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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.

Chapter List
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Chapter Twenty-One—Concussive Force
            “It doesn’t look like much, does it?”
            Harry shook his head. He was finding it hard to speak, and not just because Dark magic had made the air smoky and intense without clouding their view. He was starting to think that there were reasons not to practice Dark Arts quite apart from whether they made you evil or not. They made the area you were in stink.
            The rubble of wizarding London included a few shops still standing, but for the most part, it all seemed to have been hit hard with spell after spell. Stones sprawled on the streets. Harry thought he recognized the Leaky Cauldron, but its doors were shut and crossed with a huge piece of wood that seemed to have fallen from nowhere. There were dark splotches on some of the walls that Harry thought were dried blood, and once a flash of something pale from the direction of what might be Knockturn Alley that Harry was sure was human bone.
            “I thought people still shopped here,” he’d whispered to Fred as they went by that alley.
            Fred’s mouth had tightened. “Sort of,” he murmured back. “There’s a few people who come every week and set up a market off these streets, or down one of the alleys. They keep it as fleeting as possible, and everything’s really bloody expensive. But I didn’t know it was this bad, either.” He glared around at the walls as though he knew who was personally responsible for it and wanted to make sure they suffered, then dropped back to talk to George. Harry thought that might be part of the plan of making them suffer.
            Destroying Voldemort would be a good thing all around, Harry thought. There would still be Death Eaters, but fewer of them after today. And he doubted they would be as organized and powerful as they were now.
            The Death Eaters’ stronghold was a building that might have been Flourish and Blotts or an equivalent, once. Harry thought he could make out the image of a book on the enormous glass window. But surrounding it were stones carved into the shape of snarling gargoyles, wards that made the glass window and stone walls waver, and lines of magic crisscrossing the low, hunched doorway.
            Like George said, it didn’t look like much, but it was more than anyone else had in Diagon Alley or Knockturn Alley right now. People might wonder about it, but not many of them would come here, and those who did wouldn’t risk trying to break in.
            “Right,” George said, leaning over his shoulder. “Let the egg go.”
            Harry opened his hand, holding it flat. The twins had told him that the egg would “know” what to do, but Harry still wasn’t sure what that meant.
            For a minute, it seemed the egg didn’t, either, since it just sat there. But then it leaped, and landed on the earth, lightly turning around while one end of it opened. Out came a great, gleaming steel claw, which began to scrape at the dirt.
            Harry opened his mouth to ask how long it would take, but the egg buried itself faster than he would have thought possible. In seconds, it was beneath the surface of the soil, and kept digging further down while Harry watched, dust shifting and settling behind it.
            “They have wards everywhere up here and above the building,” Fred murmured to him. “But they can’t extend them very far downwards. Not without getting into geomancy, which is the sort of specialized subject that no one studies anymore.”
            “Except for you,” Harry whispered back, and got a smug smile as a reward.
            “We’re all sorts of special,” George drawled, and then went off into a fit of coughing as his mother glared at him.
            Harry waited, his spine tingling as he watched the wards and the other protections shining on along the building. Fred and George still hadn’t explained exactly what the device did, but Harry thought he could guess now, and waiting was a kind of pleasure in itself.
            There was a distant, low noise, which reminded Harry of Fluffy waking up from a nap. Then he thought he felt something pass under him, like a big snake crawling towards a destination. He shot a hard look at the twins, and got two reassuring nods. That presumably meant that the device, whatever it did, wouldn’t affect them.
            Presumably.
            It started a few seconds later. The boulders carved into gargoyles began to shake. The wards wavered. The walls of the building shrieked and collapsed in on each other, so suddenly that Harry started despite himself. And in the earth under the stronghold came a strong, steady, tearing noise.
            Fred and George popped into view on either side of him. “Localized—”
            “Earthquake,” George said, and cupped his hand around his ear, as though he could hear screams, although so far Harry hadn’t heard anything. “It was hard to make—”
            “The egg stop exploding because the earthquake wanted to shake it apart,” Fred said, nodding. “But we managed at last.”
            And they had, Harry thought in wonder. Other than the first vibration, he hadn’t felt anything beneath his own feet; but the land was cracking and shaking apart now beneath the building.
            The first of the Death Eaters came flying out. Harry couldn’t see the face beneath the black cloak, although he didn’t think this one had his mask on. It didn’t matter. They hadn’t come to spare the Death Eaters’ lives. They sure hadn’t been doing it for anyone from the rebel side or the Order they caught.
            Harry raised the Elder Wand, but Fred got there first, tossing something like a little dark pinwheel at the Death Eater. It hit him in the face, and his head snapped back. His hands flailed out, and then he fell to the ground. Harry could hear him snoring.
            “What happened to him?” he asked no one in particular.
            “Coma,” said George, and started trotting forwards. Molly and Arthur had already passed around them, running across the littered ground, and Fred was right behind. Harry caught his breath and kept pace with George.
            “Can he wake up?” Harry asked, staring into the Death Eater’s face as they passed him. He looked a little like a Lestrange, but Harry still couldn’t see fully, and they didn’t have the time to pull back the hood and look—if it was even important, which it wasn’t.
            “Probably not,” George said. His grin this time was evil, and he dived ahead as other Death Eaters started to pour of the building, some of them limping, others bleeding, but a few seeming to be as unwounded as the one in the coma.
            Harry raised the Elder Wand again. The magic poured at him through the wood, but this time, it was easier to restrain himself. Just the thought of the magic Harry had smelled when they first Apparated into Diagon Alley was enough to deter him.
            No magic that smells like that, he told the Elder Wand sternly.
            The humming didn’t diminish, but it did change tone. Harry grunted and cast a Stunner at the trio of Death Eaters rushing him. The Stunner was more orange than red, and it divided up into three forks to hit all three of the men, and their heads bounced off the ground with more force than Harry thought was strictly necessary, but he knew that he would get only limited cooperation from the Elder Wand if he didn’t do something like this, so he had to be content.
            “Come on!” he shouted at the stronghold, because he thought there might still be people in there. “Come out and face me!”
            There was a long stir of darkness at the door, like a shadow. Harry wondered if someone was coming out who had some sort of specialized magic. The Weasleys were shouting and dodging and wheeling around, but they didn’t seem wounded so far, and Harry found it hard to take his eyes from that shadow.
            Then Voldemort materialized out of it.
            Harry didn’t see Nagini, and he didn’t see any other way around it. He screamed and attacked, rushing so hard at Voldemort that it was a long moment before he remembered to cast a spell with the Elder Wand.
            Voldemort parried his Cutting Curse lazily. He was looking only at Harry, with an interested little smile, ignoring the Weasleys. Harry kept his gaze straight, too. If Voldemort didn’t know that hurting the Weasleys would be the worst thing he could do to Harry, then Harry wasn’t about to tell him.
            “We meet again,” Voldemort said, and bowed a little.
            Okay, Harry told the Elder Wand. Remember that warning I gave you a little while ago? Disregard it. Do whatever you need to do.
            The humming returned again, and for a second Voldemort was looking at Harry’s wand, his eyes narrowed. Which was stupid, since it gave Harry time to launch the first attack.
            “Conspiro!” Harry spoke the spell so fast that he felt as if the Elder Wand was the one moving his lips, and not him. The wand flowed in the same motion, fast as the word, turning and looping around itself, and the spell, one Harry hadn’t remembered he knew, crossed the space between him and Voldemort in one shining stream.
            Voldemort staggered—for a moment. His breath stopped—for a moment. Then he stood tall, and his hand moved in a chopping motion, as if taking down a spiderweb. Harry felt his magic splinter and drift apart, echoed by a frustrated throb from the Elder Wand.
            Voldemort clasped his hands together, the fingers moving like worms, and the same spell, the Breathtaking Hex, closed around Harry. He found himself on his knees with his hands clawing at his throat before he could think. He could also hear the shouts of the Weasleys, but Voldemort moved his hand again, and they might as well have been in another world.
            “Stupid child.” Voldemort paced towards Harry, as slowly as though the hex wouldn’t kill him, although Harry could already see his vision darkening at the edges. Voldemort turned his hand over, and a little breath streamed into Harry’s lungs as they abruptly gaped open. Of course, he thought, with the small bitter corner of his mind that seemed in contact with the Elder Wand, Voldemort could do anything he wanted with his magic, including making Harry die by inches.
            “Your prior performance led me to expect better from you.” Bizarrely, Voldemort sounded like one of his primary school teachers who had expected Harry to get better marks than Dudley. Harry would have laughed if he could have got the breath. “Instead, you cast a minor hex that I could easily defeat. Why did you do that?”
            Harry opened his mouth and smacked his lips a few times. Voldemort rolled his eyes—a gesture Harry had never thought to see from him—and released a little more of the magic. Harry could breathe enough to speak.
            Which meant he could breathe enough to cast spells, if he wanted. But Harry really didn’t think he needed to. He twitched his fingers enough that the Elder Wand was aiming more or less at Voldemort, and told it, Really. Do what you want. Draw on my magical core as you need to. Just stop him.
            There was an answering pulse, something thick and dark from the center of him, and then the Dark magic rushed up the Elder Wand and launched at Voldemort, as true and fast as the Breathtaking Hex had been. Harry didn’t recognize this spell, though. He didn’t know if it was a spell, or just pure power and will. It looked like silver when it was near him, but became tarnished silver as it neared Voldemort. Voldemort stood there and watched it come, a critical, judging distance in his eyes.
            That emotion changed as the tarnished silver thing touched him, but by then it was too late.
            Harry didn’t know what it was, so he couldn’t say exactly what it was doing to Voldemort—only that Voldemort’s head tipped back and his mouth yearned open as if he was going to vomit. Then something black and thick came out of his lips, and Harry discovered that he was free from the Breathtaking Hex.
            He scrambled to his feet and whirled around. There was a barrier between him and the Weasleys, one that looked like it was made of moving air. Harry tried to break through it with a Blasting Curse, and the next moment had to dodge as the curse reflected perfectly back at him.
            Damn it.
            Harry lifted the Elder Wand and thought at it, Do your worst.
            The moving air froze and then began to crumble from the corners, as though disintegrating. Harry hurried back to the twins, who stopped dancing hysterically up and down when they saw him and leaned around him to peer at Voldemort instead.
            “Did you just choke the Dark Lord?” Fred asked, seriously.
            “I don’t know what I did,” Harry snapped, “but I know what I need to do. Did you bring any more of those eggs?”
            George looked off to the side and acted as though he would whistle innocently while backing away. Fred was the one who took another silver egg out of his pocket and tossed it at Harry, nodding. “Be careful.”
            “Fred,” said George.
            Fred looked over his shoulder, and there was some moment of intense communion that Harry didn’t really get to witness, because he could hear the growl behind him, and reckoned that Voldemort had beaten whatever Dark magic the Elder Wand had tossed at him. Harry whirled around, hand clutched around the egg.
            Voldemort was coming slowly back to his feet. His hands were braced on the ground, and his eyes were radiant with hate. The black thing lay next to him, looking like a snake with its head chopped off. As Harry watched, it stirred and lifted towards him. He could almost feel the magic that Voldemort worked like puppet strings, pulling on it.
            Harry hesitated. Should he use the egg on the snake-thing or on Voldemort?

            Then he shook his head. He was being stupid. He couldn’t just throw the egg down someone’s throat the way he would a grenade and have done with it. He had to bury it in the earth. He chose a point about halfway between Voldemort and the snake, and launched it. The snake opened its jaws as if to snap, but Voldemort slammed its mouth closed.
            The egg dug down. Voldemort paid no attention. Harry swallowed. That meant he might not know what the egg did, then, and that was the best chance that Harry would get away with it.
            “You are less a stupid child than I thought you were,” Voldemort said, advancing one step, although not far enough to get off the area that Harry hoped the egg would affect. “More an annoying one.”
            That was the last warning Harry had before something hit him in the mind.
            It didn’t feel like the Legilimency Snape had used on him—well, the other Snape, back in his own world—because it wasn’t painful. It was so far beyond painful it just felt like a huge, muffled blow, like being hit with a pillow. Harry gasped as his Occlumency shields, the ones he had been trying to construct under this Snape’s tutelage, flew apart, and the snake, or Voldemort, delved into his mind.
            Harry couldn’t remember, because his memories were flying in all directions like broken stone, what he had done the last time this happened. He did the first thing he could think of doing, instead.
            He hit Voldemort with his memories of his own world, walking to his death in the Forbidden Forest and fighting the basilisk and beating the Voldemort in his own world with the Elder Wand’s allegiance and help. It was a whole life he had lived, somewhere else, with a Voldemort who didn’t look or act the same as this one, but was the same in a lot of other ways.
            Voldemort hesitated, and the egg went off.
            Harry knew that, later, although at the time what he heard was a roar, and the ground beneath him shook, and the probe in his mind broke as either Voldemort or the snake lost control of it and had to focus on keeping his balance instead. Harry rolled, dazed, on the ground, and felt someone pick him up. That would be Fred and George, and they were hustling him away from the battle as fast as they could go. Harry struggled weakly, muttering something that didn’t make sense even to himself.
            “We were never supposed to destroy him, yeah?” Fred panted into his ear. “Only—”
            “Make him frustrated a little bit,” George panted into the other one. “And it worked.”
            Harry heard Molly and Arthur running after them, casting curses back at what might be Death Eaters. He hoped it was Death Eaters and not Voldemort, since that would imply he had recovered enough to chase them, and they probably wouldn’t survive.
            He turned his head to the side as the twins hustled him rapidly back towards the Apparition point. The Elder Wand was there against his wrist, a reassuring buzz like angry hornets.
            Cover our tracks, Harry said. Do whatever you have to do.
            He heard a faint explosion like another egg going off beneath the air, and then they Apparated and landed back in the one part of Shaldon’s Garden cleared from the wards for the occasion. Harry fell down on the earth, and breathed.
            “Did you see the sandstorm that rose behind us?” Fred asked George, pitching his voice so that Harry could hear even over his own labored breathing and the effort of assembling his mind into something like normal order.
            “I did indeed, brother mine. A most effective tool.”
            Harry, his hand on the Elder Wand and his head lolling on the ground, said, Thank you.
            There was a long pause before the buzz resumed, and then it sounded subdued. Apparently, the Elder Wand didn’t know what it was like to be thanked, any more than a house-elf did.
*
            Severus opened his eyes. He opened them to pain, and loneliness, and kept both locked inside him as he clasped his hand to his left arm. There were still people in the house, notably the Weasleys and other rebels who had not gone on the raids. The wards of Shaldon’s Garden had never failed Severus yet, but nonetheless, he did not want them to intrude.
            The Dark Lord spat burning fury through the Dark Mark, distributing it like poison. Severus at last allowed himself a small hiss when it did not stop in a few minutes, and cast a Numbing Charm on it, while he went in search of a supply of the painkilling potion he hadn’t had to use in years.
            Then again, the Dark Lord had not shed fury in years like this, either.
            I assume that whatever Harry and the others did to anger him, it succeeded.
            The potion down his throat, Severus turned his attention to the hovering spell at the back of his mind, as polite as a house-elf. He had felt it since he cast the compulsion curse on Black, but he had never needed it until now. There were advantages to being a skilled Occlumens that did not involve the ability to break into the minds of others. He wondered idly if he should insist on teaching Harry the art.
            After the war, of course.
            Which indicated that he thought they would both survive. It was more optimism than Severus had been willing to admit to for months.
            Well. He would worry about that later. For now, he had to touch the leash that connected him to Black, first tugging gently and then harshly when Black began to wake up and fight. Of course, he only woke up so much, the spell brightening in the back of Severus’s mind, before he froze.
            Severus smiled and closed his eyes. He would have cast this spell on Black long since, but for the fear that being so close to another Legilimens meant his interference would be sensed. Now he could do as he liked with it. Dumbledore might think Black’s actions strange, but he would not be able to sense the spell without a detailed investigation of his mind—which Severus intended to give him no reason to perform.
            Now, he whispered to Black, sending the words in a blurred, rippling fashion so they would resemble even more closely the dream that his commands would come to Black as. Now is the time to go to the Order members and tell them what you remember about Harry’s body. The original Harry, your Harry, not the others. Remember how his eyes were bigger than they should be? The darkness of them, as if they had no pupil? You remember. And you can suggest hazy details of what kinds of potions might cause that darkness, as well.
            The memory was a dream, of course, not something Black had known. But it was something he could suggest to the others—and something that was true enough to panic Albus, when he heard of it. Whether or not Black had ever known or suspected that something was wrong, now it would appear that he had, and even that the Order had always known the truth that Albus tried to keep from them.
            Severus opened his eyes, and smiled.
            The burning of the Dark Mark on his arm had subsided, he noted. The Dark Lord had mastered his rage, and was presumably trying to control it, to turn his mind to other methods. Severus considered ways to irritate him further and keep him focused on the rebels, but he could do little right now, with his magic still exhausted, and without Harry. He would wait until Harry returned.
            Then he felt the sharp buzz of the wards, and lifted his head. His first thought was that Harry had returned—but in that case, he would have felt the wards welcoming someone Severus had linked to them—and then that some of the rebels were trying to sneak through the folds of wizardspace into places that he had not told them they could be—but in that case, the wards would have snapped taut.
            No, he decided after a second, this particular buzz meant a letter. He would have felt it before this if his mind and soul were not still reeling from the great task he had performed that morning.
            He moved towards the nearest window that looked over the garden, and whispered to the roses, “Bring the bird and the owl both to me. Bind the bird.”
            The climbing roses that he had commanded half-bowed to him and sped off to do his bidding, slithering on their thorny stalks like snakes. Severus leaned on the wall near the window and speculated, idly and pleasingly, whether he liked roses so much because of their affinity to serpents. It had never occurred to him before, it would not have occurred to him now if his fatigue did not breathe through him, but his present state of mind was an appropriate state for such thoughts. At the least, they could not harm him or Harry.
            It was a few minutes before the roses returned, one of them curled around the letter as demurely as a Kneazle carrying a mouse in its mouth, the rest of them binding the feet and the wings of the owl. The bird didn’t struggle, having received the message about what would happen to it if it did, but it glared at Severus with all the wild yellow passion its eyes were capable of.
            Severus sneered mildly at it as he took the letter. Yes, it was from Albus, and Severus could still feel the distinctive tang of broken tracking spells dangling from the parchment, like cobwebs hit by a broom. Severus shook his head as he opened the letter. He supposed Albus had to try, but the inferior nature of his attempt disappointed Severus.
            The letter had numberless tiny blobs of ink scattered throughout it. Perhaps it had been written in a great hurry, Severus thought, or perhaps Albus only wanted them to think so—wanted Harry to think so. Severus did not yet know whether Albus had anticipated that Severus or others would read it, as well.
            Dear Harry,
            I could try to answer you, but I do not know the words that would do it. Therefore, I will only give you the testimonials of people who would not be alive today if not for the way that the original Harry—as you would call him, the one born to our world, the one whose death I still grieve—had not existed, and defeated Voldemort at a young age.
            Severus flinched himself at reading the Dark Lord’s name, and then shook his head with a mild snort. “A bad mistake, Albus,” he whispered. “You should have not reminded him that you still grieve that Harry’s death. It makes it too clear that you do not grieve for the others.”
            He continued reading, however, both intent on analyzing the words before Harry saw them and curious to know what Albus meant by “testimonials.”
            From Miss Hermione Granger, I gathered these words: “I wouldn’t be able to study at Hogwarts today if not for Harry. Voldemort would have ruled the wizarding world and I would have been killed as a Mudblood the instant he found my name down for Hogwarts. Maybe I would have died when I was a baby. Maybe my parents would have died, too. He saved all our lives by being there.”
            Severus sighed. Knowing Miss Granger’s loyalty to Albus, he did not doubt those were her words in essence, though perhaps beautified by Albus for inclusion in his letter. And perhaps what Granger said was true, although Severus had his doubts. The Dark Lord was not insane; he had displayed erratic behavior only when truly enraged. Severus thought he would have found some way to cope with Muggleborns other than killing them if he had won, though that method might not be very much more comfortable for the Muggleborns involved.
            But more than that, he wondered if Albus had some strategy that Severus had not yet divined, or if he was simply that bad at knowing the truth of what Harry was feeling at the moment. Yes, Albus had loved the original Potter. What did that matter to whether Harry defeated the Dark Lord now?
            Then Severus began to laugh, and did so for so long that his roses rustled and the owl they held hooted indignantly.
            Of course. Albus had picked up on the allusions to sacrifice in Harry’s letter, as Harry had intended him to, and guessed correctly what they meant. Now he was trying to prove that he had loved that Harry too much to sacrifice him.
            Severus shook his head, and continued reading the “testimonials.” They included one from Black about how much he had enjoyed raising his godson, and one from Weasley about the friendships that cut across House lines, and one from Lucius that made Severus raise his eyebrows.
            From Lucius Malfoy, who turned his back on Voldemort to become one of our most treasured allies, and did it by rescuing Harry from his clutches, Harry was “an inspiration. I believed that he might win the war, despite the fact that the Dark Lord is so much older and wiser. He had qualities that attracted and intrigued the Dark Lord, and there was no better way to win his attention. And he impressed me with his gracious thanks after I rescued him.”
            Severus tapped the letter against his hand. Again, he reminded himself that he had no way of knowing if Albus had taken the words exactly as they sounded from the lips of the Order member offering them, or if he had changed some things around—perhaps the way they expressed them, perhaps uniting disparate sentences together. That meant he could not actually be sure that Lucius had really used the past tense when talking about Harry.
            I believed that he might win the war.
            Of course, the boy Lucius had been talking about could win no wars now, because he was dead. Severus told himself that was all it was.
            Not that Lucius had once believed they might win the war, and had lost that belief before the original Harry died. Not that he had considered changing sides to the one that would win the war. Not that. And if it was, Severus would have no way of knowing unless he asked Lucius himself, given the wards on Hogwarts and the way that Albus could twist things.

            Lucius might be the traitor. This was the best evidence that Severus had yet found for that contention, although if someone had asked him to name a traitor before this, he would have said Lucius simply because the man always looked out for his own interest and joined the Order late.
            But he did not see that the revelation need change their immediate plans, even if it was true. If they all lived through the battle, they could question Lucius after it.
            “Sorry I’m late.”
            Severus started and turned. Harry was trotting into his bedroom, shaking his head a little and touching his forehead as though he wanted to smear dirt into his scar. There was dirt everywhere on him, Severus saw with a quick glance. On his palms, under his fingernails, around the cuffs of his sleeves, and probably on his feet, not that Severus could see it with his shoes on.
            “What happened?” Severus thought all the demand for an explanation that he could possibly need was contained in those two words.
            Harry didn’t seem to think so. He flopped down on the floor and closed his eyes. “Fred and George’s weapons caused an earthquake,” he muttered. “I had to use another of them to escape, so there was a second one. And I dueled Tom. He was there.”
            “Why was he there?” Holding Albus’s letter, Severus stepped past Harry and sank down on the nearest chair, to study Harry more closely.
            Harry’s eyes stayed closed for a second, as though he was summoning up the courage to speak in more depth. So Severus got to see more of his dirty eyelashes, and cheeks, and the hand that delved into one of his pockets, clutching at his wand. The buzz of Dark magic around it seemed more distant than it had been. Severus grimaced. So long as it was not actually destroying his home around him, he would accept it.
            And if I am right about what I am thinking and we do both manage to survive, then it will not be my home much longer.
            “I don’t know,” Harry said at last. “It could have been coincidence. Or just that we attacked the stronghold near Diagon Alley, you know, and Mrs. Weasley told me some people still go there.” He opened his eyes, which were soft and dazed-looking. “I suppose the Death Eaters still want to attack some of the people who come there, and they need to buy food, like anyone else.”
            Severus grunted. He supposed, after going over several possible explanations in his mind, that the centrality of London was as good a reason as any. If the Dark Lord had felt the pull on his soul as they made the Horcrux and been able to read Severus’s thoughts enough to anticipate the attack, then he would have been able to ready protections against any weapons that the Weasleys came up with, which sounded as if it had not happened. And Severus himself had not known what raid Harry would be assigned to, so thinking the Dark Lord was in London because one of them had betrayed the secret despite himself was absurd.
            “But I don’t think we need to worry about delving into his mind or writing him a letter or anything,” Harry murmured, without opening his eyes. “He’s plenty pissed now.”
            “Yes, it does sound like it,” Severus said, and the dryness of his tone made Harry finally open an eye to regard him. “You are unhurt?”
            “Yeah.” Harry rolled over and dug his elbows into the floor beneath him, pushing himself back to his feet. “So you don’t need to look at me as though I’m bleeding to death under my clothes.”
            “I was unaware that I was looking at you like that,” Severus said, which was true and all he wished to say about the subject. “Here. This letter came while you were—occupied. You may wish to read it. I have also commanded Black to start telling the other Order members about the original Harry’s distended and murky eyes on death.” He held out the parchment, not surprised when Harry snatched it from him.
            Harry read it all the way through, snorting at what Severus presumed were the ridiculous parts. Then he waved the letter at Severus. “Does he think I’m going to come back because of this? Why did he write it?”
            “To try and convince you that he loved the Harry born to this world so much that he would never sacrifice him,” Severus said. “You did not grasp that?”
            “Oh.” Harry read it through again, then tossed the letter down. “So I reckon that he’s running scared right now, and we won’t have to do much to convince him that he has to come to Shaldon’s Garden and stop the spreading rumors?”
            Severus nodded. “And I believe that passing information about Shaldon’s Garden to the Order, hinting where it is so that Albus can come here and confront us, will mean that it is unnecessary to send information to the Dark Lord, too.”
            Harry was quicker than Severus had given him credit for, or perhaps his mind was simply primed now that they were making plans and fighting instead of arguing against Albus for every inch of ground. He narrowed his eyes. “You’ve figured out who the traitor in the Order is?”
            “I think it is Lucius,” Severus said quietly. “Not that I believe he had anything to do with the death of the Harry Potter he knew,” he added, when Harry swore and began to pace. “Because, rather, he wants to go with the side most likely to win. During the confrontation between the Potter he knew and the Dark Lord in the graveyard, he saw something that convinced him Potter would win the war, and he rescued him. But he wished to keep his options open, and so I also believe that he has been passing information to the Dark Lord. It would be consistent with his character, and he has the Dark Mark to let himself be borne to the Dark Lord’s side at any moment it is convenient for them both to do so.”
            Harry stared at him with narrowed eyes. “But you don’t know for sure.”
            Severus shook his head. “Call it a Death Eater’s understanding, not proof.”
            Harry nodded briskly. “Well, then we need to start writing letters to the Order members, and hint around about Shaldon’s Garden in—what would convince Dumbledore we were trying to keep a secret but can’t really keep it?”
            “Codes that the other Order members can crack,” Severus said at once. “If we were writing to him, he would be suspicious of anything unsubtle, but he knows what you and I both of think of most of the Order members’ intelligence.”
            Harry grinned. “That’s it, then. We need to do that, and then we just need to decide what fold of wizardspace we want them to land in.”
            “And get ready in other ways for the confrontation,” Severus added, wondering that Harry had forgotten that.
            Harry rolled his eyes at him. “I didn’t forget that. I didn’t think I needed to say anything, it was so obvious.”
            “Ah,” Severus said, and decided that his time would be better spent starting to compose letters than arguing with intuition.
*
            moodysavage: They bound a piece of Voldemort’s soul to the Horcrux without it being split, just stretched, basically. Destroy the Horcrux and they destroy his soul.
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World in Pieces