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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-Three—A Clash of Blades
            There was no pain like this pain.
            Severus could feel it eating away at him, at his magical core and his will. He had never known how strong the Dark Mark was until he tried to break away from the Death Eaters, but the Dark Lord had never used the full strength of it against him. Severus suspected he hadn’t been close enough since Severus declared his allegiance to Dumbledore to do so.
            But he was making up for it now, oh yes. Wherever Severus turned in his own mind, the pain was there; it blocked all the ways out, the paths back into his mind that Severus would have taken with most torture, his Occlumency shields. The Mark shredded Severus’s mind as effectively as his body, and Severus could feel more and more of himself curling up and dying. He wondered what would be left, in the end, whether the Dark Lord would leave a tiny shred alive so that Severus could see what had happened to him, and bitterly regret it.
            And then he remembered a way that was still open to him, a way that remained because the Dark Lord did not know it existed.
            He turned and glided through the black path that linked him to the piece of the Dark Lord’s soul, and the reverse Horcrux. The pain ceased and became transparent, like the state of mind that Severus had achieved when he used the Mark. He was inside, and everything else was outside. There would be a price to pay later, but for now, everything slid through him. He was not the fish, but the water.
            He opened his eyes and stood up.
            The Dark Lord had his wand aimed at Harry, who dodged and rolled even though nothing was coming at him yet. Severus knew the defense for the pathetic thing it was. The Dark Lord was only toying with Harry, letting him believe that he could escape. He would teach Harry better as soon as it suited him to do so.
            Then Severus stepped forwards, and the Dark Lord turned his head and stared.
            There was malice on his pale face, and hatred. But also surprise, and Severus answered the surprise by striking.
            The spell he chose was a poisonous one, and he cast it on his own left arm, on the flaring Mark, instead of at the Dark Lord. For a moment, the black snake and skull glowed as though absorbing the venom. Then it sprang along the connection.
            Severus had not truly understood, before yesterday, that he carried a piece of the Dark Lord with him at all times. The Mark wasn’t a corrupted patch of his own skin; it was a transplant, a replacement of his own skin with something else.
            The Dark Lord had used that to his advantage today, as Severus had done yesterday. But the poison couldn’t harm Severus if he cast it on something that wasn’t part of his body. It spread out, and the Dark Lord’s breathing began to choke off.
            He uttered a wordless scream, and struck back. Certainly he was powerful, and Severus did not truly expect to be able to defeat him this way. But he was vulnerable, and now Severus knew it. The Dark Lord could attempt to block the vulnerability, but he could not exorcise it, not without ripping the Mark from Severus’s arm. And what Severus had done in fetching the bit of soul and the Dark Lord had done in using the Mark against him would not permit that. They had entwined the Mark and Severus’s body more strongly, if anything.
            Severus watched dispassionately as some of his spell leaked through and the Dark Lord began to have to cast defensive spells instead of offensive ones. Again the pain hammered through him, and again he ignored it, parted himself around it and let it slide through him. Yes, he would pay for this.
            But he would die knowing he had seen the Dark Lord conquered, and that he had some part in that conquering.
            And then two things arrived at once, whirling from opposite sides of the garden, so that it was hard for Severus to sort out what had happened until he thought about it. One was the geode that they had made into the reverse Horcrux, coming in through the entrance that no one but he and Harry could go back along, glinting purple as it slammed into Harry’s hand.
            The other was Dumbledore, who wore purple robes nearly as bright as the geode’s crystals and strode into view from beside the green stone wall, from a near-instant Apparition. His wand was raised, and the magic that crackled from him was already forming into green lightning.
            The Dark Lord turned to look at Dumbledore. Severus could feel the distant pulse of his amusement. The pain that Severus had been sliding through cut off abruptly, and the Dark Lord strode away to stand opposite Dumbledore. He shook his head, and Severus slid to the ground, calling Harry over to him with one beckoning hand. Harry edged towards him, clutching the geode. Severus wanted to hiss and ask why he had brought the thing here, near two powerful wizards who might be able to sense what it was, but the Dark Lord began to speak, and Severus’s attention reoriented on the conversation.
            “Albus,” the Dark Lord said quietly.
            “Tom,” said Dumbledore, and the lightning had become a complicated swirl of colors in front of him, darker than Severus would have expected given Dumbledore’s supposed Light nature. Then again, someone who had sacrificed the boy he claimed to love most in the world had to be Darker, more pragmatic, than he let on.
            The Dark Lord lifted one hand. Severus saw the glint of an onyx ring from it, one that was surrounded by snakes’ heads, and wasn’t surprised when snakes began to emerge from the shadows at the edge of the garden. “I left that name behind long ago, along with what else I was,” he said with peculiar emphasis, still staring at Dumbledore. “You would be wise not to use it, lest it encourage you to underestimate me.”
            “I would never underestimate you, Tom, after everything you have done in the last few years.” Dumbledore spread his hands, and the green lightning surged out from him and became human figures standing beside him. Severus had never heard of the spell, which looked immensely powerful. He urged Harry a little more towards the entrance into the garden, but Harry didn’t move. “You should know that.”
            The Dark Lord sneered back wordlessly, and then they were dueling.
            The garden was a whirl of color and chaos and light. Sometimes Severus could see a man made of lightning and a snake made of shadow struggling; sometimes he could see a shield like stained glass intercept a hammer of darkness; sometimes he could make out an ocean of blue-black foam breaking on a golden rock. But it was difficult to see more than that, to comprehend more than that. There was too much magic, everywhere, and he was too low on the scale of power compared to Dumbledore and the Dark Lord.
            Someone tugged on his sleeve, and Severus turned his head away from what was probably a useless effort anyway to study Harry.
            “We need to destroy it,” Harry whispered. “Can you cast the Fiendfyre? Or do I have to?” he added, and Severus could only imagine what his face must have looked like to make Harry say it.
            Severus licked his lips and did his best to sit up, but ended up slumping back again. Someone had replaced his muscles with marmalade when he wasn’t looking. “You must do it, I think,” he said. The magic wasn’t loud, but it seemed hard to force the words up his throat anyway. “I wore myself out resisting the pain spell that the Dark Lord tried to inflict on me.”
            Harry nodded, and turned to face the Horcrux, holding up his wand. Severus turned his head to watch the reflected lights of the duel shimmer in the geode’s crystals.
            Everything was just as it should be, with the geode. Severus knew that. There was no shimmer to it that would have indicated the Dark Lord had done something to change it, and he could still feel the way it was changed, which indicated the bit of the Dark Lord’s soul was still there. Not only that, its entrance into the garden had coincided with Dumbledore’s entrance, which meant the Dark Lord hadn’t paid attention to it anyway.
            So why did he feel that there was something they’d forgotten?
*
            Okay. Okay. I can do this. We even talked about Fiendfyre and the best way to destroy the Horcrux. It’s not like I don’t know the incantation.
            But his heart was hammering so hard that he felt as if he’d fall, and he had thought he would have Snape’s help.
            So you won’t. Snape is just lying a few feet away. He could get you away before you did something wrong.
            But maybe not, if he was so hurt. Harry swallowed, and knew it had to be now. Voldemort and Dumbledore were still fighting on a level so high that Harry couldn’t make out what they were doing half the time, but Voldemort might win at any moment and turn his attention on them. Harry thought he would probably recognize the Horcrux if he concentrated on it.
            He whispered the incantation Snape had taught him, his eyes never leaving the geode. He felt the power building in him, pouring down the Elder Wand. The Elder Wand practically opened its core to the spell and laughed joyously in Harry’s head; Harry thought it was happy that Harry had chosen, purposefully, to use a Dark spell instead of just asking the wand for whatever power it could come up with.
            The fire came out.
            Harry held his wand steady, despite the tremendous heat and the backlash that felt like it would destroy his fingers. Snape had been strict about that; if he waved it around while he was still casting the spell, then it would create a separate flaming animal, one that Harry would have to deal with. Fiendfyre could turn on its caster as easily as it could destroy something he wanted destroyed.
            The Elder Wand seemed to thrum in his grasp, although it didn’t affect the way the Fiendfyre poured out. The motion was comforting, telling Harry, without words, that the wand wouldn’t let the Fiendfyre destroy him.
            Says you, Harry thought, and then the Fiendfyre surrounded the Horcrux, and a blazing chimera swallowed it.
            There was a sound so loud that it didn’t really seem like a sound, just a quake under their feet. Harry found that he was stumbling, the only real things in the whole world the Elder Wand in his hand and Snape’s hand that gripped his shoulder. Snape was drawing Harry close to him, trying to shelter him, although Harry felt as though the blow that had knocked him down was coming from inside instead of out.
            And then he heard the screaming.
            Harry turned his head, and stared.
            Voldemort was writhing on the ground, his hands over his face. The snakes that he had commanded were frozen in place, and he’d dropped his wand. The Fiendfyre stalked around him, and Harry could see the way that his face seemed to be melting, his clothes dripping. Dark mist poured up from the shattered geode, which was now lying on the ground, with no sign of the fire that had eaten it; the smoke stretched out to Voldemort, and Harry saw it sucking at him, pulling at him. Calling the rest of his soul, still in his body, to join the piece of it destroyed by the Fiendfyre, Harry thought hazily.
            But Dumbledore was lying on the ground and shrieking, too.
            Harry edged backwards, holding his wand at the ready, in case this was a lie like the ones that Dumbledore had told about the other Harry’s death. A hand grasped his ankle, and he nearly screamed himself. But Dumbledore didn’t stand up, and no one else from the Order had Apparated in when Harry whipped around with his wand at the ready.
            “Harry,” Snape whispered, leaning up towards him. “Let us retreat into the house. We can—leave them here, and come back to deal with what is left when they stop screaming.”
            Harry bristled instinctively when Snape suggested that, but he had to acknowledge, glancing over his shoulder, that he really didn’t want to stay around here any longer, even though the Fiendfyre seemed to have decided to eat only Voldemort and ignore everything else. “Do you know what’s happening?” he whispered, as Snape began to steer him up the garden towards the entrance that Harry could barely make out, a hole in the folds of wizardspace.
            “Dumbledore attempted to take your—excuse me, the original Harry’s—place in the prophecy for this world,” Snape murmured, his voice low and ragged and right next to Harry’s ear. “And we bound the soul to the Horcrux and to the Dark Lord by making it part of the prophecy. I think—the interactions between the prophecy and the Dark Lord and whoever else is involved are more complex than—Dumbledore allowed for. He could not take the place of the Dark Lord’s prophesied destroyer. But he is tied into it now, and the destruction of one piece of the prophecy brings him in.”
            Harry stared over his shoulder again. Now that he thought about it, Dumbledore was mimicking Voldemort’s gestures, his arms rising and falling at the same rate, but not as violently. He wasn’t screaming as loudly, either. “Do you think he’ll die?” he asked. “It wasn’t his soul that we put into the Horcrux.”
            “I don’t know.” Snape tightened his hold on Harry’s shoulder. “And when I said that we could come back afterwards and finish up whoever survived, I did not—anticipate—remaining around this long.”
            Harry went with the shove in the center of his back, not looking over his shoulder again. He could hear one set of screams dying, and he thought he knew which set that was. But he held firm to the idea that, even if Dumbledore survived the destruction of the Horcrux, he would be too weak to Apparate out of the garden right away. They could afford to rest.
            He looked Snape over. He was limping, although as far as Harry could see, there was nothing physically wrong with his leg. His right hand was clasped over the Dark Mark. Harry winced and reached out, wondering if he could touch Snape’s Mark and heal it somehow. “Is there something I can do to help?” he asked softly.
            “Keep moving.”
            Harry almost jumped out of his skin, and did, mumbling something that he wasn’t even sure would resolve into words. Snape paid no attention to it, at least, lunging through the opening in the edged wizard-folds in a way that made Harry think he was glad to reach solid ground at last. He landed on the far side with a groan and a thump, and Harry followed him, stretching out on his back in this second, isolated garden.
            “The wards are strong enough to hold Dumbledore if they’re strong enough to hold Voldemort, right?” Harry murmured, closing his eyes.
            “How many times have I told you not to call him that?” Snape’s voice wasn’t as stern as the one he’d used to command Harry to move, though, which Harry decided meant he could safely ignore it. On the other hand, quite possibly Snape would never speak as sharply as that command to move again.
            “He’s probably dead by now,” Harry pointed out. “Or close to it. You and I both know how the theory behind the reverse Horcrux works. If he’s not dead, we can go in and finish him off. I think I can speak of someone dying any way I like.”
            Snape gave him a weak glare, and then turned and glanced back once more at the entrance to the potions garden. “We do not know if the wards will hold,” he whispered. “We do not know whether they are dying at the moment, or managed to escape. And I forbid you to go back and check,” he added, as Harry opened his mouth to say something.
            “Well, someone has to,” Harry pointed out logically. “Unless we’re just supposed to take it for granted that they’re dead and celebrate before we’ve even seen the bodies.”
            “You are not going to,” Snape said, voice as precise as if he was etching each word in stone. “And I am in no shape to do so.”
            “I volunteer.”
            Snape opened his mouth, and then seemed to realize at the same time as Harry that the voice originated from behind him, towards the house, rather than from Harry. He and Harry turned and looked.
            Draco stood there, his face so grim and pale that Harry winced. He had his wand in one hand, spinning it around and around, as though he wanted to throw it away and hug it close to him at the same time. “I volunteer,” he repeated. “You promised me that I could be there when you got vengeance on Dumbledore. I haven’t seen anything yet. You arranged this whole thing to leave me out.” He turned his head and glared at Harry, as if he suspected that leaving him out was mostly Harry’s fault. “Let me go in and check.”
            Snape was silent. Harry thought Snape was going to let him decide, and then glanced at him and saw the way his mouth was fixed.
            “No,” Harry said quickly.
            “So you were the one who thought I should stay behind like a child,” Draco said. Harry supposed it was progress that Draco was looking at him like he hated him now, not like he was confusing Harry with his dead boyfriend, but it was still unpleasant.
            “No,” Harry snapped back again. “What I think is that Professor Snape wants to shove you in there because you don’t matter to him as much as I do and you could tell us whether they were alive or dead without a risk to me.”
            Snape turned to look at him, face as tight and cool as the one in Harry’s world had looked when he was late to Potions. Harry glared back at him. “You know you were thinking that,” he said. “You care about Draco’s life, but less than you care about mine, or yours.”
            “I understand why,” Draco said, in a strangled voice. “I haven’t been—rational or—helpful—since my Harry died.”
            “That doesn’t mean he should just get to throw away your life on a whim!” Harry snapped, turning back to him. Honestly, did no one but him give a shit about Draco here? “You can’t just—”
            “And I told you I volunteer,” Draco said. “So I’m taking the risk on myself, and if there’s any blame attaching to that, it’s not going to be to you. You can tell my father that, if he comes and confronts you. And he’s the only one who would,” he added softly. “Weasley and Granger were Harry’s friends, not mine.”
            “Go,” Snape said.
            Draco nodded, and, with his wand held in front of him, he ducked through the entrance to the garden.
            “Why are you willing to take more risks with his life?” Harry demanded, turning back to Snape. “Even if—even if I what I said is true, there’s no reason to let him get hurt.”
            “Draco knows more Dark magic than you think, and is more capable of defending himself.” Snape’s eyes were large and calm, and he didn’t look the way he had a minute ago. He looked like the man Harry had come to know and respect. “And we did promise him revenge. This is the only way he may get a chance at it.”
            Harry just shook his head and turned around to stare at the entrance into the garden. Even if Draco was perfectly safe, he wondered if Draco liked being sent off casually like that, with no real choice on his part.
            Snape gripped his shoulder for a second, as though he wanted to remind himself of what Harry’s bones felt like. “He will be fine,” he said. “You worry too much.”
            Harry just stared at him, because Snape saying that to him was rich.
            Snape didn’t attempt a defense. He closed his eyes and said, “Might I trouble you to go to my lab and fetch the vials that are bright red and corked with purple? They are strong pain potions. I fear I need them.”
            Harry swallowed and reminded himself that Snape had been tortured, and Draco had volunteered. He nodded. “How do I get back through the maze? Turn right every time instead of left?”
            Snape slitted one eye open and regarded him with mild contempt, which reassured Harry. A Snape who couldn’t even feel those emotions would be in real danger. “Turn right until you recognize the doorway of the lab. It is in one of the folds that I had to bend most strongly. You will come upon it. Then go through it.”
            Harry nodded several times and ran away, forcing his legs to work as fast as he could. He had been so busy worrying over Draco that he had lost track of the fact that there was someone right in front of him to worry about.
*
            When he was sure that Harry was out of sight and not likely to return for at least five minutes, Severus pulled the sleeve back from his left arm, and looked at the Dark Mark. He had wondered if he would have an arm left, and had been prepared to face the sight, but he had still wanted to do so alone.
            The Dark Mark on his arm matched none of his expectations, seeing as it was neither unchanged nor a mass of bleeding flesh. Instead, it had bleached to a pale grey, and it was difficult to make out the place where the snake intertwined with the skull. Severus frowned. He had still been feeling pain, which made him fear that the Dark Lord was among the living, but now he wondered if it wasn’t residual pain, from having the connection between them exploited in a way it was never meant to be.
            Gingerly, he reached out and poked at the Mark. There was a brief hiss and sizzle, and the snake collapsed into ash that drifted away from his arm. The skin beneath it did not look exactly healthy, being the rather ghastly color that Severus had seen when Lily broke her arm one summer and had to wear a Muggle cast instead of being healed by magic, but much better than he had thought.
            And unmarked.
            Severus closed his eyes, glad he was already sitting down.
            When he thought he could look again, he opened his eyes and went on surveying it.
            He had only the skull now, and the stare of its empty eye-sockets was no longer as threatening as it had been. Someone might look on this years hence, or now, and think only that it was an ugly tattoo.
            Harry scrambled back through the doorway with the pain potions, and Severus let his sleeve fall back into place and picked up the first vial. The cork popped out smoothly, and he actually managed to swallow most of the potion before something began to pound frantically on the wall of solid air that blocked the entrance to the potions garden from the other side, for everyone but Severus and Harry.
            Harry whirled around with his wand in his hand. Severus eyed it warily, but said nothing about the Dark power that buzzed through it. That wand had more than likely saved Harry’s life in the struggle with the Dark Lord.
            On the other side of the barrier was Draco, pounding with his fists and screaming now. Severus surmised that he had not expected to be trapped behind the barrier like that, and that he wanted them to come get him, and said as much.
            Harry gave him a dire look and moved straight towards the barrier. Severus swallowed the second pain potion, ignoring the way it tried to choke him, and stepped in front of Harry.
            “Will you tell me what has you paranoid now?” Harry folded his arms and stared at him as if Severus was obstructing him for the fun of it.
            “Certainly,” Severus said, so calmly that it took a moment for Harry to realize what he had actually said and scowl at him. “I need to make sure that that is Draco beyond the barrier, and not a clever glamour. Or for that matter, that Draco is doing it of his own free will and not because he is controlled by the Imperius Curse.”
            Harry blinked at him, then gave a tiny, “Oh,” and stepped out of the way.
            Severus nodded graciously at him and stepped up to the barrier. With a flick of his wand, it melted away, and Draco started to stumble forwards.
            Severus caught his eye and sliced into his mind in a Legilimens so smooth and certain that he thought the Dark Lord could not have bettered it. A second later, he nodded to Harry. This was the shallow and frenetic mind he knew, and with no trace of anything controlling it except an absolutely overwhelming preoccupation with what he’d seen in the garden.
            “Come on!” Draco was gasping. “The Dark Lord is dead, and I think—I think Dumbledore is dying. Something’s wrong with him, anyway. I don’t know what!”
            Harry gave Severus a glance. He might not have meant for Severus to construe it as asking for permission, but Severus nodded gracious permission anyway. Harry scowled at him and ducked through the gate, aiming for the back of the garden, where Dumbledore and the Dark Lord had fallen, the last time they saw them.
            However compelling the sight of Dumbledore might be, however strange the things that he was doing, Severus had to turn his head and gaze at the place where the Dark Lord’s corpse had fallen.
            He saw what Draco had meant, despite the Dark Lord’s ferocity and supposed immortality. He had burned. His body was still recognizable, mostly because the fire had reached his face last, but it was nothing more than a brittle, delicate husk of black skin over hollowness. Except for the color of the ash—black rather than grey—he resembled the snake that had flecked off Severus’s skin.
            Severus closed his eyes and did not sink to his knees mostly because he did not wish to demonstrate such weakness in front of either Draco or Harry.
            But there was so much light in his soul.
            Whatever came after this, whether it was traveling back with Harry to his world or parting from him, that light would be there.
*
            Harry bent over Dumbledore and stared at him. Dumbledore’s face was completely red, his beard tossed aside and his hands grasping at his throat. Harry would have thought he was choking to death, but he was pretty sure Dumbledore would be dead by now if that was the case. He shook his head when Draco asked in an impatient, hissing voice what was wrong with him. Harry didn’t want to say and get it wrong.
            But Dumbledore was still alive. The way his eyes moved to Harry and then bugged out told Harry that.
            Harry grinned at him. “Feel like confessing?” he asked, although he had no idea if Dumbledore could talk right now. “How you killed the Harry who was born here, sacrificed him, and made him think it was his own idea? He had to think he was his own idea, unless you were controlling him with Imperius then, too. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have swallowed those potions.”
            Draco drew a sharp breath beside him and stood trembling. Harry frowned and just kept himself from wincing. He kept doing that to Draco, forgetting that he had been in love with that Harry and that he had a prior relationship with everyone here. Maybe he had to say this, but he didn’t want the blow to go past Dumbledore and hit Draco instead.
            Dumbledore’s face slowly rolled towards him. The sheen of red was fading from it, and his hands fell away from his throat. Harry took the moment to Disarm him. He didn’t really think Dumbledore could do him much damage right now, but on the other hand, he knew he’d been mistaken about that before, and he didn’t want to repeat his mistakes.
            “I never killed Harry,” Dumbledore whispered. “I never murdered him. He died willingly.”
            Harry had started to feel a bit worried in spite of himself, wondering if it was possible they could have been mistaken about the origin of Harry’s death, but by the end, he understood and snorted. “Right, because that makes it so much better,” he snapped. “Because you persuaded him that it would be best if he sacrificed himself and died, that means that you didn’t play a part in his death.” He gestured at the way Dumbledore lay on the ground. “I think this proves that you did, because why would the destruction of Voldemort affect you this way if you weren’t tied to the prophecy? Maybe it could only half-kill you, since you didn’t take the original Harry’s place even though you tried, but you were involved.”
            Dumbledore had to labor several times before he had the breath to speak again. Draco was trembling beside him, Harry saw. He glanced once over his shoulder, looking for Snape, but he was standing back, waiting, and Harry snapped his eyes back to Dumbledore. He didn’t think looking away from him was a good idea.
            “There is a difference,” Dumbledore said at last, his chest heaving mightily, “in fulfilling your destiny and dying without purpose.”
            Harry laughed harshly. He saw Dumbledore shudder, probably the only kind of flinch he was capable of giving right now. “Right. There’s so much difference, and you appreciate it so much, that you told the whole Order about how Harry had really died. But you couldn’t, could you? You couldn’t admit that you killed him and it was for nothing, because it didn’t even make you the invincible Light Lord that it was supposed to. So you covered up the death and said it was a suicide. You left everyone to assume that he killed himself because he was too cowardly to face up to this so-called destiny. You made Draco grieve and obsess over his death. And you summoned other versions of me from other worlds, and made them die, too. All of that, rather than admit you made a mistake.” He leaned forwards until his nose hovered a few inches above Dumbledore’s. “That doesn’t sound like you helped someone die fulfilling a destiny. It sounds like what you did was futile, and you were perfectly willing to let other people die instead of letting them find out.”
            Dumbledore made a sound of pain and closed his eyes. Harry didn’t know whether it was physical pain or mental pain. He just found himself watching Dumbledore and savoring every moment of it.
            Hermione would probably say that was me being vindictive.
            Harry shrugged. His Hermione would say that, yes. The only one who was real to him, the only one who mattered to him. But this Order had gone along with Dumbledore’s plans, even when they could see they didn’t work. They were less guilty than he was, but not by much.
            “I had to do what I had to do,” Dumbledore whispered next. “There was no…way…that the boy could defeat Tom alone.”
            “Have you heard of something called extra training?” Harry asked, widening his eyes. “I hear it does wonders. And leaves the victim alive, even!”
            Draco choked beside him, with what might have been outrage or glee. Harry didn’t turn to check. He wasn’t sure that he could turn away from Dumbledore’s eyes right now, which blinked fretfully at him, as if Harry would stop making sense in a second.
            “He could have lived,” Harry said, hammering in the words as hard as he could, doing his best to make Dumbledore understand, how much of a waste it was, what he’d done. “He could have changed the world, maybe. Maybe he would have done his part in the prophecy in a way that you didn’t foresee, and made it come true that way. The way I did when I burned a stone that we’d bound a bit of Tom’s soul to and destroyed him.”
            Dumbledore stared at him, and then shut his eyes again.
            Harry could see the way he breathed, though, and knew better than to think he’d died or gone unconscious. He took a step forwards and kept speaking. He knew that Draco deserved a chance, too, but Draco didn’t know about this, which made it Harry’s thing to say. “You kept saying that the prophecy had to be fulfilled, and that was the sole reason you summoned versions of me, of us, over and over again. But you never thought there was any flexibility. It had to be straightforward battle, and because I survived battling Tom but didn’t obey you, you were sure that I was the wrong one. You were going to give up and try to summon another version of me, or try to control my mind so that I would do things your way. Why didn’t you realize that interfering in fate and prophecy didn’t do anything except fuck things up? You idiot!”
            He was breathing hard now, himself, and raised a hand to touch his throat. Draco was eyeing him sideways and looked as though he thought Harry ought to be locked up for his own good. Harry gave him a quick smile and turned to face Dumbledore and deliver the death blow.
            “You thought you knew everything,” he said softly. “You thought you were so grand, the chess master, the one who knew where everyone had to go and what they had to do for you to win. What makes you any different from Tom? He wanted to destroy the Harry born to this world, but you were the one who actually did it. And he wanted to manipulate people, but you did it, all of it, all the time. And not even to conquer the world. To cover up your own mistakes. Well, you failed at that, too. The whole Order will know soon.”
            Dumbledore shivered and tried to curl in on himself. That was rather pitiful, Harry thought, a grown man in a fetal position.
            But he didn’t know what else he could say to Dumbledore. Even now, he held back the information that he’d found a way to return to his world, just in case there was something Dumbledore could do to interfere with it.
            He stepped back and nodded to Draco. “Your turn.”
            Draco’s mouth fell open a little. Harry hid a smile. Had Draco thought Harry was so angry that he might kill Dumbledore right there?
            Probably. Harry could feel the rage and fear still twisting through him. Maybe Draco had thought that was a strong enough emotion to make him kill Dumbledore, after all.
            But Draco turned back to Dumbledore and said, “Transfero aegrimoniam.”
            Purple-grey tendrils slid out of his temples, like Dark versions of the memories that you put in a Pensieve. Harry watched in fascination, since he didn’t know what the spell did. Draco just watched.
            The tendrils wrapped around Dumbledore and bound him, and he choked. Harry turned to Draco with raised eyebrows, wondering if Draco had meant to kill him after all.
            Draco shook his head. “I gave him my grief for Harry,” he hissed, his eyes savage. “He’s feeling now what I felt, and I’m free of it.”
            “You gave him all of it?” Harry blinked at him. “I would have thought…”
            “Well, yes, we’ve already established that you don’t understand me very well,” Draco snapped back at him, and turned away. “You were the one who taught me that he wasn’t coming back and I needed to move on, though,” he added, over his shoulder, as he moved towards the entrance of the garden. “So I suppose I can thank you for that, and make you responsible for my decision, in a way.”
            He did spin around once more and give Harry a smile so wicked that Harry blinked a little. Then Draco turned around and sauntered on.
I suspect that Draco’s going to be just fine, Harry thought, staring after Draco and shaking his head. He’s going to grow up to be a right bloody git, but he’ll probably like that.
“Let me out, please, Professor Snape.”
Harry looked around again. Snape was standing inside the entrance to the garden, and he dispelled the barrier with a flash of his wand. Draco left, not looking behind him even to see if they would come with him.
            Then Snape came up and stood next to Harry, looking down at Dumbledore.
            Harry thought of lots of things he could say, and all of them misplaced. He chose to be silent, instead, and look thoughtfully at Dumbledore, waiting for Snape to make up his mind to take vengeance, or not.
*
            There were many things Severus would have liked to say, but he had been listening as Harry said them, and that meant he did not have to waste time or strength on them now.
            Most of all he would have liked to tell Albus that they had found a way back to Harry’s world and both of them would be taking it, but he shared the same fear he suspected that Harry did: that Albus would try to block their departure if he could, for all the little good it would do him.
            So they stood there, the three of them, or perhaps Severus should say that the two of them stood there and Albus lay there. Broken, ultimately pitiful.

            But a vision of another boy filled Severus’s head, a boy Albus had tricked and punished and ultimately slaughtered, and he shook his head. No, he would not waste his pity on someone who did not deserve it. It would be reserved for those who did.
            “Aren’t you going to say something?”
            Severus looked down. Harry was peering up at him, his forehead wrinkled as though he had no idea why Severus would stand so still and silent.
            “No,” Severus said, long, slow, judging. “He means nothing to me.”
            Albus’s eyes flared open, and Severus saw the truth, looking into them. He could have found no sharper blade.
            Harry just nodded as though that didn’t surprise him. “So what are we going to do with him? I know you don’t want him to stay here.”
            Severus gave a vicious little smile. “And we must not Obliviate him, or we will destroy a great deal of good. I think, instead, we should bind him and Stupefy him—for now. In the morning, we can explain the whole to Minerva. She will listen, and she would watch our Pensieve memories and believe them.”
            “And then what?” Harry cocked his head. “You think she can control him? Wouldn’t she just start listening to him again, once she spent enough time around him?”
            Severus shook his head. “I think it is time for Albus to—retire,” he said. “And Minerva will be the means of providing that retirement.”
            Albus’s horror was all he had imagined it would be.
            And in the end, it was for the best after all, to let Harry do the binding and the Stunning. Severus had only to stand there, and then to walk back into his home, leaning on Harry’s arm.
            On the way, they passed the Dark Lord’s corpse, and Severus’s robe hem brushed over his feet. One of his toes promptly disintegrated into ash.

            It was—satisfactory.

            Although Severus did not intend to keep that robe.
*
            BAFan: Glad you enjoyed!
            Severus knew Harry probably wouldn’t leave him alone, but he had to ask.
            And there are either one or two chapters left. I’m not sure the last chapter will be long enough to contain everything I want to put in it, so there might have to be an epilogue.
            moodysavage: I hope Dumbledore’s meal of crow was satisfactory?
            Severus wants to protect Harry at all costs, so if he can get away with it, he would make him stay behind.
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