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World in Pieces	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 16431 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

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Chapter Eighteen—In the Blood

            “Why did you think the geode would be appropriate for a reverse Horcrux?”

            Harry brushed a hand through his hair and coughed. He had been a bit awkward with Snape ever since yesterday when he had hugged him and McGonagall had come up the stairs and seen them. Harry supposed it was all right that she had seen them, or Snape would have already Obliviated her. But it made him want to defend all his conclusions with long explanations, even the ones that had nothing to do with McGonagall.

            Snape tapped a finger in the center of the table, making Harry leap and look up. Snape was leaning forwards, and his scowl was ferocious enough to make Harry want to pay attention, although he doubted that he would make much sense.

            “I thought—since it’s cracked,” Harry said, “that we could damage it in the future. And it’s smooth on the outside and jagged on the inside. With all those crystals, I mean. And I thought I suppose I thought that his soul could catch on the crystals and be caught and held by them.” It sounded worse the more he tried to explain it.

            Snape’s face had gone blank, but not the horrid sort of blank he had whenever he was trying to keep from telling Harry what an idiot he was. He reached out and picked up the geode that lay in the center of the table beside the place where his finger had tapped, turning it back and forth.

            “How much do you know about the theory of Horcruxes?” Snape asked.

            Harry grimaced. “Everything.” Essential though it had been to defeating Voldemort, he would far rather not have learned everything he had to about them and how they were made.

            That got him a narrowing of Snape’s eyes. Then those eyes went towards the pocket where Harry kept the Elder Wand. Harry put a protective hand on it. It wasn’t his fault that Voldemort was insane and actually strong in this universe, and had managed to crack his holly wand.

            “Where did you learn it?” Snape asked.

            “Taught by Dumbledore in my own world,” Harry said, and rolled his eyes when he saw the way that Snape looked at him. “Oh, don’t be like that. I’m not going to argue that my Dumbledore was perfect, but he did have a good reason for teaching me about Horcruxes. There were six of them—seven. I think I already told you that. I had to know about them in order to hunt them down and destroy them.”

            “Then you should know,” Snape said, his voice tight, “that destroying a Horcrux is going to be hard.”

            Harry nodded. “Yes, but I know of at least three ways to do it. Well, maybe two,” he had to add. “Depending on whether the Sword of Gryffindor got soaked with basilisk venom in this world.”

            “Those words tell me more about how interesting your life has been then you might want me to know,” Snape said, his voice soft and odd. “What are the ways?”

            “Basilisk venom and Fiendfyre,” Harry said. “And, well, Dumbledore destroyed the Gaunt ring somehow, but I was never sure exactly how, and it left him with a decaying hand that was going to kill him if he hadn’t died in another way. So I don’t think that we want to try it.”

            Snape ran his hand through his hair. “Where did the Sword of Gryffindor come in?”

            “I used it to fight the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets in my second year,” Harry said. “It got soaked with basilisk venom, and that meant we could use it later to destroy a few of the Horcruxes. But I don’t know if that happened here.”

            “I would not wish to risk it,” Snape said, after only a closing of his eyes and a shake of his head that told Harry how lightly he’d got off. “So. Basilisk venom and Fiendfyre. You realize that we will have to destroy this reverse Horcrux after we create it and link the Dark Lord’s life force to it?”

            Harry nodded, looking sideways at Snape. “Of course. I wouldn’t have proposed this if I didn’t know how to destroy one.”

            “I was not entirely sure,” Snape said, with a voice too dry for Harry to even take offense at. “Basilisk venom would be the less dangerous.”

            “Really?” Harry asked doubtfully. “Even though we would have to break back into Hogwarts to get a fang?”

            Snape closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them and said, “I am satisfied that we will need to come up with some plan to lure Albus out of his stronghold, rather than attempting to attack him there. He is simply too strong with both the wards of Hogwarts and the members of the Order surrounding him.”

            Harry nodded. “From what you told me about him, I have an idea on that, too.”

            “Oh, really?” Snape’s voice was odd.

            Harry sat up and frowned at him. “If you think my plans are stupid or something, just say so. You know that rebel plan isn’t meant to defeat Dumbledore and Tom. Just prick them in the side and prove that we can be a thorn.”

*

            I am somewhat overwhelmed by the dedication that you can bring to a task like this, and the intelligence. Not to mention that you will probably need to kill someone who, in your other world, was your mentor.

            But Severus could not say that, not at this stage in their relationship. Instead, he leaned forwards and said softly, “Dumbledore has one point of great weakness. That great conviction that he must always be right and everyone else is wrong. He cannot face it if he is wrong. Is that the point of weakness that you intend to attack?”

            Harry grinned. “Of course it is. And what do you think he would most hate to be wrong about?”

            Severus frowned a little. “The decisions he made regarding you, of course. But we know what he intends to do about that. Get rid of you, and summon another Harry Potter. I do not see how we can use it to lure him out of Hogwarts.”

            Harry’s grin widened. “That’s because you’re not me.” He stood up and paced back and forth across his bedroom, the spring in his step more like a snap. Severus found his eyes following Harry, and he had to shake his head. He had given his loyalty and would not take it back, but it was always good to see that Harry deserved his loyalty.

            “I think we should find out more about how the first Harry, the one you taught, died,” Harry said, and spun to face him.

            Severus restrained a grimace. “Then you still think it was murder, and not suicide?”

            Harry nodded. “Draco said something interesting to me that I want you to listen to. And there’s a rebel, a woman named Heron, who jumped when I said something about his death. I want them to talk to me, and to you.”

            “Draco thinks I caused his lover’s death,” Severus pointed out. “I don’t think he would willingly consent to speak to me about the matter. Indeed, I suspect that one of the reasons he came with me is to keep an eye on me and make sure that I do not kill you, or persuade you to commit suicide, in turn.”

            Harry’s smile was sad. “He’ll speak to you if I ask him to.”

            Severus sat up. “You know that we should be working to wean him from his dependence on you, not encouraging it.”

            Harry grimaced and nodded. “But there’s nothing else we can do right now, nothing that will heal him. I can’t—I don’t want to take the mental strength that we’re putting into these plans to defeat Dumbledore and Tom and try to use it to heal Draco instead.”

            Severus snarled softly. “Yes, but we can keep from exacerbating his disease further.”

            Harry rolled his eyes at him. “If we help him to find out that Harry’s suicide was really a murder, but that you had nothing to do with it, and uncover the real culprit, you don’t think he would thank us for that?”

            Severus thought about it, but ended up scowling. “I think he would thank us for it, but it would not be enough. Draco will not be satisfied until he has a replacement for the boy he loved.” He looked pointedly at Harry.

            “I can’t be that for him.” Harry folded his arms. “I have another world waiting for me, and I can’t pretend to be in love with someone else here. I won’t. I’ll offer Draco the chance to help solve his Harry’s murder. If he isn’t satisfied with that, then I’ll use a Pensieve memory of his words to tell you.”

            “Why not do that from the beginning?” Severus had to ask. “If you could let me watch what he said to you?”

            “Because I think he should be involved if it was a murder,” Harry said firmly. “I can’t offer him love, but I can offer him vengeance. That’s all. That’s as far as I can go. But I did still want to offer it.”

            Severus shut his eyes, thinking about that. He could…appreciate it. Harry was showing what care he could for someone who was not important to him, even in his own world, in the way that he had been important to the original Harry of this one.

            And Severus was thinking again about his conversation with Albus in the Headmaster’s office, the way he had flinched at the word “sacrifice.” Perhaps one could argue that the original Harry born to this world was Albus’s first sacrifice. He had not done a good enough job of protecting him, but had expected him to take on the Dark Lord with insufficient training. He had not accepted any excuse that could be offered to him as sufficient reason for the boy not doing it. He had said that the prophecy prevented anyone else from engaging the Dark Lord or mortally wounding him, but as far as Severus knew, Albus had never tested that theory until after the boy’s death.

            Severus opened his eyes and nodded. “Give me time to approach Draco. First, I think you should question this woman Heron that you mentioned.”

*

            Harry was a little surprised at how easy it was, now, working with Snape.

            He seemed to have come back from his very short time with Dumbledore with more willingness to listen. He didn’t frown at Harry as often, although he still eyed the Elder Wand mistrustfully. And he had accepted, without much questioning, that Harry was right about the first Harry’s death being a murder and not a suicide, while he had never believed enough in that theory to investigate it before now.

            It’s as though it makes a difference to him because it’s me.

            Harry paused and blinked. He was behind Snape on the stairs that led down from his room to the large one where they would meet with the rebels. Snape, of course, immediately noticed that Harry wasn’t following him, and turned around with a frown.

            “You are coming?” He looked back and forth as though he could spot something on the stairs that would indicate the reasons why Harry had changed his mind.

            “I’m coming,” Harry said, and shook his head, following Snape. “I did think of something else,” he added to Snape’s back, and thought he didn’t imagine the faint snort that the man gave out. “Dumbledore wrote to me saying that he held you captive and suggesting we meet. Obviously he doesn’t believe that now, and he probably knows that you would have come back to me as soon as you could. But what should I write in return?”

            “Save the chance,” Snape said, his voice thick and his smirk blinding when he turned his head to look at Harry. “We will use your return letter as part of the plan to trap him.”

            Harry smiled. He supposed that he didn’t have to reply at all, since Snape had escaped so soon, but he had badly wanted to write something, if only to taunt Dumbledore. This was a better idea, though.

            They entered the folded wizardspace, and Golden and Heron stood up to receive them. Heron was frowning at Harry as though there was no reason she could imagine being summoned specifically. Harry thought that was pretty rich, when Golden had brought the woman with her to witness the Veritaserum interview with Harry and she had the unusual name and the heron tattoos around her eyes. She was special, and she had to know it.

            “What did you want to know?” It was Golden who spoke, and she looked at Snape with a frown, but didn’t challenge his presence here with Harry.

            “I noticed the way you jumped when I responded to that question about the original Harry Potter from this world being dead,” Harry told Heron. “Why?”

            “I would not characterize what I did as jumping,” Heron said, half-shutting her eyes.

            Harry kept from rolling his own eyes with difficulty. “Fine. You stood up. Why? Why was what I said so surprising to you?”

            Heron hesitated once, but Golden caught her gaze and jerked her own head down. Her hand was stroking the knife she kept by her side, Harry saw. She noticed Harry watching her do it and smiled a little at him, but didn’t stop doing it.

            “Because someone cannot commit suicide by turning their own wand into a knife and slitting their throat,” Heron said.

            Harry blinked. “I don’t see why not.” That seemed a detail that Dumbledore and the rest of the Order of the Phoenix would have known, and if they were lying about Harry’s death being a suicide, they wouldn’t have included it.

            “Because,” Heron said grimly, “wands are bonded to their owners at a level that involves survival, at least if they have been with their owners for more than a few years and have never been conquered or won by someone else. I assume that was the case with the—original Mr. Potter’s wand?”

            Harry glanced at Snape, who had taken up a surprisingly unobtrusive position with his arms folded by the doorframe. Snape inclined his head in a slow nod. Harry turned back. “Yes, that was the case.”

            Heron nodded back. “A wand wants to preserve its owner. It will not become a knife if the intention is to use it for harming the owner. A former owner, yes. If someone had won Mr. Potter’s wand in a duel, they could have changed it into a blade and given it to him to cut his throat with. But the wand would simply refuse to make the transformation in the case you were talking about.” She let her eyes pass back and forth between Harry’s face and Snape’s. “It made me wonder for a moment if you were lying, but speaking about it under Veritaserum proved that you believed it, at least.”

            “Thank you,” Harry said dryly, his head spinning. Was it really that simple, then? Or had someone dueled the original Harry, taken his wand, and then turned it into a knife to cut his throat?

            Well, if they had, it would still be murder. If Harry had really wanted to commit suicide, he would have found some other way.

            “It is an obvious weakness in the story,” Snape said, echoing what Harry had been thinking. Harry looked at him in time to see him pull his hair back from his throat and frown at Heron and Golden. “Why would they create a story like this, one of suicide, with this weakness in the middle of it?”

            “I don’t know,” Heron snapped, and the bird around her eyes seemed to flicker and fly as her expression changed. “I didn’t know that Harry Potter—I suppose you could call him our Harry Potter—was dead until you told me. I had never heard this story before. Perhaps no one who did knew enough to spot the inconsistencies.”

            Snape exchanged a glance with Harry. Harry nodded in silence. He knew one person who would have; they both did. Surely Dumbledore had enough magical knowledge for that.

            “Thank you, Miss Heron,” Snape said aloud. “You have been most helpful, and I hope that you find the attack plans we have come up with, to give your rebels a chance to do something against the Dark Lord, everything that Harry promised they would be.”

            Heron gave them both a faint smile. “I’m the expert in esoteric magical knowledge that my Lady Golden brought with her,” she said simply. “I’m not the one you should be worried about if every aspect of the attack doesn’t go as planned.” She nodded sharply and spun, turning her back on them to walk away. Golden followed, with a smile so pleasant it was hard to look at the hand on her knife.

            Harry waited until she was out of the room to turn and stare at Snape. “So what do you think?” he demanded. “That it was murder?”

            Snape’s eyes were shadowed, and one hand played with his right sleeve, so slowly that Harry didn’t think he knew he was doing it. “Perhaps,” he said, softly enough that Harry stepped closer to hear him. “But I would like to hear Draco’s evidence, first.” He turned to Harry. “Shall I go to fetch him, or will you?”

            Harry grimaced. “I’d better go,” he muttered. “I’m the one who’s asking him a big favor, and if you come up and ask him something about that, then he might panic and run the other direction, because he still thinks that you were involved somehow in the original Harry’s death.” He hesitated, and then turned and looked up at Snape. “You think we can use the truth behind this to lure Dumbledore out?”

            Snape’s eyes had deeper shadows than ever, but at Harry’s question, his mouth compressed into a slashing line, and he nodded. “There is no way that Dumbledore was not involved, even if he did not commit the murder,” he said quietly. “He would have known what Heron said, and if a different murderer claimed it was suicide and gave that as the reason, he would have had to shield them.”

            “If Heron’s telling the truth,” Harry remembered.

            Snape shook his head. “She has less motive to lie than Dumbledore did. I will do some independent research this evening to confirm what she said, but as she reminded us, she has never heard that story before, and did not know what response we were anticipating.”

            Harry nodded. “All right. I’ll go and get Draco, then.” He let himself out of the room before Snape could say anything and trotted down the corridor that led to the rooms Snape had given Draco and McGonagall—both in an isolated fold of wizardspace, so if they lost their nerve or tried to send a message to Dumbledore, they wouldn’t be able to leave or get any kind of communication out.

            It disgusted Harry to think he had to distrust even people who had escaped with Snape. But McGonagall might not have really changed sides, and Draco, Harry thought, would do anything and believe anyone who told him they could get his Harry back. That meant he was as likely to listen to Dumbledore if he came up with a plausible theory as he was to Harry and Snape.

            I wish I’d never been brought here, Harry thought, and waited for a moment as the wooden carvings around the “door” that actually led from Draco’s isolated room to the next fold of wizardspace flashed at him. They turned purple from their blue light a moment later, confirming that the house recognized Harry as someone authorized by Snape to be there. I wish the original Harry had never died. I wish the others hadn’t, either.

            But they had, and Harry was here now, and at least he had the beginnings of a plan that would lure Dumbledore out and bring him into conflict with Voldemort at the same time.

            When he knocked at Draco’s door, it flew open at once. Draco looked at him hopefully, his cheeks flushed and his eyes so bright that Harry flinched a little.

            “I knew it was you,” Draco breathed.

            “How?” Harry asked, taking one careful glance around. If Draco had set up observation charms or something, Snape would have Harry’s head if he didn’t report back about them.

            Draco blinked. “Because I recognize the way you walk and knock and hesitate, of course,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I know that about someone I love?”

            Harry grimaced. He wanted to cure Draco of that infatuation, but he also needed to use it to persuade Draco to trust him, to manipulate Draco until he was willing to listen to what Harry wanted of him and tell the truth to Snape. The thought was like a knife going through his lungs.

            I would never have made a good Slytherin.

            “Listen, Draco,” Harry began, and Draco reached out to take his hand. Harry moved it just a little so that they looked more like they were shaking hands instead of holding them. “I need you to come and tell Snape everything you remember about the way you found Harry’s body on the lakeshore, okay? We’re finding evidence that it’s murder after all, and if Snape knows everything, then he can help us put it together.”

            Draco stared at him and drew back as though he would pull Harry into his room. “But…you know that he argued with my Harry right before he died,” he whispered, inadvertently cheering Harry up a little. He could still recognize the Harry born to his world and Harry himself as different people, then. “I think he caused the death somehow. Why would you trust him?”

            “Because I’m not your Harry,” Harry said. If he could be as simple and brutal as possible, then maybe Draco would listen to him. “Because I think that I would know by now if he caused the death. He’d have said something or betrayed something that would make me think that. And besides, why in the world would he want to do it?”

            “If he’s really a Death Eater,” Draco whispered, his eyes huge and drowning. “If he remained loyal to the Dark Lord all this time, and only pretended that he was going to join the Order of the Phoenix.”

            Harry checked an impatient sigh. Alienating Draco, or showing Draco how bored and impatient with all this he was, all these theories that didn’t take account of reality, wouldn’t work right now. “Do you think it’s impossible for a Death Eater to change allegiances?” he asked instead.

            Draco drew back, giving him a confused look. “Well, no. My father did it.”

            I wonder how much he really did, Harry thought, but he remembered that everyone had said Lucius Malfoy rescued the original Harry in the graveyard. He thought it was more likely that Lucius was playing both sides, trying to see who would win, and if he was betraying information to Voldemort right now, he’d probably only started after the original Harry died. “Exactly. So why would Snape go years and years without doing anything, and then suddenly start killing all the Harry Potters that came along?”

            Draco’s face settled in stubborn lines that Harry recognized, although usually he only saw them on the other side of a broom while both of them were chasing the Snitch. “I don’t know what the Dark Lord could have offered him. But it was probably something. Why would my Harry come and tell me that he’d been arguing with Snape if he really didn’t?”

            Harry licked his lips and hoped that he wasn’t making the wrong bloody decision, or betraying the original Harry’s privacy. “Look. Your Harry had a diary that was in code. If we could read the code, maybe we could find out whether he’d had lots of arguments with Snape before, or whether this was new.”

            Draco’s open mouth and wide eyes were almost comical. “Harry had a diary? Why did I never know about it?”

            “Because it was a diary, and it was private?” Harry suggested before he could stop himself. “It doesn’t sound like the first Harry who was born here got a lot of privacy. Maybe this was his way of having what secrets he could.”

            “But he didn’t have anything to keep secret from me,” Draco whispered. He looked like he was about to cry.

            Harry put his hands on Draco’s shoulders. Draco’s face warmed and brightened, and he looked up at Harry with hope.

            He probably didn’t expect Harry to shake him, because his head flopped back and forth when that happened, and his mouth opened in a little O. Harry bent towards him and spoke as sternly as he could. “Listen! Everyone has secrets, even when they’re in love. The problem is that the diary is in Hogwarts right now, and Snape and you didn’t have the chance to get it when you escaped. I think going back is out of the question for everybody. But I trust Snape, and I don’t think he would have betrayed the secret of this hiding place to me if he planned to kill me, no matter what Tom offered him.”

            “Tom?” Draco repeated for a second. “You mean the Dark Lord?” His eyes were sharpening again, and so was the stubborn look, to Harry’s disgust. “But how do you know?”

            Harry leaned forwards and stared into Draco’s face until Draco squirmed again and looked away.

            “I choose to trust that he’s telling the truth,” Harry said quietly. “I know it doesn’t make much sense, but I choose to trust him the same way I choose to trust you. I don’t know you that well, after all. I don’t know that you’re telling the truth about what your Harry said, about the argument with Snape, about the way you found him. But I choose to accept it, because I don’t think you would have much motivation to lie, and if I decide that everyone around me is lying all the time, then I can’t find out the truth.

            “I don’t think Snape has any motivation to lie, either. He values this house the way that you valued your Harry. It makes sense that you want to solve this murder, and it makes sense that Snape really is on my side. If you can put up with that, fine. If you can’t, then you can hide in your room. I’ll show Snape the Pensieve memory of what you told me instead.”

            “You can’t just do that.”

            “Yes, I can.” Harry took a step back, eyes never moving from Draco’s face. “I wanted Snape to bring you out of Hogwarts because I think you’re different from the rest of the Order and you could help us. But I’m not in love with you. And if you won’t help us, then you might as well sit in your room and pout.”

            Draco was a little pale. He swallowed and said, “But you won’t make me go back to the Order.”

            “No.”

            “Why? If you don’t love me and I’m not of value to you?” Draco scrubbed some tears away from his face with the back of his hand. “I don’t understand.”

            “No, I reckon you don’t,” Harry said coolly. “But listen. There’s still part of me that wants to see someone who’s not going along with Dumbledore’s plans safe. You wouldn’t be safe, if you stayed there. But you’re also not someone I can invest more emotional time in if you won’t help.”

            “I could show you,” Draco said, and now he was pressing forwards and his eyes were soft in a strange way and Harry had to lock his legs so he wouldn’t retreat. “I could show you the reasons why my Harry fell in love with me.”

            Harry gave him a little shove, and Draco squeaked and rocked backwards against the wall.

            “I don’t care about that,” Harry told him. “I don’t think I owe you anything except basic human safety and decency. I’m not in love with you, I won’t cooperate with you in trying to seduce me, and I’m not him. I’m just Harry.”

            Draco’s mouth hung open, and he stared at Harry.

            “He’s gone, no matter what,” Harry continued, trying to pound the words in like nails. Maybe it was cruel, but he was sick and tired of Draco continually doing this. “Even if we solve his murder, then you just have the satisfaction of knowing what happened to him, you don’t have him back. Can you grow beyond that? Can you learn to define yourself by something other than being his lover? I don’t know, but if you can’t, then you’ll be awfully tiresome to live with.”

            Draco shut his mouth and swallowed slowly, never taking his eyes from Harry. “What will you do if I’m tiresome?” he whispered.

            “Not exile you, if that’s what you’re hinting at.” Harry was already tired of this conversation, but he had started it, and it was true that he did want Draco to get over this stupid fantasy of his already, instead of continuing along confirmed in it. “I’ll just ignore you.”

            Draco’s lip twitched. “That would be worse than anything.”

            “Then listen to me, and learn to define yourself by someone else,” Harry snapped. “A rebel against the Order of the Phoenix, or someone who helps us with potions, or someone who’s going to survive the war. I don’t care. But I’m not him, and you can’t force me to be, and if you try, then I’ll fight you with everything I have in me.”

            Draco took a step back from him, but because it seemed to involve watching Harry from a critical distance instead of striking at him, Harry allowed it. Draco’s eyes were at least more alive than he had seen them so far, and that was different enough to be interesting.

            “My Harry would never have said anything like that to me,” Draco said quietly. “He was too careful of me, and he wanted me to be happy more than he wanted me to change.”

            “Then you have at least one thing to brace yourself against when it comes to separating us,” Harry said. “Is it going to hold?”

            Draco nodded. His eyes were still intense and critical, hard to meet, but Harry had a difficult time giving a fuck about that. It seemed he’d woken Draco up from his daze at last, and Snape was waiting for them.

            “Come on,” he repeated, and turned to walk down the corridor. “Unless separating me from your Harry means that you still aren’t going to trust Snape.”

            “I want to see the way he treats you,” Draco responded, following him. “To see if it’s different or the same from the way he treated my Harry.”

            Harry half-rolled his eyes, but said nothing. It was better than tiresomely brooding over everything all the time. He just had to tell himself that when it came to Draco, and maybe Draco would stop giving him cause to roll his eyes soon, too.

*

            Severus sat up when he saw the boys walk into his drawing room—well, perhaps he should say one boy and one young man.

            Something has changed.

            And it had, in more than the way Draco watched Harry, although that was the change Severus first noted. He raked Harry’s back with his eyes now, as though testing the strength of Harry’s spine with his gaze alone, or looking for an unguarded place that he could plunge a knife into.

            As long as he did not actually do it, then Severus cautiously approved this new attitude. He settled back against the wall with his arms folded and his cloak draped artistically about him, and waited until Draco looked at him.

            There was less tightness to his face when he did so. Perhaps Harry had succeeded in lessening his distrust of Severus, then, although Severus was not actually sure how he had managed that. But he had come to accept that this Harry could work miracles when he wanted to.

            “All right,” Severus said. “What did you notice about the body, Draco? Harry seemed to think that you had vital information you should tell me, and that simply viewing his Pensieve memory of what you said would not be sufficient for me to make a determination.”

            As Severus had hoped, the sharp way he spoke, and the words he used, soothed Draco a little, and he relaxed and nodded. “I saw his eyes,” he said. “I know that everyone else would probably say it was normal for someone who committed suicide, but I know what I saw.” His voice sharpened as he spoke, and he took a step forwards until he was out from behind Harry, staring at Severus. “I didn’t confess it to you before because I thought you had something to do with his death.”

            Severus shrugged slightly. If Draco still believed that, there was nothing Severus could say that would convince him otherwise. Severus knew only how to work problems, not miracles. “I did not,” he said.

            After what felt like one of the longest moments of Severus’s life while Draco examined him, Draco finally nodded. “Well, I reckon even this Harry wants to solve my Harry’s murder and wouldn’t work with you if he really thought you had something to do with it,” he muttered, glancing sideways at Harry. “What I saw was that his pupils were bigger than normal. They made his eyes darker. It was like they’d leaked and spread out over the surface of his eyes.”

            Severus had opened his mouth to explain that many people’s eyes did look different when they died, even the eyes of wizards, who liked to think that they were unique and separate from Muggles in all ways. But the last words went through him like a flame, and he found himself standing up and taking a step away from the wall.

            Draco flinched. Severus managed to hold himself back at the last moment, and turn the step into a thoughtful stretch and flex of his hands. “You are sure that you would describe it that way?” he asked, when his mind was calm and clear. “That the pupils had leaked and spread out over the surface of his eyes.”

            Draco nodded firmly. “There was almost no white left. I don’t know why no one else noticed.”

            “Because the potions that could cause such an effect would have faded from his system after twenty-four hours, and most of us did not see the body until after that,” Severus said softly, his mind speeding back to those dark days. “Dumbledore took charge of it and planned the funeral. But you found the body.”

            “Potions?” Draco started to lift a trembling finger, but Harry spoke before he could get the accusation out.

            “What kind of potions are they?”

            Severus shook his head a little, and then paused. Draco did deserve to hear the answer as soon as anyone else among the rebels, probably sooner than Minerva, who had not been Harry’s Head of House or particularly close to him when he was alive.

            “Potions that would cloud his reactions and make him soft and slow and agreeable,” Severus said quietly. “Potions that resemble a liquid Imperius Curse.”

            “They could convince him to cut his throat once someone took his wand from him?” Harry was hopping from one foot to the other, eyes alight.

            Severus nodded. “But they were not often used for such a thing,” he said. “There are simpler potions and spells that would mimic the effect. These also numb the limbs and make reactions slow, and someone would notice that. Besides, he would not make a good slave if he was ordered to react quickly under these potions. His motions would be floating and dream-like, and so would his responses. His death would have been much messier if he had cut his own throat, too messy to resemble a suicide.”

            “Then what were they used for?” Harry demanded, pressing forwards.

            “Their traditional use, in the days when they were still common, was to keep someone calm as a traumatic time approached,” Severus said. He had to force the words out, watching the two bright pairs of eyes trained on him. “To help them get through grief at a long-expected death. Or—or to convince someone to hold still as that person was being prepared for bleeding on an altar.”

            He saw the flame come to life in Harry’s eyes, and he said, quietly, “His throat was cut with his own wand, Transfigured into a knife. He was sacrificed, wasn’t he?”

            Severus nodded, thinking of the way Dumbledore had flinched when Severus said the word “sacrifice.”

            Albus, if you have done what I think you have…

*

            moodysavage: Draco might not want to, but Minerva is a possibility!

            unneeded: Now that Harry has finally decided he trusts Snape, he’s going all out, as you can see when he defends him from Draco’s accusations.
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World in Pieces