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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 Seventeen—Out of Hogwarts

            “We will have to be quick, and we will have to be silent.”

            Severus simply nodded, wondering why Minerva was telling both him and Draco what they already knew. Then he spied the way the boy was almost hopping with excitement beside them, and stifled his snort. So perhaps they did not both know it.

            Or perhaps she hopes to soothe her own nerves, Severus thought, as he watched Minerva consider the corridor that led to the dungeon room where Severus had been imprisoned. This was a big step for any member of the Order, even those like Black who had sometimes challenged Dumbledore’s rules and those like Lucius who until recently had not lived by them. Albus had a hold over the minds and hearts of those who followed him.

            And when they have participated in the spell that summoned the various versions of Harry Potter, and had to watch them die due to their own actions…

            Yes, that had been a genius move on Albus’s part, Severus had to admit. If he bound the Order as conspirators, he at once made them part of his victory if they did win and implicated them in the guilt if it failed. No wonder people like Weasley and Granger, who cared about doing right, had not wanted to help Harry more than they did. Their consciences were too tender for them to think that they might have made a mistake.

            Valuing your own survival more than your own conscience is more intelligent than many know.

            “Why did you come back, Severus?” Minerva asked, still studying the corridor ahead. Remembering the times that Albus had planted portraits in obscure corners that would warn him of movements in the dungeons, Severus did not blame her caution.

            “I wanted to retrieve the books and potions and some ingredients I had in storage,” he said, watching Draco. Draco’s cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright, but he really hadn’t said much since they rescued Severus from the cage. Severus wondered what thoughts filtered behind those eyes, and resolved to find out soon. “And take Draco with me if I could.”

            Immediately, Draco pulled himself away from whatever inner world he’d been contemplating and looked up, straight at Severus. “Did he ask for me?” he whispered.

            “No,” Severus had to say. “I was the one who thought that you should not be left to the mercy of the Order.”

            Draco closed his eyes and bowed his head.

            “Then we should retrieve what we can,” Minerva interrupted, before Severus could decide whether or not words were required. “We’re going to pass right by your rooms. It would be criminal not to take what we can carry.”

            Severus frowned. He would not have thought of that word, and he had to admit it sounded like too great a risk for him to take. Perhaps Minerva’s courage had overpowered her common sense.

            On the other hand, if it had not, would she have taken this risk?

            “Very well,” Severus said, and stepped up beside her. They had spent long enough scanning this corridor to spot most traps that Albus would have left, he was sure. “Come.” He strode towards the wall where the door to his rooms lay.

            Perhaps it was the shape of the shadows that warned him. Perhaps a change in the atmosphere about him, that hinted to him a stranger was there, someone who didn’t know how to breathe in rhythm with the dampness in the walls.

            Either way, Severus spun with his back to the walls, one hand snapping out to Draco’s shoulder to hold him back, while his mouth opened to shout a warning to Minerva. But she had already dodged to the opposite side of the corridor and let the curse go past. Severus recognized the bright orange light of the Vomiting Curse and grimaced. It was a much more potent spell than the similar hex that would upset an enemy’s stomach.

            “Almost got you, Snivellus.” The voice was ragged. Black pushed himself away from an alcove that Severus had forgotten was there—it was a dip in the stone, so shallow that one couldn’t even put a shelf in it—and stalked towards them. “If I couldn’t prevent you from taking my godson, I’ll at least prevent you from going back to him.”

            “This Harry is not your godson,” Severus said, tightening his hold on Draco when he would have tried to step in. He could see Minerva from the corner of his eye, too sensible to interfere, but most of his attention had to remain on Black. “You helped to pull him from his world and subjected him to Dumbledore’s control and attempted manipulation of his fate. That you accuse me of holding him hostage is rich.”

            “You participated in that spell, too, Snivellus.” Black’s voice descended to something close to a growl. Considering his Animagus form, Severus was not surprised. “And no one knows what you’ve done with him. Albus told me that. You were supposed to train him, not dispose of him. Which is what you did, isn’t it?”

            “If I were to tell you that Albus told me, to my face, that he wished to summon another Harry from another world to take the place of this one, because he was proving too stubborn to control?” Severus asked. “What would you do?”

            Black stopped and stared at him. Severus could hear the way Minerva had gasped, but she, at least, knew a little of what was going on, and did not attempt to interrupt, instead watching intently.

            “I would say you were lying,” Black said. “Everyone knows that you would have a grudge against a Gryffindor Harry, someone you didn’t manage to influence in your House.”

            Severus rolled his eyes. “And your own grudge overpowers your good sense,” he said. “Did I truly influence and break your hold over the godson you raised? Do you think he loved you the less for being a Slytherin?” He had come up with a plan, and only needed to keep Black distracted for a few more seconds while he intoned, mentally, the nonverbal incantation.

            “You have no idea what I felt when Harry died.” Black pressed in towards him, and his hand was twitching as though he would drop his wand and transform into a dog. Severus sneered as he considered that. Let him. It will make everything so much easier. “You have no idea what I felt when any of them died—”

            “Please let us go, Sirius,” Draco interrupted, unexpectedly, taking a long stride forwards. “It would mean so much to Harry. You don’t know. Professor Snape is telling the truth. He isn’t like the others. He has to be free.”

            Black stared at Draco with his mouth twitching, and so didn’t notice, until too late, that Severus’s wand was moving down at his side in a circle.

            The curse Severus had chosen leaped from his wand (returned to him by Minerva) and towards the alcove that Black had emerged from. Black twirled around and tried to deflect it, too late. It bounced off the corner of stone Severus had chosen, a corner perfectly placed to reflect whatever someone threw at it, and hit Black’s hip. A cluster of dark specks rose into the air and spun like a cloud of gnats before they entered Black’s nose and mouth. Black spasmed and dropped to the floor.

            “Must you, Severus?” Minerva curled her tongue around the words, but didn’t offer to move away.

            “What did you do to him?” Draco was looking back and forth between Severus and Black, his eyes wide.

            “I made sure that he can’t talk about this to Albus,” Severus said calmly, stepping forwards and bending over Black. Yes, he was still breathing, and his pulse was normal; sometimes, although rarely, the spell had side-effects. “Surer than a Memory Charm. He’ll keep what he saw to himself, and perhaps think over your words, Draco, and mine.”

            He didn’t mention the other effects of the charm, because they didn’t need to know them. Draco would insist on explanations and Minerva on morals.

            Minerva was the first of them to recover, pursing her lips and shaking her head. “I can’t say I like it, but I don’t like any of this,” she said, and turned towards the door of his office. “Choose the books and the ingredients that you want quickly, Severus. I used a distraction to keep Albus from noticing I was gone, but he’s suspicious enough to start looking past that soon.”

            “What kind of distraction?” Draco was asking as Severus passed his hand across his door, observed that nothing had changed, and unlocked it with a simple spell. Minerva had handed his wand to him the instant he was released from the cage, and he wasn’t yet interested enough to ask her where she had got it.

            “You should hear it any moment,” Minerva said, with the sort of soft placidity that Severus distrusted.

            Severus rolled his eyes. Minerva was as fond of pranks sometimes as any other Gryffindor. He preferred to let her have her little secret for now. He didn’t think she would have come up with something that could hurt them.

            It was easy enough to sweep the shelves, to gather up the important books and shrink them and tuck them in his pockets. The ingredients were more difficult, as some of them would be affected by shrinking; he employed an old trunk from under his bed and Draco’s pockets to carry the chosen ones.

            And the rest…

            The cauldrons, the pictures on the walls of his bedroom, the fireplace mantle that he had arranged just the way he liked it, the completed potions that waited in their vials on the wooden rack…

            Severus ended up shaking his head and turning his back. He couldn’t do anything with them right now, and he didn’t dare delay too long.

            He had one foot out of his rooms, back in the corridor, when an enormous roar shook the castle from overhead. Severus caught himself against the wall and stared upwards, though of course it was foolish to think he could see anything through the meters of stone. His first thought was that the Dark Lord had commandeered a dragon to attack the school with.

            Then he saw the faint smile on Minerva’s face, and nodded at her. “You Transfigured something into a lion, didn’t you?” he asked, as he edged out of the room and they started making their way up the corridor towards the stairs that would lead them out of the dungeons.

            “A rather large lion,” Minerva said, and her smile grew more pleasant and full. Severus still wouldn’t have wanted to be the one who was making her smile like that. “Sometimes, Albus needs to be reminded what his House symbol is.”

            Severus didn’t fully understand until they were in the entrance hall of Hogwarts and he saw a giant leg move past the doors. He whispered a spell that would let him see through the wards on the outside—necessary, at times, to see what was happening beyond the walls without exposing himself to attack by the Death Eaters or other forces the Dark Lord had brought up—and grasped what was going on with a single look, but still found himself frozen in place with surprise.

            The giant leg he had glimpsed was only one of four, and led up to a lion that must have been Transfigured from a tree. Its coat glowed a dark, brassy brown, and its teeth were all many-branched, splitting off into points like twigs. It reared nearly as high as the Gryffindor Tower, and it roared again and again as it ripped at the stones. All stones that weren’t part of the wards, Severus noticed, but it would take someone viewing it from this angle, and someone who had been intimately involved in wrapping wards around the school, to notice that. Minerva was keeping the rest of the Order safe, but with the maximum amount of noise and fuss to distract them from that.

            “You can do some impressive Transfigurations when you want to, Minerva,” he murmured without taking his gaze from the lion. “Will it harm us should we attempt to run across the grass to the Apparition point?”

            Even as he contemplated that, the lion turned its head and stared at them, the great mane rustling to a stop around its head. Then one of the staring golden eyes, the size of a small pond, closed in a wink.

            “I believe the answer is ‘no,’” Minerva said smugly from behind him.

            Severus nodded and began to run. The lion courteously lifted one of its paws out of the way, and then brought its leg down in a scything motion that caused two of the windows that overlooked the path they would have to take to be blocked. Draco followed, with a cautious swallow and a glance up at the lion’s underbelly, and Minerva absently patted the nearest curl of fur as she brought up the rear.

            Severus marshaled his thoughts as he ran. He had not managed to feed the mind-control potion to Albus, but the spell on Black would serve some of the same purposes, and was almost as good. He had the books and ingredients he had come for. He had Draco. He had a new ally.

            And he had the news he had learned when he was first captured, what had happened at the school since he and Harry left. Besides the news of the Dark Lord’s attacks and the forces he commanded, there was the news that the Death Eaters had captured Remus Lupin, since one of their own had approached the gates in Polyjuice disguise as him.

            Severus nodded once. I believe Harry will find what I have to say sufficiently interesting.

*

            Harry hesitated before he opened the trunk in the corner of his bedroom. There was no one to tell him that the things he had found there when he came to Shaldon’s Garden weren’t his, after all. Snape hadn’t acted as though he cared one way or another what Harry did with them, and since Snape had won the house and maybe all its contents in a duel, he might not even know they were there.

            But Harry still stared for a long time after he had opened the lid, and picked up the purple stone that had lain there with a heavy hand.

            It was the black stone that was split down the center so Harry could see the glitter of the purple crystals instead. He had thought it was an amethyst at first, but the longer he looked at it, the more certain he became that he had been wrong. This was what was called a geode.

            Harry caressed the rough outside of the stone, then reached into the middle and let his fingers trail over the purple crystals.

            He didn’t know why yet. It was a tiny plan, the gasp of an intuition, nothing more. But he thought that this rock would be a good candidate for the reverse Horcrux they had once planned to make, the object to which they would bind Voldemort’s life-force, and then they would destroy him by destroying it.

            Scritch-scratch.

            Harry whirled around, his heart in his throat, even though knew any of the Weasleys—and any of the rebels staying at the house, for that matter—would have knocked roundly on the door and demanded to see him, not scratched at the window. And it wasn’t a person outside the glass. It was the long tendril of a climbing rose, nodding at him with what looked like a glimmering globe clutched at the end of its vine.

            Harry blinked and crossed the room to the window. He would have been warier, but he had remembered both the extensive protections that Snape said were beyond Shaldon’s Garden and the plants that filled the garden as the second line of those protections. He had seen this rose before, rambling around the outside of the fence.

            He held out his hand as he opened the window, and the rose rolled the globe down its stem into his palm. Harry held it up. It looked like it was made of crystal, but with colors swimming inside it, like an opal, or a marble.

            As Harry watched, the colors expanded, and the marble seemed to become bigger. Now Harry could clearly tell that he was watching a scene on the outside of Shaldon’s Garden. An owl flew back and forth there, carrying a letter with a red and gold seal, screeching at the wards. It seemed extremely frustrated that it couldn’t come inside.

            Harry smiled a little. This had to be an owl that wasn’t from a friend; Snape would have left a path open for letters that came from people he trusted, or ones he was sending himself.

            The rose wavered back and forth, and the scene grew bigger, until Harry could see the seal in its entirety. It bore four intertwined heads, one a bird’s, one a snake’s, one a lion’s, and a fourth that was probably a badger’s. The seal of Hogwarts, Harry thought.

            He swallowed. It was probably from Dumbledore, and the owl had come as far as it could before being baffled by the wards.

            Harry was tempted to let it come in, but not with the bird itself. There was too much chance that the owl was a spy that could look at everything and report back to the Headmaster that Harry wasn’t in the house he thought Snape had taken Harry to.

            On the other hand, there was the huge chance that the letter was about Snape.

            Harry took a deep breath and looked at the rose. “Can you take the letter and bring it to me?” he asked. “But leave the owl outside?”

            He felt stupid talking to a plant, but it wasn’t like he had much choice. Snape had left him no way to communicate with the defenses of Shaldon’s Garden.

            The rose bobbed back to him, like a nod, and then withdrew and rippled away towards what Harry assumed was the gate. It was hard to tell, with all the folds of wizardspace around them.

            Harry shut the window and turned to consider the geode, then the plans laid on the table nearby. He should be working on both of them, really. The plan was what would allow them to strike back at Voldemort, but he didn’t think there was any way of getting rid of him forever except the reverse Horcrux plan.

            Then Harry shook his head. He couldn’t concentrate on the reverse Horcrux without Snape, the only one that he trusted enough to talk to about it. So he turned back to the plan that he and the rebels had put together, snorting only slightly under his breath when he realized what his thoughts had just said.

            I trust Snape.

            But he did, more than the rest of them put together. Mrs. Weasley was strong and supportive, and he trusted Ginny—but more because of the charm that Snape had put on her to ensure she couldn’t talk than anything else. Maybe that was bad, but they weren’t the people they had been in his old world, and he had already been bitterly disappointed by Ron and Hermione here.

            I’m not the same person I was, either.

            Harry had to wonder what they would think, when they got him back, his friends. Would he have changed a lot? Would they still think he was their friend?

            Harry nodded firmly. He wasn’t going to worry about that, because of course they would still want him back. And if he wasn’t exactly the same as he had been, they would still welcome him and make a place for him.

            That, he had to believe.

*

            Severus halted once they were outside the Hogwarts grounds, and glanced back. There was no one coming after them. That didn’t mean that someone wouldn’t, once they had recovered from the attack and Albus had managed to Transfigure the lion back into a tree. Severus remembered only too well what Albus used to teach.

            “Where to now?” Minerva asked it, her cheeks flushed and her hand still holding her wand. It trembled a little when Severus looked at her, but she stilled it soon enough, and gave Severus a thin smile.

            “Yes, where to?” Draco was looking back and forth between both of them, and Severus didn’t miss the tone of uncertainty that had crept into his voice. Without Harry here, he probably doubted his choices.

            Severus grimaced and drew his wand. “I am going to take you to the sanctuary where I have Harry,” he said, and tried to ignore the way that Draco’s eyes brightened with fervor out of all proportion to the words. “But I need you to swear an Unbreakable Vow first that neither of you will betray his location.”

            Draco knelt down hesitantly. Minerva followed him more firmly, her mouth a thin slash in her face. “I understand it,” she said. “You were used to thinking of me as an enemy only a few hours ago.”

            “But why do I have to swear it?” Draco burst out. “You know that I would never hurt Harry, no matter where he’s from.”

            Severus glanced at him. “Yes. But Dumbledore might pluck the location from your mind with Legilimency if you’re captured. If we phrase this Vow the right way, then he can’t do that.”

            “Oh.” Draco relaxed and held out his hand. Severus caught it and nodded at Minerva, who still had her wand out, to act as their Bonder. Draco would have to do it when Minerva swore the Vow.

            She, unlike Draco, knew how the Vow prevented someone from plucking a location from another person’s mind. The Vow would kill the one who had made it before that could happen.

            Severus gazed back at her, daring her to say that, and Minerva lowered her head and shook it in a complex gesture. Then she turned back to their joined hands as Severus said, “Do you, Draco Malfoy, swear that you will never reveal the location of Harry Potter, the third we have brought to this world, by spoken word, written word, or gesture?”

            “I so swear.” Draco’s voice was breathless with excitement, making Severus want to wince again. But he held his hand steady, and the first tongue of flame curled around their wrists. A glittering, pretty thing, to hold so much power to destroy, Severus thought.

            “Do you, Draco Malfoy, swear that you will never reveal the location of Harry Potter, the third we have brought to this world, by letting the information pass from your mind to an enemy’s?” Severus had added the last word on the off chance that Draco ever had information Severus didn’t about Harry’s location and had to let Severus read it from his thoughts with Legilimency.

            Draco repeated this vow. His voice had sunk a little, as though he was finally beginning to realize how serious the matter was. Good. Severus did not have time to specifically educate the boy on growing past his grief, but it needed to be done, and an Unbreakable Vow was as good as any other method.

            “Do you, Draco Malfoy, swear that you will never reveal the location of Harry Potter, the third we have brought to this world, without prior permission from me, Severus Snape?” And the final vow, the strictest that Severus could come up with. It might be theoretically possible for Albus to dress up as Severus with Polyjuice, tell Draco he could talk about it, and then read Harry’s location from his mind—but Draco had felt Severus’s Legilimency before, and knew what it was like. The minute he felt an enemy’s touch on his thoughts, then the second part of the Vow would go into action.

            Draco whispered the words this time, and the three tongues of flame bound their joined hands. Severus nodded once at the sight before the Vow vanished and he directed Draco to draw his own wand, turning to clasp hands with Minerva.

            Minerva held his eyes while Draco fumbled for his wand, huffing with importance, and said, too softly and quickly to be heard by Draco, “You know as well as I do that this Vow might kill him.”

            Severus looked back at her, and his eyes were indifferent because they were, naturally, not because he had willed them so. Yes, he knew that. But he had decided that the important thing was to keep Harry safe, and with a possible traitor in the Order and so many of them dedicated to doing Albus’s will rather than what was right, he would no longer take chances.

            You could ask Albus, he thought, as he took Minerva’s thin, wiry hand in his own. When I give my loyalty, I give it whole. I did whatever he asked of me for years, because I thought it was the right thing to do. And now I will do what I must in a different way.

            Perhaps Minerva understood that, because she nodded to him in the moment before Severus opened his mouth to speak the first Vow.

*

            It seemed to take forever for the rose to bring the letter to his window, but Harry knew that wasn’t so. It was simply that he’d got involved in the plan the rebels proposed, and when that happened, he tended to lose track of time.

            This time, the scratch on the window didn’t scare the shit out of him. He turned around, nodded to the waving rose, and accepted the letter, which had one torn corner, as though the rose had had to fight to get it out of the envelope. He also thought he saw a single feather in the corner of the climbing tendrils, and smirked a little. He was less than sympathetic for any losses that Dumbledore might suffer.

            The letter, under the torn corner, started out with a whole confusion of titles. Dumbledore’s titles, Harry realized, blinking at them, Headmaster of Hogwarts and—presumably because this was a private letter—Head of the Order of the Phoenix. Did Dumbledore think that would impress him?

            Maybe not. Maybe he’d done it to make himself feel better.

            Then Harry leaned back against the table, and prepared to read Dumbledore’s latest attempt to manipulate him.

            Dear Harry,

            Please do not be disgusted that I address you by the name under which I knew you best. I know that you are not the same as the beloved boy who is gone, his throat slit under the worst of circumstances, but you bear his name and likeness, and it is easiest for me to call you this.

            Harry shook his head. Was the Headmaster getting desperate, or was it just that Harry was so disgusted with him? Either way, the words seemed utterly transparent and grasping, not tempting at all.

            You must understand that you are the best opportunity that everyone in our world has for surviving Voldemort’s attempts to kill us. You are angry with the Order, perhaps rightfully so.

            Harry rolled his eyes. It seemed that, even when he was trying to act like he was seeing things from Harry’s point of view and tempt him back into joining the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore had to put that “perhaps” in there. He cared more about absolute control than making an alliance.

            But then, Harry had already known that. If Dumbledore had just kept to the alliance Harry had asked for in the first place, researching a way to send Harry home while Harry worked with them to kill Voldemort, then they wouldn’t have had this problem at all.

            If you are angry with us, please remember the rest of them, the innocent people who will have no chance if you abandon us. The people who shop in Diagon Alley each morning. The people who hope to raise their children in a world without violence. The people who feel lost without the Ministry to guide them. The Weasleys.

            Harry snorted. No mention made of the rebel groups. Did the old man not know about them? Or did he just consider that they couldn’t win and didn’t matter because they weren’t willing to make the “sacrifice” of summoning the same person from different worlds over and over again?

            Will you come back to me? You may come armed, and set the meeting at any place you like, as long as it is within a reasonable distance of Hogwarts’s walls. We have been under attack by Tom, and it would be dangerous for us to venture far outside them. I will come with any members of the Order you specify, and I will yield Severus to you there.

            “And what if I specified ‘no members of the Order’?” Harry asked aloud, shaking his head.

            This is a plea from the heart of one who has done wrong. Perhaps I was never meant to stand as the savior of the world, when that is your job. I know that I cannot interfere in the prophecy and kill Tom, much as I have tried and wished to.

            Harry narrowed his eyes and rapped his fingers along the side of the letter. At the moment, the one thing he wished he had asked Dumbledore more about was his attempts to kill Voldemort, before or after the Harry native to this world died. Would he be deflected by his curses just not hitting? Did Voldemort really know as much about the prophecy as Dumbledore assumed he did? How did it work?

            But, for good or evil, you are the only one who can save our world and prevent Tom from making it over in his own dark image—the only one who can prevent the death of two sets of parents, yours and the Lily and James Potter of this world, from being in vain.

            Please write back to me. Please come and stand at my right hand. I will lend you all the strength you need.

            Albus Dumbledore.

            Harry rolled his eyes again and tossed the letter aside. He had to resist the urge to crumple it; he thought it was possible that Snape would want to see it.

            Assuming that Snape could escape and would come back to Harry. Assuming Dumbledore had control of him after all, although Harry had to assume that since he’d mentioned it in the letter and Snape hadn’t come back. It had really been a small part of the whole letter, Harry thought. As though Dumbledore couldn’t comprehend that Snape might be important to Harry.

            Or, as though the most important thing was controlling me, and that overrode even the appeal he could have made to me through my emotions about Snape.

            Harry sighed and turned back to the rebel plan. He had to take some hours to think about how he would respond to Dumbledore’s letter, especially since he didn’t want to lead the Order back to Shaldon’s Garden accidentally or something with an owl he sent out. And if he left the defenses without Snape by his side, could he even get back in? It ought to be possible, but that was something he’d have to study.

            Except it won’t matter, because Snape is going to come back.

            Harry gritted his teeth. Yes, he still wanted to believe that, but he couldn’t let the hope consume him. As Snape would say—

            “I never thought I would manage to get this far inside the defenses, even of my own home, without you sensing me.”

            Harry turned around with a sharp cry springing from his throat, though he repressed it and reached for his wand. This could be some imposter, someone who had brewed Polyjuice to appear as Snape.

            Except that Snape had told him the defenses of Shaldon’s Garden wouldn’t allow that, that they could read their master’s mind and only allow him in if he wasn’t being coerced somehow. And if they could do that, they could certainly tell if this was their real master or someone using Polyjuice.

            This was Snape. Standing leaning wearily against the doorframe of Harry’s bedroom, meeting Harry’s eyes and shaking his head a little as though he couldn’t believe Harry stood rooted to one spot instead of attacking him.

            “You are becoming careless,” he said. “Perhaps you would be best pleased to yield yourself up to Dumbledore now and be surrounded by people as careless as yourself.”

            “Well, you don’t need to worry about changing,” Harry said, when he could get his breath back. “You’re still the same hateful gift as you ever were.” He hesitated once more, not because he feared this wasn’t Snape but because he expected more of a scolding for not noticing the way Snape had come through the defenses. Never mind that Snape owned Shaldon’s Garden and could have ordered it to conceal him from Harry if he wanted to.

            Then Harry made the decision, and flung himself forwards, wrapping his arms around Snape before either of them could decide it was a bad idea. “I’m so glad you’re back,” Harry muttered into Snape’s robe. “And not just because—” He choked. He had been about to say something about “Not just because it’ll foil Dumbledore,” but he found that his throat was thick, and so were his eyes.

            So he shut them and just silently clung.

*

            Severus held Harry in silence. He had let his arms come to rest on top of the boy’s shoulders the second he thought Harry was too involved in hanging onto Severus to notice.

            He—

            This was unexpected.

            Of course he had realized he was important to Harry, so important that he had feared Harry would come after him while he was in Hogwarts and risk getting himself captured by Dumbledore again. But he had not realized he was important enough that Harry might hold back, trusting in Severus to rescue himself, and yet still react like this when Severus reappeared.

            Severus bit his tongue on the desire to scold, the longing to tell Harry to be cautious, not to trust or depend on anyone so much. Because then Harry might not know what to do, or do the wrong thing, if Severus died or was captured again. He did not want to be a pawn used against Harry, as Albus had told Severus he intended. Severus wanted to be a source of strength and a weapon, no more.

            As they stood there, Severus’s resolve blurred, shifted, solidified again like a Calming Draught spilled on a table at the second stage.

            If I would make him unacceptably vulnerable by parting from him, then I must simply stay with him.

            Not be captured. Not accept a compromise that would part him from Harry’s side, especially as he trusted neither Albus nor the Dark Lord to keep any promise they made. Not die.

            The last was the hardest.

            But he knew, now, what he would ask in return, if Harry asked Severus to hold one side of the bridge of power that would span the gap between dimensions. Severus would ask to come with him instead. Because that was the way it would be, because anything else was unacceptable.

            Not to be parted.

            I can manage that.

            Harry pulled back at last, and grinned up at Severus. “We have a plan to attack the Death Eaters, and I think I know how to make a reverse Horcrux and bind Tom,” he said.

            Severus blinked once. Then he nodded, said, “You have been busy while I was gone,” and unfolded himself to stride over to the table that looked to be spread with battle plans. “I hope you find the gifts I brought you acceptable in return.”

            “What are those?” Harry bounced up beside him and stared at him inquiringly.

            Severus gave him a faint smile back. “I did not manage to slip the mind control potion to Dumbledore. He caught me before I could. But I brought the books and the ingredients I went for, and Draco. And I have someone else who will serve as our spy and servant, since Dumbledore cannot.” He paused.

            “There’s something else?” Harry was staring at him with most gratifyingly wide eyes.

            “There is,” said Minerva’s voice behind Severus, and she stepped into the room.

            Irritated though Severus was that he had not got to make the announcement himself, the way Harry swung on her, gaped, and then grinned—a grin as fierce as the Killing Curse—made up for it.

            No. Parting is not acceptable.

            There will be a way around it, because I will that there must be, and Harry wills it as well. And what cannot we accomplish, willing together?

*

            unneeded: Thanks! I think Severus and Harry are both doing well in their own separate ways, although joined together they can be even more powerful, of course.
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World in Pieces