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Inter Vivos	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 42948 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Twenty-Four�Secrets

�� He woke sweating.

�� Severus opened his eyes, and then
shut them again. The sight of the room around him made him ill. He recognized
it, of course; he would always recognize it, no matter how many years he had
been away. He drew the blanket closer to him with trembling fingers, his breath
coming in gasps. His skin was cold and clammy when he touched it with one hand.

�� On the other side of the room, his
mother lay dying.

�� The rational part of Severus's mind
wondered how that could have happened, because the last thing he remembered was
lying in his own bedroom and staring at the ceiling, waiting to fall asleep.
But he nevertheless knew it was true. He could hear the slight rattle of his mother's
breath as the disease in her lungs extended its grip.

�� And then she whispered his name.

�� Severus lay still, old fear and old
sorrow running over him like powdery dried blood poured from a bucket. He
wanted to vomit, which was the first time in years, given the tortures he had
endured and seen and practiced under the Dark Lord's rule. His breathing was so
loud that it should have overwhelmed the sound of his mother's.

�� But it didn't. And she kept calling
his name, sometimes plaintive, sometimes piercing, always soft.

�� Severus. Severus. Severus.
Severus.�

�� And on and on like that it went,
always repeated, never varying enough to allow his thoughts to stray to
something else. Still Severus panted like a dog, and the sweat crept out on his
skin like the creeping of maggots.

�� The fear washed over him and drowned
him.

�� Once, he had feared nothing but
betraying Lily. Then, he had feared nothing but death with his wrongs still not
made up for. Then, he had feared disappointing Dumbledore, and then he had
feared losing Harry�s trust.

�� This emotion was like none of those.
It clung like tar. It clawed like a bear. It made Severus heavy with misery,
and he didn�t, at last, notice that his mother�s voice had stopped until he
opened his eyes.

�� He was lying in his own bed in the
dungeons again, and, when he cast a Tempus
Charm, it seemed that no time had gone by at all. He shuddered and wiped
his mouth, wondering what had happened.

�� A dream, he decided at last. It had
to be. This was close to the time of year when his mother had died. Yes, it was
a dream, and nothing more. He lay back against the pillow and force himself to
close his eyes.

�� Three hours later, he was still
awake, listening for the whisper of her voice.

*

�� Yes, I have discovered how to
destroy the Horcrux.� Dumbledore suspended the locket above his head for a
moment and frowned at it. Harry was grateful that at least the man had
understandable emotional reactions to something.
�It is dangerous, but we can accomplish it relatively easily.�

�� How can it be both?� Harry winced a
little as the question came out of his mouth. It was the kind he wouldn�t have
asked last year.

�� But
last year, you didn�t have Draco to think of, and you didn�t think that much of
your friends.

�� It is dangerous, because it
involves dangerous objects.� Dumbledore put the locket on the desk in front of
him and stroked the chain for a moment. Harry hid a shudder. He supposed
Dumbledore must have touched Darker magical objects in his lifetime and that
was the reason he seemed comfortable touching this one, but Harry would never
be comfortable. The diary had been bad enough, and he remembered the sense of
oil and blood that he�d got from the locket when Mrs. Malfoy had brought it
into the Great Hall. �But it is easy because we do not need to go far for those
objects. You killed a basilisk in your second year, Harry, and no one ever did
anything with the fangs. One of them, at least, should still remain in the Chamber
of Secrets, and it will contain some unused and unaltered poison.�

�� Harry frowned and rubbed at his ear,
thinking of the research he and Draco had been doing. �That�s not necessarily
going to work,� he said. �There are also guardian spirits in the Horcruxes that
we have to deal with.�

�� Oh, yes, I know that,� Dumbledore
said calmly. �And that is what has occupied me for the past few days. I already
knew that basilisk venom was an antidote to Horcruxes.� He smiled at Harry, but
Harry didn�t know why; maybe there was some joke in the sentence that he�d
missed. �But I have been researching spells to deal with the guardian spirits.
And a modified Switching Charm is the best recourse.�

�� A Switching Charm,� Harry repeated.

�� Yes, my boy.� Dumbledore leaned
forwards, his face grave again in the way that made Harry feel like he had to pay attention, though how serious
Dumbledore was any more he never knew. �Tom Riddle, or his spirit, performed a
more complicated version of that when he tried to drain Ginny�s life-force into
the diary. He switched his presence and hers. At first he was in the diary,
full of Dark magic, and Ginny was outside, full of the spirit�or life, call it
that�that he needed to survive. As she poured out her emotions into the diary,
she poured her life into him, and her presence began fading. Tom began to
appear in her place, gaining substance that would, in the end, have permitted
him to exist independently. He gave her the Dark magic that was killing her
when you found her in the Chamber of Secrets. Of course it�s somewhat hard to
picture that, because it was not instantaneous. Ginny �faded� over a long
period of time. And instead of taking Tom�s place in the diary as a perfect
Switching Charm would have required, she would have died, as humans do without
their life. But that is the way to deal with a Horcrux�s guardian spirit. We
must pull it outside its object without giving it a hold on our spirits, so
that it is powerless, and inject something into the Horcrux in return that will
destroy it from the inside out.�

�� Harry nodded slowly. He thought he
actually understood this, which made it different from most of the magical
theory he�d learned. �How did you decide that, sir?�

�� By thorough investigation of some
of the older texts that the library does not possess, but I do. I have yet to
determine a way of resisting the spirit when it appears, so my research will
continue.� Dumbledore touched his fingertips together as if he thought that his
next words needed careful bracing. �I also conducted a careful search of young
Miss Weasley�s memories. I recognized some of the sensations she experienced,
having almost become a victim of a twisted Switching Charm myself.�

�� Harry stared at him, then shook his
head. �I don�t want anyone else hurt by this,� he said. �Did you ask her for
her permission?�

�� Of course,� Dumbledore said, and he
looked both sad and offended. �I had an untrustworthy mentor when I was
learning Occlumency. I had no wish to tear through Miss Weasley�s mind as mine
was torn through.�

�� Did you ask her for her
permission?� Harry leaned forwards. �Or did you give her some speech about how
this was good for me and for the war, and that she should do it if she wanted
to help you, her House, and her friends?�

�� Dumbledore flinched this time. His
eyes grew both sadder and harder. �You cannot do everything, my boy,� he said.
�You must learn to let others make the contributions they wish to make.�

�� And I will,� Harry said tersely.
�Just as soon as I�m convinced those compromises are the ones they want to make, and that they�re not
emotionally blackmailed or guilted into making them.�

�� Dumbledore opened both hands in a
gesture that Harry recognized as one of helplessness. He wasn�t fooled.
Dumbledore was only as helpless as other people allowed him to appear, through
their own not paying attention to the situation. �I do not know what you want
from me, my boy,� he said simply. �I have apologized. I have made mistakes, but
I believe those can be forgiven. You have not forgiven me.�

��

�� I haven�t said this before, because
we need to work together to win the war and to destroy the Horcruxes.� Harry
stood, his eyes fixed on Dumbledore�s face. �But I don�t think I�ll ever really
forgive you.�

�� Dumbledore shook his head. He never
looked away from Harry�s eyes, either. In
some ways, this would be easier if he was more afraid of me, Harry thought
in anger. This way, I never know if he�s
actually changed his mind, or if he�s decided the consequences aren�t worth it
and gone back to his old way of thinking.

�� What makes you great, and what the
Dark Lord does not understand, is your ability to love,� Dumbledore whispered.
�It is not very loving of you to refuse me your forgiveness, Harry.�

�� Harry laughed, which startled him as
much as it did Dumbledore, but he was better at hiding the shock. �And you
didn�t act very loving towards me when you left me with the Dursleys,� he said.
�Look, sir, do you really want to drag this into the open again? I�ll speak
with Ginny, and if she says that you didn�t force her to give up her memories,
then that�s fine. But I don�t want to listen to you lecture me about forgiving
someone. You don�t get to do that when you committed so many of the crimes that
you want forgiven in the first place.�

�� Crimes,� Dumbledore said, in a tone
of voice that invited Harry to correct that to �mistakes.�

�� How
do I know these things? Just from watching Snape and Draco, I reckon. Harry
didn�t like it, though. Last year, he still wouldn�t have known what Dumbledore
wanted him to say, because it would have been hard for him to sort out
Dumbledore�s longing for sympathy from his own bad emotions. And even now, he
sometimes thought it would be simpler if he could be an ignorant Gryffindor. Snape
and Draco could do the watching; their perceptions would be more right than
his.

�� Now, though, they weren�t here, so
he said, �I told you I wouldn�t bring this up again,� and changed the subject
to one that he knew Dumbledore wouldn�t be expecting. �Why have you worked on
ways to destroy the locket before the stone in the ring?�

�� Dumbledore�s face changed rapidly in
several directions, but Harry�s new ability to sense and have insights into
people wouldn�t tell him what those changes meant. In the end, he shook his
head. �The stone on the ring is harder to destroy,� he said.

�� Why?� Harry pressed. �What�s
different about it? Is it possible to make a more powerful kind of Horcrux?�

�� Those are questions I can�t answer,
Harry,� Dumbledore began, in a tone that Harry thought he meant to be soothing.

�� Can�t or won�t?�

�� Dumbledore turned his head away.

�� Harry turned, too, and left the
office with a sigh. He knew that pressing Dumbledore wasn�t a good idea; they
needed to work together for everyone�s sake. But he wished Dumbledore could see that there was a time to stop
keeping secrets and stop acting stupid, and the time had come.

�� He rode down the moving staircase to
the gargoyle, and then turned in the direction of the hospital wing. Since so
many of the students had gone home for Christmas holidays, Dumbledore had said
that it was safe for Sirius to come and stay in the infirmary for a few days.
Harry was hopeful that some of the exercises Madam Pomfrey had ordered him to
do would help his twisted hand.

�� A shadow whisked behind him. Harry
turned around, his hand already on his wand.

�� A moment later, he relaxed. He
recognized the shadow. Professor Snape was walking away from him, down towards
the dungeons.

�� Harry thought about chasing him and
asking if he�d come to see the Headmaster, or even telling him what Dumbledore
had said about the Horcruxes. (Harry had just realized that Dumbledore had sent
him away without telling him how to destroy the locket). But he was tired, and
he wanted to see Sirius, and he still didn�t entirely trust Snape. So he headed
on to the hospital wing, and the undemanding company of someone who loved him
and didn�t always push him to be better than he was.

*

�� Christmas with his mother and Harry
was fun.

�� That surprised Draco, a little,
because Christmas at the Manor was always so formal. His mother would insist
that he open his presents as if they were treasures, down to the paper they
were wrapped in, and spend a little time discussing and admiring each one, even
if he didn�t like it. Then they would probably pause for a conversation that
his father wanted to have with his mother on some point of business. And then
his mother would open a present. And then one of the house-elves would bring in
tea or brightly decorated biscuits. And only then would Narcissa allow Draco to
open another gift.

�� But Harry tore into his gifts with
enthusiasm, cuddling the Weasley jumper and laughing at the boring book that
Granger gave him (101 Ways to Finish your
Homework on Time) and noisily enjoying himself with the box of Chocolate
Frogs that were a present from Weasley�s sister. And Narcissa sat back and
smiled the entire time. So what if
the smile looked like a glint of light on an ice sculpture? Draco was too busy
enjoying the ability to be a kid for once.

�� And he was nervously anticipating
the moment when Harry would open his gift,
instead of anticipating his own.

�� Finally Harry reached the large
blue-silver box, and rattled it back and forth with a look of curiosity. Draco
winced. He agreed with his mother that that was a barbaric habit. What if he�d
got Harry something fragile, and it broke? He hadn�t, but it was the principle
of the thing.

�� This time, Harry couldn�t tell what
it was from the shaking, so he shrugged and ripped open the paper with a
two-handed motion. Draco thought he saw his mother flinch, but if she did, she
hid it well, because the next moment her face wore a polite, interested smile
again.

�� And then Harry was lifting Draco�s
gift from the blankets he had packed the box with, and turning an astonished,
soft gaze on him.

�� Draco allowed himself to preen under
Harry�s gaze, because he knew he had a right to be proud. The watch had been in
the Malfoy family for years, but most of Draco�s recent ancestors hadn�t
carried it; they found it too awkward. The watch was made of a warm metal that
looked like silver but would grow warm to the human touch and stay warm hours
later. And it was big, and it did have to be wound up now and then,
but Draco had given it to Harry anyway, because it had the Malfoy coat of arms
on the band, and the centerpiece could be inscribed with a Pensieve memory
transformed into an image.

�� He�d chosen the memory of the last
Quidditch game he and Harry played against each other. He couldn�t think of
another picture that showed them both in so good a light and which he was
willing to show to the public.

�� Harry stared at him with an
expression that Draco couldn�t read for a moment. And then he leaned forwards,
the paper crinkling under his elbows and his eyes so wide that they looked as
if they would fall out of his head, and kissed Draco right there, with his
mother watching.

�� Draco swallowed his fear. After all,
his mother wasn�t stupid. Draco suspected that she already knew and was keeping
silent because Draco hadn�t shown a sign of wanting to talk about it. But he did resist Harry�s attempt to stick his
tongue in Draco�s mouth. There were limits to what he was willing to do in
front of his mother.

�� Harry finally sat back, and said,
�What I got you isn�t anything that special.�

�� Well,� Draco said, and picked up
the white-wrapped box he�d been saving until last. He found himself happy, for
some reason, that Harry hadn�t gone for green and silver paper, the way he had
the last few years. Maybe he was starting to see Draco as more than just
Slytherin.

�� Well,
of course he is, or he wouldn�t be dating you.

�� He tore open the paper and lifted
out what looked like a red book, except with fuzz on the covers. He glanced at
Harry, who flushed and coughed. �That was the only one left when I owled the
shop,� he muttered, sounding apologetic. �I think everyone else had the same
idea for holiday gifts that I did.�

�� Still not knowing what the book was,
Draco opened it.

�� And then he froze, because there
were large creamy pages in the book, and on every page were photographs of
Harry.

�� Draco turned silently past the
images, all wizarding photographs. Harry studying with his friends. Harry
eating in the Great Hall, his mouth open and showing half-chewed chicken as he
laughed at Weasley; the pictured Granger who sat behind him slapped the back of
his head. Harry swooping down from a Quidditch match, clutching the Snitch
triumphantly in his hand.

�� Colin took them,� Harry said
anxiously. �I didn�t know if you would like them, but I wanted to get you
something special.�

�� Draco shut the book, even though he
really wanted to look through it. His mother had taught him well. There were other things to do on a Christmas
morning than spend all his time with his gifts.

�� It is special,� he whispered.
�Thank you.�

�� Harry smiled at him, and Draco
blinked. Yes, he had always found Harry attractive, but when Harry was happy
and smiling in a relaxed way, he was�beautiful.

�� I
just hope other people don�t notice. I�m the only one who needs to realize how
good he looks.

�� Harry went into the kitchen not long
after that, and Narcissa cleared her throat gently. Draco turned to her,
knowing what would come now. Narcissa had certain standards for the boy that
her only child would date, and though Draco knew Harry passed them in his own
mind, he had to wonder if Harry would pass them in his mother�s.

�� But Narcissa only said. �Are you
settled and happy, Draco?�

�� Settled.
She means sure of my choice. Draco lifted his chin and stared back at his
mother, and not just because he was certain. If he showed a sign of doubt, then
Narcissa would court other people for him, and Draco didn�t want to be bothered
by the nuisance. �I am,� he said. �Harry is everything I�ve ever wanted.�

�� What have you wanted?� Narcissa
spoke while barely moving her lips, which Draco thought was odd, but, well, it
wasn�t his business to wonder about his mother�s standards, any more than
Narcissa would be able to question his once she heard them.

�� I�ve only wanted Harry that I can
remember,� Draco said. �Someone passionate and powerful and clever��

�� Narcissa raised her eyebrows.

�� He is clever,� Draco said. �Not the way that you would categorize it,
no, but he is. And he�s beautiful and a fighter and strong. That�s what I want,
Mother. He satisfies me like no one else would.� He hesitated, but his mother�s
eyes were still skeptical, so he said the thing that would have to put a stop
to whatever she was thinking about breaking him and Harry up. �I love him,
Mother.�

�� Narcissa closed her eyes and nodded
in what looked like resignation. Then she opened them again and said, �Do you
know, I tire of the dungeons. I think I�d like a room in one of the towers, if
there�s some available.�

�� Draco blinked at her, caught
off-guard.

�� And I think that you should come
with me,� Narcissa continued thoughtfully. �Everyone already knows that you�re
not staying in Slytherin this year, and you�re closer to the people who might
try to harm you down here. So come with me to the tower. You�ll be company for
a woman living out her old age quietly.�

�� Draco snorted, both at the thought
of his mother being old and at the thought of her doing anything quietly.
�Going there won�t keep me and Harry apart, you know. We�ll just meet in
another part of the school.�

�� Narcissa shrugged, her shoulders
shifting as if she were adjusting a burden. �I suspect I can live with that.�

�� Draco looked at her closely, then
nodded. �All right. Do you think we should wait for Professor Snape before we
eat?�

�� No.� Narcissa stood and looked at
the pile of torn paper for a moment, as if she were going to find some secret
in it, before she Vanished it with a flick of her wand. �I invited him to join
the celebrations, but he would not. He said that he found Christmas a hard
holiday to deal with and would spend the day in his rooms.�

�� Draco shrugged and nodded. Well, that�s that, then. He felt a small
surge of disappointment that Snape didn�t care enough about them to spend the
holiday with them, but he didn�t know that much about Snape�s past, and what he
knew was dark. If he had some special grief associated with Christmas, then
Draco would leave him alone to nurse it.

*

�� The thing was�

�� Harry shot a curse at him, and
Severus spun past it, dropping to one knee as Harry followed that with another
spell. He was both stronger and faster than he�d been, but Severus knew none of
it would make any difference, not when he was challenging a Dark Lord far more
learned in evil magic than he was, and smarter, and stronger.

�� The thing was, he couldn�t tell any
of them about the fear.

�� Harry stalked a step forwards,
seeking to press his nonexistent advantage. Severus uncoiled to his feet and
gave him a string of spells to deal with that snapped and snarled around his
defenses.

�� None of them would believe him. All
of them would discount the gnawing fear that woke him in the morning, lay with
him at night, and hovered like a blurring mist before his eyes when he stood in
the Potions classes during the day.

�� Harry was just starting to trust him
again, just starting to confide in him the way he might have before Severus had
ruined things. Severus wouldn�t jeopardize that by talking about fear that came
from nowhere and left as suddenly.

�� Harry burst past the string of
spells and rushed him. Severus fell back, not afraid of him.

�� No, afraid for him. Because now he could see that all Dumbledore�s planning,
and all of his, and all of Harry�s, was going to be useless when he faced the
Dark Lord at last.

�� The Dark Lord had made Horcruxes. He
had made Harry into a Horcrux. How
was that possible to get past? Even if the miraculous happened and all the
other Horcruxes were destroyed, Harry would have to die before the destruction
could be complete. And Severus knew Draco was not capable of killing him, even
out of love, and he would fight fiercely to prevent such a thing from
happening. Dumbledore might talk about Harry�s death, but he would take no
concrete step towards accomplishing it, not when he still longed to earn the
boy�s love and forgiveness.

�� And then there was Severus himself,
who was no more capable of killing Harry than he was of saving him.

�� A curse got through his defenses and
cut into his shoulder. Severus gasped and dropped to his knees again, but this
time it wasn�t deliberate. He heard Harry cry out as if from a distance; all
normal sounds still swam under the oily covering of fear.

�� Or
are they normal? The fear is the normal thing, the sane way to live when a Dark
Lord is risen.

�� Professor Snape, are you all right?
Oh, Merlin, I wouldn�t have used that if I thought there was a chance it could
get through your defenses. I just wanted to see what the counter was because I
didn�t remember it very well. Oh, God��

�� And finally Severus remembered that
Harry had nearly killed Black the same way when the Dark Lord was in possession
of his body, and he managed to answer calmly and sanely. There was no reason
for Harry to share the same kind of fear whilst he was alive. Let him live out
his hopeful life and learn it only in the last moments.

�� I will be fine.� He touched his
wand to the wound and whispered a simple healing spell, then another to clot
the blood. In a moment, he was wiping away dried blood from the closed cut.
�There, you see?�

�� Harry blinked and stepped back.
�But�I thought the healing was more complicated than that.�

�� His eyes were bright with the effort
to understand. Severus felt for a moment as if his heart would burst. He had
not been able to keep the first pair of eyes like that, the first person dear
to him, alive and safe. He knew he wouldn�t be able to keep Harry that way,
either, which made him want to weep. But he could at least hold himself in
check where Harry was concerned, he reminded himself sternly. He had never told
Lily the full truth about the evils that the Death Eaters exposed him to in
school, either.

�� It is not,� Severus said. �But
usually, one does not have the chance to cast that charm in the middle of
battle, and it is necessary to cast the blood-clotting spell with it.
Otherwise, the wound bleeds out too fast, as the curse designed it to do.�

�� What�s the blood-clotting charm?�
Now Harry�s eyes were even brighter with determination.

�� And so Severus taught him the simple
magic that he would never use, that would never make any difference, because
the Dark Lord had other ways to kill than draining him of blood.

�� Harry smiled with pleasure as he
absorbed the spell, and for a long moment, Severus considered telling him about
the fear. Harry looked capable of understanding anything in that moment.

�� But then he shook his head. No, it
was better not to. Kinder. How could anyone understand the sourceless terror
that was consuming him now?

�� How
many times has anyone ever been able to understand you?

*

�� Here
we are again. Ginny had assured him that Dumbledore hadn�t persuaded her
against her will, though, so Harry had decided to work with him to destroy the
locket as soon as Dumbledore had managed to research ways of resisting the
guardian spirit.

�� And we put the Horcrux in the
basilisk venom, and that�s it?� Harry eyed the basin of gleaming venom on
Dumbledore�s desk skeptically. It sounded too simple, when he�d had to fight
off Tom Riddle and the snake and then
stab the diary with a fang.

�� Dumbledore nodded. His attention was
on the locket, which lay gleaming beside the basin. Harry decided the guardian
spirit couldn�t know what they�d planned, or it would have been out already,
trying to persuade them or force them to allow it to live. �This is not the
same as your first battle, Harry,� he said. �This is under controlled
conditions.� He looked up with a small smile. �And then there is one less
Horcrux in the world.�

�� And once we get rid of the stone in
the ring, then we�ve destroyed three,� said Harry, to see what Dumbledore would
say.

�� It was only a small movement, but
Dumbledore glanced away from him. �Yes.�

�� Harry swallowed a sigh. Whatever
Dumbledore�s fascination was with the stone in the ring, Harry didn�t think he
could get him to admit it yet. And it wouldn�t do any good to try. They would
need each other for the task. Harry would lower the locket into the venom, and
Dumbledore would cast the Switching Charm that would force the guardian spirit
out of the locket and replace it with a small, burning seed of his own magical
power, which would melt the metal and corrode the protective spells Voldemort
had left on the locket.

�� Harry knew well enough that
Dumbledore could have done this himself, and that Harry was being allowed to
participate as a courtesy. That was another reason he didn�t want to pressure
Dumbledore right now.

�� He took a deep breath and picked up
the locket. Dumbledore lifted his wand and nodded encouragingly to him. Harry
used that to make himself hold onto the locket. His scar had begun to burn when
he touched it.

�� One,� Dumbledore whispered. �Two.
Three.�

�� Harry dropped the locket into the
venom. Immediately, it began to bubble and boil like a cauldron, and Dumbledore
spoke the simple two-word incantation of the Switching Charm at the same
moment.

�� Something bright red, like a coal,
leaped off the desk beside the basin, where nothing had been before, and Harry
thought he saw it digging towards the locket. Then a brilliant flash made him
start back from the venom with a hand over his face. His scar burned wildly at
the same moment, and he heard an outraged shriek.

�� The shriek went on rising instead of
ending, growing louder and louder. Harry could hear Dumbledore chanting
something, but he couldn�t look, because the pain in his head made him want to
faint and the light was blinding him. He braced himself with one hand on the
edge of the desk until he thought about the basilisk venom splashing on his
hand and snatched it hastily back. Then he forced his eyes open against the
light.

�� Something dark and deformed, but
small, struggled an inch from Dumbledore, above the basin, its face glowing with
green magic. It shrieked without pausing. Harry supposed it didn�t have to
breathe. He thought it looked like Voldemort the way he�d seen him in some
dreams before he was resurrected, like a baby with stumps for legs and a face
that was full of evil.

�� And then the basilisk venom bubbled
with what Harry thought was a triumphant sound, and the deformed thing
vanished. Dumbledore sagged forwards, then sighed and stepped back so he
wouldn�t upset the basin. Harry�s scar stopped burning in the same instant.

�� Is that�is that it?� Harry asked,
when he could speak. His voice was scratchy. Maybe he�d screamed, too, but he
wouldn�t have been able to hear it with the guardian spirit shrieking.

�� Yes, it is.� Dumbledore sounded
breathless. He shook his head and stared hard at the basin for a moment, then
sighed. �Next time, I will be better-prepared. The spirit vanished when the
locket melted, but I had not realized that the Switching Charm would propel it
into the world with such power.�
Dumbledore stroked his beard. �It appears that the Horcrux can act as a conduit
for power longer than I had thought.�

�� Harry dropped into a chair without
answering and closed his eyes. Snape had said that he would be too busy to
participate in the destruction of the Horcrux, and Draco had flown into a rage
and said that Harry shouldn�t be present at the destruction at all, so Harry
just hadn�t told him what evening they�d planned on.

�� He wished one of them was here now, though.
He was more comfortable showing weakness in front of them than in front of
Dumbledore.

*

�� Something
is wrong with him.

�� Draco narrowed his eyes in thought.
He was sitting in the back of the Potions classroom, but that meant he still
had a good view of Professor Snape. The NEWT Potions class was small, and the
professor was never still, pacing back and forth as though some stinging fly
hurt him when he stopped. But he didn�t snap any more than usual, the way he
would have if he was really irritable.

�� That was one of the signs that
something was wrong with Snape. The others were his pale face, and the way he
hadn�t objected when Narcissa had taken rooms with Draco in Ravenclaw Tower,
even though for a moment he�d looked pained.

�� And now he approached Smith, shook
his head, snapped something Draco didn�t hear because he didn�t need to pay
attention to it, and then picked up an ingredient lying on the table and tossed
it into the cauldron.

�� The potion exploded.

�� Draco ducked and flinched, feeling gobbets
of half-solid liquid spatter his arms. It was an instinctive reaction, which he
was glad of, because he would have been too shocked to move if he�d have to
leave it up to conscious thought. Professor
Snape had botched a potion.

�� Yes, something was wrong. But Draco
wasn�t so foolish as to think he could make Snape talk to him about it just by
asking. Even subtly asking would be a problem, because the professor was subtle
himself and would probably see through it. So he would have to approach the problem
from the other way around.

�� But no good solutions occurred to
him after he left the NEWT Potions class, even when he leaned on the sill of a
window on the fifth floor and gazed out into the March sunlight, keeping his
breathing as calm as possible. That was a good way to suggest ways to correct
the flying anklets and ideas for new projects, but manipulating someone was a
different kind of idea. Draco gave up at last and went to his and his mother�s
rooms.

�� Maybe
I should think about a different problem altogether, he decided, as he
closed the door behind him. Ask Father�s
book about information we could use to fight the war, but not about what it
means when a Potions Master botches a potion, since I wouldn�t even know how to
phrase the question at this point.

�� He smiled when he noticed that his
mother was sitting at a table in the middle of the sitting room, sipping tea
from a porcelain cup and reaching for a package on the table. �Who�s that
from?� he asked.

�� My sister Andromeda.� Someone would
have had to know his mother well to hear the tinge of excitement in her voice.
Draco knew that she had stopped owling his aunt Andromeda or Flooing her when
she married a Muggle, but she needed the support of her family now that she had
left Lucius. If her sister had reached out to her first, that was important.

�� Draco glanced idly at the box. It
was wrapped in the same kind of blue-silver paper that Harry had used on his
Christmas gift. Maybe it was from him. He felt a deep contentment when he
considered his boyfriend and his mother exchanging presents, which they hadn�t
done at this Christmas.

�� And then he stiffened, because there
was a taint of Dark magic to the box that he didn�t think he would have
recognized if not for his dueling lessons with Professor Snape.

�� Mother, no!� he said sharply, just
as she reached out and brushed a finger against the side of the box.

�� It shifted and clicked, and then
Draco grabbed Narcissa and carried her to the floor behind the table. He drew
his wand as they fell and conjured a Shield Charm. His mother was working with
him, he realized a moment later, and chanting her part of the Shield Charm in a
steady voice, unafraid.

�� The explosion that followed tested
both their magical skill. Draco could see the table blown to splinters before
he had to hide his eyes from the oncoming wave of light and force. Magic
shrieked around them and battered them until Draco�s arms and shoulders were
sore. But he kept chanting, feeding new power into the shields, and Narcissa
matched him word for word, all the time alert and unafraid.

�� Finally, it was over, and Draco sat
up and stared at the wide cracks in the walls. He could hear shrieks outside
the door, and knocking, and calling, but he couldn�t respond to them at the moment.
He stared at his mother instead, waiting for her opinion.

�� That was from Lucius,� Narcissa
said at last, after some consideration. She sat up and ran a hand through her
blonde hair, studying the shattered table. �We shall have to have house-elves in
here to clear out the damage. Such a nuisance.� She spoke as lightly as though
they had been compelled to have an unwelcome visitor to afternoon tea.

�� Draco swallowed and nodded. Then he
stepped towards the remains of the package and contained them within a variant
of the Shield Charm, a protective bubble that would preserve as much of the
magical energy as possible for further investigation.

�� He did pause when he was near it,
because there was a tingle of a different
familiar Dark energy around it now, and because another thought had struck
him. He was sure that his mother had put up precautions against any package
from Lucius coming into their rooms; wards would have sounded if he had so much
as touched the paper.

�� Which meant that someone else in the
school was working with or for Lucius.

�� Draco grimaced and concentrated for
a moment, trying to identify the familiarity of that second Dark magic, but it
was useless. In the end, he shook his head, cast the protective bubble, and
then summoned a house-elf to send word to Dumbledore.

*

�� The fear was overwhelming.

�� It had got worse in the last few
months; Severus knew that. But it had never attacked him like this, in public.
He was sitting at the staff table for dinner, and the fear was rushing over him
like great waves of dirty water.

�� He wanted to close his eyes and
gasp, in hopes of forcing it away. He wanted to draw his wand and fight it. He
wanted to turn to Minerva and demand that she Stupefy him, because that seemed
like the only thing at the moment that might stop this.

�� But he knew better than that. The
fear would be waiting when he woke up.

�� It was overwhelming. It was
punishing. And between one bite and the next of meat, Severus found that he
simply couldn�t endure it anymore. He had to do something to end it, anything.

�� And suddenly he knew, the way he
once would have known the next step in a potion. He rose to his feet, made some
mumbled excuse to Dumbledore and Minerva, and hurried out of the Great Hall.

�� There was someone waiting not far
away, someone who could offer him the solution to ending the fear. He believed
that as strongly as he had believed a moment before that nothing could really
end it.

�� His mind tried to point out that his
behavior was irrational. Severus ignored that. Living with fear for five months
would make anyone irrational. He sped up, until he was almost running through
the open doors of the school and towards the gates.

�� Someone waiting there, or just
beyond it. Someone who could give him what he needed. Someone who could explain
the mysterious attack on Narcissa and Draco they hadn�t been able to trace yet,
someone who could soothe away the fears he had about Harry, someone who could
make him able to defeat the Dark Lord.

�� Someone who could give him peace.

*

�� Draco sighed and sat back in his
chair, trying to control his yawns. His mother had wanted him to eat dinner in
their rooms with her tonight, and Draco had eaten so well that now he had to
stave off sleep. He snorted half-heartedly, but couldn�t bring himself to
regret it, and tried to think of what to ask his father�s book about.

�� Some way to solve the mystery of who
had sent his mother that package would be good, but Draco had tried any
combination of words, and so had Narcissa, and nothing had resulted. There�d
been no attack since. Everything had settled down into an ominous silence, as
ominous as the fact that the Dark Lord hadn�t made a move to attack Harry in
almost a year now, and his attacks on other people had stopped. Draco couldn�t
understand it. Harry was improving in Occlumency, but he wasn�t good enough,
probably, to keep the Dark Lord out. Why did he stay out?

�� Harry had asked Dumbledore, and then
shrugged the next time Draco saw him after that. Dumbledore believed that the
Dark Lord, having handed the task of killing Harry over to Bellatrix Lestrange,
didn�t want to �lower� himself by doing anything to help the task. Draco had
pointed out that didn�t explain the rest of his silence, and Harry had agreed.

�� But neither of them could do
anything about it�which seemed to explain a lot of the war lately, Draco
thought. Life had become an endless round of kissing and training and homework.
The first part was certainly pleasant, but Draco wanted it to go somewhere, and so far it didn�t seem
as if it would. Maybe nothing would happen until Harry met and battled
Bellatrix Lestrange, and then the Dark Lord would have to come after him
himself.

�� The
Lestranges.� That�s something I can ask
the book about.

�� Draco did, keeping the question as
general as possible, so that the book could offer him any real information it
had. Words swirled out of the depths of the paper and assembled on the page.
Draco began reading idly, knowing he would need a second session when he was
fully awake to understand what the book had said.

�� The
Lestranges are more widespread than has been considered, and more numerous. Of
course, as some members of every generation in the past century have been
criminals, many pure-blood families have thought it wise to hide their
connection with them. Among the families that the Lestranges have married into
are the Blacks, the Malfoys, the Rosiers, the Wellinghams�

�� Draco�s eye nearly skipped past the
last part. And then he started awake and read it again and again.

�� The
Wellinghams.

�� Draco concentrated fiercely. He had
only heard the name once, in a discussion in the Slytherin common room about
other students� genealogy, but he was sure he remembered it, anyway. He had
been trained to memorize facts about heredity and complicated family trees
quite young, after all.

�� Wellingham was the maiden name of
Seamus Finnigan�s mother.

�� Not sure what exactly it meant, but
knowing it was important, Draco stood and ran from the rooms, intent on finding
Harry.

*

�� Harry followed Snape for many
reasons when he left the Great Hall.

�� He followed him because something
was clearly not right. Snape had been growing more and more distant lately,
more jumpy. Harry had thought that something was happening with his potions,
and then with his teaching, and then with his conversations with Dumbledore.
But no matter what he suggested, Snape denied it all. And that left subjects
that Harry wasn�t comfortable broaching, such as Snape�s relationship with his
mother.

�� He followed him because other people
stared after him, but no one did anything. If Harry was good at anything
besides Quidditch, Defense, and bringing Draco off, it was saving people no one
else would save.

�� He followed him because he had
started to feel again, lately, as if he could trust Snape, and he wanted to
tell him so. Maybe hearing that would turn Snape around and away from whatever
was hurting him lately.

�� Harry was surprised when he saw
Snape running through the Hogwarts gates and towards the Forbidden Forest, but
he shrugged and followed anyway, faster, under the guise of a Disillusionment
Charm. He missed his Invisibility Cloak for a moment, but he�d had to get along
without it for four years now; this was just another thing he�d have to do without
it.

�� Faster they went, over dark hollows
and past dark trees and away from the sun. Harry was panting by the time Snape
stopped, and fought to conceal the sound from Snape�s ears.

�� Snape came to a stop in front of a
tree at first, and stared about as if he didn�t know what to do. Then a figure
moved in the shadows of the tree, and threw back the hood of a cloak that had
covered its head. A white mask dangled from the figure�s hand, a Death Eater�s
mask.

�� Harry knew who she was at once; he�d
heard her described often enough. Black eyes, long black hair, a sulky face lit
by the brilliance of craziness. And then she looked straight at him, seeing
past the Disillusionment Charm, and laughed.

�� Little baby Potter,� she said. �How
delightful of you to join us.� She nodded at Snape. �I believe that the only
way to make the fear go away is to kill him now, Severus, because my Lord would
only finish the job in a crueler fashion,� she said.

�� And then Snape wheeled around, and
Harry saw that all the light and life was gone from his eyes, drowned under
expanded, enormous pupils, and suddenly Harry was facing both Snape�s and
Bellatrix�s wands.

�� He drew his wand, because there was
nothing else he could do, although his heart made his throat hurt, and went to battle.

*

�� Thrnbrooke: The hurt is old enough
that Harry has mostly given up on thoughts of compensation for his burned
possessions. He�s willing to tolerate Seamus.

�� Sneakyfox: Thank you!

�� DTDY: Thank you!

�� FallenAngel1129: Thank you!

�� theta: I�m glad the surprise is a
pleasant one!

�� SP777: Thank you!

�� That bow simply means that Snape
respects Harry whether or not Harry trusts him.

�� KienaBeana: Thank you! Some of your
questions are hopefully answered in this chapter; what happens to the Dursleys
is left up in the air for now, because Severus is not really himself.

�� Glad you like Draco being an
inventor. That is going to be important later in the story.
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Inter Vivos