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World in Pieces	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 16431 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter Three—Changed, Shaken, Bruised

            Harry glanced doubtfully around the room that Snape led him into. It was made of stone, of course, and all the furniture was green and silver. He’d expected that, and the bookshelves, too, which were so filled with books that Harry thought Hermione would have started drooling the moment she came in here.

            Well, my Hermione would have, anyway.

            Harry closed his eyes and tried to will away the pain that was nipping at him. He didn’t have time for it right now. He opened his eyes and made himself concentrate on the room, because at least it wasn’t something that ought to take his mind back to his own world. He’d never been inside Snape’s private quarters there.

            So the colors and the bookshelves and the walls were the same as he'd expected, but not everything else. There was no bubbling cauldron in a corner; pride of place went to a fireplace with a large marble mantle with sharp corners that made Harry wince, remembering the similarly sharp corners of Dursley furniture he had nearly banged his head on too many times to count. The chairs had stools in front of them, as though Snape regularly had tired feet. A stack of Potions journals had tilted and slid against the far wall. The first thing Snape did when he noticed Harry looking was to swish his wand and straighten them, but he didn’t say anything snide or defensive.

            He was just watching Harry instead, and Harry wondered if he thought he’d learn as much from Harry as Harry expected to learn from him. Harry had to shrug, mentally, when he thought that. He couldn’t give Snape everything he wanted, especially since he didn’t know some of the secrets from his world that Snape would probably expect him to know.

            “Tea?” Snape asked.

            Harry was so surprised that he nearly tripped over his own feet. He stared at Snape, who stared back. Then Harry shrugged physically. He reckoned that maybe this Snape was used to drinking tea with his own version of Harry, and that would be why he’d offered. Harry should probably drink some before Snape remembered who he really was and changed his mind.

            “Sure.”

            Snape brought the tea with a tap of his wand on the fireplace mantle, which opened a Floo connection to the kitchens. Harry hovered uncertainly near a deep green armchair until Snape caught his eye and nodded. Harry still cast a subtle charm that would warn him about everything from traps to poking springs, and didn’t sit down until the chair had failed to glow, meaning everything was fine.

            He looked around Snape’s rooms again after he sat, but there was nothing else to see, except two closed doors. That reassured Harry, a bit. He had thought for a minute that Snape had no secrets, but all it meant was that he probably didn’t keep them in the main room.

            “Potter.”

            Snape drew his attention with the single word, said so neutrally that Harry had to look. The Snape he knew could never have kept the hatred out of his voice no matter how he tried. No matter how awful Snape felt about having someone around who replaced the boy he’d known—and maybe liked—at least it was better than hatred.

            “I wish to know why you did not believe all that Black was saying.” Snape had his arms folded and hadn’t sat down yet, instead leaning on the mantle. Harry wondered idly why he wasn’t worried about slipping and tearing his sleeve on the sharp corner nearest him. “There is no reason for you to think of him as anything other than your beloved godfather. Even in your world, that must be true. You recognized him at once when you appeared in the cell and saw us.”

            “Because I don’t trust anything about this world,” Harry said. “You putting me in a bloody cell when I came to is only one of the reasons.”

            Snape’s eyes narrowed. “I would ask that you not use such language around me, but I have more important matters to worry about, and you are not in any real sense a student of this school.” Harry opened his mouth, but could think of nothing to say, because Snape was continuing without a pause. “Still, you should trust Black more than anyone else here. More than Albus. More than me.”

            Harry shook his head. “I didn’t know the Sirius in my world very well before he—died.” It was harder to talk about than he’d thought, but then, he’d just seen a version of the man he knew standing in front of him, real and alive and breathing. He had to look away and rub a hand over his eyes for a moment. “I trusted my friends the most. Ron and Hermione,” he added, when Snape looked blandly inquiring.

            “And you were not raised by him?” Snape said the words as cautiously as he might touch a loose tooth.

            “Right,” Harry said. “Muggles raised me. My aunt and uncle.”

            Snape leaned forwards and stared at him from closer. Harry scowled at him and waved a hand between their faces. “Could you not do that? There’s such a thing as personal space.”

            Snape frowned at him, but leaned back again and shook his head. “Why would your—why would Dumbledore allow such a thing to happen?”

            Harry shrugged. “There wasn’t anyone else. Everyone in my world thought that Sirius had betrayed my parents and wanted to kill me, at least until he actually showed up during my third year at Hogwarts. And I didn’t even know about Lupin.”

            “A werewolf is no fit guardian of a child.” Snape said it as though it was just a fact, like the sky being blue, his eyes fixed on the fireplace. A spark there grew into a silver tea service, and he bent down and gathered it before a drop could spill.

            “But he would have raised me in the magical world,” Harry said. “Then maybe I could have been—I don’t know. More like your Harry.”

            Snape’s gaze snapped back to him. “You are not as different from him as you think,” he said. “You are both touched by the Dark Lord, both apparently destined to die in battle against him.”

            Harry snorted. “Yeah, and a big load of good that’s going to do me,” he muttered. “Anyway. You said that you would answer my questions about whether Ron and Hermione were really my—his friends or not, and where Lupin is, and—”

            “Hush, child.” Snape placed the teatray on the mantle and began to pour the tea, looking irritated. “You have more questions than the Forest has butterflies in June.”

            Harry stared at him. Snape noticed it and looked at him sideways, for a moment with his fingers twitching as if he would pick up his wand. “What is it?”

            “Oh, nothing,” Harry said, startled again as he realized exactly why he was staring. “The Snape I knew would have killed himself before he talked that way to me, that’s all.”

            Snape said nothing as he prepared the tea. Harry watched closely, but as far as he could tell, Snape didn’t pour any poisons or potions into the tea he settled into the cups. When he turned around again, Harry nodded minutely at him and accepted his cup. It smelled good, and his mouth watered, but he still watched Snape drink before he followed suit.

            “I am not the man you knew,” Snape said at last. He still hadn’t sat down. That increased Harry’s worries about all the seats in the room being traps somehow, but he tried to sit there and look as calm and unconcerned as he could. “And I am trying to reconcile myself to knowing that you are not the boy I knew, either. We shall both do better with a few more solid answers to questions.” He leaned forwards. “To answer the first you asked, my version of Potter did have solid friendships with those of other Houses, yes.”

            Harry blinked. “And you allowed it?”

            “Nothing could tame that child once he had made friends with Draco Malfoy and overcome his awe of the Headmaster,” said Snape dryly. “But yes, I would have discouraged it if I had thought I could get away with it.”

            “Why?” Harry shook his head, remembering the Sorting Hat’s song from fifth year. “Isn’t that what we need? Unity between the Houses? People with friends from different Houses would be the right way to start that.”

            Snape looked at him as if he had grown a second head that talked in a new and interesting language. “There must have been more bitterness between Slytherins and Gryffindors in your old school,” he said. “While the Headmaster did say many times that the children should make friends from other Houses, it was not judged a first priority. After all, with the exception of Potter, the children wouldn’t be fighting.”

            Harry frowned and leaned back in the chair to try and think about that, sipping the tea. But no matter how hard he thought, he could only come to two conclusions.

            First, he was still mad as fucking hell that these people had kidnapped him. At least they could have contacted him through a—a dream or something, and asked him if he wanted to come over. Kidnapping him and putting him in a situation that he might not be able to leave was stupid.

            Second, other than the fact that his parents had still died and Voldemort was smarter, this universe sounded better in every way than his own. He’d been raised by Sirius, and he’d had friends from all the Houses, and he’d been smart and talented, and Lupin was still alive, and people had trained him, and…

            Harry let his thoughts trail off when he realized how intently Snape was studying him, and added a third conclusion to the first two.

            This Snape was really weird.

*

            Severus had assumed he would understand the boy better once they had exchanged a few words. It was his usual experience of conversation, though he did not engage in much on his own behalf, considering the emotional cost and threadbare gain of such things. And this conversation was primarily a trading of information, coupled, perhaps, with the chance for him to settle his feelings about this particular summoned Potter.

            So far, it had not worked. The boy revealed the strangest things and was guarded about others that Severus would have considered public knowledge. He watched Severus as if he were going to poison him, and then went ahead and drank the tea with no more hesitation than that. Someone had never told him about Potions masters being immune to most of their own concoctions, then, or being able to prepare and bottle antidotes.

            Someone should have.

            Well. Severus could settle that later. He had other questions to ask, and answer, for now.

            “You did not have a wizarding education as a young child,” he said. “I assume that someone attended it to later in your life.”

            Potter gave him the kind of defiant look that Severus remembered from Harry’s first year, when the child had decided to see how much he could disorder Severus's mind without making him change into the odious beast his guardian Black had warned him against. “Well, yeah. Since I went to Hogwarts.”

            “That is not what I meant,” Severus said sharply, and then took a moment to stand still and contemplate the scent of his tea. He would not allow Potter to force him into losing control. There was little that was more humiliating. When he thought that he had spent long enough in silence, he looked up and focused on Potter. “I want to know what you learned about your own background, wizarding cultural traditions, the things that children usually learn. The things that you think you would have learned, if you had spent your childhood in the wizarding world.”

            “Nothing.”

            Severus did not gape, but only because he had iron control of his jaw muscles. “Why not?”

            “Because no one said that I had to know, and I didn’t ask.”

            Severus surveyed him again, carefully. That did not resemble the hungry curiosity of the Harry he remembered, which pointed the way to one certain conclusion.

            Someone taught him not to ask.

            Yet again, Severus had to remind himself that he could not leap to conclusions. Perhaps the boy had been taught, yes, but whether such training had taken was a different question. From the battles that Miss Granger and Albus had seen the boy involved in in his own world, he must sometimes have probed into mysteries educated children would have left alone.

            “Anyway,” Potter put in, pushing past manners with an arrogance that reminded Severus forcibly of James for the first time in several minutes, “so we’ve established that I didn’t grow up in a house with a guardian who cared for me like Sirius would have. Your turn to answer a question. Where is Lupin? Is he part of the Order of the Phoenix?”

            Severus shook his head, not sure whether he was irritated by the question or by the way that the child focused on Lupin rather than more important factors. “Yes, he is. He is out gathering information at the moment. The Headmaster believes that many werewolves are not loyal to the Dark Lord and are only following him out of fear of some of their more powerful who are joined with him. If Lupin can stir rebellion, the Headmaster thinks he should have the chance of doing so.”

            Potter sighed with what sounded like relief—not the reaction Severus would have expected on being told the danger the werewolf was in. It was another jewel to string into the web. Before Severus could add a question of his own, Potter leaned forwards and fixed his gaze on him. It made him look more like Harry than he had yet.

            “And Tonks? What about her?”

            “Tonks?” Severus frowned, searching his memory. It was a finely-honed instrument, but even he took a moment to recall names he didn’t often get a chance to sharpen it upon.

            Memory supplied the image of a painfully clumsy woman a few moments later, and Severus shuddered. “She is an Auror trainee, I believe. Part of the lower circle of the Order of the Phoenix. She believes, with many others, that you have been only one Potter all along, the original one, and that you simply retreated into hiding to heal after your unsuccessful confrontations with the Dark Lord.”

            Potter paused. Severus watched him in reluctant fascination, wondering where his mind would fly next. He had nearly forgotten this magpie-like quality to the boy, the darting after one and then another shiny thought. He had trained it out of his own Harry early on, at least when the boy spent time around him and the potions that one must pay attention to if one didn’t wish to end up short a limb.

            “What about the rest of the Weasleys?” Potter asked then. “They weren’t here to know that I came from another world, so does that mean that they expect me to act like I was the original Harry all along?” He was staring at the far wall, his hand clenched on his cup as if he had forgotten it existed.

            Severus resisted the urge to rescue the cup, and said only, “They are not as trusted as the Weasley that our Harry chose to befriend, no, though they have fought for us and hosted Order meetings. So they will believe the same thing that Trainee Tonks believes.”

            Potter’s face struggled with the unknown threat or emotion for a long moment, before he shook his head. “But aside from the fact that I’m lying to them, and that’s wrong,” he said, with the conviction of the childish, “how am I supposed to convince them that I’m who I appear to be? It’s—I’m not good at lying.”

            Severus had to muffle a snort, remembering some of the deceptions that Harry had come up with in his time. Of course, perhaps it was true, as Severus had sometimes suspected, that Draco had a hand in the majority of those lies. “The others had no trouble,” he assured Potter. “You can do the same thing.”

            Potter scowled at him. “You said they were also in Slytherin,” he said. “Did they trust you the same way? Were they raised by Sirius?”

            Exhausting, that was the term that Severus had once associated with the dart and motion of Harry’s thoughts and had forgotten when he managed to urge Harry to tame a few of them. He swallowed his exasperation, both at the question and because he did not see the point the boy was driving at, and then inclined his head. “Yes. We did not talk as—personally as I have talked with you, but those large facts are correct.”

            “Then they had practically the same life as him, only the timing of their battles was different.” Potter made a flinging motion. “But I’m from a different world and I have different memories. They’ll want me to—they’ll want me to do certain things and I won’t know how to do them.” He craned his neck around to see Severus again. “Does Dumbledore want me to fuck things up? Was he going to tell me this before he called everyone in and let them stare at me, or what?”

            Severus was glad that he stood beside the mantle and had it to brace him, because the urge to take a step back would have been overwhelming otherwise. The child had brought up a point that he had not thought of, and that Severus should have anticipated the moment he grasped the facts of the boy’s different House and upbringing.

            He should not have been able to do that, if he were as unintelligent as Severus had thought him.

            Things had changed.

*

            Harry watched Snape warily, because he almost looked as though he was about to have a breakdown, and Harry wasn't sure what would happen if he did. Perhaps that was something this Snape did all the time, and he had a special potion he had to take or something. Harry knew who would get blamed if he missed a dose.

            But Snape recovered a moment later and nodded coolly at Harry. "An excellent question, Mr. Potter."

            "Which means that you don't know the answer," Harry translated, unsurprised. He didn't think anyone had ever asked Dumbledore questions here. They just did what he said, or they stared and sulked and then did what he said, the way Snape had after he objected to Harry being here at that first meeting yesterday. "But I don't see why it would matter. I'm here to kill Voldemort, not do anything else. He can just keep me away from the rest of the Weasleys, I reckon."

            Snape's stare became very flat after he flinched at Voldemort's name. Harry didn't know why, but then again, he never knew the "why" of anything Snape did, and this man was still that one, even if he didn't have as much reason to hate Harry.

            "And you will let him do that?" Snape asked softly.

            "Keep me away from the Weasleys? Well, yeah." Harry glanced down at the cup of tea and then set it on the table next to the chair. He might have to move fast, the way Snape was uncoiling. "Unless they have to do some research for the spell that can send me home. Fred and George can help with that, if they're as smart here as they are back in my universe."

            Snape moved away from the mantle. Harry kept a sharp eye on him. He had seen people move like that before, and one of them was Uncle Vernon and all the rest were Death Eaters. Snape was stepping high, his shoulders tensed, his wand not raised but dangling there where he could reach it in a second. Harry figured the conversation was over and he should leave before Snape blasted him, as usual.

            He stood up, and Snape aimed his wand at him. Harry froze in place, the spells that Evelina had given him to memorize running through his head. What would she say was the best strategy? The door was behind him, and that was probably his first mistake, sitting with his back to the door--

            And then Snape shook his head and lowered his wand. That was the first impossible thing. The second was that he said, "Your pardon. I held out my dominant hand to stop you and forgot that you would see it as a threat."

            "Well, yeah," Harry said, and glared.

            Snape moved a careful step away and kept the wand down. "You have the instincts of a warrior," he murmured. "That was one thing that we never managed to train into Harry. He was clever, but--it was a trickster's cleverness."

            "He was smart, I understand, you don't have to keep rubbing it in." Harry edged a step back, feeling better about aiming for the door now that Snape was further away. "But anyway, you've answered some of my questions, and I still have to find a knife for the training that Evelina and I are going tomorrow, so I'll be going now."

            "But our conversation is not finished." Snape moved towards him in the edge of his vision, and Harry spun around and raised a Protego before he even thought about it. Snape paused, his head lowered, and seemed to think about it before he murmured, "That is the other part I forgot about the warrior's instincts. The inconvenient one."

            "Look, sorry," Harry snapped, and managed to hold down the temptation to expand the Shield Charm and keep expanding it until it had backed Snape into a corner. "Don't sneak up on me like that."

            Snape watched him for a minute or so, then shook his head. "These instincts," he said. "Your endurance. Your fearlessness, to name the Dark Lord and keep naming him even after you understand what he did to three other versions of you--"

            "I thought you said your Harry killed himself--"

            "Killed him by proxy, by his fear." Snape shook his head again. "All that, and paired with this--this ignorance of what may happen if Albus is not open with you. Why do you not care more? Why do you not plan revenge on him? You seem to have accepted the fact that he tried to keep you from talking to me."

            Harry sighed. "Because all my anger is focused on being brought here in the first place and expected to win an impossible war. If Dumbledore lies to me about something that could get me killed, that's one thing. But he probably didn't tell me about what the Weasleys expected because he didn't think I would ever meet them. Fine. I can accept that. I'll avoid them if they try to come see me and get the job done, and then I'll go home." Hell, he would have been glad to see his old Snape at that moment, or even receive a detention from Umbridge--well, maybe. As long as there were no blood quills and the promise that he would get to sleep in Gryffindor Tower later.

            "These are areas of ignorance that could kill you," Snape said, his voice deepening, Oh, outrage, Harry thought. That's dependable. "You need someone to watch your back."

            Harry shrugged. "I don't think Dumbledore will outright try to kill me or get me killed until I defeat Voldemort." That little flinch again. Snape controlled it better than he had the first time, though, Harry would give him credit for that. "And no one here can look at me without seeing the hero who should have saved them the first time around."

            "I can."

            Harry stared at him, then snorted. "Right. So much so that all you can do is talk about my lack of intelligence in comparison to him." He flipped his hand, and the shield between them disappeared, although he kept one eye on Snape as he headed towards the door. "Use the time you would have spent following me around to think up a more convincing lie."

            Snape locked the door before he got there. Harry stood still, then rolled his eyes and turned around again.

            "Look," he said. "I'm going to have enough trouble fighting Voldemort. Will you please not make me have to fight you, too?" He tried for anger, but as he'd told Snape, all his anger seemed tied up in his fury at the people who'd brought him here. He didn't have time for splutters of rage at every little thing.

            Especially when Snape stared at him searchingly, the way the Snape from his world had looked at the last moment, as though there were answers in the color of Harry's eyes. Harry just waited, keeping his wand at the ready but becoming surer that Snape hadn't locked the door so he could attack him with every moment that passed.

            "You said that you needed a knife," Snape said, breaking the silence at last. "I can help you find one."

            "I don't need to dice Potions ingredients," Harry explained patiently. "I need to kill people."

            Snape frowned. "She is training you in hand-to-hand combat?"

            "No, I'm going to use it on myself," Harry said, and then frowned back as he watched Snape flinch, this strange, whole-body movement like he was a shaken rug. "Sorry," he added, because he could spare that much for someone who'd answered some of his questions. "But yeah, of course. She said that I should use magic as much as I could, but if someone came close or took my wand away, I'd have to have some way of defending myself."

            Snape nodded, his eyes falling shut. Harry turned to look at the door again. "I've answered more questions for you than you've answered for me," he said. "So could you let me out now?"

            "You have not seriously considered my offer yet." Snape loomed behind him, and Harry took a casual step away. At least, he hoped it was casual, but with war and the Dursleys and everything else that this Harry had never had to go through, he feared it wasn't. Still, maybe Snape couldn't read him that well as long as he was looking for the Harry he knew. "Why is that?"

            "Because you're one of the people who brought me here," Harry said. "And you like to present yourself as subtle and cunning, but you don't understand that yet. No offense, but why would I benefit from having an ally like you?"

            Snape made an aborted gesture with one hand. Harry would have thought it was the beginning of a spell, but his wand was in his other hand. A moment later, he sighed through his teeth and said, "I did not agree with Albus. And I will do what I can to help you survive now that you are here, unless you persist in rejecting all of my help, in which case, to be consistent, you should also reject Evelina's."

            "I don't care about being consistent," Harry explained. "I care about surviving and about going home."

            Snape took what sounded like a difficult breath. "And I can help you do those things."

            "Yeah," Harry said. "But at this point, why would you want to?"

            Snape gave him another look Harry was overly familiar with, the you-are-stupid look. Harry relaxed a bit. Having Snape talk to him about being allies and plans to survive was strange, probably dangerous. If Snape acted like he was an inch away from murdering him, well, Harry knew how to dodge that if necessary.

            "Because I wish to survive the Dark Lord," Snape said. "Do you think he would spare me for associating with Albus? The time when I might be able to convince him that I was a spy is long since past."

            "That's not the only reason," Harry pointed out. "You could stay out of the way and still try to survive instead of training me."

            "With my training, you have a stronger chance of surviving, which means that I do."

            Harry shook his head. "I don't think that's true, or you would have offered to train me from the first. You didn't. You acted like you would follow me around and spy on my conversations and nothing else, which means that you do think Evelina is competent to train me on her own. So. Why?"

            Snape stood there with his fingers twitching. Harry tried a nonverbal locking charm on the door in the meantime, but nothing happened. He sighed. It probably would be a good idea if he could learn from Snape, but he had thought the same thing back in his own world, and it had never happened except by accident, with the Half-Blood Prince's book.

            Why should it be different this time? Our worlds are similar in that much.

*

            Severus could feel the smooth stretch of anger under his skin. But for the first time in months, he was angry at himself. The last time had been when he thought he should have seen the warning signs of Harry's impending suicide.

            This boy was intelligent. And Severus continued to forget that, continued to treat him either like a dunderheaded Gryffindor or exactly like the Harry he had known, expecting the subtle cues of his willingness to make the boy accept him.

            His Harry would have smiled slightly at the offer of help and nodded. The other two might have required a bit more persuasion, but they had been hungry for any signs of familiarity and would have latched onto him. This one stared at him with distrustful eyes and forced him into open declarations.

            Severus did not want to make those declarations. But he had known for at least three minutes now that one would be necessary, which meant that continuing to avoid them was his fault and his weakness, not Harry's.

            And perhaps this Potter could be Harry. It would soothe some of his grief; Severus knew himself well enough to realize that he was no longer as rational as he had been, and that was the grief's fault. Closeness to Harry would suppress and compress some of his impulses, and that would, in turn, render him more effective for battle than he had been of late.

            Albus claimed that it would not come down to battle, that Harry would simply defeat the Dark Lord and all would be well. But he had a distressing tendency to forget about the Death Eaters, and Severus had always known that.

            "I did not want to train you," he told Harry, who watched him with one leg braced--a stance that could push him quickly into flight towards the door. Severus wondered when he had started his training, and knew it must have been more extensive than the boy had admitted, even if it was not organized as lessons. He had learned these gestures, the defensiveness, the wariness, young.

            Shadows brushed Severus's mind, making the jewels of information he had collected glow more brightly. There were many places that Harry could have gathered such instincts. The suspicions massing in the corners of his thoughts had nothing as yet to solidify them.

            "What changed your mind?"

            It took Severus a moment to dredge up his statement that Harry's question had come in response to. He shook his head slightly. "Watching you. You are--other than I thought you were."

            "Well, yeah. I tried to tell you that." The boy was all bristling defensiveness in an instant. Severus was sure that he had never seen his own Harry act so hedgehog-like, and that made the shadows grow thicker, the web stretch to accommodate another jewel. "Not like the Harry you knew, not a Slytherin, not someone who's going to tamely lie down and take orders. That doesn't answer my question."

            "No, I suppose not," Severus murmured. "I changed my mind because I do think that you could last, could be stronger, with someone to back you up. Yes, Evelina will teach you well." Severus respected the woman even as he despised her because she did not have enough Potions talent to combine defensive potions with her defensive magic. "But there are spells she does not know, and there are landmines in the ground that she does not see, because she is not familiar with the Order. What?" he added, since Harry's eyes had widened as if the Dark Lord had Apparated in behind Severus.

            "You know about landmines?"

            Severus rolled his eyes. One trait that seemed constant in Harry across worlds was his tendency to focus on irrelevant tangents and lose control of the conversation. "Yes," he said. "I have spent enough time in the Muggle world to know about them."

            "Oh." Harry continued staring at him. Severus held back the remark he wanted to make and continued. They had more important things to worry about than whether Harry picked up on any trace of his Muggle heritage.

            "Someone who is familiar with the Order, and who is on your side, could help you immensely."

            Harry watched him with one eye, then with the other. He kept brushing his fringe into place across his scar whenever it shifted. A defense against the Dark Lord after being on the run, Severus wondered idly, or a gesture originating from another time, another place?

            "But I don't trust you to be on my side," Harry said at last. "No more than anyone else who stole me away to this bloody mental place, anyway."

            "Language," Severus murmured, although it did not matter as much as what Harry had just said. "You believe the others want you to fail."

            "What you've been saying about them isn't exactly filling me with confidence."

            Severus shook his head. At times, distrust had to yield to practical sense. That had been one of the hardest lessons to teach both Draco and Harry, and he was not sure that Harry had learned it before--before the end. "But you cannot succeed alone."

            "I have Evelina."

            Severus resisted the urge to put his head in his hands. It seemed he would have to pull out more of the secrets coiled in the bottom of his belly. It would have hurt less to remove a portion of his lower intestine; he knew a potion that would allow one to remain calm even through that, which he carried constantly in anticipation of possible capture by the Dark Lord.

            "But you would do better with someone who will teach you more than spells," he said.

            "I don't have a talent for Potions."

            Severus took a long, slow breath that he didn't allow to rattle in his lungs the way it wanted to. "I meant--cunning. Tactics. The history of the world that Albus has not, so far, given you. Relationships between people in the Order. How Harry affected them, whether they put trust in him or the prophecy or something else. How you can use potions brewed by someone else to affect battle--"

            "Yeah, fine, I get it." Harry's foot thumped an irregular tattoo on the floor. "But it doesn't mean that I can just--accept it."

            "Why not?" Severus asked reasonably. If Harry could see the need for these things, and trusted Severus to provide them, then it seemed strange that he would refuse.

            Harry stared at him. Severus looked back. He knew that he did not need to fear Legilimency, and so he took the opportunity to look deeply, studying the color of Harry's gaze, watching the way the skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes, noting the multiple nervous tremors in his cheeks.

            "You were my enemy in my own world," Harry whispered. "Until the very end. And now you're mourning someone else, someone who isn't me. I don't think you'd--betray me. Just that you wouldn't fight very hard to help me."

            Severus did some more staring. The boy was working out of a logic he didn't know, experiences he couldn't see. He had no doubt that Harry's words made sense in that context. But if he persisted in treating this world like his own private universe, he would die.

            And Severus wanted, with a passion that made him wary, not to see that happen.



            "Assume that I can help you," he said. "Assume that I want to help you. What happens then? Can you afford to disdain this help?"

            "Yes," Harry said. "When it would make the difference between living and dying."

            "It would," Severus said, unable to help the growl that slipped into his voice, "but only if you did disdain it."

            Harry shook his head slowly. "Sorry. I just can't get over the impression that you would sooner stab me in the back than help me."

            Severus shook his head back. "Why did my counterpart hate you so much?"

            "For getting him killed," Harry said smartly.

            "You are lying," Severus said, and did his best to meet the boy's eyes fearlessly. He reminded himself again that Gryffindors respected courage, and that none of the versions of Harry he had met had shown a talent for Legilimency, except under his tutelage. "Why? This is not productive. Tell me why you cannot trust me."

            Harry stood there, under so much tension that Severus could see it make him vibrate like a harpstring. He bit back a sigh. He had already known that he would have to have more patience than usual for this particular Harry, but he had not known that it would be this much.

            "He hated me for being my father's son," Harry said. "For being my mother's son. For having to run around after me at school, defending me from threats that I suspected half the time were coming from him. For snapping back at him in Potions and refusing to be intimidated by him in detentions. Because I cost him things I didn't even know I cost him at the time. All those. You must hate me for at least the first two, along with hating me for not being your version. How in the world can I trust you?"

            Severus took a deep, steady breath and held it. He was thinking, though he would not voice aloud, that it said a very great deal about Harry Potter that he assumed the first response by anyone to him would be hatred.

            Of course, perhaps the Dark Lord had given him that example, and taught him to apply it to other things in his life. Severus would not be surprised if that was the case, along with whatever he had learned from being raised in the Muggle world instead of in the wizarding one, where he belonged.

            "You can trust me," Severus said, "because I do not have the reasons in the middle of your list for hating you, you are the fourth Harry I have known in the past six months and so any hatred I felt because of that is long since exhausted, and I overcame my hatred for your parents in the first two years of knowing Harry."

            Harry said nothing. He had one hand on his wand, and the other angled towards the door. Severus wondered if he noticed or understood half his defensive instincts.

            He wouldn't earn Harry's friendship right now by pointing them out, however. He remained still, his hands clasped in front of him, which surely not even Harry could mistake for a threatening gesture.

            "Let's say I believe you," Harry said. "Let's say that you can teach me things that Evelina can't. What's going to happen with the Order? If Dumbledore didn't want me to talk to you, I can't imagine he'll be happy when you back me up like this."

            Severus let his eyelids fall half-shut so Harry wouldn't see how pleased he was by the consideration for him. Of course, it probably helped that Harry already thought of most of the rest of the Order as enemies.

            "More than anything else, Albus wants the Dark Lord dead," he answered easily. "He will not like that I am training you, no. On the other hand, he is also likely to see it as a continuation of the relationships that I managed to maintain with--the other versions of you. He will then think of you as the same as the others, perhaps more obedient than they were. You should do all you can to strengthen that impression," he added, as Harry looked mulish. "And if that results in the Dark Lord dying, then he will have nothing to complain about."

            "Are you going to help research the spell that will get me home?"

            Severus inclined his head slowly. "Of course. I consider it a condition of our alliance."

            He saw Harry relax the moment he said the word. He seemed better off if he could think of this as something less personal.

            In some ways, Severus decided, he has his own Slytherin traits, despite the Gryffindor that runs so strong in him.

            "All right," Harry said finally. "I'm willing to try. I--don't know if it'll work." His eyes flashed distrust at Severus again. "But I'll try."

            "As will I," Severus said, and made a silent vow to himself, as strong as any chains that Albus had tried to use to bind him.

            This time, I will not let him die.

*

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