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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 Sixteen—Caught

            Severus sat with his eyes shut, his breathing deep and untroubled, and explored with spread hands all the limitations of his new environment.

            Albus had paraded him before the rest of the Order, of course, telling them that he was no longer trustworthy, that he had come to believe Harry’s lies, and that he cared more about the rights of one boy to return home than he did about the safety of his own world. Severus had said nothing whatsoever about that. He had sat in his cage and let them peer at him, fascinated or angry or self-satisfied, and taunt him and believe what they wanted. He intended to rescue Draco if he could, but he had counted on no help from any member of the Order, and in so doing had protected himself from surprise and disappointment.

            Now he sat in the same cage—large, steel bars connecting rectangular steel ceiling and floor, interwound with wards and stronger magic—in a set of rooms that tradition reserved for the Headmaster of Hogwarts. Severus knew that Albus rarely used them. They were some distance, both horizontally and vertically, from his office, and he preferred the comfortable bedroom immediately behind it instead. Still, Severus knew his location, and he recognized the deep mahogany wood of the chairs and bookshelves, the sharp edge of the desk behind which Headmaster Dippet had sat in Pensieve memories from other Death Eaters.

            No valuable books in here. No convenient corners on which to tip the cage over and hope that the bars would shatter. And of course his wand had been taken from him. Nothing that Albus believed would help him.

            Severus knew otherwise. These rooms were lower in the building of Hogwarts than many others, and that was already an advantage.

            So he breathed, and he waited. And he waited. And he waited.

            The soft sound when the voice began to speak was like a revelation.

            “So. One of mine. He imprisoned one of mine, did he? And he thinks that he can go on doing that. That there’s no one left who can stop him. That Gryffindors rule the world. That this is the end, the end, the end…”

            Severus didn’t turn his head in the direction of the voice, but he did open his eyes. The babbling words tumbled out from a faint square on the wall, behind one of the huge bookcases. Severus watched with narrowed eyes, and at last caught a flash of green, idling back and forth in the square like a nervous butterfly.

            The square meant nothing to someone, like Albus, who didn’t spend a great deal of time in these rooms. It would have meant nothing to most Gryffindors, Severus thought, or even most Slytherins who weren’t used to examining the castle from top to bottom in search of advantages, secrets, wisdom to pass on. It had been Ravenclaws who learned this secret most often in the last hundred years, simply because they cared for finding out everything, whether or not it would ever matter to them.

            The square of the tarnished portrait at last had a faint, filmy edge of a face visible, and Severus bowed his head in respect to the painted form of Salazar Slytherin.

            For long moments, Slytherin lingered there, staring at him. Severus waited. He knew that this portrait had been driven mad, due to extreme age or spells from Gryffindors or a curse placed on the castle by Gryffindor himself; those were the likeliest theories and the ones with the most evidence in the records that he had been able to find or copy or steal. But the portrait still existed, and in some rooms of the castle, revealed itself.

            The deeper the one went, the greater the chance became, first that there were undisturbed frames that the portrait could creep into, and the second that there were dungeon rooms where a Slytherin might call for help, and Slytherin himself might hear.

            “Who is it?” Slytherin whispered finally. “Who calls?”

            “My name is Severus Snape,” Severus said, keeping his voice calm and neutral, the way that he would talk to a Muggleborn Sorted into his House. “I am the current Head of Slytherin. The Headmaster is a Gryffindor, and he has imprisoned me for trying to help a student.” He saw no need to trouble what was left of the portrait’s mind with details about Harry himself being a Gryffindor, or the war being against someone who had shared his House. Slytherin, this shadow of him, understood rivalries confined to Hogwarts best, and simple black-and-white oppositions. Severus spoke the words and then waited, his heartbeat a bit faster now. He had other options if this did not work, but he could admit that he would like it to.

            The portrait considered him for so long with its head on the side that Severus thought it would wander off soon. But then Slytherin said, “I cannot help. I cannot touch you.”

            That was more sanity than Severus had thought he would win for so little effort. Keeping his voice low, his head bowed, he said, “But, Founder, you can speak Parseltongue. You might not be able to touch the cage that holds me, but you could call snakes who can.”

            The portrait’s tongue shot out and licked up and down its lips. Severus had never been sure whether it was forked or that was only a momentary impression. “That is true,” he said at last. “But no snakes have come to my call since my basilisk died.”

            His Harry’s second year, Severus thought. He held back his impatience and said, “Founder, you are still one of the greatest wizards in the world, with one of the greatest minds. If you think, you may find the solution.”

            Slytherin trembled, eying the door that Albus had brought Severus’s cage through. Then he said, “I must think. I must go.” And he faded out and to the side, into the part of the portrait that Severus had never seen.

            For now, the promise had to be enough. Severus leaned back against the side of the cage—the wards wouldn’t sting him as long as he didn’t actually try to get through the bars—and shut his eyes. He was weary, and he might as well use the moments to soothe his weariness, since escape was as yet impossible.

*

            “I don’t find you impressive.”

            Harry blinked, then smiled. “It’s refreshing to be told that right from the beginning,” he said, and held out his hand. “Harry Potter, but from another world, one where I was Sorted into Gryffindor instead of Slytherin. Nice to meet you.”

            Lucy Golden, leader of one of the rebel groups that Fred and George had contacted and convinced to meet him, shook his hand without smiling. She stood tall and aggressive, legs braced, the way she had from the moment Harry walked into the abandoned manor. She had long, orange hair, which probably indicated distant Weasley blood, that tangled around her face, and a sharp jutting chin, and a scar that burst through her left eyelid and continued up that side of her face. Harry thought he recognized the mark of Nagini’s fangs.

            Golden jerked her hand back from his and sat down as soon as possible, arms folded. Harry noticed the weird way the cloth wrinkled over her hip when she did that, and thought it possible that she was carrying a long knife. Evelina had taught him to recognize that much, although he wondered why most wizards would bother with blades when their spells could strike from a greater distance.

            Then he eyed the scar on Golden’s face again, and admitted to himself that there were probably some wizards who didn’t mind getting in close.

            “Tell us what proof you have,” Golden said, voice flat and uninterested, although she leaned back in the dusty chair that her group had dragged out from somewhere in the manor and never took her eyes from Harry. “The last I knew, the Savior was all cuddled up somewhere in Hogwarts, under the personal protection of Dumbledore.”

            “Dumbledore says a lot of things that aren’t true,” Harry said quietly, and spread his arms. “As for the proof, there’s no evidence better than the truth. Put me under Veritaserum, and I’ll answer a careful list of questions.”

            Golden actually bounced up in her seat, staring at him. Harry arched his eyebrows, and waited. He didn’t know exactly what had stunned her, and he was learning not to give his reactions away until he did.

            “I find it easier to believe that you’re a Gryffindor than I did,” Golden said, a moment later. “No Slytherin would offer that much.”

            Harry shook his head. “I think the House stereotypes are less than useful, sometimes, but here you’re probably right.”

            “I know I would never offer this.”

            Harry blinked, then nodded, understanding what she was telling him. She had been in Slytherin herself. “I don’t want a lot of other people in the room with us,” he warned. “A few of my allies, a few of yours.” At the moment, they were alone in the actual room itself, though Molly and George were watching his back and some of Golden’s rebels lounged outside the door behind her. “If you can’t manage that, then I don’t think we can deal.”

            Golden watched him in silence, her fingers scratching at the sides of the chair. “I can manage that,” she said, lips barely parting to let the words out. “I think you may be the one who has trouble.”

            “I’m the one making the offer,” Harry pointed out, and leaned forwards. He wasn’t that intimidating, but from the way Golden blinked and shifted away from him, she didn’t agree. “Are you going to be stupid and refuse it, or not?”

            Golden laughed, then, and if her laugh was raspy and she caressed her knife when it was done, at least she had made the bloody sound. “Two of my allies,” she said. “And two of yours.”

            Snape. But in Snape’s absence, Harry had to pause and think a bit about who he trusted most. “Molly Weasley and Ginny Weasley for me,” he said. Ginny was under the charm Snape had cast that would prevent her from talking about what she had seen when Ron and Hermione had contacted him, but Harry was still inclined to trust her. She knew some secrets. Might as well bring her into the rest.

            “Mine are a witch named Heron and a wizard named Aristides Golden.”

            Aristides was probably some sort of cousin, Harry thought. “Just Heron?” he asked about the other one.

            A small smile that rearranged the scar on her face a little. “Just Heron.”

            Harry nodded. If she wanted to be mysterious, then he would indulge her, and maybe that way, she would see that he actually took this seriously. “Fine. Then you might as well call them in, and start preparing your list of questions. One of your allies and one of mine will have to work on the Veritaserum.”

            Golden didn’t take advantage of the invitation right away. Instead, she just sat there, studying his face, and shook her head when Harry stared at her. “You’re being very accommodating,” she murmured. “Someone might wonder what you have to gain.”

            “Allies,” Harry said. “If you believe me.”

            “If you’re under Veritaserum, how can I refuse?” Golden rose to her feet, stood looking at him with one fist cocked on her hip, and then bowed to him. “Consider well who you want to brew,” she added, turning her back on him and walking to the edge of the folded wizardspace that led into this meeting room. “I plan to choose a Potions expert.”

            Snape.

            But Snape was gone, and that left Harry to handle the politics by himself and hope that he didn’t fuck up too badly. He nodded to Golden and said, “I’ll be ready.” Then he turned away to find Fred and George.

            Come back quickly, Snape.

*

            “You have disappointed me, Severus.”

            Albus spoke with a gentle, mild emphasis in his voice that made Severus want to thrust his head through a brick wall. As that was not an option, he remained sitting still, his reinforced Occlumency barriers shimmering behind his eyes, and watched Albus. His cage had been moved to Albus’s office now, the same place where Albus had made plans to trick and summon and control and murder so many versions of Harry.

            “You ought to have known that milder human loyalties do not matter next to the greater cause we serve,” Albus said, and paced back and forth with his eyes locked on the floor for a moment, before he lifted his head and turned back to Severus. “Or perhaps I should not have exposed you to a temptation that would prove too much for your knowledge of that fact, by making you Harry’s exclusive mentor.”

            Severus once again chose silence. Only the suspicion of an advantage would tempt him to break it, and as yet, he had seen nothing like that here.

            Albus sighed and took his seat behind his desk. His face collapsed into a mask of age that Severus had seen for the first time when they had attacked the Dark Lord, in desperation, after the first Harry—the one born in this world—had died, and found themselves beaten back. But it was a mask as much as any other expression that Albus wore was. Severus watched him motionlessly, attentively.

            “Do you not understand that no one life can be allowed to trump the fate of the world?” Albus asked, staring into Severus’s eyes. “That Harry was brought here to serve the purpose expected of him, and if he dies, then he has died in fulfillment of his destiny?”

            Severus considered whether he ought to speak, but again saw nothing that would change because of it. He shifted a little to ease the cramps in his legs that the cage was causing.

            “Yes, you might say that we did not ask him before we brought him here.” Albus made a dismissive motion with one arm. “But the prophecy did not ask if he wanted to be in the middle of a fated situation with Tom before he was born, either. Nothing about this is his choice, or mine, either. We are both simply doing the best we can in the middle of dark circumstances.”

            Oh, well done, Severus thought. If he had the slightest shred of loyalty left to Albus, that little speech might have touched it.

            As it was, while Harry was indeed doing the best he could in horrible circumstances, his method of doing so entirely opposed Dumbledore’s. So there was really no reason to change allegiances, either. And Severus knew that mere lies would not suffice to fool the Headmaster, not now. He remained still and relaxed.

            Albus paused, and took off his glasses to clean them on his robes. When he put them back on, he asked, “Should you like to see the owl I will send to Harry?”

            Severus didn’t twitch a muscle because he had practice. Once again, he experienced a distant pity for Albus. The man had been training Severus for years not to pay attention to what he said, but rather to think what the consequence would be if he did what Albus asked him to do.

            That had led Severus into cooperating with him more than once, notably lending his strength to the spell that had summoned more than one version of Harry Potter from his universe. He had wanted to survive. He had wanted some kind of repayment for the fact that he had pinned his hopes on the Harry he’d known and the boy had died and left him vulnerable to death. Nothing else he could do would ever touch or affect those other universes in any way, so he had called it a necessary sacrifice.

            Now, he saw. He was not the one making that sacrifice, and while he did not need to participate in it, neither did he need to hasten Harry’s steps to the end. He would help this Harry he had come to know better than any other to survive, and that meant planning out his reactions in advance of Albus’s manipulations.

            Albus leaned towards him and dropped the façade of gentle old Headmaster, the way he had only ever done with Severus. “You know that I will use you to lure Harry to me,” he said quietly. “That we must have him to continue the war.”

            Severus raised one eyebrow, and said nothing. That would anger Albus more than anything else. And even people as powerful as Albus made mistakes when angry.

            “Do you doubt the validity of this war, now?” Albus’s voice descended, became the gentle one a general would use to talk to a soldier who had tried to desert. “I must admit, my work would be much easier with you by my side. I have new strategies now, ones that do not depend on controlling Harry in the ways that I mentioned to you. If you convince Harry to come back to me, not only he but the innocent people he is fighting to save may have more chances to survive.”

            Do you think I forget so easily? Severus remembered the grim determination that had filled Albus’s tone when he spoke of controlling Harry to make sure that “everyone” could survive the coming war. No, Severus did not think Albus had changed his mind.

            “I think that linking my mind and Harry’s could change the course of the war,” Albus continued. “If he could use my power, but strike at Tom inside the prophecy barriers, it would be the same as if I could fight him myself. Then we all might survive, and Harry might go home.”

            Severus blinked, the only concession he would allow himself. It was indeed an interesting suggestion, but the main thing he wondered was why Albus had not made it before now. He had always been obsessed with figuring out a way to fight inside the prophecy, because they had tested the Dark Lord’s protections so many times and learned, to their sorrow, that no one but the one destined to do so—Harry—could kill him.

            “Do you think he would agree to that?” Albus had been watching him, Severus knew, and would not have missed the blink. “I knew he would not agree if I proposed it, but if you did so…if you explained to him that this is the only way we can win the war…”

            “Why is it, Headmaster?” Severus knew that the lack of emotion in his voice, the lack of reverence and involvement, would hurt Albus worse than any insults he could have flung. Insults would have let Albus feel martyred, and Severus wanted to avoid that. “Before, sending the Patronuses against the Dark Lord was the only way. Before that, summoning multiple versions of Harry Potter. If this works so well, why not offer it before now?”

            Albus was silent, his gaze at Severus as mild and steady as ever. But Severus knew the quality of that silence. He was planning, thinking, on how to come up with a response. If he already had one, or believed what he said he believed, he would have answered by now.

            “I did not think,” Albus began at last, his voice sounding as if he was trying to convince a tiger not to attack him, “of this before now. And of course it’s very difficult to suggest to a young boy that he yield his mind to his Headmaster.”

            “You know that his position and yours are not ordinary,” Severus said. He let a little more emotion into his voice, mainly to hold Albus’s attention. There might be a way around the impossible position he had placed himself in after all, again by angering Albus, or perhaps forcing Albus to kill him. “Even if they were, a moment ago you spoke of linking your minds. Now you speak of him yielding his mind. Why?”

            Albus shook his head, slowly. Severus watched him. Albus stood up and once again paced out from behind his desk, ending up at one end of Severus’s cage, where he reached up and caressed the bars. Severus felt a hum rise and surround him, a hum like the power that gathered before a storm.

            “I did not expect you to understand the subtleties of what we do here,” Albus said, his head turned so that Severus was excluded from his field of vision. “But I did think that you would understand why I must control Harry’s mind after we have linked. He does not have the war experience I do. He would not make the right decisions. I am the one who has understanding of the psychology of this version of Tom, and the one who can best guide him in acting with our allies.”

            Severus hesitated. But he did not think there was much worthwhile in stretching this game out with Albus. Albus either needed to kill him, which would loosen the hold he could have over Harry, or to send Severus back to the room where he’d been keeping him, where the portrait of Salazar would feel free to come near as he did not in the Headmaster’s office. Enough game-playing.

            “I know that you know Harry won his own war,” Severus said. “And that the only allies you speak of are the Order of the Phoenix, who he doesn’t like and doesn’t trust.”

            “With an exception for you,” Albus said, staring at him full-on now.

            Severus shook his head. “We still argue,” he said, and knew that Albus would hear the ring of truth in his voice. With any luck, he would not look under it and note the shadows in it, especially because Severus proceeded with his plan to make Albus angry. “And he cannot help comparing me to the Severus Snape he knew in his own world, who angered him and provoked his hatred.

            “Meanwhile, Headmaster, what do you think you have to teach him? If this plan would work, you would have proposed it before now. This is another tiresome attempt to gain control of Harry, and of me. I would wonder why you bother, but even more than someone acting independently of you, you hate the fact that someone around you could have independence of thought. Thus your pitiful attempt to capture my loyalty. Thus your even more pitiful attempt to make me think that you would spare Harry’s mind once you had control of it. No, this is a plan that is risky in some way, or you would have proposed it before. You care more about defeating Harry than you do the Dark Lord.”

            Albus stood up straight, his hands clasped in front of him and his bearing taking on a decidedly more magisterial presence. It would take someone who knew him as well as Severus did to see the slight tremble under his robes, in his clasped hands.

            “That is not true,” Albus said, softly. “We are all in this together. Sirius wants Tom’s defeat, and I do, and young Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger.”

            He names only the Gryffindors, Severus thought, and looked into Albus’s eyes without fearing the probing behind his Occlumency barriers. Albus was not even trying that at the moment. Does he not think the Slytherins want the same thing? Or is it his prejudices showing through, even as he attempts to convince me?

            Truly, Severus did not know that Albus’s attempts to persuade him had always been this transparent. Rather, he thought that he knew them for what they were now because his primary loyalty was no longer to Albus. He had followed him because he had to, because the Order of the Phoenix was the only way to survive the war, the only group still fighting.

            Now…

            Now my primary loyalty is to Harry. And if he thinks he can sway me from that because I abandoned my loyalty to him, he does not understand me at all.

            But how far did he ever understand Slytherins? Or Gryffindors whom he has not managed to influence from childhood?

            Albus faced him again, and he was silent and intense as he met Severus’s eyes, his hands loosely held in front of him as if in prayer. He could look at someone like that and make them feel they were the center of the world, Severus thought. It was one reason so many people had stayed loyal to him even when they lost someone they valued and loved, as Black and his friends and Draco had lost the original Harry. Albus made them feel that he cared for them individually, that he always turned to them with his mind full of what they had lost and that sympathy would make that loss into his own.

            Severus could not remember the last time he had believed that for himself. Perhaps seven years ago, when Harry Potter had been Sorted into Slytherin and Albus had guessed at some of the torment Severus would feel, having the son of his old enemy and his old friend, the heir of his still-living enemy, in his House. He had come to Severus’s office and they had talked for a long time.

            That man was no longer here. Fear had eaten him alive.

            “When the war is done,” Albus said, “we must not begin another one immediately.”

            “It sounds like that is what would happen,” Severus said, “if only in Potter’s mind, if you tried to enslave him.”

            “It is what will happen if I am not in control,” Albus said, his voice rising a little. Severus had noticed, though again someone who did not know Albus would not have, the way he flinched at the word “enslave.” “Because with his renown and his skills and his lack of care for this world, Harry could become a Dark Lord.”

            “If you send him home,” Severus said, in a voice that not even he had known was going to be that dry, “then you obviate the problem.”

            “There is no way to do so,” Albus said. “I knew that when I urged the rest of you to perform the spell, and it is a cost that I should have considered more closely. I should have suggested that we use some other spell. But Harry is here, now, and for my mistakes, I am at last claiming responsibility. I am stepping up and doing what I should have done.”

            “Which is destroy a boy’s mind?” Severus asked in interest.

            “Which is fix them.”

            Severus nodded as though he cared. At least this convinced him that there was no possibility of negotiating with Albus, not if he wanted to destroy Harry’s mind and personality in order to “fix” him. A pity that no one else might ever know that, because Severus did not know of a way to get the information beyond the castle.

            “Then you will have to do it without me, Headmaster,” he said. “I have chosen my side.”

            “Which is with a boy so careless that he could destroy our whole world?” Albus spoke sadly now, the twinkle in his eyes dimmed to a mere ember. “I am surprised at you, Severus, knowing how you value care and mindfulness.”

            “If I had valued them properly,” Severus said harshly, letting his own anger out in a carefully controlled way, “I never would have participated in this spell in the first place, nor blamed a boy for my own errors, the way you do, sir. I would not have participated in this meaningless summoning of boy after boy, this mindless sacrifice—”

            Albus jerked, and his face turned pale. Severus cut himself off, staring. A moment later, he wondered if he should have kept going, pretending not to notice the reaction, but the damage was done. Albus had stepped back from him and given him a politely false smile.

            “I think the best course of action, if we cannot agree, is to return you to the dungeons,” he said, and waved his wand. Severus’s cage rose and floated through the door. Severus leaned back against the bars, not the most comfortable pillow but one that would keep his head in roughly the same position and allow him to think better.

            Long after Albus had returned him to the dungeon room where he had started, he was sitting there, thinking on that, meditating on it. Even with Albus’s willful blindness to what they had done in the past, Severus could not believe that this was the first time someone would have suggested the concept of sacrifice to Albus. It could not be. Albus was intelligent as well as powerful. He had come so far in stupidity because he could not bear to think he was wrong and wanted to ignore the consequences of his actions, not because he could not possibly imagine different words for those consequences.

            So. What did it mean, then? Why was the concept of summoning Harry Potter as a sacrifice so shocking to Albus?

            Severus did not know, but at least it gave him something to occupy his mind with during the long hours as he waited for something else to happen.

*

            “You have agreed to the list of questions under Veritaserum, and everyone else in this room has agreed to bear witness.” Golden’s voice was stiff and formal.

            Harry nodded. They had chosen the huge room where he had confronted the Weasleys for this negotiation of the terms of the alliance. Golden sat in a simple wooden chair facing him, flanked by her chosen witnesses, a big wizard who looked a lot like her without the scar and a still, silent witch with long black hair. The symbol of a heron circled around both her eyes, making a flying body and long, trailing legs.

            Harry had got no answer to his question about why she was called Heron, but he hadn’t expected one.

            Molly and Ginny both stood with Harry, and Molly kept reaching out and squeezing his shoulder. Everyone else was out of the room, and the loudest sound at the moment, as Golden stood up to bring the Veritaserum over, was the flickering of the fire.

            “Now,” she said, and handed the vial to him.

            Harry took out the stopper and tilted the vial back, allowing three drops, and no more than three drops, to fall onto his tongue. It stung and shivered, and then the world became distant and drifting and clear. Harry handed the vial back, and Golden retreated to her chair, conjuring a small hourglass in front of her. They all watched and waited in silence as the sand measured out five minutes. Golden insisted that was the length of time they needed to be sure that the Veritaserum was really working.

            Then Golden nodded, looked at the parchment, and asked, “What is your name?”

            “Harry James Potter.” Harry’s voice sounded like an echo to his own ears. He felt Ginny’s hand clasp his, and he nodded a little to her in thanks.

            “Were you born in this world?”

            “No.” The Veritaserum would have been content to have that be the answer to the question, but Harry pushed himself further, because he knew it would work best to convince Golden. “I was born in another world that Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix snatched you from.”

            Golden frowned. Harry knew he was probably forcing her to skip a question on the list, although he couldn’t remember which one. “Why did they bring you here?”

            “Because the first Harry Potter is dead,” Harry said. “He committed suicide by changing his wand into a knife and slitting his throat. And they needed a Harry Potter in order to defeat Voldemort and combat the prophecy.”

            The woman called Heron straightened up at that, and exchanged a sharp look with the wizard behind Golden. But either Golden didn’t notice that or she didn’t care, because she asked the next question. “Why didn’t you stay with Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix?”

            “I don’t think they can win the war,” Harry said. “And they kept summoning versions of me and letting them die. I don’t trust them to get me home.”

            Golden bit her lip for a second. Probably because she couldn’t ask any questions except the ones already on the list, but she’d thought of something else, Harry decided, with a detachment that he doubted he would have had except for the Veritaserum. Well, maybe he could give her a chance to ask them later, when she trusted him more.

            “Do you want to kill You-Know-Who?” Golden was clutching the parchment list now, bending forwards.

            Harry nodded. “I want to kill him with everything in me.”

            “Why do you want to kill him?”

            “Because he killed other versions of me, and because he’s killing other innocent people,” Harry said. “The Order of the Phoenix wanted to use me against him, but they failed. But I can’t just give up. There are other people like the Weasleys out there who don’t deserve to suffer just because the Order is stupid.”

            Golden turned to the witch named Heron and whispered a question. Heron bent down towards her and listened, but gave a slight shake of her head. Harry couldn’t hear what Golden whispered, and he doubted it mattered, anyway.

            Golden turned back. “Do you want to help us?”

            “If you’re fighting against Voldemort, and if you don’t want to give me to Dumbledore,” Harry said. “I’ll fight if you turn against me in any way.”

            Golden gave a thin, approving smile that made the scar on her face writhe. “Are you going to betray us?”

            “Only if you betray me.”

            That made the wizard behind her move and Molly’s hand tighten on his shoulder, but Golden kept right on going. “Could you take orders?”

            “If they were orders that someone explained and I thought they made sense,” Harry said, and again added a little more, because Golden had started to watch him as if he stunk a little. “I’ve had enough of people trying to use me and not explain to me why I can’t just do certain things. You have to treat me like an adult and not a teenager.”

            “Can you work with people who use Dark magic?” Golden went on to the next question in the list.

            “Yes,” Harry said. He thought about adding that he had used Dark magic himself, but then he would have to explain about the Elder Wand, and anyway, that hadn’t been part of the question.

            “Can you work with people who weren’t Gryffindors?”

            Harry had thought that was a stupid question when they put it in, but he supposed they had to ask, since all of the Weasleys were Gryffindors, and those were the only ones of his allies Golden had met so far. “Yes. I’ve worked with Professor Severus Snape, and he was a Slytherin.”

            “The Head of Slytherin House,” Harry thought he heard someone mutter, but he ignored it. It was obvious information, and if they had to say it aloud to comfort themselves, that was all right.

            “Very well, then.” Golden’s shoulders tensed as she leaned forwards. “And finally, can you fight beside people who may dislike you?”

            “Yes. As long as they don’t betray me or try to control me.”

            Golden nodded slowly. That was the end of the questions on the list, Harry thought. He did tense a little, because the Weasleys, minus Fred and George, had thought Golden would ask more questions and betray the agreement.

            But Golden stood up instead, her hand on the blade that Harry had seen hanging under her robe, and bowed to him. “Welcome to our ranks, Harry Potter. We are proud to have you.”

            “And I, you.” Harry was glad that he was still under Veritaserum at the moment, so she would know he was sincere.

            That’s one hurdle passed, and some allies gained. Not that I think it’ll be enough on its own, but it’ll help.

            You know what would really help, Snape? You coming back from your little trip as soon as possible.

*

            “Severus Snape?”

            Severus lifted his head. He had seen a flicker of motion in the portrait already, but hadn’t looked around, because he didn’t want to scare the mad figure away. He nodded. “Salazar?” he asked, when he still saw only the corner of a head poking around the tarnished frame.

            “Yes. There are a snake and a person. They’re going to help you.” Salazar beamed and ducked back behind the frame, maybe out of the painting altogether. Due to its position and the way Albus had placed the cage when he brought Severus back down here, it was more difficult than it had been at first for Severus to see him.

            Severus frowned and started to speak, but a door scraped open behind him. He turned, hoping that Salazar had not gone far enough into insanity to think that it was a good idea to alert Albus.

            But Draco stepped inside instead, stared at him for a second, swallowed, and called over his shoulder, “Yeah, he’s here. And in a cage, like the portrait said.”

            Severus drew his breath to tell Draco how dangerous it was to bring anyone else into this, given that the rest of the Order was loyal to Albus, but an entirely unexpected voice said, “Good. I have had quite enough of this, especially when this one is a Gryffindor. It’s time that I chose my side.”

            Minerva McGonagall stepped into the room behind Draco and began blasting away at the wards on Severus’s cage, a look of grim determination on her face.

            Severus sat back slowly, keeping his pleased smile from showing with an effort. It must have taken, truly, the courage of the mad, for Salazar to go to Minerva as well as Draco.

            And even more courage for her to break with Dumbledore.

            We may win this war yet.



*

            unneeded: Draco is getting out, but Harry really does need Snape for a lot of things. On the other hand, Snape is coming back, so.

            Zip: Sorry it took me so much time, but yes, I am continuing both stories. Roses, Made by Hands should have the next piece in a month or so.
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World in Pieces