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World in Pieces	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 16431 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter List
- 9
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Chapter Ten—For the Conquest

            “And you think this a reasonable plan.”

            Harry didn’t look around at Severus. He stood with his arms folded in front of the window that Severus had placed into his lab as a useful spying device, when he wished to exert the effort, and as a convenient soothing scene when he did not wish to use it against his enemies. At the moment, it showed a harsh blue lake seen from the height of a sheer cliff, with the rocks spilling purple and gleaming into the water. Harry didn’t seem to breathe as he stared out and down at it.

            Severus did not speak again. Harry had confessed his “reasonable” plan in a flat voice that had nothing of apology or admission about it. Severus responded with silence to such things until the person who had come up with them took the time to explain them adequately. He would do the same now.

            He glanced at the potion in front of him again, and frowned as it changed from black to gold. Though he was not sure exactly how the final product would look—no Potions master ever did when inventing an experimental draught—he knew the gold color was a regression. He noted in the book lying beside him that adding poppy seeds was not an improvement and reached for the next ingredient he wished to try, a harpy feather.

            “Dumbledore can’t be trusted, and he won’t tell me anything. I’ll have to pretend to agree to his plans so that he doesn’t get too suspicious about what else we’re up to. So yeah, I have to steal a march on him somehow.”

            Severus sighed and put the feather down, using a Stasis Spell to hold the potion in place. The silence had worked better than expected. “And using your own scar to establish a link to the Dark Lord and read his mind that way is your stealing of a march,” he said. “Nothing more. Not a plan born of pain and frustration.”

            Harry turned around and snarled at him. Severus felt something in himself relax. That, at least, was a reaction the original Harry might have had, and something he could deal with.

            Then his muscles seemed to tense as he wondered whether something that would have been characteristic of the Harry he had known for seven years was worrying when it came from this Harry.

            “This is the only way I can think of to get knowledge that we have to have,” Harry said, and his voice had a calm that reminded Severus of the crushed ice that Minerva liked to put in her glasses at the Christmas parties, so thick and so pushed down was it. “No one in his ranks can spy for us. Dumbledore won’t tell me. You can give me more information than you have so far—”

            “And will do so, gladly,” Severus interrupted, with his own and more real calm. It would not do to let Harry forget that he had allies.

            Harry paused, and his eyes flickered for a moment before he smiled. The smile was there and gone too visibly for Severus’s comfort, but it had happened.

            “I know,” Harry said. “Thanks. But you can’t tell me what’s going through the Dark Lord’s mind right this second.”

            “No one can,” Severus said. “Dumbledore could not do it if he was gazing into his eyes this moment. I would not say that he was as practiced at Occlumency as I am, but the Dark Lord is a master Legilimens, and that in some ways is worse. Venturing into his mind, you would be on his ground, and vulnerable to a number of tricks and traps that could render you a mindless husk. Or, worse, take you and make you into his servant and slave, or read all the information out of you.”

            Harry grinned for some reason, explained when he said, “Nice to know that you don’t think me being a mindless husk is the worst fate I could suffer.”

            “I have been his servant,” Severus said, before he could stop himself. “I know what that fate feels like.”

            Harry lost his smile and nodded. “But this is still the best plan for all the reasons I named,” he said. “Dumbledore’s plan can’t be allowed to happen. No matter what he said, I couldn’t trust it, for fear that he was keeping something back, and that he wants to control me more than he wants to keep Tom from winning. So. I have to do this.”

            Severus relaxed once more. “Ah,” he said. “So this determination comes from the knowledge of Albus’s plan to summon another of you.”

            Harry blinked. “Did you expect me not to do anything when I heard about it?”

            “I expected you to spend more time considering your options,” Severus said, and folded his arms in turn. That made Harry face him and frown, perhaps because he had seen his version of Severus stand often in such a pose before a scolding. Severus did not mind, as long as he had Harry focused on him. “Not run in panic because of what might happen and leap onto an untenable plot because you must be doing something.”

            Harry half-lowered his head and narrowed his eyes. “That’s not the reason I’m doing this,” he said.

            “Yes, it is,” Severus said, and heard the noise of Harry’s teeth grinding. Good. “You take risks. I can understand that, because it has worked out for you in the past. You feel most yourself in the heat of battle, and that is how you were able to survive your confrontations so far with the Dark Lord. But that is no excuse for taking a stupid risk, simply because you feel helpless waiting for Albus to reveal his hand.”

            “I’ll do anything rather than see him drag another version of me into this fucked-up world,” Harry said, and clenched his hands.

            “Then commit an ‘anything’ that is productive and will not get you killed,” Severus replied, his voice smooth and cold. That voice had occasionally worked good results with Draco, in the days before Draco decided that he cared only about his dead boyfriend. “That should be simple.”

            Harry pushed his hair out of his eyes, revealing the scar in a way he usually did not, and glared at Severus. “You think so? Then why haven’t I been able to come up with anything?” He turned and lashed out at the wall, his knuckles scraping the stone.

            Severus murmured the Summoning Charm to fetch a healing balm from a cupboard nearby and tossed it to Harry. He would not hold the boy’s hand and put it on himself unless Harry was determined to act more stupid than Severus thought he was. Sure enough, after a moment when Harry held the jar of ointment and too clearly considered not using it out of spite, he grunted and began to smear it on.

            “You have not asked for help,” Severus said. “Acting alone would lead you to such doomed plans, yes. Ask me, and we will come up with something that will prevent Albus’s plan and also gain you some traction in the war.”

            Harry hesitated. Then he said, “I don’t—I don’t want you to do something that will put you at risk, or make Dumbledore suspect you.”

            “But you can, and it doesn’t matter?” Severus folded his arms again, this time not as a gesture of manipulation.

            “I didn’t say that,” Harry said carefully. He capped the healing ointment again and set it down on a nearby table, watching Severus. “He already distrusts me. Nothing except going back to my world or turning into his mindless servant will ever make him stop suspecting me.”

            “So far,” Severus said quietly, “you have acted sensibly. Perhaps more openly and with more foul language than I would approve for my Slytherins, but Dumbledore has not daunted you, even when he revealed that a way back to your universe might be impossible. You have retreated as necessary, and found ways to fight. This is different. Why?”

*

            Harry wondered how the hell he was supposed to explain, why he felt as though something was clawing him beneath his skin and shrieking in his ear.

            He couldn’t let something like this happen to anyone else. He couldn’t. He would murder Dumbledore before he would let that happen, and the idea of killing someone like that and splitting his soul made him feel weak and sick. He would come up with some insane idea to kill Voldemort, something that couldn’t possibly work and might destroy all their chances for surviving here—

            The way he just had.

            Harry shut his eyes and began squeezing his fingers into his palms, regularly, rhythmically, an exercise that one of his primary school teachers had mentioned once. Sometimes Harry had used it when he was in his cupboard and frustrated because he was hungry or listening to Dudley break a toy he would have loved to play with. He hadn’t needed it that often since he came to the wizarding world. It seemed that most of the time, there was something happening, something to do. Even when he’d walked to his death, still the hardest thing he’d ever done, there had been his feet to force to move and the Resurrection Stone to turn.

            “That is better,” Snape said, his voice so still that Harry wondered how he would get Ron and Hermione to believe him when he was home, that Snape could sound like that. “Now. Tell me why.”

            Harry forced his eyes open. Keeping them shut for too long didn’t feel like a good idea, and he stopped moving his fingers when he saw the way Snape was looking at them. Snape looked up and at his face, and that didn’t feel like a good idea, either. Harry glanced away.

            “I don’t know,” he said, and that was the truth. He didn’t know why this was so different from anything else that had happened since he was here. He’d been able to wait and accept Snape’s training and what he was learning from the books he studied without insisting on joining battle with Voldemort, why was this different? “It’s just—I hate feeling helpless, and I think I am. So I came up with this.”

            Snape was silent. Then he said, “Very well. I will accept that answer for now, though in truth there are many things about you that I would give much to understand better.”

            Harry snapped his head around and stared at him. “All the important ones can be explained by you knowing that I wasn’t raised by Sirius and I’m a Gryffindor and I was pulled here against my will,” he snapped, wondering what in the world Snape was talking about. So far, he hadn’t got very personal. What happened to talking about training and ways to take down Voldemort, and why had they switched to talking about emotions? “There isn’t anything else that you really need to know.”

            “More about how you were raised would indeed help.”

            Harry stiffened, and then realized he shouldn’t have, because if he’d snorted and treated this as an obvious thing, like his House identity, then Snape wouldn’t have thought he had anything to hide. As it was, Snape was gazing at him so intently that Harry felt as though he was back in detention.

            He ground his teeth. Well, fine. He would look at this the best way, that he still wasn’t really acting like a Slytherin if he couldn’t plan ahead, and meanwhile deal with the obstruction in true Gryffindor fashion. “That has nothing to do with this,” he said. “And you know it, too. My mum’s sister raised me, my Aunt Petunia, and her husband. I don’t know if you ever met them here, but it doesn’t matter.”

            “Then it should not matter that I would like to know more about them.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. No, Snape wasn’t going to get around him with that one. “Assuming that we win the war and I stay here for a few minutes instead of fleeing back to my universe as fast as possible, I’ll tell you about them then. Now, can we please concentrate on how we’re going to figure out what Scaly-and-Flaky is going to do next?”

            Snape remained quiet for so long that Harry thought he was going to linger on this discussion. He couldn’t figure out why Snape would want to, but asking him about it would only cement the moment in his mind as worthy of yet more discussion and laying the words out and thinking about them and—and things.

            Finally, just when Harry had thought that he might need to pick up a book on Occlumency to make Snape focus on what they should be thinking about, Snape nodded and said, “I was thinking of learning more about the prophecy bond that connects the two of you and using that to locate the Dark Lord and find out what you can from him.”

            Harry blinked. “Even though we know almost nothing about it or how it works?”

            “Yes,” Snape said, and he had eased back to the level of intensity that Harry was comfortable with, coming from him, where he wanted someone to think on the subjects he presented but did not care what time they spent on subjects that were unrelated. “It is, at the moment, a weapon for the Dark Lord alone, and Dumbledore does not understand it well, and has likely no time to research it, not if he plans to use the Order to bring someone across from another world soon. If you could use it…”

            “I’d have advantages against both of them.” Harry shook his head. “But last time we mentioned it, you said it was only the Dark Lord’s magic and training that allowed him to use it. I don’t have access to that.”

            “You have a great strength of will,” Snape said. “In some circumstances, that can substitute for knowledge.”

            “That’s not what the other version of you used to say whenever I tried to work on a potion,” Harry muttered.

            Snape paused, and for a moment, Harry thought he would ask more about the other version of himself, and Harry would have to lie or tell a lot of truths that might break the trust they had in each other. Harry set his shoulders and scowled, but he knew the scowl was really meant for himself, and hoped Snape would think much the same thing. If he didn’t want to get into awkward situations like this, then he shouldn’t keep bringing them up, the same way he never should have said those things about the Dursleys if he didn’t want Snape prying into them.

            “Nevertheless, in some cases it is true,” Snape said, and it was evident that he had decided not to ask questions, just answer them, from the way he focused on the bookshelves next to him. He frowned, and reached out to push several of the larger volumes aside, before his hand fell on something that looked like the kind of pamphlet religious organizations sometimes tried to give Aunt Petunia. He tossed it to Harry. Harry caught it out of the air, and hid a grin at Snape’s blink.

            Don’t toss things to a Seeker if you don’t want them caught.

            He looked carefully at the front of the pamphlet, but all it had was some lettering he couldn’t read. It might have been Russian. Harry rolled his eyes. “You realize that I can only read English, right?”

            “And Parseltongue,” Snape said calmly. “The book is in English, Harry. What matters is that you read it and understand the magical theory on how to channel your will. I will be available if you have questions, but I believe this is something that needs to be mastered as much by oneself as possible.”

            Harry subdued the impulse to ask why the fuck the book had a cover that looked like Russian if it was in English, and opened it. Snape nodded and turned away. Harry sighed when he saw the dense paragraphs coating the pages in front of him, with lots and lots of mentions of “will.” He was probably going to get sick of that word long before he finished reading it.

            But at least the clawing feeling under his skin had gone away. So conversation with Snape could do that much.

            It was nice to know.

*

            Severus returned to his potion, noting that harpy feathers, Augurey feathers, and pegasus down did not work, either, before he decided to abandon the use of light, drifting material for a time and turn to its opposite. He opened the drawer that contained chunks of onyx, sapphire, and other dense and difficult stones, glancing at Harry out of the corner of one eye as he did so. Harry’s mouth was set in a grim line as he read.

            The thought of the Dark Lord never truly leaves him. Perhaps that is less surprising for a young man reared in another universe where he was the only hope against him, however.

            Severus did not think the boy was paying attention to Severus himself, and certainly not enough to read the faint flickers of expressions traveling and leaping through his mind. Which meant he had the time and the freedom to make his decision.

            Did he want to know the truth about Harry’s past to aid the war effort and keep him from doing something stupid—understand him in order to help him—or was it only his natural curiosity about what events in their world had made Harry, ultimately, so different from the first one he knew?

            Looked at like that, the answer was simple. It was both, not either. He wanted to help Harry; he wanted to know the truth as much as he had ever wanted to know what the Dark Lord’s next move would be.

            Which meant he could move on to the next question: How much should he push? How far was it permissible to indulge his curiosity?

            As far as would help the war. That, at least, he knew. Choosing how much he needed to know for that was the difficult part, and the part that Harry would likely fight him on regardless of whether it benefited Harry himself or not.

            “Stop staring at me.”

            Severus blinked. He hadn’t realized that he had turned away from the jewels and was studying Harry on his couch instead. Harry’s hands had tightened on the book, and he didn’t raise his head, but Severus could see a flush making its way down the back of his neck.

            That is the problem. If I try to hold back and probe subtly, he will likely notice, and shut me out with more determination than before. If I ask him outright, he may not answer, but at least he will know that I am being—honest with him. And the reasons that I do not state, he may guess for himself. He already knows that I am interested in his past.

            “I am sorry,” Severus said, taking a chair near the desk and once again casting a Stasis Spell on the potion. “But I find myself curious why it matters so much that you grew up with Muggles, how that alone could have introduced such a profound change in your character.”

            Harry’s knuckles whitened as though he was becoming a ghost, but he never looked away from the words. “I didn’t know about the wizarding world, living with them,” he said. “So I never knew about Hogwarts, or the Houses, or the history that the other Harry must have known, or my parents. That’s the obvious reason. Of course, when I came to school in my world, I was going to pick Gryffindor instead of Slytherin.”

            “The House difference is not the most important one,” Severus said quietly. “It is a mask, a distraction, for those like Dumbledore, who are inclined to pin your strangeness—to them—on such a thing because it is obvious. And simple. Suitable for the minds of Gryffindors.”

            Harry gave him a faint smile. “Like me.”

            Severus smiled back, but did not allow the tangent to lead him away from the main trail. “I am still curious how growing up with Muggles changed you otherwise.”

            “It didn’t,” Harry said. “Except for what I just told you.”

            “Not even the second Harry, who seemed to have been raised more honest than the rest of them, was as bad a liar as you are,” Severus said softly.

            Harry ground his teeth so hard that Severus thought of warning him about chipped enamel, and in the end did not because it would sound as if he were seeking some way out of this conversation himself. Then Harry put down the book and leaned forwards, and Severus understood that he was going to get the intense focus he had desired.

            He might, however, not like what Harry did with it.

*

            “It doesn’t matter, except that you keep insisting it does,” Harry began. The clawing feeling under his skin was back—though not as bad this time, because instead of thinking about another Harry in danger of being dragged into this world, he only had to fear Snape dragging his secrets out of him.

            He can’t. Not if you keep a watch out and know how to defeat him.

            That didn’t lessen the fear, however, any more than knowing his plan to invade Voldemort’s mind had been crazy had diminished his desire to do it. He locked his hands on his knees and met Snape’s eyes without fear of Legilimency, because he thought he would feel it going in and he trusted Snape not to enter his mind without permission.

            You trust him that much, but not enough to tell him about the Dursleys?

            Harry ignored that thought, though. He hadn’t told Ron and Hermione about the Dursleys, not in any detail. There were some things that you just didn’t talk about, and it had nothing to do with whether you trusted the person or not.

            “I wish to understand the source of your differences,” Snape said. He sounded untroubled, even though Harry was fixing him with the kind of burning gaze that seemed to have unsettled Dumbledore. “Not because I fear them, but because knowing you means I can help you plan how to survive and get back home.”

            Harry paused. That was a new idea, but chimed so much with his own thoughts that it seemed weird to just throw it away and not listen to it. “But you don’t need to have that knowledge to help me,” he said at last, because it was the only thing he could think of. “Helping me depends on potions and battle spells and—and things like the prophecy bond. It doesn’t depend on my personality.”

            “You think not?” Snape dropped his voice, and proved his stares could be just as piercing when he wasn’t using Legilimency as they were with it. “When your resistance separates you from every other Harry who has come through the gate so far, when it is your stubbornness that frightens Albus, when it is your courage that has permitted you to survive so far? What are those but facets of your personality?”

            Snape was right, damn him, Harry had to concede. But grudgingly. “You already know everything you need to know, then. You even knew that I was thinking of something dangerous and how to persuade me out of it. That’s not something even my friends can do most of the time. Why do you need to know about my relatives?” The words burned his throat.

            Snape settled back in his chair. “Some part of it is personal curiosity, I must admit,” he said. “But I have found that many of your reactions do not make sense, or seem inconsistent, even for someone shaped by the different forces operating in your universe. I wish to—see beneath the surface. And you defend those secrets so fiercely, while being open on others. If I did not know better, I would say that they told you something disparaging about magic that you still believe. Perhaps it even damages your power.”

            Harry snorted. “That’s not likely. I defeated Tom back in my world, and I can assure you that no one there really knew anything about my family. My friends guessed some of it, I think, from seeing—”

            He stopped. Snape simply folded his hands in front of him. He didn’t say that Harry had as good as confessed that he was hiding something important, because he didn’t have to.

            Harry glared at the wall, and thought. On the one hand, he didn’t want to talk about this because it was embarrassing, and Snape would probably think of him as a victim or something for the rest of Harry’s life. On the other hand, Snape might not leave this alone once he had latched onto it, and that meant he would always be munching away at it, nibbling it, when Harry wanted him to think of other things.

            “I’ll tell you because I don’t want you distracted,” he said at last. “For myself, I’ve learned to live with it, and it really doesn’t matter.”

            Snape simply nodded. Harry faced him, because if he was going to convince Snape that it was no big deal—just the truth—he had to, and started explaining.

*

            Severus listened to the words of the explanation, and the silences that underlay them and played over them. He could be less sure of what the silences concealed than the words, of course, but a good listener should be able to pick out both.

            What Harry said was,

            “My relatives never liked magic much. I think—I know my aunt was jealous of my mum and hated that she went off to be a witch and Aunt Petunia didn’t get to. So they took me in, but only because Dumbledore threatened them, I think. I grew up thinking my parents were drunks, not knowing there was such a thing as magic, and not really knowing anything except that I wasn’t normal somehow and it was my fault. Or my parents’ fault. They had me do a lot of chores. I think that was their way of making sure I was absolutely normal or something. Even now I still don’t know how much they knew about the Boy-Who-Lived stuff, but if they realized, I’m sure they thought the hard work was an even better idea. They were saving money and time and getting me so exhausted I could only think about what I was doing and not start fancying myself a hero or something else stupid.”

            What Severus heard was,

            I grew up without any connection to magic. I didn’t know who I was until I was eleven years old, and then I plunged headfirst into a world where people adored me as much as my relatives hated me. There was no one there I could trust except the people who seemed to be my friends for honest reasons, and they were all my age. I was used to hard work, but also pointless work, the kind you have to start all over again the next morning. And it was work for other people, not myself. No one taught me to work towards a goal, or that I might want to. No one taught me that I was supposed to want things, to be things.

            Severus was sure that those were not the only crimes that could be laid at the Muggles’ feet, but they were the most prominent ones, and the only ones he knew about right now. He continued to listen.

            What Harry said was,

            “They didn’t want to waste time or space on me, so they had me sleep in a cupboard under the stairs. There was a bedroom, but they just used it to store all of Dudley’s old toys—Dudley’s my cousin—and didn’t let me have it until I went to Hogwarts. Then they started getting scared, because they thought I might do magic to them. There was a lot to do and never enough time to do it in, and never enough to eat. I s’pose they thought, if I was weak enough, that would also make it hard to do magic.” Harry lifted his head, and his eyes were as dark as jewels. “But they never hit me or beat me up. Well, not my aunt and uncle. My cousin did, but that was all.”

            What Severus heard was,

            They didn’t feed me. They kept me in a cupboard, like an animal or a thing they were ashamed of. They never wanted to waste a moment’s thought on me, and they nearly taught me never to waste a moment’s thought on myself. And they let their son bully me. But for all that, I don’t want you to pity me. I’ll lash out if I think you do.

            They abused me, and they taught me to look away from it, because I never had hopes of changing it, even when the wizarding world found out about me and I about it. Only of escaping it.

            Severus remained still in his chair for long moments when Harry was done speaking, and let his hands and his face and even his breathing stay in the exact same position. Harry stared at him for some time, drumming his fingers on the table next to him, but didn’t speak, perhaps because he was afraid of what would happen when they broke the silence. Instead, he finally turned away and busied himself with the book Severus had given him on will magic once more. At last, he began to relax, and he even fell into the natural rhythm of turning pages, instead of flicking wildly through them the way he had done before.

            Severus looked at him, and thought.

            He could see the marks of abuse, now that he looked, though before he had had too few pieces of Harry’s past to make them connect that way. He saw the slenderness, the flinch-and-react reflexes that perhaps had played into Harry’s talent with defensive magic but had done him no good in other areas of his life. He saw the wariness in the back of his eyes, the way he kept himself from engaging with others in the way that so many other children, like Weasley and Granger and even Draco, automatically expected to. Severus had thought it all came from being snatched into a different world and shoved at a different Order whom he could not trust. And perhaps some of it did, but it ran deeper.

            Harry had not broken. He had grown and survived.

            But in a different form than he would have, had wizards taken him in. Severus despised Sirius Black, but he had raised a boy who did not have half the reflexes or the distrust that Harry did, who was more successful at making people like him, who understood more of the signals they gave and who had established a relationship of sorts even with Severus.

            One who had survived and thrived in Slytherin. And so had the other boys that had come from much the same background, the versions of Harry Severus had known too briefly for his comfort or their survival.

            It was no wonder that Harry, this Harry, the one living and breathing in front of him, the one he was trying so hard to aid, had chosen Gryffindor. It would have been madness for him to be in Slytherin, which would reinforce all his battle-bred traits and his abuse and surround him with people he could not trust. He had needed an escape of some kind, and all the more when he began to understand the fight that awaited him.

            I can only hope that I can convince him to trust me enough to survive this particular fight.

            Harry raised his head from his book at last and blinked at Severus. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to let so much time go by,” he said in a very normal voice. “I didn’t know that I’d got so caught up in the book. Did you say something?”

            “I did not say something,” Severus said, and added one more thought to the ones he had gathered so far. If Harry could trust Severus enough to cooperate in the plans they would make to hunt down the Dark Lord, then Severus would not push him to talk further, or act further, on the abuse. There were certain things that were more important than others. Now he understood Harry’s behavior, and it seemed that Harry had managed to live in spite of it. It would be out of place to insist that he must deal with it further simply because Severus would be most comfortable if he did so.

            He will do it if it becomes necessary, as I think he will do everything else. And listen to me, counseling the son of James Potter and Lily Evans.

            Even if a different pair than the ones I knew.

            “I think that you have adequate strength of will for most of the spells described in that book,” he said. “Do you see why I wanted you to read it?”

            Harry nodded and ran his fingers absently over the letters on the cover. They glowed briefly, and Severus would have smiled if he had not been sure that Harry would misunderstand the expression. The book had certain spells on it that would lock it down completely if it judged the readers unworthy. It had bonded with Harry, however, and Severus’s handwritten notes would become visible to him in that case. “But I don’t see how I can access the prophecy bond itself without a lot of training. And even if Vol—sorry, Tom can feel all of us, all the versions of me across the universes, does that mean that I can feel him? There’s no saying that it would work both ways.”

            Severus inclined his head, impressed that Harry had thought of the objection. “There is a potion that will clarify and relax your mind, and by focusing your will in that state, I believe you can identify the bond—”

            He paused, and then leaned forwards. Harry had closed his eyes and sat still, his cheeks flushing, his hands tightening on the book. Severus had seen that expression before, but only after interrupting Harry with Draco.

            “Harry,” he said, and waited.

            “I think—he’s here,” Harry said.

            It was the only warning Severus had before the scar on Harry’s forehead, half-visible given the way his fringe was hanging, burst open. Red blood poured forth, but also something different, blacker. Severus surged to his feet as the dark liquid formed itself into a hand and groped at the air for a moment before it withdrew and turned into an eye.

            His Lord’s eyes had never been black, but the one on Harry’s forehead had the same cool anger, the same desire for power. Severus stared at it and noted Harry’s body hanging slack and limp beneath it, as though the Dark Lord could manipulate him like a puppet.

            “You have missed me, Severus.” The hissing voice issued from Harry’s lips, but it didn’t seem to bother with such small things as tongue or teeth to move. “You will be content to come with me when I take over this body? There are things I could use for you, even now. All will be forgiven if you—”

            Harry’s mouth gaped open, and his tongue appeared for a moment. Severus could hear him gasping, struggling, and knew the boy was engaged in a battle of body and mind, trying to reclaim both from the Dark Lord.

            Severus gave what aid he could. Meeting the black eye, he said, without flinching, “Legilimens,” and passed into the grip of that arctic mind.

*

            Alice: Thank you! I hope you like this new chapter, too.

            unneeded: Harry and Severus will look for more allies if they can figure out who to trust. At the moment, the problem is that very few people can be permitted to know Harry is from a different world unless they’re part of the Order, and Harry doesn’t want to trust any of them.

            The Slytherin Harry did try to help people, but he was more laid-back and more confident that adults could handle some crises.

            Zip: That confrontation is coming up next chapter, I promise!

            kyandoru: At the moment, Snape really hasn’t considered going with Harry, because this world is his home and Harry’s world would be at least as alien to him as this universe is to Harry.
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World in Pieces