summons.

Severus strode into the manor house where the Dark Lord had been resurrected and knelt again before the chair. Of course, the man was much taller this time than the small body that had contained him before, but he reached out and touched the side of Severus’s face in much the same way.

“Look at me, Severus.”

Severus did, his mind floating in calm, under ice.

The Legilimency this time was a brutal strike, much the sort of thing that was meant to shatter his Occlumency and send the pieces of it flying to pierce through the sides of Severus’s mind. He weathered it easily, gave before it, froze behind it, and showed the Dark Lord the moment when he had taken Harry to the Order’s headquarters.

The edges of the memory blurred and wavered because of the Fidelius, but the Dark Lord would see enough of Harry’s loyalty to Severus to understand why he had gone to spend Christmas with his godfather.

The Dark Lord pulled back. Severus lifted his head and waited for the condemnation or the Cruciatus.

“Harry did write to me about this.”

Severus nodded. In this state, he did not feel relief, but perhaps it was something swimming beneath the surface. “I am glad, my lord.”

“Are you.”

The Dark Lord’s voice was flat, his eyes hard on Severus’s, but it was no problem, it was only truth, for Severus to nod and say softly, “Yes. Even if Harry is loyal to me, his loyalty to you should come first.”

“Because you are loyal yourself.”

“Yes. And because Harry told me often how much he needed safety from Dumbledore, and you are the only one who can oppose the Headmaster.”

The Dark Lord paused for a moment. Then he leaned back in his seat and said abruptly, “That is the tale Barty brought me, after your first conversation with him.”

When he was in disguise as Moody. Severus blinked and nodded. “Oh, my lord?”

“Yes. We had thought to create a plan that would involve bringing Harry through the Tri-Wizard Tournament and resurrecting me with Harry’s blood, but Barty persuaded me to try the recruitment route. It has been a spectacular success.”

“Yes, my lord. I think so too.”

“What does Harry think of the Order of the Phoenix?”

“He has heard little of their goals, since of course I have not spoken to him of them without your permission—”

“You may do so. I am more interested in whether Harry may develop a dangerous attachment to his godfather.”

Severus had to fight to keep his lips from twitching, as he remembered the time when he had feared the same thing. But he shook his head. “Harry did want to live with Sirius Black during the summer after third year, mainly for the size of the house and the Dark Arts artifacts that it contained, and because he believed he had inconvenienced me by living with me. But Black caved to Dumbledore’s suggestion that Harry return to his relatives.”

“Even though he did not in truth.”

“No, my lord. Harry has not lived with them since the summer after his first year.”

The Dark Lord was silent for a moment, staring at the wall. Severus waited, still tranquil in the darkness of his own shields.

The Dark Lord finally jerked his head down. “You are to make sure that Harry’s loyalty does not waver towards his godfather or the Order of the Phoenix at all.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You are to share the fruits of your spying with him and make sure that Harry knows he may be called upon to fulfill a similar role.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The Dark Lord studied him for a minute more or so, while Severus knelt on the hard floor. Then he nodded. “Dismissed.”

Severus stood, bowed, and made his way back to the edge of the wards around the house, where he Apparted. When he landed outside Hogwarts, he shuddered for a moment and leaned against a tree.

There was a reason that the Dark Lord had told Severus to inform Harry of the spying mission that the Dark Lord planned for him, instead of just telling Harry himself. Harry wasn’t going to like this, and it seemed the Dark Lord wanted him to associate the displeasure with Severus.

Severus shook his head as he straightened. The Dark Lord was going to be in for a surprise if he thought that would make Harry react by hating or disliking Severus.

And at the moment, Severus felt a small curl of hope, for all that he had been summoned on Christmas and the Dark Lord might suspect that Severus’s and Harry’s loyalty was not as firm as a stone wall.

Harry would thrive, no matter what happened. He would find some way to retain his freedom and power.

He might still be a Death Eater, but he would be one negotiating with the Dark Lord from a position of strength. And he might not be, and in that case, he would be safe as well.

Both Harry and Severus would not let it be otherwise.

*

“The Order despises you, and I wanted to kill Sirius for calling you that name.”

“As expected.”

“The wards around the Black library are so thick that I would have crumbled trying to get past them, but I did manage to get Sirius to tell me that I could have access in a few months.”

“A coup.”

“Dumbledore thinks I should take more Occlumency lessons with you.”

Severus choked a little.

He turned around to watch Harry sitting on the chair in front of the fire in his quarters. Severus had been sorting through some of the tea flavors on a shelf above them, looking for what he wanted to keep and what he thought he would never want to taste again. It was a small ritual he performed every year, not wanting to keep himself chained to things he had a choice about keeping, unlike the vast majority of his Potions ingredients.

Harry had leaned forwards with his eyes gleaming. The firelight caught them, and he looked relaxed and vicious and pleased. Severus smiled back without fully intending to. “What context brought this decision on?”

“He said that the Dark Lord could probably reach out to my mind through the scar, and it was a connection I should close.”

“The dreams that you had…”

“Oh, of course. But I just playacted a frightened little kid and asked what he meant sand said I knew Occlumency already, and Dumbledore wouldn’t tell me much more than that the connection existed and stronger Occlumency could close it. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, either. I asked how much more I should learn from you, and he said that you knew Occlumency well and he had every confidence in you.”

Severus weighed the words, then dismissed them. After all, Albus had likely known that Harry would report the conversation to Severus. Severus could not be sure that he did have Albus’s full confidence.

Besides. He never would, when he had so many sins, in Albus’s eyes, to atone for.

“Then I suppose we should talk about some details to report to him.”

“They won’t be difficult. I can just talk about things we did study and change the tense of the verb.” Harry shrugged. “What about you? I know the Dark Lord summoned you on Christmas, you said that, but then Nott came around the corner and you said that we should be back in your quarters before we talked about it.”

Severus swallowed and nodded, and then sat down in the chair opposite Harry. For a moment, he looked at his ward. Some people would say that Harry had grown into a fine young man, but Severus had never been sure of the meaning of that phrase. He knew Harry was still as quiet and self-contained as he had been when he was younger, but taller, with brighter eyes, and a far more clever mind than he had let anyone except Severus and Barty and perhaps the Dark Lord see.

“Severus?”

“The Dark Lord said that I could report to you more on the Order of the Phoenix meetings. He intends to use you as a spy.”

“And he didn’t tell me about this.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He wanted me to say it.”

Harry’s eyes chilled in a way that made Severus wary. But he knew he had nothing to fear, so he simply sat and waited for Harry to reason out the best course of action.

Well. Perhaps it was not true that he had nothing to fear. After all, the last time Harry had thought through a course of action and made up his mind about a plan, he had pulled Severus after him into the Dark Lord’s service.

He did that to keep you safe. He truly believed you would have been in danger from the Dark Lord otherwise, and that that you would have remained a Death Eater if you’d had a choice.

Severus settled his mind with another layer of Occlumency. Harry had done much for him, and he much for Harry. At least he thought Harry would discuss things with him this time, instead of charging ahead—perhaps the only remnant of his parents’ Gryffindor nature he had retained.

“I see.”

Harry was staring at the ceiling in a way that Severus had seen before. The words slipped out in spite of himself. “Please do not discover another Dark Lord to bind yourself and me to.”

Harry started and looked at him, shaking his head. A small smile appeared on his lips. “No, our oaths stand because they have to. But we need an advantage in relation to the Dark Lord. One that will convince him to not try and move us around the chessboard like pieces.”

“An advantage,” Severus echoed. He could not imagine what that might be. The Dark Lord had far more magical power than they did, more people loyal to him, more inroads among Dark wizards and witches in Britain, immortality—

“I know one thing that we can research.”

“Yes?” Severus leaned forwards a little. It was impossible not to. Harry radiated the kind of magnetism like this that could have made him a dangerous Dark Lord if he had wanted to be.

Perhaps the world should be happy that he was focused on our safety, after all.

Harry smiled at him, a thing as cold and glistening as the snow outside. “I soothe the Dark Lord and Barty when I’m near them. I restore their shattered minds. Why? Let’s find out.”

Chapter Text

“It seems to me that you have had few reports on Voldemort to give me lately, Severus.”

His Mark still twitched and burned a little at the name, but not nearly as badly as it had before he had resumed his old allegiance. Severus shrugged and blew on the tea that Albus had handed him. He could smell no potions in it, and sense none of the faint tingle of alien magic that would mark Veritaserum, so he drank. “He is doing very little, Albus. When he summons me, he talks in circles and hints at what he wants rather than outright commanding me to do it. I suspect that he suspects how close I am to you.”

“And to Harry?”

“He hasn’t made any specific comments about wanting me to harm the boy. But those could be coming.” Not for nothing had Severus served two men who could use Legilimency and learned to talk around them.

“Mm.” Albus leaned back in his chair, staring at the wall. Severus sipped his tea and watched Fawkes instead. “And he has given you no reason for this lack of action?”

“I believe that he is trying to estimate the level of his support. After all, some people remained loyal to him and pulled that absurd stunt at the World Cup last year, but others lied that they’d been under the Imperius. Who truly serves him? How many can he trust?”

“Why is that his main activity?”

Severus smiled grimly, and he didn’t have to feign it. “He was brought down last time, at the height of his power, by something utterly unexpected. I believe that he’s trying to see every step clearly this time, and avoid overconfidence.”

“He cannot do such a thing. Overconfidence is in his blood.”

“His blood?”

“He is a descendent of Salazar Slytherin, Severus. And you know that Slytherin left a basilisk here in a belief that he could purge the school of Muggleborns.”

Severus kept his opinion on the likelihood of that plan to himself, as well as his opinion on whether the Dark Lord would really be influenced by an ancestor a thousand years back. He nodded.

“Leave me now, Severus. I must think.”

Severus stood and put the teacup on Albus’s desk, looking once more at Fawkes as he turned to leave. The phoenix turned his head almost upside-down and gave a long, slow croon that sounded more inquiring than anything.

Severus shrugged at the bird. If Fawkes knew the truth, he wasn’t betraying them for some ineffable reason of his own.

And Severus had had enough of trying to reason with ineffability.

*

“I found something.”

Severus looked up with a start. He hadn’t heard Harry enter the room. In fact, he hadn’t seen his office door open. His eyes darted to Harry, then back to the door, wondering if he needed to be worried about his wards.

Harry shook his head with a little snort. “It isn’t your wards. I finally used that Cloak Dumbledore gave me. It’s—wards slip off it, somehow. And I think you would have seen the door opening if you weren’t marking essays.”

Severus nodded slowly. He had allowed himself to pay so much attention to the essays because he had assumed the wards would be enough to defend him. He might need to rethink that position in the future. “Very well. What is it you wanted me to see?”

Harry was practically beaming, which made Severus smile back, even though he wondered how good a sign this was. Harry took a thick book out of the bag slung over his shoulder, and Severus sucked in his breath. Even from here, he could feel the aura the book radiated, like slimy claws sliding over his skin.

“I found this in Dumbledore’s office—”

“Harry.”

Harry shrugged at him. “Those wards slid off it, too.”

“It was still risky. To expose your magical signature or imprint to other wards that he might have up inside the office, if nothing else.”

“I accomplished it. And I don’t think that he would have let me leave with the book if he really knew I was there and was only pretending not to observe me. Just feel it.”

There was a longing in Harry’s voice that made Severus uneasy, but he had little reason not to trust Harry at present. “All right. What is it called?”

Harry turned the book so that Severus could read the spine. Secrets of the Darkest Art.

“I was doing research on connections between magical beings and humans in the library. I kept seeing references to this book. But even when I got into the Restricted Section, I couldn’t find it. I thought the Headmaster’s office was the next most likely place.”

“Well-reasoned. Five points to Slytherin.”

Harry laughed a little and tapped the book’s cover. Severus watched closely, but it didn’t seem to be attempting to eat Harry’s fingers. “I looked through it for a few days, and I found what we’re looking for, I’m sure of it.” He cracked the book open and spun it around to put on Severus’s desk so he could look into it.

Severus scanned the page, uncertain if he should wince or not from the aura of Darkness that crept from the book. He saw soul magic first, and then Horcrux.

His breath stopped.

He read the rest of the page quickly, then the next one, and then leaned back and stared up at Harry. “You are saying that—you believe the connection to the Dark Lord in your scar is a Horcrux? But there’s nothing here about making living creatures into one.”

“We both know that our lord has gone beyond so many boundaries that that, in and of itself, is not a disadvantage,” Harry said softly, leaning over towards Severus. “And we know that an unexplained magical occurrence happened on the night of Halloween in 1981 that could mean something previously impossible is now possible.”

Severus nodded. His throat was thick. He didn’t know how to cope with the emotions swirling inside him, dancing back and forth like snowstorms. He closed his eyes, Occluded until they calmed, and then said softly, “And you do not—you are not upset about the idea that you possess part of the Dark Lord’s soul?”

Harry laughed.

Severus’s eyes flew open, and Harry bent towards him, chuckling. The Cloak was still partially draped across him and sliding across his robes, making them invisible here and there.

“This is the best news I’ve had since Barty revealed himself,” Harry said, and grinned. “We have power over him, Severus. And over Barty, too, although I don’t know why my Horcrux would affect the Dark Marks. Perhaps it’s something to do with the way that the Dark Lord got disembodied.” He tapped something on a page that Severus hadn’t looked at yet. “That level of instability shouldn’t happen with just one Horcrux, in fact. It suggests the Dark Lord made at least two. Probably more, since the diary you destroyed in the Chamber was probably one, as well.”

Severus’s breath caught in his throat again as he thought about the potion the Dark Lord had commended him to brew. To protect artifacts, even against something like basilisk venom…

The Dark Lord had placed power in Severus’s hands, too, although he might not have known it.

“What—do you suggest we do from here?”

“Begin to identify the Horcruxes and gain control of them,” Harry said evenly. “We know from the diary they are probably things important to the Dark Lord, for the most part, which would mean looking into his past. And could you create two versions of your potion?”

“In what way?” Severus asked, but his mind had already leaped ahead. “One that would truly protect the Horcruxes. And one that only seems as if it would. The first to show him during the experimental stages, the last to be the one presented.”

“Yes. I don’t know how much the Dark Lord knows about potions—”

“Theory only.”

“Really? From the way Barty talked about him, he was a student who mastered all the principles and the practical work.”

Severus snorted a little. “Yes, in school. But remember that he was gone for decades, traveling on the Continent and likely seeking out knowledge of Darker magics and perhaps objects to make more Horcruxes. He did not stay in touch with Potions and the developments in the field, which raced ahead in the middle of this century. And when he came back, he did not wield the necessary delicacy.”

“What he did to himself with the Horcruxes—”

“Yes,” Severus breathed. This was the most hopeful he’d felt in half a year, his mind springing ahead and dashing from conclusion to conclusion. Perhaps it would come to nothing in the end, but right now, it felt like it would. “His hands had a tremor that was not noticeable when he was handling a wand. But otherwise? There was a reason that his Death Eaters approached me the instant I began displaying talent in Potions.”

“How old were you?”

“To know it? Fifteen. When the first approaches started, behind a façade of friendliness and lending me books on Potions and Dark Arts? Thirteen.”

Harry’s breath caught. Severus looked at him and found those green eyes blazing with rage. He looked as he had the night the Dark Lord was resurrected, but as if felt pure anger rather than angry joy.

“That is young.”

“Yes. The Dark Lord has never had an objection to finding and recruiting teenagers.”

Harry nodded, his eyes and expression going distant again. Then he murmured, “The brewing task will be yours, of course, and the research mine.”

“I believe Barty would find it suspicious if you started to ask questions about the Dark Lord’s past. And you do not know any other Death Eaters well enough to talk with them about such subjects, I would assume.”

Harry blinked and then looked at him with a faint smile. “Well, that bodes well for the success of my plan.”

“Not knowing Death Eaters?”

“No. That you haven’t noticed how my Legilimency has been sharpening.”

Severus stared at him in silence. He had thought, during Harry’s first year, that his instinctive knowledge of the truth and apparent intuition about others had betokened talent in reading others’ memories, but Harry had concentrated on Occlumency to the point that Severus hadn’t thought he had progressed with Legilimency.

“You believe you can read the Dark Lord’s mind.”

“I already have.”

Severus stared at him again. Harry raised his eyebrows a little. “I know that he confronted his uncle Morfin Gaunt when he was sixteen, and killed his Muggle father and grandparents. I was able to find that memory because of the emotion it emanated. I haven’t seen the deaths yet, only the discussion of them, but I would assume that he probably used one of those deaths to create a Horcrux. Or all three, if you can do that.”

“How is—Harry, how are you doing this? The Dark Lord is perhaps more skilled as a Legilimens than an Occlumens, but he would still defend his mind too strongly for a, forgive me, fifteen-year-old to find his way past his shields.”

“Oh,” Harry said casually. “I’ve been sharpening my actual Legilimency, yes, but also using that little hole in his defenses that the Horcrux connection opens up.”

“A little hole in his defenses.”

“Yes. It used to be a gaping wound, but he pretty much sealed that after he was resurrected. But there’s still a pinprick there. I think he left it open so that he could monitor my emotions.”

“And he may know that you are creeping through and reading his.”

Harry laughed softly. “He feels little but rage and hatred at this point. He can temper that when I’m around, but it expands when I’m not.”

“There is a simpler method of achieving power over him than the Horcruxes, then. You could simply threaten him to—”

“But that wouldn’t protect you, so it’s not what I want.”

Severus had to close his eyes. He could have said many things, including that it was the part of a professor to protect his students and not the other way around, but given who both he and Harry were, normal strictures did not apply to them. He simply sat there and basked in the idea that, after all, Harry had helped him.

Then he opened his eyes and nodded briskly. “Very well. But we will also both have to be able to keep this from him.”

Harry’s mouth trembled on the edge of a smile. “Have you tried to read my mind lately, Professor?”

“No,” Severus said slowly. “I would not wish to intrude on your privacy.”

“Try now.”

Severus turned in his seat to face Harry. Harry was waiting with open hands and patient eyes at the far side of the office. Without the invitation, Severus wouldn’t have thought he was practicing active Occlumency.

He reached out with the same flicker-quick probe that had revealed, two summers ago, the memory of Harry speaking with young Mr. Nott.

He shrieked in pain in the next second, rocking back in his chair. Harry was immediately beside him. “Severus?”

“Just a moment,” Severus said, his eyes closed, as he reordered his mind from the devastating pain that had ripped through it, much like having a hand cut off. He swallowed and opened his eyes. “That was—”

It had been like stepping into the middle of a storm of knives.

“I reached a point in practicing Occlumency that I couldn’t advance beyond,” Harry said quietly, still with that ghost of a smile. “I knew I wasn’t going to be good enough to keep our secrets from the Dark Lord, or probably to stay uncaught while I read his mind. But I remembered what you and Barty had both said about me having a gift for Legilimency.”

“So your defenses are offenses.”

“Yes. Any attempt to touch my mind will be cut off by what’s essentially a sharp, continually active Legilimency probe.”

“To keep that active all the time…”

“I use the energy that other people would use on other things.”

“Harry?”

Harry tilted his head, and his smile was the most frightening one Severus had ever seen him give, a half-winsome thing with the razors of his Legilimency behind it. “On making friends, worrying about their marks, thinking about Quidditch strategy. I have a lot of energy left when I care about two people, and about keeping them safe.”

Severus swallowed, his eyes locked on Harry’s. He had never received a declaration of such devotion, although once he might have made one.

But now…

Perhaps, after all, he came close to it.

But he coughed and managed to say, since Harry would be expecting him to answer, “I thought you cared for Barty?’

“In the sense that I enjoy what he has to teach me,” Harry said. “And he did make sure that I didn’t get put in the Tournament, per their original plan. He was the one who suggested to the Dark Lord that they might as well try to recruit me instead. But his first loyalty is always to the Dark Lord. He would tie me down on an altar in a second if the Dark Lord suggested he sacrifice me.”

Severus nodded slowly. It seemed that Harry had the ability that Severus did not, to cut himself off emotionally and immediately from people who betrayed him.

Or who did not put him first. It would explain why he had never called the Slytherins he dominated his friends. They all had families, other friends, different loyalties that would get in the way of doing things for Harry.

He is more ruthless than the Dark Lord.

But perhaps it was only that the Dark Lord had more multifaceted plans. Even in the first days of his fascination with the Death Eater cause, Severus had known that the Dark Lord’s first loyalty lay with himself.

“Do you think we will be able to keep this secret with the Dark Lord’s closest follower living in the castle with us?”

“I’ve kept it with the Dark Lord himself in my head.” Harry smiled slowly, and no, this was the most frightening smile Severus had ever seen him give, pouring across his face like blood from a wound. “I promise, Severus, we can keep it. We’re going to be safe. And we’re going to be free.”

“I haven’t heard you speak of freedom before. Or of power.”

“They seemed out of reach. Safety had to come first, and at one point, I thought I would never get it. But now I have it, and I’m going to make sure that no one can take it from us.”

Us.

Severus folded that word into his soul, and, for the first time, truly laid down the burdens he had carried because of the Dark Mark and his Vow to Albus. In the end, his Vow came down to protecting this boy, who had returned the protection more wholeheartedly than Severus could ever have guessed.

From now on, he would work for his own safety, peace, and freedom, and Harry’s, without worrying about the rest of the world, or whether they had damned it.

Perhaps the world should look after itself.

Harry seemed to notice the way that he had shifted, and his smile grew brighter and gentler. He drew his wand and flicked it, and the light that represented his vows and burdens manifested again as chains and collar and cuffs on Severus’s body.

But this time, it was obvious that the light was less bright, the links less thick.

And there was a new chain, probably because Harry had cast the spell a little differently this time. It reached directly from Harry’s chest to Severus’s, and was doubled, reaching back.

“Yes,” Severus whispered. “My first loyalty has lain with you for a long time, and this only proves it.”

Worlds could have burned in the light of Harry’s smile.

Chapter Text

“Please sit down, Severus. There is something important I have to tell you.”

Severus did so, maintaining his mask of slightly bored impatience without effort. He had reached a crucial point in his development of the potion the Dark Lord had assigned him, and he would have to split his work soon so that he could truly develop the twin brews Harry had suggested. This meeting, vague as ever when Albus had asked him through the Floo, was an ill-timed interruption. “Yes, Headmaster?”

“You know the diary that you destroyed in Harry’s second year.”

Severus blinked. Meanwhile, inwardly he had gone still and crouched, but that of course wasn’t something he was going to show Albus. “Yes?”

“I have learned something important about it from studying it.” Albus’s face was grey, and his hands trembled a little as he folded them on his desk. “I could hardly believe it at first, but there is no—there is no doubt. The diary is a Dark artifact called a Horcrux, infused with a piece of Voldemort’s soul.”

Severus flinched. Let Albus think it was at the name, and not the proclamation.

Bollocks.

“I’ve heard of them, of course,” Severus said slowly, as if he were thinking back and trying to remember the book he had first read the term in. “But I didn’t think they were—I thought they were only objects that sat in a certain place? That they didn’t reach out and try to possess someone?”

“I believe the diary was different, as it was meant to be written in. Most other Horcruxes are pieces of jewelry and similar objects. They might interact with someone who wore them, but only in dreams and the like. Not through writing and the direct absorption of magic.”

Severus nodded. “Then we have struck the Dark Lord a blow by killing the thing?” Let Albus claim his part in this, as small as his part had been, limited to his permission for Severus to use Dark Arts to discover the Chamber.

“I believe so, but I also believe he has made multiple Horcruxes.”

Severus didn’t have to feign the flinch this time, both because Albus was on the trail that Harry had already traveled, and because the notion was still insane to him. “What?”

“Yes. Voldemort always believed himself cleverer than anyone else. He would see the lack of multiple Horcruxes in other Dark wizards as a flaw in their character, not as a warning not to commit that crime.”

Severus nodded, swallowing back his sickness. “Then we will search for the others?”

“I do not need to search for at least one of them.”

No.

But Severus maintained his calm, Occluding furiously, and his voice came out icy and slightly interested. “The diary?”

“No.” Albus took a deep breath that seemed to suck in most of the air in the room. “Young Harry.”

Severus could have managed a Killing Curse aimed at Albus at the moment. The dark hatred surged under the icy surface of his mind, so thick, so tempting, to lose himself in. He wanted to drown, to kill, to keep Harry safe and flee the castle with him in the next hour if they had to do so.

But Severus knew it would be to their advantage if they could wait. He shrank backwards. “What?”

“I know that you do not want to believe it, Severus, but it is true.”

“What evidence do you base this on, Albus?’

“Alas, my dear boy, I see no way that I can detail all the evidence for you.”

In other words, Albus wasn’t going to trust Severus with it. He let loose a bitter laugh and leaned back in his seat. “So you will hobble my ability to do my job effectively, both as his Head of House and because of my oath.”

Albus hesitated long enough that Severus thought the ploy might not work and he might have to resort to Legilimency or Veritaserum in the future. Then Albus took a deep breath and said, “In the end, you will have to step back from those jobs.”

“Thanks to the Vow you had me swear, Albus, that is literally impossible for me.”

“You will have to find a way around that. There is no way around the fact that Harry has to die.”

Severus spent a full minute swallowing his protective fury. Albus could think that Severus was swallowing anger or grief or the requirements of the Vow, if he liked. Severus didn’t care that much. “What?” he finally rasped.

“The Horcruxes hold Voldemort to life. The one in Harry fulfills the same purpose. It will be impossible for Voldemort to die as long as Harry exists.”

Which is one reason that makes him unspeakably valuable to the Dark Lord.

But Severus just folded his arms and stared at Albus. “There are ways around the murder of an innocent child.”

“This is the first time I have heard you appreciate Harry’s innocence, Severus.”

You think you know how little he has of it. You have no idea. “We could disembody the Dark Lord again, trap his spirit, and search for a way to remove the Horcrux from Mr. Potter so that it could be transferred to an object we could destroy.’

“We do not know how Lily disembodied him in the first place, so that is not a method that we can employ.”

I do. I might even be able to stand against the Dark Lord and lay down my life for Harry.

But that was not an option he could say to Albus, so Severus sneered at him a little. “And you would give up committing to research? You would leap to the fastest solution of simply destroying him?”

Albus paused. Severus waited, the beat of his heart under control now, his mind glittering in layers of ice even colder and firmer than the ones that he tended to employ around the Dark Lord. This would be what he did. This would be one of the means by which he saved Harry.

Because he was certainly not going to destroy him. No information Albus could share would change his mind.

“If I told you that I have evidence Harry has been possessed by the Dark Lord?”

“What is that evidence?”

“You do not trust me, Severus.”

“You ask me to violate the Vow that you made me swear in the first place, after snapping at me about how I did not understand the value of an innocent child’s life. Say that I have learned your lessons well enough to turn them against the teacher, Headmaster.”

There was a long pause this time. Severus wondered if he had spoken too honestly and with too real a bitterness in his voice. But he simply stared at Albus and waited.

The Headmaster rapped his fingers on the desk. Then he said, “I will require an oath from you not to share this evidence with anyone else. It could cause a panic.”

Or warn Harry in time for him to escape from a trap.

But Severus did not hesitate, because if he waited, there was always the chance that Albus would make him swear on his life or his magic or something else that he needed to go on protecting Harry. He clasped his hand in a fist in front of his heart and bowed his head. “I swear on the Unbreakable Vow that I swore to guard Harry Potter’s life.”

Albus was silent. Severus leaned back in his chair and met the Headmaster’s eyes, and thought he recognized the signs of unguarded shock. Of course, with Albus being as skilled with the mind arts as he was, even that could be a trick.

But Albus blinked and cleared his throat a moment later, and said, “Ah. I didn’t know that swearing a vow on another vow would work.”

Severus shrugged. “It makes the second vow as binding as the first. I am sworn twice, now. To defend Harry Potter with my life, and to tell no one of what you told me.”

For an instant, his nerves were alive with singing fire, waiting to see if Albus noticed what Severus had slipped past him and made him swear another oath. Severus hadn’t sworn not to share any information about Harry’s possible possession with anyone. He had simply sworn.

But Albus either did not notice, or thought that he would let the game play out. One more hesitation, and he nodded and leaned back in his seat.

“I am entrusting you with this, Severus.”

His trust had long since ceased to matter to Severus as a reward. It was only a chain that he must keep bearing as long as he and Harry were in danger. So Severus just nodded.

“I was wary of the boy’s Sorting into Slytherin at first, but then I convinced myself that that was nothing to worry about. After all, Slytherin is only a House, and not everyone who goes through it comes out with darkness in their being.” He nodded to Severus as if complimenting him.

Only the ones who need it.

Severus raised his eyebrows patiently, and Albus coughed and went on.

“But I came to realize that Harry was not the boy I had thought he was, or even just a more abused and quieter version of the boy I thought he was. He spoke Parseltongue. He hid from the responsibilities that his fame charged him with—”

“Responsibilities?”

“Fame requires much of those who are subject to it.” The Headmaster made a deprecating little gesture to himself. “I could not hide from what I had done after I had defeated Grindelwald. Harry cannot hide from the fact that people expect more of him, and if he is going to enjoy the rights, he must also take up the burdens.”

Severus choked on rage. He bowed his head to hold it in, and then spoke, as the Occlumency grew over his mind like frost spreading across a window. “You were an adult when you defeated Grindelwald, Headmaster. Mr. Potter’s fame comes from something that happened when he was one year old. He did not choose it.”

“But you cannot deny that he has taken advantage of it.”

“How? He hasn’t tried to get out of detentions with other professors or answered back to them in class or the like. Not that I’m aware of.”

“He has enjoyed attention from yourself, Alastor last year—” Albus paused. “The man I thought was Alastor. He has people who would do anything he asks of them.”

“Does he know that? Would he ask them?”

“There are burdens that are unfair, Severus, but are still given.”

I do not think he really believes that. I think this is way of trying to convince himself that it’s perfectly all right to sacrifice a child on the altar of the magical world.

But Severus did not show that. He simply drew a little back, looked Albus in the eye, and drawled, “Continue.”

“If he had merely been quiet and self-protective, I might have overlooked it. But he seems to have no friends. He seems to be passionate about nothing. Apathy rules his soul. I thought perhaps he would become interested in Defense with the time that Remus spent teaching him and then the man wearing Alastor’s skin, but he has not. Neither has he picked up on your brewing skills, despite your being his frequent champion.”

“So because he is friendless and apathetic, that means he must be possessed by the Dark Lord?”

“You forget that I taught Tom Riddle, Severus. I think I know him better than anyone else now alive. And he was just the same. Friendless, self-involved, to the point that it was noticeable to anyone who looked further than the surface. And if Harry, who comes from such different circumstances, ends up the same way…”

“How were their circumstances different? Both were raised in the Muggle world, were they not?”

“How did you know that, Severus?”

Severus let a ghastly smile travel across his face. “You forget that I was recruited into the Death Eaters, and the Dark Lord took a personal interest in me. And that I also grew up in the Muggle world, at the hands of one particular Muggle who hated me.”

“I do not think he hated you, Severus. I think that he must have loved you, very deep down. I had my differences with my brother, but I loved him.”

Severus laughed, quietly, and wondered what Aberforth Dumbledore would say if Severus went to ask him. But he said only, “This is not about my background, except insofar as it gives me some knowledge of the Dark Lord’s and Mr. Potter’s. How were they different?’

“Tom Riddle was raised in an orphanage, with no one to call family until perhaps further on—when it would indeed have been too late. Harry was raised with his family.”

“Did they love him? Could a woman like Petunia love anyone?”

Albus gave him a reproving look that grew the ice in Severus’s mind the way winter would. “Just because she is a Muggle and you had bad experiences with her as a child, Severus, does not mean that she is incapable of love.”

“Did she love Harry Potter?”

“She must have. Otherwise, her house would not have been a home for him. The blood protections would not have functioned.”

Severus nodded very slowly. In truth, he knew the kind of blood protections Albus was talking about would have functioned based on intent, not love. Petunia could have intended to shelter Harry for any number of reasons, including some hope that she would raise him to spite her sister if he didn’t have magic, and the protections would have taken.

“I am glad that you are learning to see reason, Severus. Muggles are not lesser than we are. They are not incapable of love.”

Severus nodded throughout the lecture, and finished with, “So you believe Harry Potter was raised with love, and that is the reason he must be possessed by the Dark Lord now?”

“I wish you would call Voldemort by his name, or Tom. Not the title he took for himself.”

“You have neglected to answer my question twice now, Headmaster. I ask now thrice.” Severus lowered his voice, and saw a bit of wariness creep into Albus’s eyes. “Thrice I ask, and done. Is Harry Potter possessed by the Dark Lord?”

Albus hesitated. He might not recognize the source of the demand Severus was making, might not have studied the magic that could be woven with the voice alone and the demand for truth.

Or, more likely, he did, but was not sure that Severus was actually invoking it. It was subtle magic and hard to sense even in a plain, bare room. With the instruments and the phoenix and the spells that the Headmaster had active, it would be impossible.

“I believe so, yes,” Albus said.

“Because of the differences in their childhoods and the way that Mr. Potter is similar to the Dark Lord anyway.”

“Yes.”

Severus nodded, feeling something like relief slide through him. He had turned against Albus in secret long months ago, of course, but there had always been the chance that Albus would prove less inimical to Harry than the Dark Lord in the end. Now there was no chance of that.

Severus and Harry would need to fight for themselves against the Dark Lord, should he turn on them, and fight Dumbledore as well.

Now he knew that for certain.

“This is what I want you to do, Severus…”

Severus listened to the plans in perfect indifference, although now and then he did nod or ask a question. His memory would retain the words for him, and he could always revise them in a Pensieve afterwards.

His mind was busy with the more important plans, the ones that he and Harry would make, and despite Albus’s knowledge of the Horcruxes and plots against Harry, he left the Headmaster’s office feeling lighter.

He had someone to stand beside. Someone he did not have to serve, and someone who would protect him as certainly as Severus would fight to protect Harry.

It was a sensation he had last experienced twenty years ago.

This time, he would do nothing to mess it up.

Chapter Text

“He wants you to spy on me and report to him about me? Hilarious.”

Severus raised a glass of Firewhisky to Harry with a slight smirk. He had decided that he could drink it in front of Harry, who indeed showed no impulse to ask for it himself, even though he had eyed Severus’s drink with slight curiosity. “Indeed. I think that Albus has faith in my spying skills and nothing else.”

“And no faith in any attachment you might have developed to me.”

“Of course not. Albus thinks me the same boy he watched in school, the same young man he had swear an Unbreakable Vow.”

“But given the Vow…”

“I believe that his talk of your possession is meant to get me around the Vow.”

Harry blinked at him for a moment, and then smiled a bit. “Because if I’m not me, but the Dark Lord possessing my body, then the boy you swore to protect is already dead.”

“Yes.” Severus sipped from his glass and set it down again. “Have you begun your research into the Dark Lord’s past?”

“Yes, but only recently.”

“Albus told me that he grew up in an orphanage in the Muggle world and was not beloved there. There might be certain memories you can look for in the Dark Lord’s mind that would show you what he might have prized from his childhood.”

“Besides the diary?”

Severus grimaced. “Yes, that would be the sticking point, if the other Horcruxes are treasures he acquired more recently.”

“Well, we know that he is descended from Salazar Slytherin, or so he claims. Would things that belonged to that family have significance for him?”

“I assume they would, but I know little of the line except that they had the name Gaunt at one point. None of them had attended Hogwarts in recent memory for the Slytherins I went to school with.”

Harry smiled, a dangerous, glinting thing that Severus would back against the Dark Lord or Albus any month of the year. “It’s a place to start.”

*

“Sir, can I speak to you, please?”

Draco’s voice was low, his face was pale, his hands trembling. Severus nodded at once to the request when Draco remained behind after Potions class. He wondered if Harry had terrified Draco again, or perhaps his father.

But when Severus had chased the dunderheads, minus Harry, out of the classroom and closed the door, Draco took a deep breath and asked, “Is the Dark Lord as terrifying and glorious as they say?”

“Who says specifically, Mr. Malfoy? And please use the past tense.”

“I know, all right? I know.”

Severus raised his eyebrows slowly. That did rather change things. He wondered if it were Lucius who had mentioned the Dark Lord to his son and not Harry. He stepped back and said, “I will require an Oath of Silence from you, Draco.”

Draco drew his wand without hesitation and touched the tip to Severus’s. “I swear that I will repeat to no being, magical or Muggle, living or dead, anything I speak of in this conversation, by deed or quill, by word or gesture, except for Severus Snape.”

Severus raised his eyebrows even higher—the form of the oath was an old one that he thought Narcissa might have instructed Draco in, rather than Lucius—but nodded as he tucked his wand back in its holster. “What troubles you, Mr. Malfoy?”

“I want to know about the Dark Lord.”

Draco’s voice was small, but defiant, and the way that his eyes rested on Severus said he wouldn’t be put off easily. Severus sighed and nodded. “Yes, he is terrifying and glorious. I don’t know if words can properly convey the measure of the terror and the glory. It would depend on what you’ve heard.”

“What Potter said.”

Severus hid a frown. He knew that Harry had acquired the loyalty of other Slytherins so he could make himself more attractive as a prospect for an ally to the Dark Lord, but now that Harry was fixated on gaining power and freedom enough to escape from the Dark Lord if he could…

Where did that leave Draco?

“I still do not know everything Mr. Potter might have told you, Draco.”

Draco braced himself as if for a curse, licked his lips, and said, “Potter said he would overwhelm me. That I’m not as suited to being a Death Eater as I—always thought I was.”

“Did you think that? Or did your father?”

“I did, of course.”

But Draco had winced in a way that would have told Severus he was lying even if he was as capable of Legilimency as a stone. He sighed and lowered his head. “You should know, Draco, that just because your father was a Death Eater does not mean you need to become one.”

“But…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t think either Father or the Dark Lord will accept any other answer,” Draco said in an almost soundless whisper, ducking his head.

Severus shook his head. “The Dark Lord does not need poor tools, Draco. He would induct only those into his Inner Circle who are useful and strong. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“That I’m weak.”

Draco’s voice was full of self-loathing. Severus held his eyes and pushed his thoughts out as far as he could. Draco might have enough minor training in Occlumency to catch what he was doing. Think, child, think.

Draco hesitated again, perhaps because the expression on Severus’s face didn’t go exactly along with his words. “But there are other ways I could serve the Dark Lord than becoming a Death Eater,” he said slowly.

“There are.”

“I could be a—researcher?”

“Perhaps. I do recall that you demonstrated some creativity coming up with that song that the Slytherin stands sang during the game with Gryffindor?”

A smirk crawled over Draco’s face, and he perked up. “You think the Dark Lord would need some kind of creativity at his disposal?”

“Of course. Wars are not won in a day, Draco. Those who fight us should be persuaded to stand down if at all possible, instead of encouraged in their defiance. Why not lend your words to the Dark Lord’s cause, instead of your wand?”

Draco was all but vibrating with excitement now. “I could do that. I could do that, sir. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Draco.”

There, Severus thought as he left. Now I have a memory of encouraging Draco to enter the Dark Lord’s service, and my lord is not being encouraged to use a tool that would break in his hand.

Whether Lucius or Narcissa would thank Severus for this remained to be seen, but he had greater concerns in his life than the Malfoys’ opinion of him.

*

“Malfoy seems to think he’s going to head up the Dark Lord’s propaganda department.”

Severus laughed in spite of himself as Harry settled into the chair across from him. “I might have encouraged him to turn his talents in a different direction than becoming a simple Death Eater.”

“And will the Dark Lord like that?”

“The Dark Lord will see the conversation one way in Draco’s mind, and another in mine, but not so differently that he will suspect more than the usual interference of emotion.”

Harry nodded and seemed to forget about Draco in the next moment. “I’ve had a glimpse of one Horcrux in his memories.”

“Have you.” Severus kept his voice flat to hide how fast his heart was beating. From the glinting glance Harry cast at him, he knew anyway.

“Yes. Probably because I can’t use the connection well yet, it tends to stray towards things I find important, rather than, say, the Horcrux he would find most important. And since I spend all my time in Hogwarts most days, that’s what comes up. There’s a Horcrux hidden in Hogwarts, on the seventh floor.”

“Any particular place on the seventh floor?”

“A room filled with rubbish. A large one. That’s the only part that somewhat makes me doubt the memories. Wouldn’t we already know about such a room?”

“Not if it was only there some of the time,” Severus said distantly, memories of his student days and rumors that floated about among the professors coming together with a snap in his mind.

“How can it only be there some of the time?”

“Have you heard of the Room of Requirement, Mr. Potter?” Severus asked, in the lecturing, professorial tone he rarely bothered using with Harry now.

After a moment, Harry began to smile.

Chapter Text

“This is full of rubbish.”

“And also full of cursed objects. Wand out.”

Harry shot Severus a withering glance. His wand was already out, of course. Severus hid a smile and led Harry into the piles of furniture, unraveling tapestries, old brooms, and worse.

They searched for more than an hour before Harry uttered a low hiss. At the same time, Severus felt a twinge in his Mark. He turned towards Harry, who had one hand clapped across his scar and one eye squinted shut.

“You are in pain?” Severus asked sharply.

“Not—intolerable. I suppose this is the way that my Horcrux reacts with other Horcruxes.”

“I have a pain potion. There is no reason—”

“It must mean that it’s close, right?”

“Yes, of course.” Severus rubbed his Mark, and Harry’s eyes skittered across it. “I can feel the same pain here.”

Harry started. Severus looked at him evenly, but Harry didn’t object to Severus’s presence, and didn’t say whatever he was thinking. There was a faint, thoughtful frown on his face as he turned away and began to walk in the direction of a large cabinet.

Severus expected to hear whatever it was Harry was thinking about, later.

The cabinet turned out to bear the bust of an ugly warlock atop it, and on the warlock’s head, a silver diadem hung, carelessly placed. Severus halted when he saw it, and Harry turned towards him, wand poking out of his holster.

“Severus?”

Severus cleared his throat, eyes still locked on the diadem. “I believe that—is—surely the lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw.”

“Things that are important to him,” Harry murmured, his head tilted and thoughts traveling so fast through his green eyes that they flickered with the light of a storm. “Hogwarts mattered to him. It makes sense that he would look for Founders’ artifacts.” Harry shook his head, an expression of almost professional disgust on his face. “Imagine ripping up your soul to store in them instead of basking in the prestige for collecting them.”

Severus managed a smile with an effort. It was hard not to reach out and touch the diadem, even knowing what it must be. The diadem offered wisdom and insight unparalleled. The potions he could brew with it—

A Stinging Hex hit his hand.

Severus shuddered and snatched back his arm. He had been reaching for the diadem, and hadn’t even known it. He looked at Harry, who stared back at him without expression.

“Thank you,” Severus said hoarsely.

“You’re welcome.” Harry contemplated the diadem for a second, his head on the side and an ancient look in his eyes. “It’s ugly, isn’t it?”

“I—do not find it so.”

“So you don’t see it as tarnished?”

“No.” Severus turned back to the diadem to make certain, but it still looked like cool and gleaming silver. The sapphire set in the front of it made him have to swallow an instinctive hunger to touch it, to wear it—

Another Stinging Hex hit his hand. Severus cursed and closed his eyes, freezing his mind with spreading webs of frost-like Occlumency. Harry shifted beside him and said softly, “I think I should be the one to gather this Horcrux, Severus.”

“Yes, please do.” Severus stood in the darkness and listened to the rustling as Harry conjured a bag and used his wand to lift the diadem and imprison it in the bag. All the while, he shuddered and clenched his hands. He had never encountered a threat, not from the time he was eighteen years old, that could prevail against his Occlumency.

“It’s all right.”

Harry’s shoulder was pressed to his. Severus nodded and walked towards the door of the Room of Requirement with his eyes closed. What stung him the most was not humiliation, but the realization that Harry might have to handle most of their hunt for Horcruxes alone.

*

“Have you noticed any signs of possession in Harry, Severus?”

Severus sighed and looked up from the essays spread out in front of him. This time, Albus simply stood in the doorway of his office. Severus supposed it was preferable to appearing in his Floo, but only just.

“No, Albus.”

“You sound certain.”

“Why ask me to watch out for them in the first place if you will simply doubt every negative answer?”

Albus dragged a student chair forwards with his wand instead of answering, and Transfigured it into a throne with a high gold back that was studded with semiprecious jewels. Severus was careful not to roll his eyes. “I fear that things are coming to a head,” Albus said with a sigh, sitting down in the chair and turning so that he could meet Severus’s eyes. “I find it suspicious and strange that Voldemort has not made a move—unless he is making ones that we cannot see, hidden beneath that placid mask of Mr. Potter’s.”

Severus rubbed his forehead. He had essays to mark and strategy to think through, and if he was no longer as desperate as he had felt a year ago, that didn’t mean it was easy to have Albus here and have to dance through his words so that he spoke no direct lie that Albus’s Legilimency could pick up. “I still do not believe that the Dark Lord is possessing Mr. Potter.”

“I know that you are close to the boy and wish to think no ill of him, Severus. But that is not reality.”

“You are not close to him. How do you know?”

“I told you about their similarities, more than could be accorded to mere chance—”

“There are similarities between myself and the Dark Lord as well, but you do not think that he is possessing me.”

“You know love, as he does not.” Albus gave him what was probably meant to be a comforting smile. “I am not sure that Mr. Potter does.”

“Why not?” Of course, Severus would not reveal anything Harry had done for him, but this was a strangely confident pronouncement when Albus truly did not know anything about the boy.

“He does not love his family—”

“They abused him, Albus.”

Albus paused and seemed to think that through, so that Severus felt an ember of hope burning, before Albus shook his head. “They are still his family. One might say that they hate their family members, but love lies buried at the root of all their interactions.”

“You are significantly less intelligent than I thought, Albus, if you believe Petunia Dursley is a loving woman.”

“I am certain she loves her husband and son. And I did not come here to discuss her. I came to discuss what you think of Mr. Potter.”

“More capable of love than you think. Because he does not care for the Muggles who abused him, you would not deny him all capacity for the emotion? That is your own fondness for Muggles blinding you, Albus.”

“Hating Muggles is also very like Tom.”

Severus openly rolled his eyes. “Lucius Malfoy hates them. You do not think that the Dark Lord is possessing him, although it would be a wise choice when Lucius has more power and prestige than Mr. Potter—”

“I am here to ask you what you think of my theory, Severus, not to listen to a lecture.”

Oh, that sharpness was new. Severus leaned a little back in his chair and evaluated Albus before he said at last, slowly, “I do not believe that the Dark Lord could have possessed Mr. Potter, Albus.”

Albus sighed. “I had thought you would see the signs. It would make my course of action clearer.”

“What course of action?”

“Mr. Potter will need to die before the end of this year.”

It felt as if Severus’s whole world had been traveling at an even pace and had suddenly jerked to a stop. He stood up and croaked, “What.” His wand was in his hand, although he did not remember drawing it, and pointing at Albus.

Albus simply looked at him, his head cocking a little, as if he welcomed the chance to consider Severus from this closer angle. “Yes. It would be true even if my possession theory is not true. He is a Horcrux, Severus. He holds Tom to life. The death of a child is always a sad event, but many more children will die if Harry lives. And if he dies before the end of this year, we will be all the safer.”

“Would you do this if the boy were a Gryffindor?”

“You think that this is a matter of Houses? You think I do not care for him?”

“I will level the charge at you that you leveled at me when I came to ask you to protect Lily. You care for unknown children you cannot even name more than you care for him!”

“That is not the same charge.” Albus folded his hands and regarded Severus over the top of his glasses. “I am caring for more people than the one immediately in front of me. It is what I will require you to do as well.”

“I swore an Unbreakable Vow to protect the boy,” Severus hissed back, taking the first joy that he ever had in that circumstance, as bitter as it was. “You think I could disregard it? Or that I should kill him and court my own death?”

“Yes. You swore to protect Lily’s child.”

“Yes.”

“That is not Lily’s child. That is Tom. You can get around the Vow and live.”

Severus laughed, and heard the echoes sound like metal clanging off metal. “He is not possessed, Albus. You have your own means of ascertaining whether he is.”

“In fact, I just came from asking young Harry to open his Occlumency shields so that I might read his thoughts and make sure that the Horcrux was not unduly influencing him. Not that I phrased it like that, of course. We must not let Tom know he has been discovered. But Harry refused, and I could not pry open his mind without being detected.”

Severus had to lean his arm on his desk, he was laughing so hard. “You were the one who directed me to teach him Occlumency, remember, Headmaster?”

“I confess, I did not think Harry would become this good.”

“I am not going to kill him.”

“You will condemn the world if you do not.”

“Why?” Driven by the goad of his own bitterness, Severus smiled at the man who had had a part in making his life hell and asked, “Why can you not do it yourself?”

There was a pause long enough that Severus wondered exactly what Albus was thinking. He had never seen the Headmaster like this, unless he was using the hesitation as a political ploy—which of course he might be.

At last, Albus sighed and murmured, “I care for the boy too much.”

“And you think I care less?”

“He is still James Potter’s son. He is still the incarnation of the man who killed Lily.”

Severus tucked his wand away and took a deep breath. It was hard, knowing that Albus was an imminent threat to Harry, but he could not do otherwise. He would begin to duel Albus if he kept his wand out, and he could not face the Headmaster and live.

He needed to live, for Harry’s sake.

“My Vow would not let me. I am not convinced he is possessed.”

“What more proof do you need?”

“More than ‘he grew up in the Muggle world and loathes his guardians’ and ‘he is good at Occlumency.’”

“Do you truly believe that Harry would have become so good at Occlumency himself without Tom to teach him? Truly, Severus?”

“Why, Headmaster,” Severus drawled, finding black hilarity at the bottom of it all, “this sounds as if you doubt my skill in teaching.”

Albus closed his eyes and stood there for a moment. Severus watched him back. There could be all kinds of things going on here, he thought. Everything from Albus telling the truth to trying to use this kind of directive to reestablish a hold on Severus he had sensed was slipping.

“If I get you the proof,” Albus said at last, quietly, without opening his eyes, “will you kill him?”

“I would still have to go against the Vow.”

“But if Harry Potter is essentially already dead…”

“You do not think I can teach him impenetrable Occlumency, but you think I can convince myself that mental survival matters more than physical?”

Albus sighed again and said, “I will get you the evidence.” And he turned and walked out of Severus’s office.

Severus leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. His hand shook, lightly, as he laid it atop the Dark Mark.

He needed to speak to the Dark Lord as soon as possible. Severus knew what he wanted to do, but it was such a drastic step that he needed his Lord’s permission.

He would talk to Harry about it as well, of course, but he already thought Harry would approve. The Dark Lord might not.

But Merlin, Severus hoped he would.

Chapter Text

“How subtle is this poison?”

It was the only question the Dark Lord had asked after Severus had spent more than five minutes reporting to him. Of course, Severus had only reported on Albus’s possession theory and his desire to have Severus kill Harry, nothing about the Horcruxes. But that was more than enough to win both the Dark Lord’s rage and his attention.

“So subtle that it will be mistaken for death from old age, my lord.”

“You have never talked about this before, Severus.”

Severus gave the bitterest of smiles, the one the Dark Lord would believe, while his mind glittered behind its icicles. “I developed it during the years when I did not know if you would return, my lord. But I did not think to volunteer it for your service. I assumed that you would wish to kill your enemies more openly and with more fanfare.”

“That was a mistake, Severus. Do not make it again.”

“My lord, I will not,” Severus said, and bowed his head.

He was kneeling before the Dark Lord in the sanctuary he had found, the one he had summoned Severus to the last few times. The house was neither obviously magical nor Muggle. Of course, the Dark Lord might have removed any portraits that did exist, so as not to have to deal with spies.

For now, the Dark Lord remained silent. Severus did not move. He would have to hope that the Dark Lord’s desire to kill Dumbledore himself would be subdued by the obvious caution with which he treated the aged Headmaster.

Abruptly, the Dark Lord gave a little nod and said, “You may use the poison.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Severus replied, hiding his shock. He had of course hoped to receive permission, but he had thought it improbable. “When will you wish me to administer it?”

“The poison takes some months to act?”

“Two or three, my lord, depending on the dose.”

“Then begin now. We should perhaps allow the Hogwarts students to keep our dear Albus until the end of term, should we not? And that is three months off.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Did you truly do this only because he threatened the boy you love, Severus?”

The question was not unexpected. Severus tilted his head back so that he was meeting the Dark Lord’s eyes, so that he would seem honest. “It was the major reason, my lord. But I also saw that Albus would stop at nothing to track you down and destroy the least trace of you. I thought, if you would prefer to eliminate him now, this might be an acceptable method.”

“Oh, it is. It is.” The Dark Lord’s eyes were alight with crimson mirth. “I once dreamed of killing him myself as the masses screamed in horror, but I find I prefer the—subtler road.”

Severus ducked his head. “Thank you, my lord.”

“No questions about why I am not attacking and raiding openly, Severus? Why I have only directed the boy to bring a few of his classmates to me, and Barty to watch, and you to continue teaching at the school?”

“I know that you have reason not to trust me, my lord. I assumed you were keeping the information back until you were sure of my loyalties.”

The Dark Lord reached out and grabbed his chin, dragging Severus’s head painfully up. Severus let his chin rise. He was passive on the outside, yielding, the same way that his mind had yielded to the Dark Lord’s Legilimency on the surface.

Beneath, he was ready to spring if he had to. He might not know magic that could destroy the Dark Lord, but he knew what would destroy his ritually resurrected body.

“If I did not trust you, Severus, you would not now be kneeling here.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“There are purposes behind my plans that you cannot fathom.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You will do as I bid you, and I will reveal to you what my true plans are when the time is right.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The Dark Lord laughed and released him. “Such an obedient servant. Return to Hogwarts, and prepare to dose Albus.”

Severus stood and executed a deep bow. The Dark Lord waved him away, and Nagini gave him no more than a single glance before she turned and slid into the shadows behind the Dark Lord’s chair.

Severus filled his mind with thoughts of nothing but the poisoning of Albus as long as he was in the Dark Lord’s headquarters. When he was back in the castle, he allowed himself to think of Nagini and how she had never been far from the Dark Lord since his resurrection.

Of course, perhaps that was because the Dark Lord meant her as a line of defense against Severus if he should turn traitor.

But the Dark Lord would never make such a gesture if it could be interpreted as a sign of weakness, and he had shown this evening that he meant to treat Severus’s loyalty as assured, even allowing him to perform the killing of such an important foe as Albus. So there was another possibility.

Nagini might be the Dark Lord’s familiar.

She might even be a Horcrux, assuming that the Dark Lord would knowingly place one in a living being.

Severus thought he might. Severus himself did not recognize Nagini’s species, and that meant she could have magical protections woven into her that he did not know about, either—or be entirely a magical construct, on the level of the Dark Lord’s new body. The Dark Lord might be more confident that she would survive than if he were to make a human being into a Horcrux.

A witting Horcrux.

Severus felt a smile slide across his lips, and he laid his hand on the book in which he had concealed the recipe for the poison he would use on Albus, scattered and disguised in different scribbled annotations on other formulae. No one else would be able to reconstruct it without already having a detailed idea of how the poison worked, as well as its existence.

He had to keep so many things secret, so many things safe, so many things slow—but there was no reason he could not take some pride in his work.

*

Harry hadn’t objected to Severus’s plan to poison Albus. But he had made the request to be present.

After all Harry had suffered at Albus’s hands—and given that his hatred for Albus was one reason he had felt driven to approach the Dark Lord in the first place—Severus did not want to deny him this.

“Harry. Severus.”

Albus’s eyes flitted back and forth between them as they walked into the Headmaster’s office. It wasn’t often that Severus could guess at Albus’s exact thoughts, but he believed he could now. Severus wants to show me the boy close at hand, so that I’ll see he isn’t possessed and soften towards killing him.

Or having Severus kill him.

It raked claws across a place in Severus he had thought was no longer vulnerable to know that Albus couldn’t even do his own dirty work.

Harry gave Albus a faint smile, but mainly looked around the office with fascination. The other times he had been here, Severus supposed, he’d been too involved in whatever drama was behind his summoning to pay much attention.

Albus turned his gaze on Severus, not actually projecting a thought, but demanding an explanation.

“Harry wanted to speak to you in private, Headmaster,” Severus said quietly. “About something that’s been troubling him.”

The flask with the half-completed poison rested beneath his robes. Already, Severus could feel the sparks of magic awakening in it, as the atmosphere of Albus’s office—the last component required to make it deadly—stirred the power in the poison.

“You did, my boy? Please take a seat.”

Merlin knew what Albus thought Harry wanted to ask. Harry had promised to come up with something convincing, and that was all Severus knew.

Harry took a seat, his head down as he fiddled with his hands. Then he raised his face and took a deep breath. “Do you—do you think that—Sirius will ever be healthy enough to take me out of my aunt’s house?”

Well. That was unexpected.

But Severus knew it would be all to the good that he was blinking at Harry along with Albus. There was no way that Albus must be suspicious at all of Severus’s visit, and that meant Severus could not act too assured.

The poison was beginning to dance back and forth in its flask, something Severus could only feel because the glass of it was pressed directly against his skin. Severus kept his gaze firmly on Harry as Albus settled back and gave it visible thought.

“I do not know if he is completely healed yet, Harry. How did he seem when you went to visit him at Christmas?”

Harry hesitated. Then he said, “Sane.”

“Harry.”

“Saner.”

Albus nodded, face painted with a terrible gentleness. “He still needs recovery in St. Mungo’s. I would be happier if he were there full-time. But he insisted on coming out earlier so that he could spend Christmas with you.”

These subtle chains of guilt would be easier to wrap around Harry if you knew him at all, Albus.

“I—didn’t know that.”

And it might or might not be true.

Harry let his lip tremble and looked down at his hands. “He really could hold coherent conversations with me,” he whispered. “I thought he was better.”

“Just holding coherent conversations is not enough to care for a child, Harry. I’m sure your aunt is more than coherent.”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

Severus held in the sharp crack of his laughter far below the ice of his Occlumency. Albus was not troubling to ask what Harry would have added to that description.

“So. I do think it is best if you stay with your relatives during the summer, for now. But of course, you can spend Christmas and the Easter holiday with Sirius. I can’t see that tiring him out, if it only happens for short periods of time.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Harry kept his head bowed as he slid off the chair. He started to walk towards the door with heavy steps, and Severus accompanied him in silence. The poison had become active and was spreading through the air, invisible, odorless, only harmful to one particular person.

“Harry.”

Harry paused and looked back. Severus looked with him, wondering if it were possible that Albus would add another well-intentioned and totally useless piece of advice.

Albus only looked weary, though, and had his hands clasped very tightly. “Would you mind telling me—how does your aunt treat you?”

This again? Is he hoping to hear that all the past truth was a lie, or does he want to believe that Petunia changed after the letters he sent her?

“They locked me up in the bedroom they gave me the summer before second year and weren’t going to let me come back to Hogwarts,” Harry said softly. “They fed me just one or two cans of soup a day through a cat flap. Until they gave me the bedroom, I slept in the cupboard beneath the stairs, and was locked there on a regular basis. They starved me a lot. They told my primary school teachers that I was a liar and a cheater. They encouraged my cousin Dudley to beat me up. Aunt Petunia swung frying pans on my head, also on a regular basis.”

Albus’s shoulders hunched. His face turned grey. Severus scanned him with all the awareness that had served him well during his spying, wondering if he had changed his mind about killing Harry.

No.

Severus was sure, from the brooding way Albus stared at Harry, that this had in fact confirmed him in his belief that Harry must be like the Dark Lord because they had grown up so similarly.

“Thank you for telling me, Harry.”

Harry glanced at Severus, but Severus simply motioned for him to continue on. Harry shrugged and did so.

Severus looked back once. Albus was reaching out an arm, and Fawkes had landed on it, crooning anxiously as he bowed his head to stroke Albus’s cheek with his own head.

Severus felt nothing like compassion, but there was a certain satisfaction.

As they went down the moving staircase, Harry tilted his head back and looked at Severus.

“He has a phoenix,” Severus said softly.

Harry’s eyes widened, and for long moments, he did nothing but look at Severus as though he thought he was mad. And then he laughed a little as they reached the end of the moving staircase and walked towards the dungeons.

Severus smiled. It wouldn’t matter what Albus’s eavesdropping spells in the staircase might report to him. He would not know what Severus was referring to, or why Harry was laughing. If anything, it might sound like a statement of fact, or a reminder that Albus was supposed to be a good person.

Albus would not know that it referred to the fact that the poison would only act on someone who was bonded to a phoenix, and be activated by the air of a room saturated with phoenix feathers and magic and fire.

Severus was proud of his own skill in a way that he had rarely been.

Chapter Text

“Has it seemed to that you that the Dark Lord has been acting strange?"

Severus turned around to stare at “Professor Dawlish” as he came to a stop in the doorway of Severus’s classroom. Barty must consider this serious indeed, to seek out Severus when he was still cleaning up after some of the dunderheads’ mistakes.

And to speak so outside a Privacy Charm was the height of foolishness.

But then Severus saw the shimmer of a charm around “Dawlish’s” head after all, and he managed to relax. “No,” he said. “That is, I did wonder why he has not been launching raids and announcing his return the way he did in the first war, but our Lord has made it clear to me that I am not to question him.”

“It bothers me.”

Severus blinked, and blinked again as he watched Barty prowl into the classroom. Barty poked at a long-lasting stain on a table with his wand, and it faded a little. Severus would have to ask about his nonverbal Cleaning Charms.

“He said something to me last night that was unusual.”

“Do tell. If our Lord would allow you to.”

“He said I could share it.” Barty raised his eyes, and at the moment, Severus could almost see the real, cold, gleaming blue color behind Dawlish’s brown. “He said he is considering how the real power lies in esoteric magic and rituals. Rituals that he can’t share with me, but that he’s spending all his time performing.”

“Oh.” Severus could think of little else to say.

“Do you think,” Barty whispered, leaning closer, “that the Dark Lord has—strayed from his path? That he might still be suffering from the consequences of the years he spent as a wraith?”

“It would be possible,” Severus said, and decided that he might as well throw out a guess of his own to see how Barty would react to it. “But I think it just as likely that he is seeking power to make his ritually-constructed body more natural and resilient.”

Barty paused. “Really?”

Severus nodded. “It cannot be comfortable to be bound inside such a construct,” he murmured. “But at the same time, our Lord would not seek a return to a mortal and vulnerable body. He would seek a perfect blend of both, one that would allow him to experience all the benefits of embodiment and immortality at the same time.”

Barty relaxed with a long sigh. “I should have thought of that. And he might not have told us because…”

“Because he is reminded of his own vulnerability as he contemplates it. Rest assured, I think he will involve us when he is advanced in his research and convinced of his own theoretical success.”

Barty half-smiled. “You’re good at this, Severus.”

“Good at reassuring you?”

“At being a Death Eater. At understanding our Lord’s mind. Why did you ever give it up?”

“I have told you why.”

“I just can’t fathom dropping everything that made you yourself for a Mudblood.”

Severus shrugged. He was deep in his Occlumency now, ice filling his veins as he reached out to cast his own Cleaning Charms on a ring that a Hufflepuff’s cauldron had left behind. “At the time, it felt like I was balancing my past against my present, and the past was stronger. Now they are one.”

“The kid.”

“Yes.”

“Who would you choose, if you had to? Harry or our Lord?”

Severus raised his head and looked slightly down his nose at Barty. “I cannot conceive of our Lord harming Harry,” he said coolly. “He has sworn an oath that Harry will never have to take the Mark. And Harry is…impressive, for his age, but nothing compared to our Lord in magical skill. There would be, could be, no contest between them.”

“So you say.”

“So I do.”

Barty lingered and needled him some more, but Severus ignored him and kept cleaning. In the end, Barty retreated, and Severus took a deep breath and allowed his own curiosity to come floating up from the depths of his Occlumency.

What was the Dark Lord doing? Severus believed his own guess could be the truth, but it was only a guess.

Could he perhaps fear another confrontation like the one that had destroyed his previous body? Could he be searching for some method to make sure that neither Albus nor Harry nor anyone else could ever harm him again? It would make sense with his having ordered Severus to develop a potion to keep his Horcruxes invulnerable.

But the Dark Lord did not have to make sense.

*

“Severus!”

Severus came flying out of sleep with his wand in his hand. The voice snapping through the Floo was Poppy’s. Other than Albus, she was the only one who had access to his private fireplace.

“Please, come quickly.” Poppy’s eyes were wide, with something that Severus thought was both fear and anger. “Bring Blood-Replenishers, Pain-Killers, the nerve regenerator that you invented…”

Severus swallowed, even as he nodded through the rest of her list and let his Occlumency capture it for him. Then he was standing up and striding towards the robes that he had had draped over a chair for convenience’s sake of putting them on the next day. He flung them over his head and reached for the door that led to his private Potions stores.

The nerve regenerator was only needed after a bout of Cruciatus.

If the Dark Lord tortured him…

But by the time Severus got to the hospital wing, he had once again settled himself into his normal cold. He would have to heal Harry first, and get his revenge on the Dark Lord later.

Poppy was standing next to a figure tucked under blankets so Severus couldn’t see identifying features. But he could make out the size, and he relaxed. This was an adult, not Harry.

“You have them all?” Poppy asked, but didn’t even wait for him to answer before she snatched the vials from Severus and began forcing them down her patient’s throat.

Severus made some vague noise of concern, his eyes locked on the figure. The first potion Poppy simply spelled into the victim’s stomach, but she had to roll him on his back to pour the next one down his throat, and Severus saw his face.

He nearly swore.

Dawlish.

“What happened?” Severus whispered, even as he motioned a few of the vials he had floating in the air forwards so that Poppy could grab them more easily. He sat down on a chair not far away, staring.

“Something brushed the wards on the door to the hospital wing, and I woke up because I thought it was a student with a late-night stomachache or something of the kind.” Poppy didn’t look up from continuing to ruthlessly spell the potions into Dawlish’s—Barty’s—stomach. “When I opened the door, he was sprawled there. He managed to tell me that he’d been put under the Cruciatus before he passed out.”

“The curse on the position?”

“What else could it be? But he didn’t tell me if he was out investigating something in the Forest, or someone broke through the wards and cursed him.”

Severus grimaced. It would make sense that the curse could ensure Barty ran into an intruder or that the wards were weakened in a specific place he wouldn’t think to check.

But he did not think it was that.

The question remained, however: why would the Dark Lord have tortured his most loyal follower?

*

“I asked him one question too many.”

Severus lowered the old edition of the Prophet he had been reading. Since people coming and going from the hospital wing didn’t lend him the privacy or the silence he preferred to read books, he had thought to scour the papers for any signs of Death Eater attacks and the like that he might have missed.

“What do you mean?” Severus asked quietly, raising privacy wards around them with a wave of his hand.

“When did you start being able to do that wandless?” Barty followed the motion of his hand with feverish eyes.

“I have been practicing at it more often since I began tutoring Harry,” Severus said calmly. “And I had had the impression that our Lord would encourage you to ask questions, since you did it more respectfully than many.”

Barty laughed, a rasping noise that sank into silence after a moment, maybe because he heard how bad it sounded. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back against the pillow, his throat working. Severus Summoned one of the glasses that sat on a nearby shelf and conjured water to fill it.

“Thanks,” Barty rasped, and sipped from the glass. He sent a long look towards the back of the hospital wing.

“Poppy and all the students here are asleep,” Severus said softly. “I made sure of it.”

Barty nodded and then rolled over so that he could look at Severus fully. Despite the fact that he still wore Dawlish’s features, Severus could see Barty’s intelligence shining through as he had the other day when Barty was asking Severus what he thought the Dark Lord wanted.

The intelligence. And the pain, and the betrayal.

“He summoned me so that we could talk about more long-term plans to turn some of the students to our side. Harry’s done a good job, but Nott and Malfoy are the only ones who will definitely be taking the Mark so far. The others are wavering.”

“Go on.”

“I asked the Dark Lord what he ultimately planned to do with those students—for example, if he was going to have them try to start eliminating professors who were the most sympathetic to Dumbledore, or even Dumbledore himself. He told me that he didn’t want to answer, so I tried to ask the same question in a different way, about what I should tell Harry his responsibilities are. And he drew his wand and cursed me.”

“The Cruciatus first?”

“Yes.” Barty swallowed. “He’s—he’s never subjected me to it before.”

Severus controlled his reaction. Barty probably already knew how special he was, and the loss of that specialness would have hit him more than Severus’s questions or jealousy, in any case. He nodded slightly. “Please go on.”

“Then he tried a few minor curses that I suppose made me bleed. I don’t—really remember that part. Then I was stumbling towards the school, and I thought I couldn’t Apparate, but I suppose I managed. Or perhaps he Apparated me here.”

That might have been the case, Severus thought. It was hard to imagine the Dark Lord stricken by remorse, but he might not have meant to go as far as he did, or hurt Barty as badly. “I see. Do you believe that he will hurt you at your next summons?”

“I don’t know.”

Poppy came out to scold Severus for “bothering her patient,” but Severus stood and apologized and made his way out of the hospital wing, dropping every trace of the Privacy Charm as he did so. When he turned around, he caught Barty’s gaze, and he could hear the plea there as though the man had been standing next to him.

Find out why he did this. Please.

Severus inclined his head, knowing that he could promise nothing aloud and that Barty wouldn’t ask for such a promise in any case, and went his way.

Chapter Text

“D’you think if he tortured Barty, he might torture you?”

“He might. But he has not so far. And I do not believe he would kill me, when his servants are so few. But I cannot resist the summons in any case.”

“I’m sorry.”

Severus blinked and looked up from the book he had been studying; it had a curse on it that made the spells bristle and slide out from under the reader’s eye unless they used intense concentration. “For what?”

Harry, who had been working on a scroll of his own that Severus suspected contained his next attempt at spell creation, bit his lip and smoothed his hand over the tabletop for a moment. “For trapping you in his service.”

Severus shook his head. “I was already trapped in Dumbledore’s. And you are the one who showed me there was some way to escape.”

Harry blinked. “You don’t resent me?”

“There were times that I thought you had damned the world for the promise of safety. But I no longer think that.”

Harry made a small incredulous noise under his breath. “Even if I had, why would you care? You know that the world has been nothing but cruel to the two of us.”

“Well. The world still has books and potions and rare ingredients that I would like to see preserved.”

Harry laughed and leaned back in his seat. His voice was gentle as he said, “I think you wouldn’t have been as badly off as you think, under the Dark Lord’s rule. But it’s just as well that we’re coming up with a way to win our freedom and get rid of him for good.”

Severus smiled helplessly at this pale, fierce child, who had his hand lying on top of the scroll and the firelight flickering in his deep green eyes. Severus had thought once that Lily’s eyes were a mystery, but she had never had anything like the wildness that Harry did in his own gaze, as if he had gone out wandering in a forest deadlier than the Forbidden one and come back with his hands dripping with blood.

“Are you studying for your OWLS?” he asked.

Harry blinked and then looked at him askance. “What?”

“That scroll you’re working on is obviously not part of your homework. I want to know if you intend to get good OWL scores. Even if you don’t think them worth much next to—everything else—they would be a first step in winning yourself a reputation beyond Britain.”

“People beyond it already know who I am.”

“Harry.”

“OWL work is boring. McGonagall told me in class the other day that no one can Transfigure one animal into another animal permanently! And Barty already taught me to do that!”

“That Transfiguration is long-lasting, not permanent. Even if it would last far longer than most people would live, that is not the same thing as permanence in Transfiguration theory. And she is Professor McGonagall.”

Harry stared at Severus with his mouth open for a minute, and then he groaned and snapped open the Transfiguration book that he’d brought with him earlier and not touched for hours. He flipped his pages huffily.

“Thank you.”

More huffy flipping of pages.

Severus hid his smile and went back to reading his book. He had the feeling that Harry would have liked to say something about the direction that Severus’s studies were taking him, but Severus was not studying for his OWLS.

Although in some ways, this will still affect my future.

*

He was alone with Harry a few days later, exploring the theory behind the spells Harry had created, when the Mark began to burn.

Severus took a slow, deep breath, and stood. Harry tensed, his eyes flickering for a moment between Severus’s arm and his face.

“He’s calling you?”

“Yes.”

“Do I need…” Harry turned to face the shelves behind Severus. Severus nodded a little.

“Have the nerve regenerator that I showed you standing ready, and perhaps the Blood-Replenisher.” In the days since Barty had returned tortured and bleeding, neither he nor Severus had heard from the Dark Lord. It was possible that his bad mood had passed off.

It was possible that it had not.

Severus reached for the set of black robes he kept ready with the white mask tucked in a pocket. He paused when he saw Harry’s acute misery, and reached out one hand to rest for a moment on his shoulder. “It will be all right, Harry.”

“I wish I hadn’t got you into this.”

“But I am into it now,” Severus said, and squeezed Harry’s shoulder once more before he turned to the door of his quarters. He would need to walk beyond the wards to Apparate, since it had been more than a month now since the Dark Lord had given him a Floo address that worked.

“I’ll stay here and wait for you.”

Severus cast a glance over his shoulder, ready to snap at Harry, and then stopped and sighed a little at the expression on his ward’s face. He looked mulish. Severus raised his shoulder and then let it fall. “If you wish.”

Harry nodded, eyes blazing for a moment before he dropped them back to the scroll in front of him.

Severus walked quietly out of the school, listening for some call or command to stop that didn’t come, and Apparated the moment he was clear of the wards.

*

“Severus.”

The Dark Lord’s voice was low, and flat as a plain of ash after a forest fire. Severus dropped to one knee in front of him, head bowed. He waited with his heart beating no faster than normal.

Occlumency had some benefits for the body as well as the mind.

They were in a large room inside a house that Severus was sure he had never seen before, unless this was a forgotten cellar of Malfoy Manor that even the house-elves didn’t know existed. Dust lay on the floor everywhere around them, and the stone walls were bare except for ancient torch sconces.

The Dark Lord sat in a chair that was clearly Transfigured, and had, for some reason, huge cushions with golden tassels. Severus wondered if he had been trying to impress other, more reluctant Death Eaters.

“My lord,” Severus responded, when his name had fallen into silence, and the silence simply continued.

The Dark Lord shifted back and forth, and tapped his fingers. Severus maintained his serenity, his equanimity, staring at the Dark Lord’s shifting bare feet.

Scales scraped along the floor behind him. Severus did not allow his hand to edge towards the robe pocket where he kept a bezoar. He was not entirely sure that such would be effective against Nagini’s venom, but that was no reason not to carry it.

“Do you know what Barty did to displease me?” the Dark Lord asked suddenly.

Severus calmed and centered himself in his Occlumency, paying attention only to the Dark Lord. “No, my lord.”

The Dark Lord leaned nearer to him. His eyes seemed a deeper red than Severus remembered them, and his skin paler. Severus stared in silence at the scales that ran under the surface of the Dark Lord’s skin, and which he did not remember seeing from this close before.

“He asked too many questions,” the Dark Lord whispered.

Severus remembered Barty asking him what Severus thought the Dark Lord was doing, and hid a wince of sympathy.

“I like that you do not ask questions, Severus. I like that you see your Lord’s actions as beyond question, and accept them.”

“Yes, my lord. Thank you.”

The Dark Lord shifted to stare off into the darkness. Severus didn’t follow the gaze with his own eyes, the way he thought Barty would have done. He remained kneeling in the exact same position, and heard Nagini slithering past again.

“I will accept no attempts to undermine me or overcome me.”

“No, my lord.”

“And I will not accept questions on who I choose to call. Who I choose to reward. Who I choose to make aware of my return.”

Severus smothered a flinch before it could be born. Yes, he could see why Barty would have questioned that. He was so loyal to the Dark Lord himself that he despised all the other Death Eaters except the ones who had actually gone to prison for the cause.

“You are remarkably quiet, Severus.”

“I agree with you entirely, my lord.”

The Dark Lord eyed him, and then moved back in his chair with a grunt that was perhaps the most human sound Severus had heard him make. Harry’s granting of stability to him was a good thing, Severus thought. “You are not to tell Barty of this conversation. And you are not to give him any more details of the potion you are brewing, or the future projects that I may ask you to take up.”

Barty will hate that perhaps more than being tortured. All Barty wanted to do, sometimes, was ask questions.

Severus bowed without letting a trace of his opinion cross his face. “Yes, my lord.”

“I wish that all of my servants were as obedient as you are, forced as that obedience is.” For a moment, the Dark Lord’s hand feathered across Severus’s hair, and he held his breath; those pointed nails were remarkably close to his eyes. “You will not even tell Barty that you were summoned.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Leave me.”

Severus did, bowing and backing up, and bowing and backing up again. The Dark Lord ignored him entirely. He held out a beckoning hand, and Nagini slid towards him and settled against him. The Dark Lord began to speak to her in Parseltongue.

Severus did not dare turn his back until he had crossed beneath the archway that marked the entrance to the room. Then he turned around, closed his eyes in the dusty corridor, and breathed.

Chapter Text

“You’re all right.”

“Yes.”

“He—didn’t torture you?”

“No, he did not.” Severus removed his cloak and hung it on a hook. Harry had climbed to his feet, but had to brace himself with a hand on the stool that he’d been sitting on when Severus had been summoned. He looked pale and clammy, and a fine tremor was making its way through his shoulders.

“Were you so worried?” Severus asked as gently as he could. “He has tortured me before. I have always survived it.”

“All it takes is one time.”

Harry collapsed back onto the stool and buried his face in his hands. Severus eyed him. This seemed more than mere worry. He Summoned a Calming Draught without a word and held it out to Harry when he looked up.

“I don’t need it.”

“I say that you do.”

Harry hesitated, then took the potion from Severus and swallowed it with a gulp. A shimmering tremor crept up his shoulders, but then he sighed and leaned back, rolling his head on his neck. “What did he say about—Barty? Did he say anything?”

“That I was not to tell Barty what I was working on in the future. And that Barty had been tortured for asking too many questions.”

Harry grimaced and leaned back even further on his stool. “I see.”

“Is that what you expected him to say?”

“I think that the Dark Lord’s lack of action is getting to Barty,” Harry said, and opened his eyes. His face was still pale, but he did look better. “He said something to me that indicated that. And I wouldn’t have—expected the instruction to you to keep Barty in the dark, exactly, but it’s not that surprising.”

“Do you have a theory about why the Dark Lord isn’t attacking right now?”

Harry froze for a second. Then he blinked and said, “Not a theory.”

“What do you have?”

Harry hesitated. Severus waited, his hands resting on his knees, in as open and non-threatening a posture as possible. That Harry might feel threatened by him and wish to keep his own counsel was, of course, a possibility. But not one that Severus wished for.

“An idea,” Harry finally whispered.

“That is the name for a theory in other words.”

“It’s what I have.”

Severus met Harry’s eyes and then looked away with a sigh. “I do not wish to press you to speak if you are uncomfortable,” he murmured. “But you ought to know that the Dark Lord is becoming more unpredictable, not less. It will surely affect our future plans.”

“I know, sir.”

Severus paused. The confidence behind those words made him want to ask Harry more questions after all. He had forgotten, momentarily, that Harry had a connection to the Dark Lord’s mind and soul, and could be more sure of what the monster was doing than most of them could.

But since it seemed that Harry wasn’t going to talk about it for now, Severus put it out of his mind.

*

“I mislike this.”

Severus nodded to Albus, but said nothing, sitting with his hands folded on his lap. Albus had summoned Severus to his office as it seemed he did several times a month to do nothing but speculate on what could have made the Dark Lord change his tactics.

Severus truly had nothing to offer as far as that went, and the other secrets that he was keeping did not belong to Albus.

“What was his manner when he gave you these orders not to interfere with his other servants’ work?”

That was as much as Severus had told Albus about the summoning. He certainly was not going to tell him the truth about Barty. He repeated the words about the Dark Lord being seemingly unsettled, but also cold, and then sat back and waited for Albus to do something with the words.

Albus stared unseeingly at the wall. Then he turned back to Severus and returned to Severus’s least favorite of the many subjects they discussed. “Have you given any thought to making sure that Harry dies when needed, Severus?”

“My Vow is still too strong.”

Before, Albus had accepted that, although sometimes with an unhappy frown. Now, though, he leaned forwards and flattened his hand on the desk in front of him. Severus went still, watching him, wondering if he would have to kill Albus now after all, and not wait for the poison that was slowly working on him.

“Have you not considered that the world matters more than one boy?” Albus asked softly.

“Have you not considered that I swore to protect Lily’s child, and not the world?”

“Perhaps I should have insisted that you word the Vow differently.”

“Perhaps you should have.”

Albus stared at him. Severus stared back, and tried not to mentally compare himself to Harry. He knew this was a tactic Harry had sometimes used on people who didn’t want to leave him alone because of his fame, or perhaps because they wanted to be close to the power he had amassed in Slytherin House.

Perhaps it worked. Albus glanced aside. “Would you, then, be pleased to learn that I have discovered other Horcruxes?”

“I would,” Severus said, and he was not even lying. Harry was delicately picking his way through the Dark Lord’s mind, but precisely because they could not afford to have “their Lord” discover that he was there, it was work too delicate to press.

“I have searched out memories relating to Voldemort’s past,” Albus began, ignoring the way Severus flinched as always. “It seemed to me that he could not go untethered to the world, that there must always be someone who knew something about him even when he was drifting as a wraith.”

“Yes,” Severus murmured. “Perspicacious.”

Albus eyed him as if waiting for Severus to say something nastier, but Severus put a bland expression on his face and waited. Albus sighed. “I suspect that the snake he keeps around him may be a Horcrux.”

“That would make sense.”

“Have you noticed signs of unusual intelligence from the snake in your time with Voldemort?”

Severus flinched at the name again, mostly for show, and said, “Not intelligence, but devotion. Nagini is always present, and always focused on the Dark Lord, when you know that most snakes pay little attention to anything that is not their own desires.”

“That could come from a familiar bond.”

“Perhaps.”

“I remember your advice being more useful in the past, Severus,” Albus said, with sharpness that made him blink in surprise. “You need not agree with me if you think I am wrong.”

“You have made it clear that you will not listen to my advice on the most fundamental point where we disagree, Headmaster.”

“Harry Potter is a Horcrux, and he must be destroyed to kill Voldemort.”

“I do not see why I must be the one to destroy him.”

“You are the one I think would do the best job.”

Severus stared at Albus, and didn’t bother to hide his skepticism. “You could do it yourself,” he said, even though he didn’t really want to encourage Albus to go after Harry. But he only need delay any direct action on the Headmaster’s part until the end of this school year, to let the poison do its work. “You are not close to the boy, and you know that I am.”

“You will be gentler than I could be, Severus.”

“And it is the next step in my redemption, I suppose,” Severus said, with as much bitterness as he could.

“It does prove that you would put the safety of many above one person, which is not a lesson I think you have learned yet.”

“I cannot twist the Vow so that it will allow me to do this, Albus.”

“Have you tried, dear boy? With your Occlumency?”

“I’m not going to risk dying to prove your point, Headmaster.”

Albus regarded him in silence for long enough that Severus wanted to shift in place. He didn’t know what decisions the Headmaster was making, and he thought it might be disastrous not to know.

But he had told the truth. He was not going to try and break his Vow, and if Albus thought it was sheer cowardice rather than some other reason, he could think that.

“I will be forced to adopt—”

The cough caught Albus in mid-breath, as he bent over and wheezed, his hand pressing to his heart. Severus stared, hesitated as if he thought the Headmaster would recover on his own and he shouldn’t interfere, and then stood and hurried around the desk.

“Albus, are you well?”

Albus flapped a hand at the small crystal bowl of golden powder on his desk. Severus picked up a pinch of what he recognized as a Throat-Soothing Draught condensed to a powder, and blew it into Albus’s nostrils.

He didn’t say anything about the powder being less potent than the full potion. Albus would know that, and he would have his reasons for using this method. But when he sat back and the cough had subsided, Severus did ask, “Why do you need to use the powder instead of the potion?”

“My throat hurts too much to swallow any potion now.”

Severus stared at him. Then he said, “But—water? Tea? You could perhaps place the potion in one of those.”

“I can drink ordinary water or tea, or anything else without a potion in it. But the minute that the potion approaches my lips, my throat begins to burn.”

It was as the poison should work, given that it was picking up on the fiery tendencies of the dust shed by a phoenix. Severus still had to work to hold back his laughter. He moved back a step, then paused as if uncertain. “Perhaps Fawkes could heal you?”

Albus laughed a little desperately. “Watch what happens when he tries.” He extended his arm.

Fawkes soared across the office to them, but Severus didn’t think it was his imagination that the bird’s movements were slow and reluctant. He bowed his head, and his tears slid onto Albus’s skin.

Where they fell, they left blisters. Fawkes flew into the air with a mournful trill.

Severus ignored the way the bird stared at him. If Fawkes chose to bond with someone like Dumbledore, then he had to put up with people like Severus getting tired of being the man’s slaves. “How is this possible, Albus?”

He buried his satisfaction down deep beneath the iciest of the Occlumency shields in his mind. He had designed the poison to work this way—it would be worth nothing if a phoenix could simply heal it—but he had not known for sure that it would work.

Despite everything, including the Dark Lord’s twisted morality that meant Severus did not want to be one of the man’s slaves any more than he wanted to be one of Dumbledore’s, there was still the pride of an experiment well done.

“I do not know,” Albus was saying wearily, when Severus paid attention to him again. “I believe that Voldemort might have cast a curse on me when I found his Horcrux, but I do not know how, not from this distance.”

“You found another of them?”

“Yes.”

“Have you destroyed it yet?”

“I have tried a few methods, but neither of them have worked.”

“There is the basilisk venom, Headmaster,” Severus murmured. He could not reveal that he had some on hand from the potion that the Dark Lord was asking him to make, not without also revealing how he had received it, but—“I could go back to the Chamber of Secrets and retrieve the fangs.”

“I am seeking other methods, Severus.”

Albus’s voice was so firm that for a moment, he sounded as though the poison had never tormented him at all, as he sat up in his chair and locked his eyes on Severus’s. Then he began to cough again, and a small flame actually emerged from his mouth.

“You are ill, Headmaster.”

“I know that, Severus.”

“You may have to cease your research into other methods and simply use the basilisk venom.”

“Its use implies a curse on those who would use it, Severus, the same way that drinking a unicorn’s blood does.”

Severus blinked. Then he said, “No, it does not. It is an ingredient in several potions, and those brewers who used it never died early, that I heard, or suffered unusual effects. They merely had to be careful with it.”

“It is a cursed substance, Severus. I will not use it.”

Severus kept the rolling of his eyes purely internal. Just as he would not kill Harry himself, it seemed, Albus did not want to “sully his hands” with something that he would happily ask others to use. “Very well.”

“I want you to research methods into destroying a Horcrux without using basilisk venom or Fiendfyre.”

Fiendfyre was a Dark spell, but Severus still thought Albus’s refusal of the venom an idiotic idea. He simply nodded, however. He knew that making a sarcastic remark would not be taken in good part. “Very well.”

“Please send Poppy to me as you leave, Severus.”

Severus turned away, the knowledge that the mediwitch would be able to do nothing to cure the poison easing his irritation at being used as an errand boy.

You wanted me to find a way to work around an Unbreakable Vow? You wanted me to kill Harry Potter so that you didn’t have to do it, and you want me to find a way to destroy Horcruxes that does not involve the things most likely to destroy them? You deserve all that you will suffer, Headmaster.

Chapter Text

“I think his snake is a Horcrux.”

Severus paused and lowered the teacup he had been about to take a sip out of, focusing on Harry, who sat in the chair nearest his desk with an ancient book open on his lap. At least he had taken his studying for his OWLS more seriously after Severus had spoken to him. “Why do you think that?”

“I’ve been able to guide and nudge his thoughts back to the Horcruxes more often lately. They circle around Nagini the same way they circle around the other ones.”

“Have you identified how many he has yet?”

“With Nagini, and counting the diary? Seven.”

Severus hissed despite himself. He had once believed in the Dark Lord’s genius, though never as fervently as the other Death Eater recruits of his generation; he had simply been too cynical by then to revere to one man so much. But he had not thought…

“He is a fool.”

“Especially since he only planned to make six, and keep the shard of soul in his own body as the seventh in his private Arithmancy equation. He never planned on the one that’s attached to my soul.”

Severus had to close his eyes and pinch his nose. The Dark Lord’s stupidity was too great for him to express otherwise.

Harry chuckled.

“I must admit that I do not immediately see a way to gain control of Nagini the way that we have of the diadem.”

“I don’t think we need all of them, only some. Threatening part of his immortality would be a way to get him to do what we want. Especially if we know how to destroy the ones we have, and we insinuate that we know what the others are. Where they are.”

The triumph in his voice made Severus peer at him. “Nagini is not the only Horcrux you have identified.”

“No.”

“Harry.”

“The others are in places that would be difficult to access. A booby-trapped cave, the shack where the Dark Lord’s mother lived with her family, also booby-trapped, and Gringotts.”

Severus shuddered at the thought of assaulting Gringotts. He had never been sure how Quirrell had managed to do it four years ago. “The shack does not sound difficult compared to the others.”

“That Horcrux is a ring, and he thinks all the time about how he trapped it with a curse that I think he created himself. Memories of Arithmantic equations keep coming up when he thinks about it. I don’t think either of us could reverse engineer that curse enough not to be hurt by it.”

Severus peered at him, looking for some shade of insult about Severus’s spell creation skills—even now—but saw nothing but sincerity. He nodded slowly. Harry was admitting his own weakness as much as he was talking about Severus’s.

“You believe you will be able to identify ways to get hold of the Horcruxes eventually and use them to threaten the Dark Lord?”

“Or something better.”

“What are you talking about?” There had been a flare of the fire in Harry’s eyes when he spoke those last words that had been there when the Dark Lord was resurrected.

Harry paused, then shook his head. “It’s pretty new yet, and I don’t know if it’s going to work out. But if it does, then we won’t even need the Horcruxes as a chain on him to threaten him. He won’t be able to threaten or control us anymore.”

“How could you guarantee that without having a means to collect all the Horcruxes first, or breaking the vows you swore?”

“I didn’t say I would kill him. I said he would no longer be a threat.”

Severus studied him, but Harry sat there and radiated stubbornness. In the end, Severus capitulated with a sigh. “As long as you know that nothing you could achieve on that front would be worth the pain of losing you.”

Harry blinked, seemingly stunned. Not by the emotion, Severus thought, but by the fact that he had admitted it. Severus swallowed through his own dry throat.

When Harry’s smile came, it was wilder and gentler than any other Severus had seen from him. “I promise. I’ll be careful.”

And with that, Severus had to be content.

*

“You haven’t heard anything from the Dark Lord?”

Severus sighed and rapped his stirring rod on the edge of the cauldron so that the drops falling from it would land inside the brew. He had no desire to deal with melting pewter at the moment. “I told you that I cannot tell you of his orders, Barty.”

“I just want to know if you’ve heard from him. That wouldn’t constitute disobeying his orders.”

“How do you know? You have admitted yourself that you must have misjudged our Lord’s mind badly.”

Severus turned around in time to see Barty, or Dawlish, flinch where he stood against the doorway of Severus’s lab. In truth, Severus felt a sliver of pity for the man. Whether it was the Dark Lord’s paranoia or something else that had turned him against Barty, Barty looked closer to breakdown than he must have been when he was the half-mad Azkaban escapee that Harry hadn’t yet stabilized.

Or Harry’s Horcrux.

Harry’s research hadn’t yet revealed why it didn’t have such an effect on Severus.

“I just want to know if there’s anything you’re doing that I could be doing, too, to get back in his favor,” Barty whispered.

“Following his orders.”

Barty flinched and hunched, staring down at his boots. Severus let this go on for a moment before he said, “Albus has noticed the change in you. He’s been asking me and the other professors whether you fear the curse overcoming you.”

“I don’t. The plan was always for this particular identity to go at the end of the year.”

Barty still didn’t look up. Severus gave a sharp sigh and rapped his fingers on the table that held his cauldron. Barty jerked his head up.

“That is not the point, Barty. The point is that the Headmaster is noticing that something is wrong, and you should guard your behavior more closely.”

“What does it matter, if the Dark Lord has turned against me? He was the entire point of my existence.”

Severus blinked, because he had never heard Barty put it in terms quite that stark before. But he ended up sighing and shaking his head. “In truth, it does not matter. What does is that you must follow his last orders and keep your secrets and our Lord’s secrets hidden.”

“You really haven’t heard anything?”

“The last time he summoned me was the time when he asked that I tell you nothing.”

Barty gave a single sound suspiciously like a dry sob, and then whirled and fled. Severus stared after him, and wondered if the Dark Lord knew how truly loyal a servant he was losing. If he would reverse course or the like if he did.

But then he put it out of his head. He still had a Blood-Replenisher to brew, and research questions related to Horcruxes and means to defeat curses created by a paranoid Dark Lord to look up.

And, as it turned out, a Headmaster’s dying to enjoy.

Chapter Text

Albus had told no one else how much he had steadily weakened. Severus had assumed that Poppy knew at first, but when he made a reference to Albus’s “time left” in front of her, she had laughed a little and reassured him that it was just an allergy to some common Potions ingredients, which was apparently the lie Albus had fed her.

“How do you expect Madam Pomfrey to help you if she does not know the truth?” Severus asked, as he held the latest of an array of useless potions to Albus’s lips. He enjoyed the license to experiment and brew, but nothing could counteract the poison.

Albus swallowed and slumped back in his chair, closing his eyes. “You could call her Poppy, Severus. You have been colleagues long enough.”

“I would like an answer to my question.”

“She cannot do anything, and I would not want to worry her.”

Severus held back the temptation to say that it would worry Poppy if Albus flaked to ash in front of her. In truth, there was no reason to assume that the poison’s effect would be quite that dramatic. He settled back, his arms folded across his chest. “And what happens if you cannot defeat this curse?” Albus seemed to be utterly stuck on the theory that the Dark Lord had cursed him somehow.

“Then I must have your oath.”

Albus was suddenly sitting upright, his eyes more direct and strong than they had been in weeks. Severus regarded him warily. “Related to what?”

“That you will rid Harry of the Horcrux inside him.”

“Kill him and myself, you mean.”

“You could get around the Vow if you applied your Occlumency, Severus. I know how good an Occlumens you are.”

Severus spent a moment considering his options. There were many things he wanted to say, but they might give the game away. On the other hand, Albus was dying, and Severus’s resistance to the idea of destroying Harry was not new.

“I think that you want me to die,” Severus breathed, as if it were a new revelation, his eyes locked on Albus’s. “I think you would prefer I do not outlive you, even if the Dark Lord is not doing anything in particular at the moment, because you do not trust that I will continue down the path of redemption without you to watch over me.”

Albus jerked backwards. The chair in which he sat wobbled and nearly fell. Fawkes issued a warning croon from his perch.

Severus glanced over at the phoenix. Fawkes hid his head beneath his wing in response. Severus controlled the temptation to sneer. Ruddy bird.

“I have never wanted you to die, Severus. To atone, yes. But not to die.”

“How is killing the boy I swore to protect atonement?”

Albus was silent for a long moment, as though considering an actual answer—or, Severus thought, a way to phrase the actual answer that Severus would accept. Then he looked up and said simply, “It would prove that you care about the soul of Harry Potter—the untarnished Harry, without the possession by Tom that now afflicts him—more than you care about the simple survival of a vessel possessing Lily’s blood.”

A vessel.

Severus wanted to scream and throw something. The Headmaster had thought of Lily as the means to an end, to make Severus swear to him, and now he thought of Harry as the means to an end, too.

As a chain to yank so that Severus would dance to his tune.

“I am not in the business of caring about souls,” Severus sneered.

“That is more than evident, given the way you have endangered your own.”

Albus’s words broke off into fiery coughs, and this time, there was no denying the flames that jerked forth from his lips. Severus raised his eyebrows. Perhaps the poison would ensure that Albus flaked to ash, after all.

Severus dearly hoped he was there to witness it.

“And killing Mr. Potter would splinter it further, would it not? If the Vow did not simply kill me in response.”

“I truly believe it would not, Severus.”

“Perhaps I am not so assured of that.”

Albus closed his eyes and sat back, rasping. Severus listened and determined that the rasps did sound much the same as someone’s voice would after breathing in smoke for an undetermined period of time.

It soothed part of his—ha—soul.

“Then I shall have to assume that you do not care so much about Lily,” Albus whispered at last. He did not open his eyes again, but his hand groped out, faltering, and then closed on Severus’s with what was probably all the strength he had left. “Because you would let Tom walk around wearing her son’s skin and dishonor her memory.”

“Do not presume to tell me how much I care about Lily,” Severus hissed in response. He kept his voice low to hide the enjoyment and project as much anger as possible.

In truth, he had become—not immune, but aware, of the ways that Albus was trying to manipulate him by constantly bringing up Lily, far more than he had in the months or years before this.

“Would you truly wish me to take on the task of killing the boy myself?”

“You are the only one convinced it is necessary,” Severus’s voice replied, while the rest of him sat up in ringing, paralyzed rage.

If you touch him—

But Severus would make it such that Albus could not touch him. If nothing else, he would simply order Harry to sneak out of the school under the Invisibility Cloak, Apparate to the Dark Lord, and stay there until Albus was dead.

Severus folded his arms now and shook his head. “Are you sure that your idea that Mr. Potter is possessed is not a further consequence of the curse clouding your mind, Albus?”

Albus blinked and shifted around in his chair. Severus enjoyed the uncertainty driving his every movement right now. Albus clearly hadn’t thought of that possibility, and liked it even less than he liked the idea of Harry Potter possessed by Tom Riddle.

In the end, Albus simply shook his head and said firmly, “I was convinced of this before the symptoms of the curse showed up.”

“How do you know that? The curse could be slow-acting, and it could have happened at a time when you went into public, given how hard it would be for a Death Eater to sneak into Hogwarts.”

Severus enjoyed saying that, given the Death Eater who was currently sitting in an agonized torment of indecision in “Professor Dawlish’s” office.

“I know that this curse is Tom’s work. Not the work of any Death Eater.”

Severus sighed a little. “Very well. But you will get no oath out of me.”

“Then I must do it myself.”

Severus cocked his head. “Do you think the Unbreakable Vow I swore to protect Lily’s son will let me step aside and do nothing when it comes to that, Albus?”

Albus paused, long enough to cough again and roast part of his beard off with the flames coming out of his mouth. But he shook his head and murmured, “You have made it clear that you intend to obstruct me no matter what, Severus. I will not allow your disapproval to weigh with me anymore.”

Severus stepped back, watching the Headmaster narrowly. He made no attempt to stand, however. And the progress of the poison was such that Severus thought Albus would not be up to any strenuous running or dueling for this evening, at least.

“You don’t have to do anything, Severus,” Albus said softly. “You can avert your eyes. Send Harry to me tomorrow morning without telling him why I want to see him. Speak and then ignore the consequences. The exact thing you are so good at.”

Albus was trying to sting him about carrying the prophecy to the Dark Lord or maybe about insulting his students the way he did, but Severus did not care. He was deep in the ice, and he only nodded and turned and left the office for what might be the last time.

Let Albus take the nod as he would.

*

As soon as he reached the corridor that led to the Defense professor’s quarters, Severus lengthened his stride. He knocked briskly on “Dawlish’s” door and listened to the shuffling inside before Barty opened it.

“Yes?” Barty asked listlessly. He had been listless most of the time since he had been tortured at the Dark Lord’s hands.

“Albus is planning to kill Harry.”

Barty’s eyes widened, and his wand slid into his hand without his seeming to be aware of it. “That is—how can we stop him?”

“Our Lord ordered me to kill him in a slow, subtle way, and not until the end of term. However, I am not sure what I should do now. I do not wish to disobey our Lord’s orders, but we must protect Harry at all costs. He is the key to our Lord’s stability.”

“And you care for him,” Barty muttered, but he wasn’t trying to sting with the words. He might also be thinking that Harry was the cure to his own stability, Severus thought. “There is one thing I’m practically an expert in.”

“What’s that?”

“The Imperius Curse.”

Severus stared at him. When Barty returned the stare with an impatient look, he said, “I was aware that you suffered under it, but I was not aware that that gave you expertise in casting or holding it.”

Barty snorted. “I didn’t have a lot to do during the summer when I wasn’t tutoring Harry but read. I went into a lot of the theory behind the curse. I know exactly how it works, now, and how to flex it to hold a powerful mind and direct that mind without even letting the target know that they’re under Imperius.”

“And you believe that you can do it to Albus?”

“He’s dying. He’s preoccupied with thoughts about Harry. Yes, I can do it if I take him by surprise.” Barty breathed out. “Is he likely to leave the office this evening to come to dinner in the Great Hall?”

“I don’t believe so. He is increasingly sickly.”

“Then I’ll have to make up an excuse to visit him. Well, he did ask that I reconsider my behavior towards the other professors.” Barty’s voice was full of acid. “I’ll just pretend that I have to see him because of a conflict with you.”

Severus half-smiled. “That will work. If you are sure that you can hold him…”

He would not have suggested such a course. Even weakened, Albus was a formidable duelist and a skilled Occlumens. He should have been able to fight off an Imperius Curse from someone as much magically weaker than he was as Barty easily.

But Barty was giving him a look that was half-pleading. “This way, I know that I’m helping you fulfill our Lord’s orders to prolong Albus’s death and keep the boy safe, but I’m not interfering with his orders not to ask questions. Please, Severus. This might be the only thing I can do to prove…”

To win your way back into the Dark Lord’s good graces? In truth, Severus was not sure if that would be possible. The Dark Lord had not summoned Barty to torture him or berate him since the night he’d come crawling to the doors of the hospital wing, from what Severus knew, but neither had Barty received a summons of forgiveness or even communication.

“If you are sure.”

“Yes, I am.”

Severus nodded. “If you cannot hold him, you must flee before he can look into your mind.”

“Do you think I’m stupid?”

No. Devoted, and reckless in the name of proving your devotion.

But Severus only nodded again and said, “I shall be in my office if you—require my aid with anything.”

“Thanks, Severus.” Barty turned to go, but hesitated, and Severus waited, although he was internally dreading the sounds of battle to come down the corridors, as they inevitably would if Albus found himself strong enough to attack Harry.

“And Severus?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for giving me a chance to make up for irritating the Dark Lord.”

Barty started towards the staircase that would take him most directly to Albus’s office, and Severus stared after him for a moment. Then he shook his head.

Albus had accused Severus of resisting the need for forgiveness and atonement, but it seemed he was doomed to be the cause of atonement in other people.

Chapter Text

“He was very serious about this threat.”

Harry’s voice was almost inaudible. Severus nodded and sipped again from the glass of Firewhisky he had poured himself the moment he got back to his quarters. It wouldn’t do to become too dependent on it, so this was still his first glass, but he felt that he bloody well deserved it.

“Yes,” Severus added, when it seemed that Harry was waiting for something more from him. “Barty believed that he could take care of the problem. But if not, you will be leaving under your Invisibility Cloak.”

“With Barty?”

“I had not considered that at the time, because that was before I spoke to him, but yes. Perhaps that would be for the best.”

“And you would have us go to the Dark Lord who tortured Barty?”

Severus breathed out. Yes, he could see why Harry would have objections to that plan. “You needn’t go straight there. But I believe that the Dark Lord might be growing more unstable because of the distance from you, and so it could be that—visiting—would make his mind clearer. I would not ask you to put yourself in danger, however.”

Harry kept his head turned, staring into the fire. Severus watched him, and wondered what his main objection was. That he was being chased out of Hogwarts? That he feared the Dark Lord torturing him as well? Leaving Severus behind?

Severus could hope that it was the last, but he didn’t know, not truly.

Harry bit his lip and finally turned back to face him. “I suppose that you should know…”

But he trailed off and said nothing. “Yes?” Severus finally prompted, after five minutes of no one talking but the fire.

“I told you that I’d spied enough in the Dark Lord’s mind to learn some more about the other Horcruxes, but not enough to know how to retrieve them.”

“Yes.”

“That was because I was doing something else.”

Harry seemed to be sitting taller, and his face had a smile on it that made Severus think of hungry wolves running through bloody snow. “Yes?” he repeated, warily. He wondered for a wild moment if Albus’s suspicions were true and the Dark Lord had possessed Harry after all, working back along the Horcrux link.

“I can control him.”

The words were so impossible that Severus’s brain simply refused to comprehend them at first. Then he stared at Harry, and felt his mouth opening. Harry inclined his head, eyes glittering, and seemed to wait for Severus’s mind to draw itself back together.

“What do you mean?” Severus finally whispered.

“I can control his actions. I don’t do it all the time, because it would be tiring, but he’s arrogant, and he didn’t guard the connection with me closely because he believed that a Horcrux could never affect him except positively. I can bloody well turn him into a puppet when I want to.”

“You—you made sure that he didn’t torture me when I was summoned after he had tortured Barty.”

“Yes.”

“You are part of the reason that he hasn’t been raiding and murdering people.”

Harry smiled. “Yes.”

Severus reached up and put a hand on his forehead, pinching the skin for a moment. No, this was not a dream, and he didn’t believe that he had a fever and was hallucinating, either.

“Barty and I wondered why the Dark Lord wasn’t moving more aggressively,” he whispered. “We both did. Why he wanted to concentrate on protecting the Horcruxes and—I don’t know what else. I thought that he might be researching methods to keep his constructed body safe.”

“I did nudge him in that direction. Like I said, I don’t control him all the time. But I control him more and more often, and it’s easier and easier. It helped that he didn’t have a lot of Death Eaters around him when he was resurrected who would notice the difference between one day and the next, and also, honestly, that he came back in a body so like a snake’s. I think it infects him with something like the torpor they get when they’re cold.”

“And now?”

“Now?” Harry’s smile flashed like lightning. “Now, there’s little of him left.”

“If you’re possessing him…”

“It’s not like possession, really. Or the Imperius Curse. I just—eat away at his mind and spirit. Most of him’s gone.”

Severus swallowed, staring at Harry. Harry stared back, head slightly cocked as he seemed to wait for praise or condemnation.

But Severus could find nothing in him of condemnation. Instead, rising inside him like a star was pride.

Oh, you vicious, clever child. You knew we would never be safe as things stood, and you took care of the Dark Lord while I was taking care of Albus.

“I am proud of you,” Severus whispered. “So immensely proud.”

Harry looked a little startled, as though he’d expected at least a lecture about how dangerous it had been and how he could have lost himself in the Dark Lord’s mind. Severus might have been minded to give that lecture if he had known what Harry was doing it when he began his—feeding. But as it stood, all he could feel was that pride.

And relief, washing in like a tide behind it.

He and Harry were safe from both their masters, or would be shortly. They were free.

“We do have to decide what to do about Barty, of course.”

Severus blinked. “Did you want him to be tortured by the Dark Lord?”

Harry grimaced and shook his head. “I would kill him if he was a threat to either one of us, but beyond that, I’m—a bit fond of him, I suppose. I knew that I needed to tighten my grip on the Dark Lord’s mind once I heard from you about how he’d tortured Barty. He was furious and frightened and lashing out the only way he knew how.”

“And the Horcruxes?”

“The thought of any danger to them makes him fight and almost gives him strength enough to break my grip. We’ll have to go after them later and decide what to do with them.”

“Decide what to do with them?” Severus repeated blankly. “We are going to destroy them, surely.”

“But think of how much we could learn from them if they were cleansed.” Harry’s eyes shone hungrily. “Ravenclaw’s diadem, a legendary source of wisdom. Slytherin’s locket—I’m sure that’s what the locket I saw is—supposedly possessed of magic that would make its wearer able to discover the deepest secrets of the world. And Hufflepuff’s cup! An inexhaustible source of wealth and food.”

Severus laughed shakily. It seemed that he had mistaken Harry’s deepest passion after safety. It was not for anger or vengeance. It was for knowledge.

“You are a scholar at heart, then?” he asked. He teased. He could not remember the last time he had felt light-hearted enough to tease someone.

“Don’t be silly, Severus. I’m not a Ravenclaw. But yes, I do like creating spells, and I like learning enough that I can pick up unknown secrets and keep myself safer than Divination could ever manage.”

“But what would happen to the Dark Lord if the Horcruxes remained?”

“Cleansed, they wouldn’t be Horcruxes anymore. I think his body would crumble and his spirit would fade. Of course, we would need to have some story ready to tell Barty, but it might take years for him to truly pass away, and then we would have something ready.”

“If you could secure Barty’s devotion for yourself…”

“It would be difficult. I can’t be the father figure to him that the Dark Lord was. But you’re right that it would be worthwhile to make an effort. I’ll think on it.”

And as if he hadn’t disclosed the most incredible revelation in Severus’s life, Harry turned back to the scroll in front of him, which held the components of the latest spell he had been inventing.

Harry did nothing but twitch a smile when Severus began to laugh. When the laughter crackled on the edge of tears, Severus’s Occlumency shields coming down, Harry crossed the room to him and leaned a light hand on his shoulder, not enough to imprison or restrain.

Severus reached out and embraced Harry, causing a startled intake of breath from the boy. But his ward relaxed against him, and wrapped his own arms around Severus.

“I was never going to let him hurt you,” Harry whispered. “And now neither of them can.”

Severus still found it hard to think of a future where he was free from both of his masters. It gleamed like a crystal cauldron he had once seen in a dream, and he kept thinking he would open his eyes and it would be gone.

But Harry was here, Harry with his arms around him, Harry with his incredible mind and his determination to see to Severus’s safety.

This was real.

Chapter Text

“I did it.”

Severus started and turned his head. After the epiphanies of the night before, he had nearly forgotten that Barty had gone to Albus’s office to put him under the Imperius Curse.

“So I gathered, when no one came screaming in flames down the corridor,” he said dryly, picking up the newspaper and the cup of tea in front of him.

Barty snorted and leaned back in his own seat, stretching and yawning. A few of the other professors gave them curious glances, but most of them were too involved in their own petty gossip and “discussions” to pay much attention.

“He put up a fight, I’ll have you know.”

“I’m sure he did.”

Barty eyed him for a moment, and then snorted. “And what has you so cheerful?”

Severus blinked. “Am I cheerful?” He thought about it, and realized that something was moving through him like a river, what used to be a riot, a river in flood, but was now one that he could tame and bridge.

“Yes,” he said slowly, startled. “Perhaps I am cheerful.”

“What happened?”

“I learned something from Harry,” Severus said smoothly. “He had told me a few concerning things about his ambitions for the future. I had worried that he was not properly placing those ambitions within the context of service to our Lord. But last night, he explained to me in such a way that it cleared up my concerns.”

“What did he say?”

“I think he would want to explain that to you himself.”

Barty grumbled a little, but he seemed too well-pleased to have succeeded in his battle with Albus to make a fuss about this now. Severus thought about finding Harry before Barty could and warning him of the questions Barty would ask and the lie Severus had used, but honestly, he believed that Harry could think on his feet quickly enough to come up with convincing but vague statements.

Harry stood. His eyes moved back and forth from Severus to Barty as he did. Severus thought he was probably the only one who saw the darkening and tightening in Harry’s face, that way that he tensed as if ready to hurt Barty.

Severus shook his head minutely.

Harry’s eyebrows tilted upwards, but he turned and left the Great Hall without any fuss. Nott and Malfoy trailed after him, and so did Bulstrode. Severus checked an impatient sigh. Honestly, they would have to do something with the influence that Harry apparently spread unchecked among the younger Slytherins.

“A problem?”

“Only that a few of the candidates Harry has chosen to lead down his own path, I think less than suitable,” Severus replied, and returned to eating.

“You can’t mean Nott. Or Malfoy. His father practically guaranteed that he would be born to it.”

Barty’s voice was low, with a vicious edge. He never had reconciled himself to the Death Eaters who had walked free from prison—except Severus, and his circumstances were different enough that Severus thought Barty placed him in a separate mental category.

Severus shrugged with one shoulder. “Does blood serve our Lord? Or is it willingness, cleverness, loyalty that does?”

“I don’t know.”

Severus turned and stared at Barty. He was looking unhappily at the table, tracing his spoon through his porridge.

“What do you mean?”

“I used to think I knew what the Dark Lord valued.” Barty stared up at him with haunted eyes, the expression coming through clearly despite his Dawlish disguise. “But now? When I spoke out of turn and was tortured and—for something that our Lord used to value? For asking questions?”

Severus nodded slowly. He had thought Barty’s faithfulness went so deep that trying to rock that foundation would be like trying to crack a mountain, but perhaps not.

“We could ask Harry to ask him.”

Severus regretted the offer the instant he made it, but Barty’s eyes widened, and there was a shine in them that was not the shine of tears, but wasn’t too far from it. “Really? Do you think he would?”

Severus sighed, berating himself for the unaccustomed sympathy that had led him astray. “Let me talk to him.”

This is why sympathy is so good to restrict instead of employ.

*

“You want me to reassure Barty that the Dark Lord isn’t too angry with him.”

“Yes.”

“This is hilarious.”

Severus gave Harry a half-hearted glare. It didn’t work. For one thing, Harry was rocking on his stool and cackling, and probably didn’t even see the glare.

For another, Severus couldn’t make himself glare too badly at his ward—at impossible, vicious, wild, magnificent Harry—no matter what he was currently doing.

Harry finished cackling and straightened up, rubbing at his eyes as his chuckles finally died. “What do you intend to do with Barty? I just thought that he would go on worshipping the Dark Lord until the change in his behavior became undeniable, and then he would probably flee or commit suicide or go insane again.”

“You discuss it so coldly. The man has taught you.”

“He hasn’t kept me safe. And I had little choice, once I realized that he was a Death Eater, but to be drawn into the plot, unless I wanted to face even greater threats to my life.”

Severus nodded. He had known that, of course, and he chided himself for forgetting it for even a second. “Very well. I confess that I had not created a plan. I only thought that Barty would probably fight us when he realized, unless we managed to kill the Dark Lord in such a way that he could not connect it to us.”

“That’s not going to happen for the moment. A tame Dark Lord on a leash is too useful.”

“…What do you intend to use him for?”

“I thought you knew.”

“Enlighten me.”

Harry grinned, probably at the sound of the drawl in Severus’s voice, but his eyes were still questioning as he said, “To wring some Galleons and power out of the people who believe in and follow him. To make sure that we are so safe no one can ever challenge us again.”

“Will there be such a thing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will you ever feel entirely safe, Harry? Or will you be thinking about the people who could attack and challenge us far into the future?”

Harry paused. His eyes were thoughtful instead of the cold and distant ones that Severus had learned to fear, however, so he settled back in his own chair and took a sip of the Firewhisky that for once was celebratory instead of merely soothing.

“I’ll feel a lot safer when Dumbledore is dead,” Harry said at last. “And when the Dark Lord doesn’t retain enough independent will to torture anyone anymore, unless I direct him to do that.”

“But will it be safe enough?”

Another pause.

Harry finally said, softly, “I don’t know.”

Severus nodded. He felt exceptionally calm, not upset about this, because he had anticipated Harry’s answer. The kind of young man who was ready to swear his loyalty to his parents’ killer because he wanted to be safe was not the kind to accept the empty promises of good fortune.

“If you were able to pursue any career that you wanted, would it be spell creation?”

Harry blinked, but answered readily enough, “It would.”

“So you definition of safety would have to include the books and the Galleons to pursue that?”

“Yes.”

“And do you wish to remain at Hogwarts for your next two years? Or do you think that you will be done with it once Albus dies?”

Harry paused again. His eyes traveled all over Severus as though seeking the hidden source of his questions.

“Humor me, please,” Severus said quietly.

Harry nodded, although he still looked as if he’d have liked to have the answers to his questions now. “I really see no purpose in remaining here. I don’t have friends. The main reason that I’ve stayed is that people would have protested if I left. And for you.”

Severus smiled at him. “With Albus dead, there will be little reason for me to remain here, either.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“That we leave the school at the end of this year, and you persuade your godfather to give you as many Galleons and books as you need to feel safe. He’d probably be happy to settle as much money on you as you want. He might even have a house he could give you. We’ll either pay someone to create wards, or we’ll take a house with wards and study until we can create our own. And we can spend the rest of our lives in scholarship if we want.”

By the end of his little speech, Harry was leaning forwards as if he were about to fall off his stool. His eyes were huge, and filled with longing.

Severus concealed a smile. Other people might believe they knew Harry Potter, but Severus was the one who had figured out what was the most important to him.

“Would—I know that you hate Sirius. Would you be able to bring yourself to accept any charity from him?”

Severus laughed aloud. Harry blinked at him. “I would not consider it charity. Rightful repayment for the harm he caused me, if anything. And yes, I would take anything that allowed me to live out my own dreams.”

“What are those, Severus?”

“Brewing. Research. Profiting from the potions that I make by selling them instead of simply turning them over to Madam Pomfrey or the Order of the Phoenix for their own use.” Severus settled a little more firmly back into his chair. “Having a friend who will remain loyal to me to share the research and discussion.”

Harry paused. Severus waited. He had been sure he was right about what Harry’s deepest desires were, but perhaps he had not.

Then a real smile bloomed over Harry’s face. Severus caught his breath. It was so easy, in that moment, to see how young Harry was, how he had done things beyond his years because he had to, instead of because of his growth into them.

“I would like that,” Harry whispered, and the yearning in his voice was audible.

“Then that is what will happen.”

Chapter Text

Harry had scrawled a short note at the bottom of the essay that he’d turned in for homework a few days later.

Expect a summons tonight.

Severus cast a spell that blurred the ink on those particular lines—just in case Barty ever thought to look for them—and took a deep breath.

This might be the last, the very last, summons he would ever receive to the Dark Lord’s side.

The thought made him giddy.

But giddiness was no excuse for carelessness, so Severus went back to cleaning up after the children—the children he would soon be done teaching, thank any gods who listened—and composing his mind in icy Occlumency for tonight.

*

“I don’t know what to hope for.”

Barty’s voice was low as he and Severus stood waiting in the middle of the open field to which they had been summoned. Severus inclined his head solemnly in Barty’s direction. Part of him was listening, but the rest was wondering how Harry had chosen this location and why he had forced the half-brained Dark Lord to summon them here.

For that matter, how had Harry activated the link between the Dark Marks and the Dark Lord? That was a magic that Severus had never understood himself.

Then again, he’d never studied the Mark in detail, because such an action could have seemed treasonous to the Dark Lord.

“Severus?”

Severus turned to face Barty, and found the man staring at him with an edge of desperation. Severus held back a sigh and said gently, “Yes?”

“Why are you standing there looking so unafraid?”

“I trust that our Lord has some motivation for summoning us now, and both together. Before, he kept us separate, except for the night of his resurrection. I think this must be significant.” Severus paused. “And I cannot imagine that he means for one of us to witness the other’s death.”

“It would be you witnessing mine, at this point.”

Severus started to reply, but the sharp crack of Apparition came from in front of them, and he turned and fell to one knee. Barty hastily imitated him.

Even with his eyes down, Severus could make out the Dark Lord’s steady approach. Harry was doing a great job of controlling the body—well, either that, or the reflexes that controlled things like walking would be left as some of the last things to be devoured by Harry working down the Horcrux link.

The Dark Lord stood before them and surveyed them in what would probably seem a meditative silence to Barty. Severus was struck by a ludicrous desire to stick out his tongue or otherwise make a gesture that would acknowledge Harry behind the staring red eyes.

He restrained himself, obviously. But the temptation was there.

“Rise.”

Severus did so, his eyes still on the ground. But Barty was looking up hopefully, hungrily, next to him. Severus bit back irritation. To see one of the brightest minds among the Ravenclaws of Severus’s generation turned into this slavish thing struck him now as waste, which it never had before.

I never had the time or ability to worry about it before.

“Do you know why I have summoned you here?” the puppet asked, pacing slowly back and forth in front of them.

“No, master,” Barty whispered, his voice fawning and cringing so that Severus was more than a bit embarrassed for him. But he simply shook his own head, looking no higher than the puppet’s bare feet.

“Because I have a task that only the two of you can accomplish. You must work together.”

Severus did not frown, because he was deep in his Occlumency. But he did wonder what Harry thought he was doing.

“Yes, master,” Barty said, probably taking this for implied forgiveness. Severus hoped with a vicious abruptness that startled him that the Dark Lord was aware enough behind his eyes to scream in fear and rage as his most devoted servant was directed by someone else.

“Good. I have rethought the wisdom of having a symbol of ownership that can be seen by all and sundry.”

Barty blinked. “What, master?”

Severus could not help the way that his eyes jerked up and met the red ones of the Dark Lord. The pseudo-Dark Lord. One of them closed in a slow, distinct wink at him, and then the Dark Lord, as it would seem, swung away and began to pace back and forth with his robes eddying around him.

“The Dark Mark, my servant. Too many people are aware of its presence, and gaze at it and my servants with covetous eyes. I will design a new mark. Discreet, small, and only visible to the truly devoted.”

What is he doing?

“Only visible to the truly devoted,” Barty repeated, sounding overwhelmed. Severus had to look down in what he hoped would look like abasement and was truly embarrassment as Barty knelt further. “Yes, yes, my lord, that is exactly as it should be.”

“I am glad you approve, Barty.” The Dark Lord extended his hand and let his white fingers spread over the front of Barty’s forehead for a moment—echoing the placement of Harry’s lightning bolt scar, Severus realized with a jolt. “You shall have input into the decision. Severus shall brew the potion that will erase the Dark Marks now extant and create the new design.”

Thank you very much for telling me so.

Barty’s head bobbed back and forth like it was on strings. “Yes, my lord. We’ll work together, never fear.”

“It may be a project that will have to continue beyond the end of the school term.” The Dark Lord pulled his hand back from Barty’s head and began pacing back and forth once more. “There is so little that one can do without the presence of the boy…”

You had better have a plan.

“Of course, my lord! I know that Harry will be thrilled to visit and help you.”

“Yes, he will. He is my second most devoted.”

You are laying it on a little thick.

Barty shot Severus an astonished, commiserating glance, as though believing he would be upset that his “place” at the “Dark Lord’s” side would have been taken by Harry. But he said, “Please tell us of the design of the new Mark, master.”

“It will be gold, and it will resemble…”

Severus did not bother listening. He could always ask Harry later if he was curious. He maintained a steady gaze and nodded when it seemed appropriate.

And meanwhile, he wondered what in the world Harry had decided to do, and if it was for a better reason than his own entertainment.

*

“Well. Partially my own entertainment. But mostly because of what I found looking around in the Dark Lord’s head.”

Severus shook his head and nudged the glass of water across the table to Harry. Well, mostly water. He had put a small splash of Firewhisky into it. “And are you going to stretch it out all night?”

Harry laughed and picked up the glass. He wasn’t pale and shaky the way he had been after the night Severus had been summoned and he must have controlled the Dark Lord for hours. Still, Severus thought he could use the invigoration of the drink.

“We did wonder why I didn’t affect you the way I did him and Barty.”

“Well, yes. But I thought it was because—forgive me if I brag—I was sane.”

Harry blinked for a moment, and Severus stilled, wondering if he should not have made that joke. But then Harry was laughing quietly, leaning forwards in his chair with the glass shaking in his hand from the force of his mirth.

I can make jokes. We are entering the kind, the way, of life where I can make jokes.

Severus sat there savoring the freedom from his burden for a moment, and then raised an imperious eyebrow at Harry. Harry took one more sip of his water and said, “He was putting bits of his soul into the Dark Marks.”

Severus stared at him. “What?”

“From what I can see in his memories, he made his first Horcruxes years before he ever Marked someone. Decades before there were Death Eaters. So his soul was unstable when he started Marking them. And he wanted to design a spell that would be absolutely impossible for anyone to escape. So…”

“He did it on purpose?”

“No. He designed the Dark Mark as a trap, a net that would weave around the Marked person and bind them to him body and soul. But that meant, in turn, that the bond pulled on his soul. He was arrogant enough to think it wouldn’t.”

“So I have been walking around with a mini-Horcrux in my arm.”

“Yes. Sorry,” Harry added, as Severus picked up his own glass of Firewhisky and stared into it, motionless and disgusted.

“It is of no matter,” Severus said faintly, and shook himself. “Truly,” he added, when he saw Harry staring at him in concern. “I would rather know than not.”

Harry inclined his head.

“What does this have to do with the fact that the Dark Lord and Barty are more stable when you are around, but I did not need the steadying effect of your presence?”

“I have a large part of the Dark Lord’s soul compared to what’s left in his body after making all those Dark Marks as well as the actual Horcruxes. He grew more stable and sane when that larger piece was brought into proximity. And Barty’s Mark actually contained less soul than your average Death Eater because the Dark Lord trusted so much in his loyalty that he saw less need to bind him. So he also had a small piece that was balanced out by my larger one.”

“Whereas I…”

“Had a larger piece in the first place because the Dark Lord didn’t trust you that much, and you also have Occlumency to keep your emotions calmer.”

“The Dark Lord is an Occlumens. I should say, perhaps, was.”

“Yeah, but he was so much affected by the loss of large swathes of his soul that it didn’t matter that much.”

Severus nodded slowly. He thought he could venture another reason. “And he focused on Legilimency more than Occlumency—and even his Occlumency was there mostly to defend against an attacker, not to balance or calm himself.”

“Exactly.” Harry sneered a little. “He didn’t think about his safety, even though supposedly every move he made was towards securing that.”

“Safety from death. From betrayal, if putting pieces of his soul into the Dark Mark was meant to make it impossible for his Death Eaters to betray him.”

“Exactly.”

“And you are using this project so that you can remove the Mark from me and from Barty.”

“Yes. And other Death Eaters, I suppose, although frankly I don’t care about them.”

No. You care about two people in this world, and occasionally three. I do not know why my somewhat reluctant gestures on your behalf were enough to buy me entrance to the charmed world of your protection, but I would not reject it.

Severus lifted his glass in a toast, and Harry leaned forwards, with a chilly smile, to clink his own against it.

Chapter Text

Severus would have aimed a Killing Curse at his own temple before admitting it, but working with Barty on a research project was—fun.

Barty put a manic energy into the process that Severus thought only a Ravenclaw could have managed. But that was a complement to Severus’s own chilly approach, and it meant that he could create a glass-like surface that Barty’s wilder suggestions bounced off.

Altogether, they tore through books and memories of books and had more intellectual conversation than Severus could recall with anyone but Harry. And since Harry was still young, still working on OWL preparation, he didn’t have the same breadth of knowledge and remembered knowledge that Barty did.

Severus created a potion that was a variation on a simple Skin-Cleanser. Barty argued that it wouldn’t work. They cursed a rat with a mark in the shape of a snake and skull and a small bit of Dark magic buried in it the way that it was in the Mark—Severus could hardly reveal that he knew much more about the Mark than that—and then dripped Severus’s potion onto it

It took him forever to clean the gobs of blood from the explosion off the ceiling.

But the Mark, as he pointed out to Barty, was gone.

They returned to debating, brewing, arguing, tracing out Arithmancy equations and runes on scraps of parchment that half the time Barty balled up and threw at Severus. If anyone thought it was strange that the Defense professor was spending so much time in Severus’s office, they said nothing. Maybe they were just relieved that “Dawlish’s” erratic behavior had calmed down.

Maybe they thought that Severus and Dawlish were lovers. It didn’t bother Severus the way it once would have. He was on the verge of leaving Hogwarts forever, after all.

And all he had to do to make that dream a reality was to surmount this one last challenge.

There was never any doubt that he was going to do it.

*

They were arguing about whether they should try modifying two potions to erase the Mark in case the first one didn’t work on humans—it was working on rats now—when Barty collapsed.

Severus immediately dropped into a dueling stance and cast Homenium Revelio. But nothing came back. No one in Severus’s office had taken Barty out.

“He…”

Severus turned back to Barty without relaxing. If the Dark Lord had reached out in some way that was only discernible to his loyal servants, then they needed to know right away. “The Dark Lord?”

“No.” Barty lifted his head, his eyes still glazed, an odd look on Dawlish’s face. “Dumbledore. Broke the—Imperius. Must have been biding his time.” He tried to stand, but fell again and passed out.

Severus didn’t bother trying to revive him. He turned and ran towards the door, already sending a Patronus to Harry. All it said was, “Dumbledore is looking for you.”

The doe leaped through the wall, and Severus headed straight for the Headmaster’s office. He reckoned that Albus was no longer there, but he also thought that he might be able to pick up on traces of his magic that would allow Severus to track him.

He was stopped before he got there.

Albus was standing at the bottom of the staircase that led up from the entrance hall. Harry was standing in front of him, very still, his face pale. One would have had to know Harry as well as Severus did to know that his pallor came not from fear but from incandescent rage.

Harry didn’t have his wand drawn. The Headmaster did.

Severus opened his mouth, ready to take command of the scene, which had about twenty students watching, but Albus spoke before he could. “This,” Albus announced, lifting his wand so that it pointed at the scar on Harry’s forehead, “is Lord Voldemort.”

Screams echoed through the entrance hall. Severus spared the students a look of utmost contempt. It probably didn’t help calm them down, but it made him feel a little better, and it let him see the looks on the students’ faces.

Bewilderment. Fear, but confusion. They didn’t believe Albus, even if some of them were looking at Harry as if they expected his skin to tear and the Dark Lord to loom out of his body.

“Headmaster,” Severus said, in the voice he used in loud Potions classes when he needed to get the idiots’ attention through the snap of flames and the boiling of liquids. “I think you need to lie down.”

“No.” Albus turned to him, and Severus raised his eyebrows a little. He had assumed from what Barty had said that Albus had only pretended to be affected by the Imperius, but it seemed that it had had some effect on him after all. Albus’s eyes were glazed, and he was swaying in place. “This is Lord Voldemort!”

Only, this time, he was pointing his wand at Severus.

There was a burst of murmurs and shouts. Then someone said, in the moment of silence that fell after the first chatter was done, “It’s at least more believable that Snape is a Dark Lord than that Potter is.”

This time, what moved around the hall was laughter.

Albus paused. Severus had the impression that he didn’t know what exactly was going on or why his threat hadn’t worked.

Severus met the man’s eyes evenly. He didn’t want to try Legilimency given the mess the Imperius had probably made of Albus’s mind, but he said, “Headmaster, this is me. The same man you asked to—”

“Reducto!”

Severus dived and rolled with a duelist’s reflexes. It was all that saved him as the charm flew past him and slammed into the wall, sending several large chunks of stone flying. Severus heard more than one scream.

“Stupefy.”

The Stunner hit Albus in the back and made him sway in place for a long moment before it dropped him. As if in a dream, Severus watched the back of Albus’s head hit the stone floor with a massive crack, followed by a stream of blood.

He looked up and found that Harry was lowering his wand. His face was still blank, his eyes tracking over Severus. When he seemed to realize that Severus was unwounded, he slumped a little, and his eyes shut.

Standing beside him, Nott said something. Harry nodded without opening his eyes, and Nott was the one who walked towards Severus.

“Sir, do you want me to summon Madam Pomfrey?”

“No need, Mr. Nott,” said Minerva’s brisk voice, and she stepped into view, coming down the staircase so rapidly that Severus thought for a moment she might fall as well. She stopped and looked at Albus, something deep and sorrowful in her eyes. “I think he was far more ill than he let anyone know.”

“I can confirm that,” Severus said, straightening and tucking his wand away. “He had told Madam Pomfrey that it was an allergy to Potions ingredients, I believe, but he had confessed to me that it made his throat burn to swallow the simplest potions, even mingled with water or tea. And the healing tears of his phoenix did nothing.”

Minerva closed her eyes tightly for a moment. “Dragonpox virulens?” she murmured, for Severus’s ears alone.

“It does look that way,” Severus said gravely. He hadn’t designed the poison only to mimic the more dangerous and far rarer form of dragonpox that burned its victim from the inside out for weeks, but it was a benefit.

“I’m amazed that it could attack Albus. I would have thought that he would have taken his potions regularly.”

Severus hesitated just long enough before he said, “I agree,” to catch Minerva’s attention.

“What do you know, Severus?”

Sometimes it was useful to have one of his colleagues still think of him as a misbehaving student. Severus visibly hid a sigh. “Albus had—neglected several of the duties he should have done as a result of his conviction that Mr. Potter was…”

“Was what?”

Nott spoke in a quiet, cool voice that drew Minerva’s attention right away. “He accused Harry of being You-Know-Who, professor. And then he accused Professor Snape of the same thing.” Nott shook his head, wonder in every inch of his bearing, and voice politic down to using “You-Know-Who” instead of “the Dark Lord.” “I don’t know what he was thinking, but he fired a Blasting Curse at Professor Snape, and then Harry Stunned him.”

Minerva shut her eyes. Severus thought he could see a fine tremor in her hands as she murmured, “Very well. I will—take him to Poppy.”

She waved her wand, and Albus’s body rose from the floor. Severus watched him in silence. The trickle of blood from his head hadn’t slowed, although neither had it become more than a slight sluggish movement.

Swelling of the brain? Cracking of the skull?

Severus shook his head a little. Honestly, he didn’t need to care about that anymore. He turned around as Minerva Levitated Albus up the stairs and addressed the students who had gathered close to stare at him. “You will be informed of the Headmaster’s condition at a later time. For now, go to class.”

He turned to face Harry only after he had glared away most of the gathered crowd. Some of them went slowly, glancing over their shoulders; others all but scrambled down the corridors, probably to be the first to spread the gossip to their Houses.

Only then did Severus let himself look at Harry.

Harry had calmed down, in the sense that he was no longer teetering on the edge of rage, but his eyes had a deep wildness to them that was never a good sign. Severus let his gaze move to Nott.

“Sir,” Nott said quietly, inclining his head a little.

At that sign of willing to let himself be commanded, some of Severus’s irritation faded. “Good work with Professor McGonagall, Mr. Nott,” he said. “Thirty points to Slytherin.”

Nott’s lips curled with the faintest of smiles.

“Mr. Potter, with me,” Severus added over his shoulder, and turned to stalk in the direction of his office. He didn’t hear footsteps following his for long enough that he wondered if Harry was really about to disobey him in front of other people.

Only when he did hear those footfalls did he allow himself to breathe.

Chapter Text

“He could have killed you.”

“My dueling reflexes are too good for that.”

Harry had accepted a cup of tea to which Severus had prudently added a Calming Draught, but his hand was still trembling a little while he sipped from his cup. Severus studied him and added a drop more of Calming Draught to the tea.

Harry closed his eyes. “I don’t—I don’t know what I would have done if you’d died.”

“Or if Albus had forced you to defend your own life?”

“I could have done that. But I might not have made the best choice of spells.”

Severus inclined his head. Harry would have cast Dark Arts if he had truly believed his life was in danger, and dealt with the legal consequences later. Instead, he seemed to have been frozen by the power of his own anger at being threatened without his wand drawn.

“Mr. Nott?”

“I didn’t ask him to step in like that. He’s probably the best one who could have. McGonagall thinks he’s reasonable, and she would have got a story that was a lot more drama-laden from someone else.”

Severus nodded slowly, eyes fastened on Harry. Harry noticed and glanced at him, his face dark in the light of the fire.

“Is Barty going to be all right?”

“He’s asleep at the moment, but I think he’ll wake up fine. As fine as Barty can be,” Severus added dryly, given that the man was still most truly himself when he was close to the stabilizing influence of Harry’s Horcrux. “Losing control of the Imperius is a hard blow, but it’s not nearly as bad as something like the impact on Dumbledore’s skull when he fell.”

“I would like it best if Dumbledore never woke up again.”

Severus watched Harry, considering whether he should try to take care of that. Then he said, “That would make him too much of a martyr. Better if he survives long enough to wake up and make more statements that will confuse and alienate others. He will die of the poison soon enough, but we can inflict harm on him after death.”

“His reputation,” Harry said, after a moment’s confusion that proved how truly disoriented he was by what had happened.

Severus nodded. “I thought at first that he was unaffected by the Imperius, but I believe now that it confused him and decreased his impulse control. He would not have blurted out the accusations about your possession in public otherwise.”

“He never said anything about possession in those words, though. Do you think…”

“I think people will think he is mad. Or collapsing under the pressure of the job, if they prefer a more charitable interpretation. Professor McGonagall believes that he has dragonpox virulens.”

“It can cause madness?”

“Hallucinations, dementia, fever dreams. It essentially sets the brain on fire.”

“And your poison wasn’t meant to mimic that?”

“It was one of several possibilities it was meant to mimic,” Severus said, in his blandest voice.

Harry had lost the last of his tremors. He laughed. “And what do you think is going to happen from here?”

“No one will take Albus seriously again, even if he wakes back up and has a few good weeks left. People might not be able to think of you as the hero that they once hoped you’d be, but they wouldn’t think of you as the Dark Lord, either. And they certainly wouldn’t think of me that way.”

“Right. You’re the known terror, not the unknown.”

It would not have been so long ago that Severus would have bristled at those words, no matter how much teasing he knew they contained. Now he simply smirked at Harry and turned back to studying his notes on the Dark Mark once more.

Harry drew out a book, and they worked for a time in companionable silence. At last, Severus had a question to ask.

“Do you know what you’ll replace the Dark Mark with?”

Harry smiled at him. It was so much less tense than he’d been earlier that part of Severus relaxed, too. “Oh, yes.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Oh, no.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. “It might be that Barty will react badly in the heat of the moment, as you know, and that I will be needed to defend you. I could do that better if I knew what the Mark would be and what Barty’s reaction was likely to be as well.”

“You won’t need to do that. Trust me on this.”

Severus studied him, but Harry preserved a calm expression, and it wasn’t as though Severus had consulted him on every plan before he put it together, either, such as the way that Barty had put Albus Dumbledore on a mental leash. He confined himself to a shrug. “As long as you are sure that you will be well.”

“I wouldn’t let either of us be otherwise.”

*

“Albus is awake and asking for you, Severus.”

Severus turned around to lift an eyebrow at Minerva. “He’s asking for the person he thinks is an incarnation of the Dark Lord?”

Minerva grimaced and tucked a strand of hair back into her bun. “He wasn’t in his right mind when he said that.”

“And how many students would agree with you?” Despite his snide tone, Severus turned to walk with her towards the hospital wing. He did need to know the state of Albus’s mind at the moment, and how insane he might act.

“I’m sure that many students would agree with me that something is deeply wrong with the Headmaster.”

“I have been aware of his circumstance for some time, and that he was lying to Poppy about them. But he ordered me to say nothing, even when I expressed my opinion of his lying to our good mediwitch.”

“At the moment, I’m the unofficial Headmistress of Hogwarts.”

Severus nearly stumbled over the stair in front of them. “The Board of Governors takes his indisposition that seriously?”

Minerva gave him a tired glance. “It was really the lying to Poppy that did it. If the incident yesterday had been all? They might simply have concluded that he had dragonpox and tried to treat him for it. But since he knew what was happening for weeks and didn’t tell Poppy? That’s made them sure that either his brain was far more affected than they thought or that he did know what was happening and deliberately hid it. They’ve removed him from office.”

Severus felt a deep, quiet joy all the way up to the hospital wing.

When they entered, Poppy stood up and glared at them from eyes that had a bright red rim of exhaustion around them. “You are to have ten minutes and no more with him. It doesn’t matter what Albus says he wants.”

“His wishes seem to be suspect in any case,” Severus murmured.

“Quite.” Poppy cast a glance at Albus’s bed that was vicious enough Severus blinked. “Maybe I could have saved him if he had come in earlier. Maybe. As it is, I never had the chance to do it!”

She stomped off, and Severus raised his eyebrows at Minerva. She pursed her lips. “Poppy will grieve him, but it will be tinged with fury.”

Severus nodded. Poppy did hate losing a patient. She’d mourned for years each time a student died on her watch.

He walked over and stood next to Albus’s bed, gazing down. Albus met his gaze with fever-bright eyes. Severus would have liked to dip into his mind and see how ravaged it had become because of both the poison and Barty’s Imperius, but he thought Albus’s Occlumency might still be good enough for the man to realize what he was doing.

“Severus,” Albus whispered, “I’m dying.”

“Yes, Headmaster. I have been aware of that for some time.”

Minerva twitched a little. Technically she was supposed to be standing far enough away not to overhear, but that just confirmed for Severus that it was best to speak with an audience in mind.

“You must complete the work we talked about.”

“It will be hard to fight the Dark Lord without your guidance, Headmaster.”

“You know it is not that. You know that you must do anything you can to end Harry’s possession.”

Minerva smothered an exclamation this time. Severus honestly could not tell if Albus heard her. His eyes were hard and focused on Severus like a wand.

Severus inclined his head. “I believe that your condition and the incident yesterday have taken their toll on you, Headmaster. You are still in the thrall of ideas about Mr. Potter that are not true.”

“You have no idea what I have seen, what I know.” Albus’s voice was suddenly passionate. “We will lose this war unless you kill Mr. Potter.”

Minerva spun around and stared at them, aghast.

And he didn’t know she was listening. Severus did enjoy the way that Albus cleared his throat and looked at Minerva, who seemed as if she were about to transform into her Animagus shape and lash her tail. It served Albus more than right.

“Albus Dumbledore.” Minerva kept her voice low, probably only because she was afraid of summoning Poppy otherwise. “You think that boy is possessed?”

“I know he is, Minerva. And I know what he is.”

“What is he?”

Albus hesitated, looking at Minerva, who seemed about to breathe fire. Severus just put an expression of long-suffering on his face and enjoyed the show. It seemed Minerva had a soft spot for Harry, even if she had also believed his parents would be disappointed in his Sorting.

“He is someone who is particularly susceptible to possession by Lord Voldemort,” Albus said at last. “I have been working myself into a frenzy trying to find some other solution, my dear. If there were one, I would take it.” Severus even believed that. “I believe my collapse was partially derived from how hard I have been working.”

Severus tensed slightly. If Minerva believed Albus, it might be that Severus would need to do something that—

“You lied to Poppy.”

“About what it was? Yes.”

“How do I know that you are not lying now?” Minerva spoke in a whisper, her eyes full of disbelief—and pity, Severus thought. That was better than any emotion he might have tried to touch her mind and plant. “We know that you have dragonpox virulens, Albus. All the symptoms are congruent. I fully believe that you are suffering, but I cannot let you make an innocent boy suffer with you.”

“I do not have dragonpox, Minerva! Do I show a sign of the spots?”

Minerva just shook her head, the pity remaining. “The virulens subtype affects the body with fire more than with the actual spots, Albus.”

“Severus.” Albus turned to Severus and issued a tone of command that Severus once would have felt bound to obey. “Tell her. It was not dragonpox. It was a curse from the Dark Lord.”

Severus felt his eyes widen a little. “The Dark Lord, Headmaster?” he repeated, slowly.

In truth, it was probably a remnant of Barty’s control, the way that he had felt when he controlled Albus leaking into Albus’s head. But it was also a slip that brought Minerva’s head up as she stared at him.

“Severus,” she whispered. “Do you think he could be possessed?”

“Of course not,” Severus said, but he made his voice a little less certain than usual, and moved away from the bed with a slow step.

Albus abruptly sat up. He glared at both of them, although his eyes were out of focus. “I am not mad! And not sick! And not insane! I am cursed! Severus must kill Mr. Potter so that the world can be free—”

He slumped over on the bed as Minerva’s Stunner hit him. Severus swallowed and glanced at her as she holstered her wand. Poppy was already bustling over, face promising a painful death for Minerva.

Minerva ignored the mediwitch. “He might be cursed, but he is also insane.”

“Minerva!”

Severus turned to look at the still man on the bed as the women began to argue. Albus’s eyes were wide and staring, one hand still spread out, claw-like, at his side. There were burns along the sides of his mouth that Severus noted with satisfaction.

Severus would have liked to say something, but there was too much chance that Minerva, Poppy, or both would have noticed, and the last thing he wanted to do was increase their suspicion.

So he had to say it in his head as he looked down at Albus.

You have had control of my life for so long. It is only right that you lose control of your own at the last.

Chapter Text

“All of the Death Eaters will be called together tonight.”

Severus arched his eyebrows a little as he watched Harry leaning over an essay, studying the swirls of ink in a way that might have convinced anyone who didn’t know him like Severus did. “And you will reveal the new Mark to them?”

“Among other things.”

“You want them together so that you can destroy all of their Marks at once?”

“Among other things.”

“You could simply tell me.”

“But then it wouldn’t be as dramatic.”

Severus opened his mouth, and Harry leaned up and stared intently at him. “It’s possible that there could be someone there who knows you well enough to tell if you’re not surprised. I won’t put you in danger.”

Severus canted his head. “That is possible. But it’s also possible that you just want to see me surprised with the rest of them.”

Harry smiled, although with more than an edge of anxiety to the expression. “What happened with Dumbledore has me more on edge than I thought. Could you indulge me in this?”

Severus thought about it, and ended up nodding. Honestly, it would cost him little, and it would mean that he would indeed be surprised with the rest, in case anyone would be looking at him as a traitor.

And it would please Harry.

Perhaps that factor should not have weighed as much with him, but it was a fact that it did.

*

“Severus?”

Severus glanced up swiftly. Barty was standing in the doorway of his office, arms spread so that his hands could grip the sides. Severus stood and made his way over to his “compatriot,” eyes ready in case he fell again.

“I would have come up, but Poppy didn’t tell me you were awake.”

“I woke up about five minutes ago, and she didn’t want me to leave, but I had to. I—” Barty bit his lip. “Harry was there, and he said that he had communicated with the Dark Lord, and there is going to be a summoning tonight?”

Communicated with the Dark Lord. Severus swallowed his laughter. That was certainly one way to put it.

“Yes. I understand that the Dark Lord intends to reveal the new Mark. He presumably intends to get rid of all the existing Marks at once, and replace them with the new one.”

“He didn’t say anything to me.”

“You were unconscious,” Severus said dryly. “I assume that he probably thought a message through Harry would reach you faster than an owl. Harry has been spending all his time in the hospital wing with you when he was not in classes or with me.”

And if it had been to watch in case Albus woke up and started spouting nonsense that people believed, that was not something Barty needed to know.

“True.” Barty stared down at his boots in a way that made Severus want to pinch his nose, because he knew what was coming next. And sure enough—“I failed.”

“You did not fail.”

“You trusted me to hold Dumbledore under Imperius,” Barty said, low, angry. “I failed.”

“You did confuse him enough that he seemed obviously disturbed and said things tin front of other students and professors that did not make sense. He was affected by the Imperius, even if he managed to break it. He wasn’t pretending all the time.”

Barty’s head came up. “Truly?”

Severus held in a sigh. When had he become Official Barty Reassurer? “Yes. The Dark Lord told Harry that he was impressed with your work.”

And Severus was pretty sure that Harry would agree to go along with that lie, because he was fond of Barty. In a way. As long as Barty didn’t threaten Harry’s safety or Severus’s. As long as he wasn’t too needy.

Maybe I should speak to Harry, at that.

“Thank you, Severus.”

Barty went away with a glowing face, and Severus shook his head a little. He had to think that no matter what Harry had planned with the reveal of the new Marks, it would not be enough to earn Barty’s whole-hearted devotion. That belonged to the Dark Lord, and always would.

*

“My followerssss.”

Despite everything he knew, Severus honestly thought for a moment that the Dark Lord was playing up the hissing for the sake of the Death Eaters who had not seen him since his resurrection. And then he wanted to shake his head. Harry was less than a meter away from Severus, kneeling with his own head bowed. Of course he was in control of everything the Dark Lord said and did at the moment.

Severus hoped, even more than he had with Albus, that the Dark Lord was screaming mentally at his loss of control over the lives of people around him.

“My lord,” Lucius said, bowing his head until his hair brushed the grass of the meadow where Harry had once again arranged to summon them. “Have you come to spread the glorious news of your return?” He looked haggard when he raised his face, but then, the Dark Lord had used Malfoy Manor for a time when he had presumably been more in control of himself. Lucius looked as if he wanted to know whether that would happen again.

“I have a different announcement.”

The Dark Lord paced back and forth, head turning back and forth as smoothly as a snake’s. Nagini coiled around his feet, and Severus wondered, a bit uneasily, what Harry’s plan was for dealing with her.

“The Dark Mark isss too obviousss a brand of my ownership,” the Dark Lord said, and Severus made out the disgusted glances more than a few people exchanged. That indicated some hope for what Harry had planned, he thought. “I will be replacing it with a new Mark.”

“Will you tell us what that Mark is, my lord?” Augustus Rookwood, a cold bastard Severus had always been wary of, asked.

“Better. I will show you. But firssst…Severusss.”

Severus stood and obediently came forwards to put the potion he and Barty had worked on inventing in the Dark Lord’s hands. Harry made the puppet’s head bob and the lipless mouth say, “Thank you,” while his left eye winked.

It was the one turned away from the majority of the Death Eaters, but Severus still had to fight the temptation to scold him for taking risks.

The Dark Lord held up the crystal flask of potion. “My mossst faithful ssservants have worked on thisss day and night,” he announced. “You will owe the more dissscreet Mark I have chosssen to the work of Severusss Sssnape and Barty Crouch.”

More than one person, including Lucius, shot Severus a hateful glance. As Severus stared haughtily back at them, he thought he might begin to come around on the wisdom of Harry not telling him the truth of everything that would happen tonight. He was having a hard time acting with perfect conviction at the moment, and he didn’t know everything.

“You will come forwardsss and receive the potion.”

The Death Eaters lined up, more or less eagerly, with the truly eager one, Barty, at their head. There was more than one murmur as the Dark Mark dissolved. Severus was in the middle of the line, and he extended his arm, meeting the Dark Lord’s eyes unflinchingly.

Harry performed that stupid bloody wink again. Severus stepped back convinced he would survive this night if only to scold his ward about risks. Hadn’t Harry been doing the same to Severus only a few hours ago?

“Now,” the Dark Lord said, and folded his hands behind his back, his red gaze sweeping the Death Eaters with ease and grace that Severus suspected Harry was playing up as much as he had the declaration of Severus and Barty’s faithfulness. “I will reveal the new Mark to you.”

Half the gathering leaned forwards.

The Dark Lord opened his mouth—

And exploded.

The white flesh of his constructed body shot outwards in an expanding cloud of dust and ash and foul-smelling debris. Severus ducked and cast a shield at the same time. He was spared more than a gasp of the fumes, but others of his fellows staggered away, not reaching for their wands, crying out in shock and disgust.

And horror.

Barty was one of them.

Nagini reared up, hissing, and Severus started to aim his wand at her. But at the same moment, she burst apart, body breaking up into small writhing gobbets that bled a black, blood-like liquid. There was a long, tattered scream that seemed to dissolve into nothingness. Severus watched the way that her body bubbled in numb shock, and he was fairly sure that Harry had, in fact, brought a vial of the basilisk venom with him to destroy her. He had been in and out of Severus’s lab all afternoon.

There was another sharp wail, and then the Dark Lord’s tattered wraith broke apart and followed the dissipating mist of Potions ingredients.

There was a long moment of silence.

“Fuck this,” someone towards the back of the crowd blurted, and then Apparated out.

As the night filled with the sound of swift pops, Barty turned around in what seemed to be slow motion. He was staring towards Harry in a way that made Severus step forwards to shield his student.

No. Wait. He was staring at Severus.

“You did something with that potion,” he whispered, and a second later, he was shouting, aiming his wand. “Snape is the one who destroyed the Dark Lord!”

Only two people looked as if they might step forwards to join their wands with Barty’s, but that was two too many. Severus raised another shield, one that was layered so thickly in shimmering layers of light that they couldn’t see behind it, and then he grabbed Harry and Apparated himself.

Chapter Text

“Dramatic.”

Harry grinned at him. “I honestly didn’t know that would happen.”

“You are ridiculous.”

“You don’t sound that upset with me.”

Severus sighed. “I should have remembered that you are a teenager, and drama is inherent to your species.”

Harry blinked. Then he scowled, probably because Severus was comparing Harry to other teenagers. Severus just raised an eyebrow. If Harry started to complain about that, then he would be far more similar to the other teenagers than Severus had thought him.

Harry avoided the temptation to prove himself a cliché, at least, by sighing out. “It was a little more dramatic than I thought it would be. But the general outline of my plan worked.”

“Why did the Dark Lord’s body explode?”

“As the potion dissipated the Dark Marks, those pieces of soul he’d placed inside them returned to him. The constructed body was never meant to hold more than the small shard that it did.”

“And Nagini?”

“I did bring that vial of basilisk venom along with me. I just threw it on her while everyone else was distracted by the screaming wraith.”

Severus rubbed his forehead for a moment. “And you do not think that the wraith will return? That he will not manage to find and possess Barty as he once did? And did you think about what will happen when Barty returns to the school?”

“I think that the wraith isn’t even the same as he was, thanks to the addition of other parts of soul to the piece in his body—”

“Then he could be stronger! He could return more quickly—”

“Please listen to me, Severus.”

Severus closed his eyes and nodded. Harry’s hand was resting gently on Severus’s, and he squeezed once before he let his hand drop.

“I know more than anyone else does right now about the Dark Lord and his connection to his soul-pieces and his Horcruxes,” Harry said softly. “What was left the night my mother defeated him for the first time was a distinct shard of soul, after the one that’s lodged in my scar broke off. It managed to cling to life because of the Horcruxes, but also because of the experiences it had, and his hatred. He never realized, like I did, that the Dark Mark contained tiny pieces of his soul. Now that those pieces have returned, the wraith isn’t whole the way it used to be. It contains memories, and flashes of memories, from many people. It’s the thoughts and devotion—and private fears and doubts and worries and experiences of the last fourteen years—filtered through dozens of minds. The only Death Eaters that it doesn’t include a piece of are the ones who died before this or the ones in Azkaban.”

“And that means—what?” Severus asked slowly.

Harry’s smile rose across his face like winter dawn. “That he is truly insane. He doesn’t even know who he is anymore. He may have begun to disintegrate already. He certainly has no sense of himself as a complete person the way he used to.”

Severus hesitated. Then he said, “If you are wrong…”

“We’ll watch out for him. We have two Horcruxes in our possession, two are destroyed, and we’ll find our way to the others. I certainly got more complete and clear memories from him in the last few days than I did before. We can find them and overcome the traps on them, I’m certain.”

“We may have one near us yet.”

Harry sat up. “What? What do you mean?”

“Albus said something about securing one, and wanting me to find a way to destroy them that wasn’t basilisk venom or Fiendfyre.” Severus shook his head, annoyed that he had forgotten that. He had simply been too preoccupied by the threat Albus had posed to Harry’s life—understandable, but not forgivable. “We will have to search his office to find it.”

“Can we go now?”

“In a few minutes. We must discuss our strategy for when Barty returns to the school.”

“I thought you knew.”

Severus placed a hand over his eyes and took a long breath. “No more surprises, I beg you.”

“No, I just meant that we’ll talk the same way Dumbledore did, and make Barty think that I destroyed the Dark Lord’s body because the Dark Lord has found a better one.” Harry reached a hand up and touched his scar, winking at Severus.

“You want to make Barty think that the Dark Lord is possessing you.”

“Well. Yes. I have to admit that this plan isn’t as dramatic as the one that made the Dark Lord’s body explode, but I didn’t think that you would have much objection to its lack of drama.”

Severus closed his eyes and silently counted in his head. He had once thought it a cliché that parents of teenagers would have to do that. Now he knew it was a true way to cope with reality.

But an inadequate one.

Severus opened his eyes and said as patiently as he could, “And how long do you intend to play the Dark Lord possessing a teenage boy and faking his death before the Death Eaters? And why would you fake your death in front of your loyal followers?’

“I thought you kn—”

“Harry.”

Harry smiled at him, with that vicious edge that Severus so admired, and leaned back a little in his seat. “The Dark Lord was getting tired of a vessel that was obviously inhuman, and one that depended on a stabilizing influence from an outside agent. Just as he was of the Dark Marks that so obviously revealed his followers’ allegiances. What better way to convince most of his followers he was dead and start over with a new body than to possess Harry Potter’s?”

“And Barty will accept this?”

“Barty is the only one besides you and the Dark Lord who knew about my ability to make him sane. Why wouldn’t he think that the Dark Lord wanted to possess the body that had that sanity-inducing power, instead of depending on someone else?”

Severus hesitated. Yes, he believed Barty would believe that about the Dark Lord’s pride, his hatred of dependence.

“But it means that you cannot be yourself around Barty for the rest of the school year.”

“That’s only a few more weeks, and some of that will be spent in OWL study and preparation. And honestly, it’ll be fun to pretend.”

“For that long?”

“For that long,” Harry agreed. He inclined his head. “And in the end, it means that we can play our leaving the school more easily. You can say that you’re escaping the suspicions that Dumbledore placed on you about being loyal to the Dark Lord, and I can say that I’m bored with the ordinary life of a schoolboy.”

“All the better for being true.”

“Of course.”

Severus leaned slowly back in his chair and shook his head. “You are—a mastermind.”

“I’ve just had a lot of time to think. And I’m sorry that I didn’t share those thoughts with you until now, but I wanted to work things out on my own until I was sure that it would succeed.”

“Will you still need to do that once you are free of Hogwarts?”

Harry looked at him with shining eyes. “Why would I? I won’t be anything more than a scholar then.”

Severus snorted in spite of himself. “And probably a bored one.”

“No. I’m looking forward to the moment when I can start a life where reading and studying and learning new things is the most I do.”

Severus wasn’t sure how much he believed that, but it was at least true that Harry was less likely to give him a heart attack with his reading and studying, so he nodded and changed the subject.

It is in the world’s best interest that he mostly wants to read and study.

*

Severus shook his head when they found the Horcrux in Albus’s office. A gigantic golden ring, with a black stone fastened to it. The ring bristled with curses. Basilisk venom would have been an improvement.

“Are you sure Dumbledore wasn’t insane before the poison, that he refused to destroy this?” Harry asked, staring at the ring.

“Not insane in the way that he is now.”

“Huh,” Harry said, and floated the ring into the silken bag that Severus held ready.

Only two more Horcruxes—that they might destroy—remained outside their control, Severus thought as he did up the bag, and Harry might have ideas about how to handle them.

Hopefully not by exploding them.

*

Barty stared back and forth in silence between Severus and Harry. Severus had insisted on being present during his ward’s meeting with Barty. He had thought it only sense, given what Barty had looked like he wanted to do in their last moments before the Dark Lord.

“You’re—the Dark Lord?” Barty asked slowly.

“Partially. Not entirely.” Harry shrugged, with a hint of the same fluid grace that he had given the Dark Lord in his last moments. Severus swallowed and wondered how long Harry had been planning this, how many tracks his mind ran along. “I am still the soul, one could say, of Harry Potter, combined with the memories and knowledge of the Dark Lord. But this body will shelter and protect me more than my old one ever could have.”

Severus had to work on keeping a straight face when Harry spoke about souls.

“I am not sure that I believe this.”

Harry leaned forwards, his eyes boring straight into Barty’s. “I know the exact dimensions of the room that you spent your years under your father’s Imperius in,” he said, his voice ringing. “Do you want me to describe it?”

Severus wondered fleetingly why Harry would have tried to use that as a test if Barty had described the room to him—

And then realized. The room was one that Harry must have seen in the Dark Lord’s memories.

Barty turned an odd, delicate pink, a strangely child-like blush. “No,” he whispered, casting a glance sideways at Severus. “I would prefer that you not try to—I know that you are the only one who knows that, my lord.”

“And how much you struggled with the Patronus at first. And what you felt for Regulus Black. And what you said when your mother was—”

“No, my lord. Please!” Barty fell to one knee. “I am sorry I doubted you. I only wanted to be sure you were safe.” He hesitated.

“Speak your mind, my servant,” Harry said, haughty and acting to his fullest extent as he lounged in the chair that Severus had Transfigured to be a little more like a throne. But only a little, and only because Barty would expect that.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Barty blurted. “I would have helped you get ready for the transfer, and I could have planned the—event—last night so that it was even more terrifying and convincing for the other Death Eaters.”

“You spent months in close contact with Albus Dumbledore.” Harry let his lip curl. “Who was one of the greatest Legilimens in the world. How was I to know that he would not read the secret out of your mind?’

“But you told Severus.”

“Because he is both a good Occlumens and close enough to Harry Potter that he would have noticed a change in the boy’s bearing and actions.” Harry stared at Barty for long enough that Severus started, again, to think this particular trick wouldn’t work. Then Harry sighed. “You are upset about my lack of faith in you, my servant?”

“Yes, my lord. Of course I am.”

“You have been erratic, and you have been someone I did not quite dare to trust because of the way that he had behaved. But you did maintain control over Albus Dumbledore under trying circumstances, and you are part of the reason that he is dying, confused and mad, now.” Harry smiled, a truly chilling thing. “So you are forgiven.”

“And your faith in me?”

“Must be restored by action.” Harry stretched languidly. “For example, there are two artifacts that Severus was creating a potion to protect stored in safe places but beyond my current reach, given that Harry Potter must remain at Hogwarts. If you rescue them for me…”

“My lord, of course! I can go today!”

“As long as you can avoid suspicion, Barty. After all, Professor Dawlish must also remain at Hogwarts.”

“I can arrange things so that my students are mostly revising with each other. Please let me go and serve you, master.”

Harry contemplated Barty from on high, or so it seemed, for long moments, while Severus continued to struggle to hold his laughter in. Then he nodded. “Very well. One of them is in a cave by the sea, and protected by a variety of magical traps. You will need to take someone with you to drink the potion…”

Chapter Text

“You don’t think that he will take one of the Horcruxes and do his best to resurrect the Dark Lord?”

“He doesn’t know what they are. Given that he brought back the Dark Lord the first time a different way, he doesn’t even know that they might be necessary to resurrect him.”

“Might be?’

Harry tossed Severus a cold smile and leaned back in the Transfigured chair again. “You know, this is pretty comfortable. I could get used to it.’

Severus Transfigured it neatly into a smaller chair that promptly spilled Harry onto the floor.

Harry picked himself up from the floor, dusting off his arse, with an injured look in Severus’s direction. Severus felt something deep inside him relax. He had been worried that Harry would retaliate for that, would prove that deep inside himself, he was still the Dark Lord.

He had not. He was still Harry in all the ways that counted.

“Barty doesn’t know about the Horcruxes,” Harry repeated. “I saw that in the Dark Lord’s memories. The only way that the Dark Lord would ever have told him is if that was the only way to resurrect him. And even then, he wouldn’t have confessed the secret of exactly what they are to Barty. He would have just told Barty that it was a powerful artifact he’d enchanted to help in the resurrection process.”

Severus considered that, and then nodded a little. He could see how that would make sense to Barty, and it sounded like the kind of thing that the Dark Lord would say.

“So the people who know now are—”

“You, me, and Dumbledore. And I don’t know if the knowledge remains in Dumbledore’s rapidly fraying mind, to be honest.”

Severus smiled. He couldn’t help himself. The thought of Albus trapped and screaming behind the walls of insanity that he had partially made other people believe in gave him so much joy. Severus did hope that he got to see Albus one more time, before the end.

With difficulty, he shook off the mood. “And the Dark Lord?”

“What do you mean?”

“The Death Eaters are unlikely to tell people about the demise of the Dark Lord. How do you propose to counter that?”

Harry gave him a small smile. “Oh. I’m sure that I’ll come up with something.”

*

“I had the impression that you would warn me the next time you had an insane plan.”

“I did! I said I would come up with something.”

“That was not specific enough.”

“But it was a great test of your acting skills to maintain your expression in the middle of the Great Hall.”

Severus closed his eyes and counted backwards from ten. That did not work. He tried fifteen, then twenty, and finally opened his eyes and stared at Harry, who beamed back at him.

Severus glanced at the front of the Daily Prophet once more.

HARRY POTTER EXPLODES YOU-KNOW-WHO WITH ACCIDENTAL MAGIC!

Severus just shook his head slowly. The paper was all about Harry’s “dramatic story” of having been kidnapped from Hogwarts the night the Dark Lord had died, and supposedly about to be used to “bring him back to full power.” Given that only Albus and a few others had believed that the Dark Lord had returned fully, Harry had tailored the story to the knowledge of their audience.

Harry had somehow got hold of Rita Skeeter—well, Severus could imagine that an owl would have brought her rushing joyfully to Hogwarts—and “let her interview his bravely crying self” about how he had become so frightened when the Dark Lord was stalking towards him that he had exploded his body with accidental magic. And then destroyed his snake, his familiar, the same way.

“The detail about Nagini. Why did you include that?” Severus murmured, watching the photograph on the front of the paper. It was of Harry looking solemn and standing in front of Hogwarts, his head uplifted.

“Both to confirm for the Death Eaters reading it that it was really me there, and to give some explanation for the Dark Lord’s return.”

“His bond with his familiar?”

“Yeah.”

“But he could not have had such a bond as a wraith.”

Harry laughed in that way that always seemed to bring a rime of frost crawling down the walls, to Severus. “Do you think they really know that? Or care?”

After a moment’s thought, Severus shook his head. Albus would be one of the few who had believed the Dark Lord’s wraith had survived, outside the Death Eaters. And even most of the Death Eaters would not have known how that survival worked.

“People are just happy that he’s gone. And this way, they won’t be pursuing me when we leave Hogwarts to come back and supposedly finish my duty.”

“There will those who do not believe he’s gone. The members of the Order of the Phoenix.”

“They have little to no power. Not in the way that the Minister for Magic or the concentrated force of the public would have. Or the Headmaster of Hogwarts,” Harry added quietly.

Severus had to smile again. He had “visited” Albus yesterday, and Poppy had confirmed that the Headmaster’s condition had deteriorated further, to the point that he had looked at Severus without recognition for long moments.

And then the rage and terror had surfaced in his eyes.

He had whispered broken words with trembling lips, reaching towards Severus with one hand curled into a claw that Severus knew was probably meant to drag him closer and make him listen. Severus had only avoided the touch and shaken his head, keeping sorrow in his eyes as he said to Poppy, “I see what you mean about him being far gone.”

And then he had turned and walked away, while Albus screamed and clawed at the air in rage behind him, and Poppy offered him a Calming Draught that she spelled into his stomach when he refused to drink it.

Severus came out of his reverie to see Harry watching him with glinting eyes. “What?” Severus asked.

“This worked out well for both of us, even if you disapprove of my methods.”

“I do not see why you could not have informed me.”

Harry hesitated, and some of Severus’s amusement faded. “What is it?” he asked, leaning closer. He hated he might have given Harry cause to doubt him.

“You protected me in the first place because of the Unbreakable Vow you swore and because I was Sorted into Slytherin.”

“Yes?”

“You’ll be free from the Vow now, and from any obligation you have to me as Head of House. Will you…”

And Hary could not speak the words at the last. Severus took a step forwards and let a hand rest on Harry’s shoulder, waiting until his ward stirred and looked up at him.

“You have given me both freedom and revenge,” Severus told him quietly. “Even if I were not fond of you for yourself, I would want to continue to associate with the first person for years who has cared what I want.”

Harry smiled, the relief spilling across his face, and Severus drew him close for a long moment. He stepped back before either of them could become embarrassed.

“Do you have a plan when Barty returns with the first of the Horcruxes?”

“Don’t you want to wait and s—”

“Harry.”

“Yes. Depending on what it is and how easily we can keep it contained—if it has a curse like the ring, for example—I thought we’ll want to seal it away and work on cleansing it. Perhaps they won’t be Founder’s artifacts, though. Perhaps they’ll be more like the diary.”

Severus nodded. He had to admit that he was glad circumstances had worked out so that he could destroy the diary. It had been more powerful than most of the other Horcruxes seemed, and it had no inherent value like the diadem that would require them to study it and see if the Horcrux could be removed.

“If they’re useless?”

“Then we’ll destroy them.”

“You have no wish to retain them?”

Harry laughed a little. “Waiting to see how much of the Dark Lord really lives on in me?”

Severus could feel a flush working its way up his cheeks, but he maintained his steady gaze on Harry. Harry stared back at him, and, after a few moments, inclined his head.

“I have no desire to make Horcruxes myself,” Harry said softly. “I might have been afraid of death in situations involving the Dark Lord, but I’ve also seen what comes of trying to avoid death, which is worse. By the time that I’m old enough to rival the Dark Lord or Dumbledore in age, I think I’ll be ready to move on.”

“A pity that we cannot advertise the Dark Lord’s true fate,” Severus said lightly, back to feeling balanced and reassured now that Harry had stated it so openly. “Some of those who seek immortality might reconsider.”

“Why would we care about them?”

Harry sounded genuinely astonished, and Severus once again found a smile playing on his lips. It was so rare to find someone who would accept his own stance on the world—that it was mostly full of fools and idiots not worth taking risks for—and not seek to scold or correct him for it.

Then again, Severus was sure that Harry thought about the world in the same way.

*

“And what happens now?”

“What happens now is what you want to happen.”

Severus slowed his stride. He had been walking towards the hospital wing, ready to meet again with Poppy and Minerva in the “mysterious” case of Albus’s “illness,” and promise to do what he could, while reveling in doing so much less than what he could. But he was more than intrigued by the sound of Harry speaking to Mr. Nott.

Severus turned and blended into the shadows as he so well knew how to do. A charm that showed him a vision of the corridor from around the corner revealed Harry standing in front of Mr. Nott.

Harry seemed a bit bored and a bit impatient. Nott had his arms crossed over his chest and a lack of expression on his face that was obviously him fighting against strong emotions.

“You promised me a place at the Dark Lord’s side.”

“That was before he tried to kill me.”

“What will you promise me now?”

“The freedom and power to do what you want to do. Isn’t it enough to have been freed from the Dark Lord?”

“And if I said that part of the reason I was willing to fight at the Dark Lord’s side was you?”

Harry paused, apparently baffled. Severus concealed a sigh. There was some satisfaction here, too, admittedly. He had known that Harry making all those promises to the other young Slytherins about fighting at the Dark Lord’s side would have to be dealt with.

“I would say that I can’t give you the same opportunities for power and torture than the Dark Lord could, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“I was never looking for that.”

“Not for power?”

“For that. But mostly for the opportunity to conduct my research and create my spells for someone who would value them.”

“Then could I recommend the Department of Mysteries?”

“Harry. You know full well what I’m asking for.”

There was a moment long enough that Severus wondered idly if he would have to step in and intervene. Then Harry gave a sigh of his own that sounded like mingled irritation and fondness.

“I’ll be leaving the school soon to conduct my own version of research and spellcrafting. I don’t yet know where that will be. But you would be welcome to visit when I can provide you with a Floo address.”

Severus relaxed. He truly did not think that Nott would betray them, if only because he had been willing to do things like act as a Polyjuiced Harry a year ago and assault McLaggen when ordered. And Severus would insist on secrecy oaths to bind Nott if he found out anything about why Severus and Harry had handled the Dark Lord and Dumbledore the way they had.

It would be best for Harry to have at least one friend his own age.

“You don’t want to sit your OWLS or NEWTS, then?”

“I’ll do my OWLS before I leave. But the NEWTS? No one who’ll be left here has anything to teach me. I’ll take my NEWTS, the ones I want to and not the ones the school would compel me to, at some point in the future.”

“I might leave, too. My father is seeing new—opportunities—now that the Dark Lord is no more.”

“Well. Then I would be the first to welcome you at my new home.”

“Thank you, Harry.”

Nott bowed to Harry and then walked away. Severus shook his head and ended the spell. Nott’s father was more than a blood purity fanatic, to the point that Severus knew he had seriously considered not letting his son attend Hogwarts, where he would be around Muggleborns and half-bloods.

It seemed that his son was more sane, and perhaps a valuable or useful connection. Severus would need people who could do some of the ingredient-gathering and spell-testing that might be tedious, after all.

Chapter Text

“I am sorry to have to make this announcement…”

Severus stood with bowed head next to Minerva. He already knew what the announcement was going to be, of course. Minerva had called him to what was now the Headmistress’s office to give him the news earlier.

Severus had expressed confusion, sadness, muted anger. It was all what Minerva would expect to see. But he kept his head bowed now so that he would hide every trace of exultation in his eyes.

He could still see the Slytherin table from where he stood, and was pleased to see that Harry was wise enough to do the same thing.

“Professor Dumbledore has died in the hospital wing,” Minerva finished, her voice trembling, “after a long illness.”

Of almost exactly three months’ duration, Severus thought. In the variations of the poison that he would be undoubtedly be concocting, he would need to work out how to make the timeline more precise.

“No!” cried a chorus of student voices, mostly from the Gryffindor table.

Minerva went about soothing them and talking about the funeral they would plan and the times they would schedule so that students come and pay their respects before then, the way that her office was open to anyone who wanted to come by, and how they would pick up and go on without “the greatest wizard in living memory.” Severus just nodded along and went to talk to the Slytherins when Minerva suggested he should. Classes would be canceled for the day. He had plenty of time to pack later.

There were a few first-year Slytherins who genuinely seemed devastated, perhaps because their parents had raised them with the idea that Albus was the only one who could keep the Dark Lord from coming back. Severus turned away from them only to find Draco hovering at his elbow.

“Sir? Can I talk to you?”

This is my fault for encouraging him to take his future at the Dark Lord’s side seriously, Severus thought in resignation, catching Harry’s eye on the way out. Harry just smiled and turned around to talk to Nott.

“Yes, of course, Draco.”

Severus followed Draco out of the Great Hall and raised a Privacy Charm around them when it appeared that Draco might be upset enough to simply start blurting things out in the middle of the entrance hall.

Draco closed his eyes and seemed to meditate for a moment, perhaps to keep his temper under control. Then he blurted, “Sir, was it you?”

“Was what me?”

“Did you kill Dumbledore?”

Severus tilted his head in slow incredulity. “He was the one who kept me out of Azkaban after the first war,” he said. “And he was the one who ensured that some of my colleagues accepted me, and I was able to brew Potions for the hospital wing and have access to a steady supply of ingredients. What reason would I have to kill him?”

“Oh.”

Severus just nodded, and waited, since it seemed that Draco wasn’t done yet.

“What am I going to do now?” Draco burst out. “Mother wrote to me to say that Father is considering leaving the country to avoid Potter—”

“Mr. Potter is not that vindictive, to attack someone for merely being a Death Eater, when they otherwise did nothing to him.”

“Father is afraid of him anyway. He wouldn’t tell me exactly why.”

Oh, I know why.

But Severus only nodded as though he were thinking about Draco’s words and then said, “You need not worry about hostility from Mr. Potter. It is still your father’s choice if he wishes to leave, of course, but it’s not something Mr. Potter would demand.”

“What about me?’

“You do not wish to go abroad?’

“Well, no. But I feel that I was promised a future, and now I don’t have a future anymore. What am I supposed to do?”

Severus held back a snort. He would not see Draco express that sentiment to Harry, although he also knew that Harry wouldn’t be stupid enough to strike at Draco for it. Severus simply shrugged. “Why do you not seek to find another place for the work that you would have done if you had followed the Dark Lord?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Seek a place where your creative talents and your—writing talents would be welcome. I assume that your father has some connections in the Ministry who could mentor you. Your mother may even have some ideas.”

“Mother always says that she hates politics.”

Yes, because they intrude on her precious time of doing absolutely nothing. “Talk with her, nonetheless. You are her son. Her hatred of politics is less than her love for you.”

That, at least, Severus was certain of, no matter how self-involved Narcissa Malfoy was. He sometimes rued the day that she had had a child, considering how dangerous she had become, like a volcano that sometimes deigned to notice individuals.

“Oh, okay. Thank you, sir.”

Severus took down the Privacy Charm and watched Draco trot away. He could already sense eyes on his back that he knew well, so he strolled towards the dungeons as if just happening to wander that way. And in fact, his mind was already focused on the potion that he would begin brewing that afternoon.

Harry joined him a few minutes later, ghosting out of a side corridor.

“What did Malfoy want?”

“He wanted to know what kind of future he would have now that he could no longer follow you into the Dark Lord’s service.”

“Really?”

Severus turned an amused glance on Harry as they crossed the threshold of his office. “Yes. Did you think that he would ask about something which did not relate to himself?”

“Not that, exactly. Just that—why doesn’t he have more ambition? Why doesn’t he have dreams that aren’t tied to following someone?”

“It is rare that someone does not have those dreams in some measure, in our world,” Severus murmured, as he got out his cauldron and filled it with water, then conjured the fire that would need to be there to warm the water. “And consider that Draco had been influenced by his father from a young age. His father thought it necessary to hook his cart to the Dark Lord.”’

Harry snorted, and Severus glanced up. Harry was bent over, arms curled around his stomach as he laughed.

“The Dark Lord as a carthorse,” he gasped, when Severus caught his eye.

Severus smiled faintly as he began to place green crystals of dried seaweed in the water. “Well, remember that that is largely the way it works among some of the upper-level purebloods. They try to find someone with magical power or money but who has little direction in how to use it him- or herself to use as a horse to draw them alone. The Dark Lord probably astonished some of his followers by insisting on determining the direction.”

“Are people likely to try and use me that way?’

Severus shot a quick glance at Harry. His eyes had gone dark, his lips turned downwards. He looked ready to lash out at anyone who would attempt to make him useful.

“I don’t think as much as they would have someone like the Dark Lord. You have successfully presented yourself as someone whose greatest triumphs have come through mysterious or accidental use of magic, either as a child or recently, and Dumbledore is not alive now to pressure you to stay.”

Harry relaxed, and it seemed as though a cloud had drifted away from the sun. “Good. I wasn’t looking forward to destroying everyone who would have to be destroyed in that case.”

“And your progress with your godfather?”

“Oh, I thought you might want to be there to witness the performance.”

Severus hesitated, weighing his hatred of Sirius Black against the chance to watch Harry conning someone else with his drama. Curiosity won.

“Very well. But I will leave the moment the word Snivellus is mentioned.”

“Trust me.” Harry’s eyes glittered like broken glass. “That won’t be a problem.”

*

“You want to do what, kiddo?”

Black spoke the words while shooting a vicious glance at Severus. They stood in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, the site of so many Order meetings, and Black seemed as though he didn’t know what to do with the words Harry had spoken.

“Leave Hogwarts and not spend my last two years there.” And Harry shivered and wrapped his arms around himself even more than he had the first time that he had made the appeal to Black.

“But why?”

Harry laughed a little. He was doing a good shrill laugh, Severus thought, as he listened critically. A little too high-pitched, perhaps, but that was more likely to convince a Gryffindor than otherwise. “Can you even ask that, Sirius? I got kidnapped by Voldemort, the Headmaster is dead from a curse that Voldemort apparently cast on him, and people are likely to swarm me again and make me even more famous now that Voldemort is—”

“Please don’t call him that, Harry.”

Harry fell silent and blinked at Black for a moment. Then he sighed. “Now that You-Know-Who is dead. Last time, I was a baby and people couldn’t really take advantage of me after I was hidden in the Muggle world. I couldn’t do much for them. Now they’re going to see me as able to help them, and they’ll just—try to use me.”

“Surely Sniv—”

Black choked, staggering backwards with his hands rising to his throat. Severus stared. He would have thought Harry was using wandless magic on his godfather, but it didn’t seem as though Harry was concentrating particularly hard.

Black stopped choking abruptly and bent over, wheezing. Harry just watched him, and Severus just watched Harry.

“What was that?” Black snapped, straightening up. “Did you—what did you do to me, Snape?”

“I did nothing,” Severus said, which had the virtue of being true. “Perhaps you simply should not insult the man who helped your godson to escape the Dark Lord and who intends to mentor him outside the school?”

“You’re going to what?”

Harry had already mentioned this, but Severus did enjoy the chance to raise his eyebrows and drawl, “I’m going to mentor him outside of school. I am leaving Hogwarts myself. Without Albus and without Harry, I would have little reason to stay. And the war against the Dark Lord is done. I deserve my freedom.”

“You don’t deserve access to Harry!”

“You don’t have custody of me, Sirius,” Harry said in a small, hurt voice that made Severus have to work to keep from gaping. “You refused to take care of me. So I had to find someone who would take care of me.” He grabbed Severus’s hand and clung to it, leaning against his side. “Severus did.”

He wishes to show such weakness to his godfather?

But a moment later, Severus realized that Black hadn’t interpreted it as weakness. Pain was shining in his eyes, the kind that Severus had once imagined causing with words alone. He’d never found the right words, probably because Black simply didn’t care what Severus said enough for it to matter to him.

But now? Now he looked as if he were bleeding from the heart.

It filled Severus with an exultation second only to Albus’s death.

“You don’t mean that, Harry,” Black finally whispered.

“He’s my Head of House. He was there for me when you weren’t. He rescued me from V—You-Know-Who. He made sure that I didn’t get eaten alive in Slytherin. He never abandoned me because Dumbledore told him to. I trust him more than you.”

Black might have been stabbed through the soul this time. The expression on his face as he stood staring at Harry…

Well, Severus had never been a particular connoisseur of heartbroken expressions as opposed to others, but he still judged this one exquisite.

“What can I do to make it up to you?” Black whispered. “I still want to take care of you, Harry. How can I do that?”

“Well…”

Severus restrained a laugh and turned his back to examine a few of the patterned plates that someone, perhaps Black, had found in the drawers and cupboards of Grimmauld Place and affixed to the wall in the kitchen. He would leave Harry to negotiate this with Black. He deserved everything he could milk from his godfather for the man’s refusal to do his duty.

And in the meantime, they would get a far nicer house and more books and Galleons than if Severus had been the one to handle the negotiation.

*

“How did you make him choke on that insulting nickname?”

“I had him swear an oath the last time I visited that he would never use it.”

“That is—ingenious, but I am curious to know what tactics you used to make him swear such an oath. I am sure that he would never agree to it.”

“He might have been drunk at the time. Which led to the entertaining consequence of his forgetting that he swore it.”

Severus laughed, and stopped asking questions.

*

“I am sorry that you are resigning your position, Severus.”

“Only because you will need to find another Potions professor, Minerva. Not because you think I was a good one.”

Minerva hesitated for a long moment. Severus finished laying the scroll on her desk that contained the passwords for his office and quarters, and a list of precautions and spells he took in the classroom—not that he expected those to be followed by whomever Minerva managed to con into the position.

“It is true that I could wish for a better Potions instructor,” Minerva said at last. “But not a better soldier in the war against You-Know-Who.”

“And that war is over now, with both the Dark Lord and Albus removed.”

“You make it sound as though Albus were a willing part of that war, Severus.”

Severus just raised his eyebrows. There were many things he could say, including that Albus was the one who had led the Order of the Phoenix, not someone else, and needed a secret headquarters and defined himself against the Dark Lord, while at the same time expecting Harry to take the field against the monster.

But there would be no point, not with the amount of things Minerva could not know.

“Good-bye, Minerva,” Severus said, and turned and left the office while she appeared to still be wondering how sincere her farewells should be.

*

“It’s magnificent.”

Severus smiled, partially because it was the first time he had heard Harry use the word about something that wasn’t Dark Arts. They stood on a green hill looking down on the house that they had purchased with the Galleons Black had all but piled into Harry’s arms.

It looked like a sprawling manor house from this distance, but some of the wings were pure illusion, the kind of spell meant to make an enemy waste resources attacking a part of the “building” where no one lived. The actual, guarded part of the house was the center, where wards hummed around the walls and stones and foundation that the Black ancestors had lifted, wrapping themselves so close that there was no way to get at the house from the air, from beneath the ground, or through any gap. There was no gap.

When Severus and Harry keyed themselves into the wards, they would become part of them, able to pass in and out freely. No one else would be able to do so, including Barty and Nott, unless Severus and Harry both agreed to it.

The walls were high silver stone, nearly the color of the wards that hummed around them, and Severus knew there were labs inside, libraries waiting to be filled with books purchased by the Galleons Black had given them, rooms walled with certain kinds of stone that would react to experimental spells in specialized ways, indoor gardens for growing ingredients, warded spaces that could hold magical creatures…

“You’re drooling, Severus.”

Severus’s hand went to his chin before he reminded himself that this was Harry’s idea of teasing and pulled it back. “I am not.”

“Spiritually.”

Severus snorted and leaned back on the tree behind him, a tall black specimen whose leaves he was itching to examine. They might be the very thing for the variation of the poison that had killed Albus he now wanted to brew. “What do you intend to do about Barty’s letter?”

“Nothing for the moment.” Harry shrugged. “So the locket in the cave was fake. He said that the R.A.B. who left the note was probably Regulus Black, and he’s going to start searching for the locket in some of the places that he knows Regulus frequented.”

“And if it turns out that the locket is in a place locked down by your godfather?”

“I’m sure he would be happy enough to open them to Professor Dawlish, an experienced Auror who only left his teaching post because he didn’t want the curse to catch up to him.”

“Are you not worried about playing the false Dark Lord across years for Barty’s sake?”

Harry said nothing, forcing Severus to turn and look at him. Harry’s eyes were bright and cold, and so was his smile, in that way Severus had seen before.

“It won’t be for that long, not compared to the length of time I expect to live. And I’ll dispose of Barty if he becomes troublesome.”

“Would you really?”

“If he becomes troublesome? Yes, of course. I have some fondness for him and he can live as long as he does things I’m fond of. But if he causes trouble by hunting the Horcruxes or demanding deeds from me as the supposedly reincarnated Dark Lord that I’m unwilling to perform, he’ll go.”

“I find myself uncertain how I managed to earn your loyalty when Barty also taught you and would have instructed you even more in Dark Arts if you had let him.”

Harry’s smile twisted. For a moment, Severus was sure he stood in the presence of the Harry who had plotted actions such as eating the Dark Lord’s mind.

Then Harry’s smile smoothed out again, and he was the young man Severus knew.

“He tried to trap me. He used you as a weapon against me, and said you would suffer unless I served the Dark Lord. He was foolish enough to think that I would ever forgive that. I did become fond of him, and he was useful, but…” Harry shrugged. “It’s not enough to earn more consideration from me than that. Not when he threatened you.”

Severus half-shook his head in wonder.

“What?”

“I never thought, when I swore the Vow to protect you, that I would find someone who would be as willing and go as far to protect me.”

Harry gave him a true smile and then glanced at the house. “I’m ready to key ourselves into the wards and start exploring the house. Aren’t you? We should plant the garden as soon as possible, if we’re going to have the kinds of ingredients that we want to experiment with in a few months.”

Severus shot Harry a smile, and they began walking down from the bluffs. The best adventure of Severus’s life loomed ahead.

And the best companion of it walked at his side.

The End.