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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 Five--To Mourn the Unburied Dead

            "What do you think of this?" Harry gingerly held out the knife Snape had given him, not at all sure what Evelina would think of it. The more he looked at it, the more he thought that it wasn't the kind of knife she had told him to get. And it was true that he hadn't been out of the castle yet, but he had no doubt that a member of the Order would have taken him to Diagon Alley if he asked, properly disguised under a glamour.

            Evelina leaned back on the chair that she'd hurled at his head with a spell a minute before and studied the knife. She tossed it into the air and caught it. Harry relaxed from the flinch he'd spun into a second ago. He had to remind himself that she'd been an Auror. She probably knew how to catch knives without getting her fingers all scratched up.

            Of course, assumptions kept getting him into trouble in this world. Maybe he shouldn't make any more of them.

            "Hmmm," Evelina said, and then nodded. "Yes. The balance could be better, but there are spells we can cast to lighten the load, as it were." She handed the blade back to him and then leaned forwards, her eyes fastened on his face. "You realize that I'm going to teach you how to kill."

            Harry took a deep breath. "I'm not going to get out of here without killing Voldemort."

            "Lots of people think they can nerve themselves up to do it, and find out that they can't only at the last minute," Evelina said, a warning in her voice. "We saw loads of them in Auror training. And if they managed to last through that and we didn't learn the truth until it was too late, they stood a chance of killing other people along with themselves. I don't want that to happen here."

            Harry nodded. "I know. The world is depending on me now."

            "I wish they hadn't encouraged you to think of it like that." Evelina tapped her fingers against the side of the chair and frowned at him, then shook her head. "Well. You are probably used to it because of the way that your original world taught you to think."

            Harry nodded again.

            "Very well." Evelina flowed to her feet. "Now. I want you to practice gripping the knife. You can't stab someone until you're comfortable with the weapon. Hold it away from your body at first, draw it in close, and show me--no, not like that, you're likely to cut yourself in the side if you try it like that. Come here, let me show you..."

*

            "They've got all the signs scrubbed away, of course," Malfoy said over his shoulder, speaking in bright, nervous tones as he led Harry to the side of the lake. "But I still remember exactly where he was lying." He paused and shivered, hunching his shoulders as though he felt the wind that Harry thought had blown that day cutting him. "I'll never forget," he added, and then began to run again.

            Harry watched him in pity as he followed him. He felt for this Malfoy as he had for the Malfoy in his world when he saw him sitting in the Great Hall with his parents. He'd been through something that broke him and changed his perspective of the world. Harry didn't know if that made him a good person, but it made him less than an enemy.

            He thought his only real enemy in this world was Voldemort, but then he saw some of the Order watching him from the corners of their eyes, and heard whispered discussions that stopped when he came into the room, and had to remind himself to be careful and watchful.

            "Here!"

            Harry looked around at the lake before he stepped up beside Malfoy. They were on a curve in the shore that he remembered vaguely from his own world. A tree grew not far away, bending down as if it wanted to drink the water with its branches instead of its roots. The grass gave way beneath his feet to sand. Harry glanced back and nodded. He thought it probably would be hard to see this part of the lake from the castle, which made it a good place for a murder.

            Or a suicide where no one would find the body for a while. I have to remember that I don't know it was a murder. I know I wouldn't have done it unless I had to, but he wasn't me.

            "Will you hurry up, Harry?"

            Harry shook his head to get rid of the thoughts that probably meant nothing, and did so. Malfoy was hopping up and down with impatience where the sand led into the water. He pointed with a trembling finger at a patch of sand that didn't look any different from the rest to Harry, but he reckoned that it probably was to Malfoy. You'd remember the place where your boyfriend's body was lying.

            Was he really Malfoy's boyfriend? But Snape seems to think so, and I have to trust someone here, or I might as well give up and decide that nothing here is real.

            Harry knelt down and pretended to examine the sand more closely for lack of anything else to do. "What clues did you find?" he asked, picking up a handful of sand to pour through his fingers. Of course now, six months later, the whole place had probably changed, and if there was anything as obvious as footprints in blood or something like that, someone else would have discovered it.

            "His eyes," Malfoy said. His voice had gone thick suddenly, choked, and Harry looked up, about to tell him that he didn't need to talk about this, but Malfoy's eyes were fixed on the distance, and so Harry reckoned he needed to. "They--they didn't look right."

            Harry frowned. "What do you mean?"

            Malfoy turned to him, and his eyes looked pretty odd to Harry, too. His hands were clenched in front of him as though trying to hold someone by the back of his shirt who was about to plunge off a cliff.

            And wasn't that an unfortunate metaphor? Harry winced and hoped that Malfoy wouldn't question him about why.

            "They were the same shade of green as yours," Malfoy whispered. "They looked the same in that much, even though the light and shadows that you have in them are completely different."

            "Sorry to disappoint you," Harry said coolly.

            "I didn't say that it was a disappointment," Malfoy murmured, shaking his head as if to clear it. "In fact, it might help me in keeping you separate in my mind, which I clearly need to do."

            Harry blinked, so astonished at the apology that for a second he couldn't direct the conversation back where it needed to go. "So," he said. "His eyes."

            Malfoy nodded. "The pupil was too big, and his eyes didn't look anything like the way they did in life." His voice sank on the last words, as if he assumed that someone would overhear him and be displeased about the description.

            Harry winced a little. "Malfoy," he said gently. "People's eyes are going to look different when they die. They don't have the intelligence, the life, behind them anymore. Take it from someone who's seen a lot of people die," he added, when Malfoy looked inclined to argue.

            "I can't explain it," Malfoy said. "His eyes were darker than they should have been. That's all."

            Harry sighed and decided to focus on the one thing that sounded like a concrete clue. "All right. His pupils. Is there any drug or potion that could have made them look like that? Did anyone comment on it?"

            Malfoy laughed harshly. "They were all screaming about how he was dead and how could they stand it, or talking about how the world was doomed now, or trying to drag me away from the body." That would be his father, Harry surmised silently. "No one else except me was paying attention. I tried talking to Snape about it later, but he said that I must have been mistaken and refused to discuss it again."

            "He didn't mention it to me," Harry muttered.

            "Why would he?"

            Harry sighed. He had forgotten that Malfoy wouldn't know anything about the alliance he and Snape had forged. He shook his head. "The one I knew in my universe enjoyed tormenting me, and this one doesn't seem to like my company. It's the sort of thing I can imagine him telling me because he wants to freak me out."

            Malfoy snorted so hard that Harry thought he would fall over. "I think he knows that you've seen more suffering than that, more Dark and deadly things. He wouldn't believe that a single reported detail--one that only I saw, and that all of the others doubt--was important."

            "And yet, the first day I was here, you claimed that my eyes showed I hadn't seen as much suffering as the Harry you knew," Harry murmured.

            Malfoy winced and looked down at the ground. "That was stupid of me," he said. "I was reaching for any excuse to deny what you looked like, and I was trying to distance myself, too. The others died trying to be him, and they were a lot more similar. I think I hoped that I wouldn't get attached to you if I could despise you and exaggerate the differences."

            Harry raised an eyebrow. That was more insightful than he would have expected, especially when Malfoy was suffering so much from grief and odd notions about the size of pupils.

            "You don't need to get attached to me," he said. "I'm not the boy you--loved." It was hard for him to say that, because he couldn't comprehend a universe where some version of himself loved some version of the cowardly boy who had done so much to save his parents and never cared about anything else until he saw what Voldemort was really like. "You're not the Malfoy I knew, either," he had to add.

            Malfoy looked at him with hungry eyes. "If you're more similar to him than I thought, maybe I can be more similar to your Draco than you thought."

            It was Harry's turn to snort. "Malfoy, I didn't call him by his first name."

            "That's ridiculous," Malfoy said. "I can't imagine that you didn't know each other well enough for that, even if you were in different Houses. And had some rivalry between you?" he added uncertainly, as if basing the words on the expression on Harry's face. Harry was sure he made a picture.

            "We were enemies," Harry said. "I saved his life during the last year, and he saved me, but that was only because of extreme circumstances. I'm not going to leave anyone to die in Fiendfyre, and he wouldn't identify me when Voldemort's soldiers seized me, but--that's a long way from being friends. Or boyfriends, the way you were."

            "No wonder you looked like you wanted to faint when you saw me," Malfoy commented thoughtfully.

            "I did not look like that," Harry snapped. "I just finished saving your life and returning your wand to you, why would it scare me to see you?"

            "There can be other reasons that you might want to faint besides fear." Malfoy cast him a glance, hesitated, then admitted in a low voice, "I felt the same way when I saw you."

            "But you ought to be used to seeing me appear by now," Harry said. He wondered if Malfoy would actually offer him an honest perspective on the way that people in this world saw the endless succession of Harry Potters they had summoned so far. "I mean, since I've come here and died twice. Three times, if you count the one you knew and loved."

            Malfoy shook his head. "I never get used to the shock," he said softly, and then dragged himself back to the present with a visible effort. "Anyway. The change in his pupil size is the biggest clue I have to go on."

            "You told me that you discovered the body," Harry said, and then wondered if he should have. It seemed odd to leave an uncomfortable subject only to be making Malfoy discuss something else even more uncomfortable.

            But Malfoy only exhaled and nodded. "Yes. I summoned the others at once, and I was--upset, so I don't think I was thinking clearly. But I would have noticed footprints around him, or any message in the blood, or any of the other clues that you think about when you hear someone's been murdered."

            "I don't think someone who could make it look like suicide would have been that careless," Harry said. He hesitated, then decided to go ahead. Malfoy had already been more forthcoming about the other members of the Order than Harry would have thought. "Could the person who killed him have been part of the Order?"

            Malfoy closed his eyes. "I've been thinking about that," he admitted. "It would explain why he died so quickly. He wouldn't have fought if someone he knew approached him."

            "And it would explain why they're so eager to consider it suicide," Harry said, "if the others suspected that someone they trusted and liked was the one who'd killed him." He reminded himself not to go too far, that he had no evidence yet that this was a murder and not a suicide.

            But it felt like one. He still couldn't get used to the idea that any version of him, no matter how fearful, would have done such a thing.

            On the other hand, he also couldn't get used to the idea that any version of him would date Draco Malfoy, and be apparently happy and content in the relationship. Harry entertained a brief, nasty idea that his other self might have committed suicide to get away from the git, then shook his head and stood up. That was worse than he wanted to be, even in the privacy of his own head.

            Malfoy was nodding. "Yes, yes, it all fits," he said. "And that lessens the number of people we ought to consider as suspects. I think that we need to look at Snape specifically. He'd had an argument with Harry a few hours before he died."

            Harry started and looked closely at Malfoy. "You're sure? How do you know?" That was something important, something he would have expected Snape to mention when they were forming their alliance, and yet--

            Distrust washed over him again. How much do I really know about him? I think he told me the truth about the battles, he'd want someone to save him as much as anyone else in this world, but that doesn't guarantee that he told me the truth about anything else.

            Then Harry scowled. His logic contradicted itself. If Snape wanted someone to save him, then killing the original Harry would have served no purpose at all. He couldn't know, then, what the Order's solution to the problem would be. No, Harry should posit that Snape was on Voldemort's side and had played subtle parts in the deaths of the other Harrys if he wanted to think that.

            Unaware of Harry's doubts, Malfoy happily prattled on. "Harry came to me about it, because he was so upset. Most of the time, their disagreements weren't serious. There were things that Professor Snape wanted Harry to improve on, and times that he felt Harry got away without doing as much work as he should have. But it was hard for anyone who watched to call that an argument."

            "Really," Harry said. He could think of times his own world's version of Snape had yelled at him about not living up to his full potential, and he would never have called it anything less than an argument.

            Malfoy nodded. "You could tell that Snape cared about the way Harry performed in the classroom." He hesitated, then added, "I loved Harry, but--I can admit that he didn't always do well. He was smart, but he was so naturally talented at everything that he thought he didn't need to worry. And that lack of caring bothered Snape sometimes."

            "Realize what you're saying," Harry cautioned him. "You're saying that Snape murdered someone you also say that he didn't argue with and whose marks he cared about. I can't imagine a stronger motive for Snape to keep someone alive." Even more than saving his own life, really. I think he might value a good student more than a savior.

            "What other good suspect do I have?" Malfoy's voice broke in the middle. He turned away and controlled himself for a minute, bending over to breathe. Harry tried to stand behind him and make himself invisible. He could feel his chest aching, and he bit his lips so that he wouldn't reach out and put his hand on Malfoy's shoulder. He was sorry for him, yes, but he wasn't attracted to him, and pretending that he could be just what that Harry had been was silly.

            "What was the argument about?" he asked, when he realized that Malfoy wasn't going to continue on his own.

            Malfoy sounded as though he had to breathe in twice before he answered. "About-about the war. Professor Snape wanted Harry to study harder and pick up some extra training in Defense. The kind of training they're having that woman give you now, I think." Harry decided that was another thing to think about, what exactly the connection Evelina had to the Order was, and whether someone might dislike her enough to say bad things about her and about Harry for training with her. "Harry laughed. He said that enough of his life was about the war already. And Snape got angry, and he told Harry that he was essentially wasting himself, when he should be thinking about how to defend the world and nothing else. Harry got angry in return. That was the kind of thing Snape never said to him. So he stomped out, and came and told me. And th-then he left, and that was the last time I ever saw him."

            Harry frowned, thinking. It really didn't sound like either the Snape who had talked to him or the Snape Malfoy had described. "If Snape wanted him to care about his marks, then he wouldn't just want him to care about the war, would he?"

            "I don't know," Malfoy said, his back arching up like an angry cat's. "The only thing I can tell you is what I heard."

            "Right," Harry said, as soothingly as he could. "But what I meant was, it sounds like either Snape was in a really strange mood that day, or your Harry was exaggerating--"

            "He never did that!"

            Harry raised an eyebrow. Malfoy had the grace to look down and flush.

            "Look," Harry said again, "things don't add up. That doesn't make Snape the murderer, and it suggests that--what? He got frustrated and killed your Harry because he wasn't listening to him?"

            "He could." Malfoy gave an arrogant little toss of his head. "You don't know what Professor Snape's like when he thinks someone is defying him on purpose. He actually gets less impatient with people who don't have the talent for Potions than he does with people who do and won't listen to him."

            Harry blinked. That made certain things about the Snape he had known stand out in a new light.

            But he's dead, and anyway, I'm in a different world now. I have to remember that I'm not dealing with the same people.

            "Fine," he said. "But we have other suspects, too. Dumbledore's said a number of strange things to me since I've been here. Was there ever a sign that he got impatient with Harry the way you said Snape did?"

            Malfoy hesitated, then shook his head. "No," he said at last. "Sometimes he was sad and resigned, too. I think he was trying to work out some way to help Harry, because he knew that being locked into fighting him by a prophecy didn't mean he was going to survive. But everything he tried came to nothing."

            Harry nodded silently. That would at least explain the odd way Dumbledore had looked at him when he cast his Patronus, and maybe why Dumbledore had said that they would need a few days to adjust the spell that would let the Patronuses act as spies. He had probably given up hope on Harry, too, because he couldn't help, and then he had seen that something was different this time. Harry knew from experience that having hope come back could be just as painful as feeling it die.

            And that Dumbledore might have gone on summoning versions of Harry even when he expected them all to die because he would still want to save his world, no matter what happened.

            "Do you think he killed Harry so he could bring other Potters here?" Malfoy asked suddenly, his voice so soft that Harry wouldn't have heard it if he was standing a foot further away. "I mean, maybe he thought Harry wasn't good enough and that our only hope of having a real champion was to kill him..." His words trailed off. He looked sick at the thought, and Harry really couldn't blame him.

            "I don't know," Harry said, as gently as he could. Again he started to reach for Malfoy, and again he pulled his hand back. No, he still couldn't tell how Malfoy would take that. "It's a possibility, and one we'll have to look at." He glanced up and saw that the sky was clouding over. "We should get back inside before someone comes hunting for us." He turned to face Hogwarts.

            "Wait!"

            Malfoy evidently didn't have the same shyness about touching him, because his hand locked down on Harry's arm. Harry tried not to jump or draw his wand, and succeeded at the second one. "What?" he asked, looking warily at Malfoy. He had a brightness in his eyes that Harry didn't know meant anything good.

            "Would you go flying with me?" Malfoy asked.

            Harry bit his lip as a surge of longing passed through him. He hadn't been flying for pleasure in such a long time. Clinging desperately to a dragon's back as you escaped Gringotts didn't really count. "Why?" he asked, trying to sound adult and stern, because Malfoy didn't.

            "It's something I didn't get the chance to do, that last day with Harry," Malfoy said. "We planned to, and then he...went. And neither of the others got a chance to come with me, either. They vanished into training and battle plans, and then they died." He was leaning close, his eyes so bright that Harry was increasingly sure this was a bad idea. "Please?"

            Harry shook his head. "Malfoy," he said. "I'm not him."

            Malfoy took another of those deep, twice-held breaths, and then nodded. "I know that," he said. "No, really, I do." Harry must have looked even more skeptical than he realized. "But--please? I just want to do it again, to try it again."

            Harry hesitated. "As long as you realize that I'm not your boyfriend and I'm not going to kiss you or hold your hand," he said, looking down at Malfoy's hand on his arm.

            Malfoy dropped him as if burned and held his hands up placatingly. "That's fine, that's fine," he said. "But can you really say that you don't miss flying? Can you say that you couldn't use something to relax you?"

            Harry thought about it. Yes, he did need it, or at least something else to relax him after the constant rows and suspicion with the people who looked like his friends and weren't, who looked like dead people and weren't, who acted as though they wanted to support him--or someone like him--and then didn't.

            "Do you suggest we do it now?" he asked. "If the adults have some meeting they want to hold--"

            Malfoy laughed strangely. Harry looked at him with one eyebrow raised, and he choked and stopped himself, shaking his head. "That's something he never would have said," Malfoy murmured. "My Harry. He would have said 'the rest of the Order.' We were encouraged to think of ourselves as adults from the time we learned about the Order, when we were twelve."

            Harry couldn't help a brief spasm of envy then. His life would have been a lot easier if Dumbledore and the others had trusted him more.

            But he shook off the feelings. They would mean nothing to anyone in this world. "Fine," he said, and led the way to the Quidditch pitch. Malfoy caught up with him quickly, walking by his side and giving him small hopeful looks from time to time.

            Harry said nothing, because he didn't want to encourage him. He hoped that he could have a somewhat normal, casual, civil relationship with Malfoy instead of the fraught one that it looked like it was turning into.

            But he wouldn't count on it.

*

            Flying really did help relax Harry, and he was smiling by the time that he won his third race with Malfoy. Malfoy had insisted that Harry call him Draco, but Harry had decided to ignore that, too. Malfoy got the point after the fourth time Harry refused, so he was smiling as they pulled up, and shook his head.

            "I don't think Harry was ever that fast," he said.

            Harry shrugged. "I might have done things differently in some of my matches, or something," he said, and hung upside-down, swaying gently back and forth on his broom as he stared at the branches of the Forbidden Forest. The clouds had gathered across the sun just enough to stop it from being unpleasantly hot, and if it was going to rain, then Harry couldn't feel it in the breeze around them. He didn't really want to hear about Harry Potter the Wonderful at the moment, even if the comparison was going to be favorable to him.

            His eyes fixed idly on a bird soaring above the Forbidden Forest. No, he realized a minute later. Not soaring. Flying. Hurtling. Streaking towards the Quidditch pitch as though it was on a mission.

            Harry swung upright on the broom. "Would someone send us an owl that flies like that?" he asked, gesturing to the bird.

            Malfoy turned around, frowning. "I don't recognize it," he said. "But Father sometimes buys new birds and sends them on a test of how fast they can fly at first. It's probably coming to me." He held up his hand.

            The bird was aiming straight at Harry, or so Harry thought. And he didn't believe it was an owl anymore. He shook his wand into his hand, his eyes narrowing.

            The bird abruptly rose, as though it knew they'd spotted it, and swung in a circle, aiming back towards the Forest. Harry tried to see everything he could about it in the short time before it left, but the sun was behind it, and mostly he got an impression of ragged grey feathers and wide wings.

            Then the bird turned, faster than he knew any normal bird ought to have been able to go, and swirled back down towards Harry. Now he could see the talons, spread wide, and the parted beak, and the way that the wings flapped despite the edge of one looking as though it had been half-severed.

            "That's not an owl, and I don't think it's a bird," Harry said to Malfoy, and slid forwards to meet it, trying to make sure that his broom was between Malfoy and the attacker. It really was coming horribly fast. Harry tried to remember some of the spells that Evelina had taught him while also controlling the broom and trying to estimate the thing's speed.

            Then the thing was close enough, and Harry could see that he had been wrong. It was a bird, feathers bristling from the edges of its wings, either a falcon or a hawk (Harry didn't know how to tell the difference between them). The body was chunks of flesh clinging to raw bone, with the gleam of worms here and there. Blood smeared the feathers, which were stuck on backwards in some cases, and the beak that opened and screeched hungrily had been smashed.

            It was dead.

            Harry felt his mind blank of Evelina's spells, and he returned to the ones that he knew best. "Protego!" he spat, and the shield formed in the air right before the speeding thing.

            The bird slammed into it, and lost a few bones from the left leg and feathers from the tail. But the talons still hung in place, and it lifted them and began to rend through the shield. Harry watched in disbelief as shreds of his magic drifted away like the feathers had, then shook his head and circled to the side. The bird turned its head to track him. It had green eyes, he saw, green eyes that turned red as he watched.

            "Greetings, Harry Potter," said a low, smooth voice from the beak. It could have been the voice of Voldemort from his world, if he had spoken more like a normal human being and less like a screaming child. "I am not impressed with your strength so far." The bird flexed its talons one more time, the shield tore, and the corpse flew at him.

            But Harry had had a little time to recover, and to remember some of the spells that Evelina had insisted he memorize. A lot of them wouldn't work, he thought, because he didn't have a living brain to reverse inner balance for. But there were still some that would, and one was particularly useful right now.

            "Accio venti!" he yelled, flipping his wand over in his hand and having to dive after it when it nearly fell. He hoped fervently that that wouldn't affect the performance of the spell.

            It didn't seem to. The calm air around them turned abruptly furious, the howl building until Harry had to drop lower to get out of the sudden battle of cross-currents. The winds he'd called rose and hurled themselves at the bird, coming from six different direction and possibly more, ripping at the feathers and the wings, the beak and the talons, tossing it up and pressing it down at the same time.

            The bird struggled to reach him, but even if it was dead and raised by necromancy, it still had the body of a bird. It couldn't fly when the wind was like this. Harry smiled sweetly at it as the corpse started to fall to pieces, and hoped that Voldemort would remember this.

            "Not so powerful, am I?" he muttered.

            Then the falcon abruptly whirled and retreated. It still had enough bones to hold together the basic structure of its wings and head, and the crumpled beak still clung to it. Harry wondered if Voldemort was summoning it home so that he could repair it.

            No, he realized a minute later. Voldemort was still enough like the one he had known to throw damaged servants away. Instead of leaving, the dead falcon, only clinging together from the waist up now, hurtled at Malfoy. Malfoy panicked and began to dodge, but the bird seemed to anticipate which way he was going, and the beak chopped off the top third of his broom.

            "Oh no you don't," Harry said, too softly for Voldemort to hear him even if he was listening, and swept the wand sideways. "Aestuo medullam!"

            The bird's head swiveled to stare at him, and Harry thought he saw the red eyes widen. It could have been surprise, or shock, or anger. He didn't know.

            Because then his spell took hold, and the marrow in the bones that held the falcon together began to boil.

            The bird screeched and flailed its wings, but they were burning, swirling with odd, greasy yellow flames, and the bird was falling apart in much the same way that the winds Harry had summoned had begun to destroy it. The beak parted company with the face, the feathers dropped to earth like blazing meteors, and the bones cracked and sagged. Harry punched one fist into the air and whooped.

            That particular spell was one he had noticed on Evelina's list, marked under spells that he should never use on humans unless he had no choice because it was so painful. But the bird wasn't human, and was dead. Harry had thought it would be a damn good spell to fight necromancy with, if Voldemort used it.

            He did, and it was. Harry watched in contentment as the bird fell apart, then shook his head and jerked himself back to the time and place around him.

            As far as he knew, Voldemort shouldn't have been able to attack through the wards. That meant they had to get back inside the school and warn the Order what had happened. Harry didn't like them much, but he didn't want them torn apart by dead wild pigs or something.

            He turned around, opening his mouth to suggest to Malfoy that they fly down to the ground, only to find such an adoring expression on Malfoy's face that he blinked and said nothing.

            "You saved my life," Malfoy whispered.

            Uh-oh. Harry tried to adopt a polite smile and hope that Malfoy read nothing more into it than politeness. Hell, the way he was looking now, he might think that an offer to help him off the broom was a marriage proposal. "Yeah, and mine," Harry said. "He was trying to attack us both."

            "Not even Harry did that for me." The worshipful look didn't leave Malfoy's face. "Not so openly. I know that he would have fought for me, and he stood by me when my father betrayed the Dark Lord and some of my friends turned away, but--that wasn't the same thing."

            "He probably didn't have the time," Harry said. "I think he died before he fought in any major battles, didn't he? Whereas I'm more used to it."

            "But you did it." Malfoy had apparently decided that he and blind adoration were now best friends. He reached out as if he would catch Harry's hand. Harry casually turned away on his broom as if he were scanning the skies and looked for pieces of the bird on the ground.

            He was not going to start a romance with Malfoy, however sorry he felt for him. That would only lead to rationalizations on Malfoy's part and either uneasy giving in on his when he felt no attraction--and he was still going to go home, where he had people waiting for him--or pushing Malfoy away later, which would hurt him more. There were all sorts of reasons that this was the right decision.

            He wished that he could explain that to the calfish look Malfoy was giving him.

            "Come on," he said, and swooped lower, in hopes that one of the bird's bones hadn't been boiled entirely away.

*

            At the meeting of the Order that night where they had come to discuss the modifications to the Patronus spell, Severus heard for the first time of what had nearly happened to Harry and Draco that afternoon.

            He sat and listened in silence as Harry described the attack of the necromantic falcon and what he had done to defeat it. Severus noted in one corner of his mind that Black was beaming, probably because he thought this was something "his" Harry would have done, and that Lucius looked smug the boy had achieved such a thing in protecting his son.

            As for Draco, the boy could not have looked more impressed with Harry had Harry been anointed with light and a crown from above.

            The other corner of Severus's mind was filled with a rage quite amazing, and a fear that surprised him.

            Albus declared exultantly that Harry had "proven his prowess," and that he "now had no fears about sending them into battle." Severus suspected that most of the Order, save perhaps the younger Gryffindors, knew that for a lie, but Minerva and Black nodded and beamed as foolishly as the rest of them. Albus admitted he had one more modification to make to the spell that would allow Harry to send his corporeal Patronus as a spy, but said it would be done the next evening.

            Severus took up a position by the door and caught Harry's eye pointedly when the boy lingered behind to talk with Draco and Lucius. Harry accordingly lingered more, and at last Lucius swept Draco away, with firm admonishments that he could not always rely on someone to save him and he should learn more about necromancy. Lucius looked at Severus on the way out and smirked.

            Severus gave him a single, finely judged expression, one of contempt. That made Lucius check his step for a moment, and if Severus knew him, he would spend the rest of the evening obsessively revisiting his own conversation and actions, trying to figure out what might make Severus despise him. He would be, with any luck, too occupied with the sting to his own pride to think that his initial suspicion of Severus remaining behind to visit Harry was the correct one.

            "Why did you not come to me at once and tell me?" Severus asked, in his most serene voice, when he and Harry were the only ones in the room.

            "During the battle?" Harry shook his head. "I didn't have time." He was quiet but tense, his eyes fastened on Severus's face. Severus had to admit, though, that that might come from his inability to figure out what Severus was upset about as much as anything else. "Afterwards, I thought...everyone should find out at the meeting. If you knew already, then that might betray to someone else that we have an alliance."

            Severus paused. "I did not expect that level of thinking from you," he admitted, when the boy's stare had grown expectant.

            "No," Harry said. "Well, I don't expect anger from you about this when I killed the thing, so I think we're even."

            Severus considered him. His hand hovered above his wand now, and there was another difference, another jewel to the add to the web concerning this Harry in his mind: he looked thinner and sharper than he should have, like a dagger polished until it was as likely to cut flesh as potions ingredients. The Harry Potter born in this world had never been that thin.

            "Has it occurred to you that this was a test?" he asked. "That he sent the bird because he wanted to learn if you could defeat it or not, and that by revealing that you could, you have revealed something important about your strength?"

            The boy snorted. "Sorry, sir, but I think if that was the case, he would have learned something no matter what. Maybe he'd have attacked sooner if I hadn't defeated it. Or Malfoy or I might have been dead."

            "Draco," Severus said. "You would do well to stay far away from him."

            "How far can I go, when only the Order is in Hogwarts?" Harry shook his head. "No. I know he's...trying to replace the Harry who died. And he has a lot of reason to think that I'm going to be that replacement, since I saved him today and I've been nice to him. But I didn't like him in my world, and I wouldn't go near him here even if I had. I'm going home."

            Severus felt a twinge deep beneath his sternum at those words.

            He remains fixated on that goal beyond all else, even battling the Dark Lord and surviving. What will happen if he cannot go back home, if the research that Granger promised to turn up remains elusive?

            Severus shook his head and told himself that that was still only a remote possibility. They had battle after battle to get through first, and the defeat of the Dark Lord, and the training that he had promised Harry which might help him to survive where the others had not.

            "As long as you know that any attention or awareness of him is liable to be interpreted by Draco as encouragement," he cautioned Harry.

            "The only other choice was to let the falcon kill him, since it attacked him," Harry said. "And that's not a choice."

            Severus half-closed his eyes, because he doubted that Harry would want to see his exasperation right now. At best, he would judge it to mean something it did not mean; at worst, he would get angry and possibly turn his back on Severus. "You know that the Dark Lord might decide your protection means that you can be manipulated by threats to Draco. And thus that might increase the danger Draco is in."

            Harry rolled his eyes. "If Voldemort is that smart and sane, then anything I can do could be interpreted that way," he said. "Not a whole lot I can do about it. There'll always be a reason to reject a course of action or take it, and there'll always be the fear that he could find out what I'm doing and do something to counter it. I won't sit in a corner and do nothing, since he could use that, too. So. There are things I need to know. Why didn't you tell me that you had an argument with Harry--the original Harry, the one you knew--right before he died?"

            Severus paused. "Draco told you this?" he asked, while his mind echoed, softly, as if someone was calling his name down long corridors.

            Harry gave him a smile that had too much bitterness in it for one who had survived his war. "Did you think I wouldn't find out? Yes, he told me. He said that Harry had come to him and been upset about it, which he never was after arguments with you, shortly before he died. And Malfoy was the one who found the body, so it can't have been that long after the argument took place."

            "It did not."

            "You have some knowledge about when exactly he committed suicide?" Harry stared at him.

            "I did not say," Severus said, sparing an annoyed thought for the primary school teachers who did not instruct their students to focus on the subtleties of English verbs, "that it was not. I said it did not. The argument did not take place. I did not speak to Harry that day after a reminder to him in the morning that he should straighten his school tie."

            Harry tipped his head to the side. "Malfoy is strange in a lot of ways, but I think he probably loved Harry too much to be mistaken about him. I want to know what you talked about. Even something that was casual to you, or didn't mean anything, could have been taken strangely by Harry if he was in a strange mood. That sometimes happens with me," he added graciously.

            "He is mistaken," Severus said. "Did you think that I murdered him?"

            Harry had not yet learned how to hide his emotions as well as he should have; his eyes flickered in different directions, and a faint flush worked its way up his face. He cleared his throat. "I admit the evidence is scanty," he said, "but like I said, Malfoy wouldn't be mistaken about something that upset his boyfriend. He is, was, scarily devoted to him. He can remember too much about him."

            "I did not argue with Harry," Severus said. "The correction to him about his tie was not harshly worded. I had my mind on a potion that morning, and was not much concerned about the foibles of students."

            "Don't you wish you had been?" Harry asked, sounding fascinated for some reason. "I mean, because of what happened next?"

            Severus half-curled his lip. "I do not think in such a manner," he said. "I did not cause Harry's suicide, and he must have kept his emotions far more carefully concealed from me than he did from Draco, because I did not sense the fear that moved the knife. If I had, I would have done something about it. I did not, so I did not."

            Harry stared at him. "I wish I could think like that," he said at last. "I'm always thinking of other possibilities, of things I could have done instead..."

            "Do not," Severus said briskly. "It will kill you."

            "I can't exactly stop just because you tell me to." There was a sharp tone in Harry's voice that Severus thought more precisely aimed at the version of himself who had taught--or failed to teach--Harry.

            "Then I will teach you," Severus said. "If you trust me enough to learn from me after your talk with Draco."

            That got him a long, thoughtful stare, and Harry scratched his head a few times as if the answers were hiding in his hair and could be jarred loose that way. Then he nodded.

            "I need your training to survive," he said. "But if you had something to do with Harry's death, then I'll find out."

            "You could also use training in being subtle around your enemies," Severus murmured, but let it go. As he had told Harry, he did not think in terms of missed chances when he knew they were irrevocably gone. His Muggle grandmother had called it not crying over spilt milk. The metaphor worked with potions, too.

            He would move ahead, and do what he could to ensure that this Harry, the one living right now, survived.

*



            unneeded: So far, Harry hasn't met any people outside the Order, and that is definitely deliberate.

            As for why the Order didn't steal more than one Harry at a time, it would indeed split their attention, not to mention what would happen if all the people who think the original Harry is still alive found out about it.

            fudge: Thank you!

            kyandoru: Thank you! I think their mentor relationship is still very prickly, because of understandable reasons like the ones that are mentioned in this chapter.

            SGOU: Thank you so much. I'm rather enjoying it at the moment as well.

            helewisetran: Thank you. I don't know how regular I can promise to make it, but at least it should be more frequent than it was for the last few months.
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