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World in Pieces	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 16431 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

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Chapter Nine—The Darkness Between the Stars

            This is beauty.

            It was a weird thought to have in the middle of a ritual that might or might not let them establish contact with his friends for the first time in what felt like centuries, but Harry had it anyway. He looked around at the torches floating next to them, and the spiral of chalk and dried dragon’s blood that Snape had sketched on the floor, and the dim flash of silver from the cauldrons and mirrors that had to be positioned to, as it were, bounce the radio signal they were trying to send out, and a deep sense of satisfaction moved through his bones.

            It was beautiful, to have rituals like this and do them and have them do what you wanted. For the first time, Harry thought he could see why some people liked Potions, and why Hermione—his Hermione—had always liked Arithmancy. You did something complex, and you came out with a beautiful, ordered result.

            Order out of chaos. Harry usually did it the other way around, but the Order here had put so much chaos into his life that it was nice to take a break from it for once.

            Perhaps he could remember this feeling, when he got back home, and do something about it. He was starting to think that he would never want to be an Auror now, after fighting not one but two Voldemorts.

            They stood inside the center of the spiral, with Snape chanting the incantation this world’s Hermione had found, and flicking his wand back and forth, so that sometimes the end pointed at one of the floating torches and sometimes one of the mirrors. The torches floated in a bigger spiral around the one on the floor, and the mirrors and cauldrons formed a third spiral that hinged with that one. Harry wasn’t sure what was so special about spirals, or why he couldn’t say the words of the incantation, but this was the way things had to be, if he wanted to talk to his friends.

            And he wanted to talk to his friends only slightly less than he wanted to go home.

            The air in front of them suddenly darkened. Harry took a deep breath, and felt Snape’s hand grip his shoulder. Harry shrugged a little, irritated. He wasn’t so stupid as to go running into the darkness, not after all Snape’s warnings, and Snape didn’t have to treat him like he was.

            But the hand stayed in place anyway as the spiral turned in and inwards, and the darkness acquired pinpricks of light, like stars, that flew apart from each other. Harry had the impression they were speeding down a dizzy tunnel between them, and swallowed.

            Then he heard noise. And one of the noises was Hermione’s voice, the real one. Harry closed his eyes and listened with all his heart.

            “What’s that? No, Ron, stand back, don’t go near it, we don’t know that it isn’t the same thing that took Harry—”

            “Did they see anything when I got taken?” Harry whispered, looking back at Snape. “I thought they wouldn’t, since you stole me in my sleep.”

            Snape frowned, and Harry remembered that he probably didn’t want to be counted as part of that Order anymore. Harry would have apologized, but Snape nodded rather urgently towards the spiral in front of them, and Harry faced it and cleared his throat. They had practiced this, they had agreed how it would be, and it was still hard for Harry to speak the words.

            “Um—hullo? Hermione? Can you hear me?”

            There was silence so dead that it made the darkness in front of Harry seem lively. Then Hermione breathed out, “Harry.”

            Harry felt stupid tears prickling at the corners of his eyes and grinned an equally stupid grin. He tried to move forwards, but Snape’s hand tightened warningly on his shoulder, and Harry understood, then. Snape wasn’t worried so much about him galloping into the darkness at first, thinking it was a portal, but doing something idiotic here and now, when he had the first contact with home.

            “Yeah,” Harry said, and had to clear his throat, because otherwise Hermione and Ron would think he was crying, and that wasn’t on. “Hermione? I’m in another universe, a place where I never defeated Voldemort because I died here.” Snape had told him he should tell the essential information first, because they didn’t know how long the spell would last or how dangerous it might be to prolong contact. “They keep bringing versions of me through to defeat him, it’s horrible, I’m the fourth one, all the others died—”

            “That’s horrible,” Hermione said, and it didn’t sound like she was merely repeating what he’d said. “Harry, we have to get you out of there right away. You don’t owe anything to anyone. You’ve paid your debts.”

            Harry let out a breath so deep he was surprised he was still standing at the end of it, and closed his eyes. He had known Hermione would agree with him, he told himself, he hadn’t really thought she would insist that he stay here and fight this Voldemort because it was his duty. But it was so overwhelming to hear someone—besides Snape—tell him he could leave if he wanted to.

            And Snape, as nice as he was being, still didn’t know everything about the war in Harry’s world, and everything he’d had to go through.

            You could tell him, you know, came the suggestion from the deepest part of his brain, which had been getting a workout since he’d been here, but Harry brushed it aside. He had to tell Hermione more.

            “They used a spell called the Dream Mirror to study me.” He could hear a dusty, scratching sound that puzzled him for a moment, and then he smiled. Hermione writing down what he was saying, of course. “And then they used one that would bring a version of me across who had already defeated Voldemort. But they didn’t get the one they expected this time. All the others were Slytherins who got raised by Sirius. They didn’t expect me.”

            “Why do you think that is?” Hermione, in research mode. Again Harry stepped towards the dark spiral in spite of himself, and again Snape restrained him. He flicked back a short glance and nod of thanks, and opened his mouth, but Ron interrupted.

            “Harry? That’s really you, mate?”

            “It’s me,” Harry said, and had to close his eyes as he thought about the contrast between his Wheezy, as Dobby would have said, and the git upstairs. “And I’m all right, Ron, but I think Dumbledore hates me. The Dumbledore here, I mean.” Fuck, it was going to be confusing dealing with the denizens of two worlds and mentioning them to each other. “Or thinks I could become the next Voldemort, or something.” He paused, alerted by something in the silence from beyond the spiral. “Did you just flinch at his name again, Ron?”

            There was a sound like someone reaching up to hit a taller person on the back of the head, and then Hermione’s voice said briskly, “Yes, he did. And suffered the appropriate punishment for it. All right, Harry. What kind of danger are you in? Can we help you from here?”

            “I hope so,” Harry said. “The Voldemort here is sane, and either he never made Horcruxes or he gathered them all back together again.” He wasn’t sure that he should trust Dumbledore on that point. “Snape’s helping me, but I don’t have any other allies here. If you could look up stuff on alternate universes and the spells that someone could use? Dumbledore claims that he can’t send me back because it’s a one-way trip, and no one else can defeat Voldemort because we’re bound to each other in a prophecy. Can you look that up?”

            “Of course,” Hermione said, sounding faintly offended, as if he had suggested that she couldn’t put her shirt on the right way.

            Harry closed his eyes and let the enormous relief pour over him again. “Thank you.”

            Snape shifted behind him and cleared his throat. Harry understood. The strain of holding the spell that communicated between universes was getting to be too much for him, and he needed Harry to finish up his greetings or at least make it clear that he’d told Ron and Hermione the most important bits.

            “I think I have to end this spell soon, you lot,” he said, and tried to pretend that the tightness in his voice came from embarrassment at having to talk about the situation in front of Snape. He thought it worked, but not very well. “I—can you please contact me when you have something? Do you think you can cast a spell that will let you find this universe and make contact with me again, Hermione?”

            “Let me see,” Hermione said, so brisk that Harry smiled in spite of himself. He heard something that sounded like her fumbling through several pieces of parchment, and then she said, “Yes. I remember reading Horace Galatier’s Contacting Alternate Universes, it says something about drawing the shape—”

            “Tell her to hurry,” Snape said through his teeth, and Harry glanced over his shoulder to find him swaying like a candle in a gust of wind.

            “I have to go soon, Hermione,” Harry said hastily. “I’m not in any danger right now, but this spell is hard to hold. Be—be careful, all right? If you contact someone who isn’t me, even if you hear your own voice, you have to back out right away. I don’t trust the Order here at all.”

            “Really?” Hermione sounded painfully fascinated. “Why? I mean, they might be prats, but they can’t all be prats—”

            “Promise me, Hermione,” Harry hissed, and leaned backwards so that he could support Snape. “Please?”

            “Yes,” she said, and Harry heard the murmur of Ron and what sounded like other voices behind his. He wondered if some of the real Order was there, too, or his other friends, and smiled in spite of the way that Snape was trembling. “Of course, Harry. You know that we’ll take whatever it needs to bring you home. Stay safe. I’ve already finished drawing the way the spiral appears in the air here and all the little dots around it, so I think we’ll be able to open up a way to contact you soon.”

            Harry opened his mouth to ask her what she meant by little dots and the spiral, but the spell collapsed then, the spiral in front of them turning red and sparking and falling into pieces. Harry reached out a hand, thinking he might need to support Snape, but the man had fallen to one knee already and knelt there with his surprisingly long hair hanging around his face, gasping.

            “Sir?” Harry followed him down. He thought about trying to get him back on his feet, but he wasn’t sure that would be a good idea right now, so he just waited, hand out, in case Snape decided that he wanted Harry’s help.

*

            It was no wonder that Granger’s book had spoken of spells like that being dangerous, Severus thought, his head still feeling as if the spiral were inside it, thoughts rising and falling in essentially random patterns. His chest was tight. His magical core, if one could feel that, was tender and shaky. He didn’t know how he had managed to survive so far.

            He lifted his head and blinked at Potter. Potter blinked back, crouching with one hand still reaching out to him.

            Then Severus remembered the voices, and how familiar they had sounded and yet how strange, unlike the voices of the Weasley and Granger he knew, and a vicious chuckle spilled from his lips.

            “Sir?” Harry pulled his hand back, his expression wary. He didn’t quite rest his palm on his wand, but Severus’s expression must somehow have been alarming, from the reaction he did have.

            “If they knew,” Severus murmured, his head half-bowed as he concentrated on breathing and recovering his strength. “If they had the slightest idea, the Order here, that we had made contact with another universe and that you prefer the people there to the ones here…”

            “Except for you, sir,” Harry said, and half-smiled at him. “Of course, it wouldn’t matter even if I did prefer the version of you there, since he’s dead.”

            Severus nodded, and tried to ignore the strangeness of that. He had never met a Harry from a world where he had died; all of them had left behind their Severus Snapes alive and well, profitable Potions masters and excellent Heads of Slytherin House. Severus wondered now if that should have been a signal, a warning, when he didn’t feel close to those boys, or the desire to be part of their lives, the way he did with Harry.

            Really?

            That was what he felt, yes, and he could admit the thoughts no matter how uncomfortable they grew. He hardly thought Harry would press him to speak them aloud before he was ready.

            “Granger did not give you the book intending for you to do that, you know,” he said, when he had breathed in and out for several minutes and Harry looked as if he had grown resigned to waiting. “She thought you would discover the spell was too hard for you and come looking for help, or thank her, and that would be her chance to discover a way into your confidence.”

            “Oh, of course she did,” Harry said, casually enough that one would miss the fire in his eyes unless one was looking closely, the way Severus was. “But that doesn’t mean it would happen. I don’t think the Hermione—the Granger here is used to plotting very far ahead, sir, is she?”

            Severus shook his head, and stood up. His legs remained firm beneath him, and he nodded. For all that Harry had seen his weakness, Severus would remain more comfortable and confident in himself if he didn’t have to ask for help, and they badly needed confidence. “She took part in the childish adventures that the Harry I knew involved himself in, and I think little side-adventures, given her partnership with Weasley,” he said, and made his way back over to his chair. Harry went, without being asked, for a cup of tea, and hesitated before he cast a Warming Charm. Severus noted the hesitation, but kept the knowledge to himself for now. “When she fought, it was always as you have seen with the Patronus Charm, under the guidance of someone else. She is not a warrior like you.”

            Harry looked up, blinking, in the moments before he carried the tea over and deposited the cup in Severus’s hand. Severus sipped, and yes, it was ordinarily warm, the usual kind of heat that a charm would produce. “But I don’t think I’m a warrior, sir. I fought—the Dark Lord a handful of times, and once since I’ve come here, but I didn’t kill him like a warrior would in my own world.”

            “You think a warrior someone who kills.” Severus kept his voice lulling, and Harry took the chair opposite him, watching him as if he thought the lull might be a symptom of a coming collapse.

            “Yes,” Harry said. “It’s there in the name, isn’t it, sir? War. You’re not someone who just goes around living a normal life and then picks up your wand to cast curses when you need to. You’re someone who goes out and fights. And kills.”

            Severus was silent, sipping tea. The irony of what he was about to say was so thick on his tongue that it tasted metallic. He considered not saying it, nodding in response to Harry’s words and letting the moment slip past.

            But he could not. In the end, Harry might need these words as armor against Albus. For the moment, the Headmaster had decided to step back and let Severus handle Harry, but he could change his mind at any time, especially if he realized that he wasn’t seeing the destruction of Harry’s self-confidence and anger that Severus had promised.

            “A warrior is someone who fights,” Severus said at last. “Someone who can make the war his life. I do not believe that anything in the definition says he must. Someone who fights for a living—that is a soldier, Harry. Or a mercenary. But a warrior can be someone who defends a noble cause, and someone who thinks he lives for one. And there are many, many kinds of wars beyond simply the ones that involve wands and curses.”

            Harry stared at him with wide eyes. Then he let his breath go in a little snort. “You’re a Slytherin, sir, and talking about warriors and noble causes? What would Dumbledore say?”

            It was the kind of wording that would have made Severus rise to the bait not long before. Now, because it echoed thoughts he had had himself, he could remain still and simply incline his head. “Yes,” he murmured. “They are the kinds of things that he would be surprised to hear me talk about. What would he say?”

            Harry’s eyes narrowed, bright as fireworks. “Sometimes I think it wouldn’t make a bad life lesson to find out everything this Dumbledore is in favor of and do the exact opposite,” he muttered.

            Severus nodded. “And I will use my knowledge of him to deceive him as necessary. But we must avoid falling into our own traps. We think, on our own, that our Houses define us all our lives, and limit what we can and cannot talk about and do. I do not believe that the Dark Lord has any such belief. He acts cruelly because it suits him to do so, but he would pretend to be a Gryffindor if that would work. Keep your eye on the goal, Harry, and not on what you are at the moment.”

            Harry opened his mouth, and then snorted. He tried to cover his mouth with one hand and muffle the sounds leaking out of it, but Severus had already heard them and knew what they must be. He sat up and stared at Harry. He had tried to help the brat, he had spoken of things that made him wince to speak of, and Harry took it with laughter?

            “Sorry!” Harry gasped, perhaps because he had seen the expression on Severus’s face. “I was just—trying to picture—what my version of you would have said about me taking advice from you. About time, probably, and then he would have heard the advice and gone back to his grave in disgust with both of us.”

            Severus sipped his tea again to spare himself from having to respond for a few minutes. But yes, perhaps another version of himself from a world where he had always hated a Gryffindor, Muggle-raised Potter would say those things. Severus found that he could picture the sneer that that Severus would use, and hear the low tone of his words.

            And hear the hatred in those words, so little different from the hatred that Severus himself felt for Black.

            Severus sighed, and shook his head. “I can see that,” he said, stopping another fit of laughter from Harry as it was about to start. “But I cannot sympathize with him, or stay in charity with him long.”

            Harry blinked at him. “But why, sir? He was more bitter than you are, but you’re closer to each other than the Hermione and Ron here are to the Hermione and Ron I knew. And a whole hell of a lot closer than Malfoy and the other me are.”

            “Because,” Severus said, and leaned forwards to emphasize his point, “he could not look at you and see what you are. The hidden places in you, the potential, your nature and ability to defeat even a sane Dark Lord.”

            Harry paused, still staring at him. Severus wondered how little praise he must have received in his life, even from his friends and the Dumbledore of the other universe, if a relatively mild compliment surprised him like this.

            Another jewel for the web, another fact for the collection. What had happened to this Harry Potter during his childhood, and perhaps during his school years, to make him into a Gryffindor? The fighter they needed, but someone so little at home in himself that he would react like this to praise?

            Then Harry took a deep breath and lifted his head as though to fend off any attacks that might come with the words. “Thank you, sir,” he said, calmly. “And we should decide what kind of report you’re going to make to Dumbledore now. You’ve been down in the dungeons with me long enough, he’ll think. He’ll expect some kind of results, and want you to deliver them to him.”

            “He can wait,” Severus said, and couldn’t help the vicious snarl that broke out from his control. Harry, though, waited, and in a moment Severus had reminded himself that he was not the Gryffindor and that, as confining as thinking of themselves by their Houses could sometimes be, there was something to be said for its usefulness, too. “Yes, you are right,” he said, and sipped the cup of tea again. He feared he would need to introduce a Strengthening Draft into it before he went to face the Headmaster. “And it would be best if I could present him with some tangible sign of progress.”

            Harry paused. “More than a lie, then?”

            Severus nodded, and tried not to think of the disappointed expression that would cross Albus’s face if he could hear this conversation, the words he would speak about the few merits of deceit compared to the strength of truth when facing off against a common foe. Severus had no patience for the argument that would come of that. “Yes. I will not ask you to come with me; he would not trust you enough for the risk to be worth the possible gain. But if I could report certain words, give him a memory to look at…”

            “And a memory could be altered, but it could also be staged,” Harry said, and his grin made Severus think of worlds where Albus’s fear about a Gryffindor Harry becoming a Dark Lord had proven true. “Well. What are we waiting for?”

*

            “Headmaster. Thank you for meeting with me.”

            Harry hid a smile. Snape had started out well, he thought, acting as if it was his choice to meet with Dumbledore. Well, he was the one who had sent the message, but Harry knew he never would have gone if Dumbledore hadn’t compelled him to.

            He was watching their meeting through what looked like a crystal on a long, grey string. Harry didn’t know exactly what it was, and the long, slow look Snape had given him when he exclaimed over it told him not to ask further. It could be a shrunken crystal ball, one that actually worked, for all Harry knew; the important thing was that it worked.

            Snape and Dumbledore were sitting in the middle of the Headmaster’s office, the Headmaster’s hands folded on the desk in front of him. Snape sat in a chair with his arms folded, staring over Dumbledore’s head. Harry knew that was probably just caution, so Dumbledore couldn’t read his thoughts, but it made him look like Dudley when something had taken over one of his programs. Harry smiled openly this time. Snape was doing well.

            And would you have even noticed something like that before he started training you? He’s making you more Slytherin.

            Harry shrugged away the thought. He knew he had to do this, and this wasn’t his world. If he had to act a little more Slytherin to survive here, that didn’t mean he would always have to. He could go back to normal when he went home.

            More than anything, he was determined not to allow this other world to change him. Dumbledore wouldn’t get the Slytherin Harry he demanded, and Malfoy wouldn’t get his lover, and Voldemort wouldn’t get the easy opponent he was expecting. Harry was just going to walk around being himself, as many difficulties as that would cause for people.

            In fact, he thought, as he watched the way Dumbledore watched Snape, the more difficulties, the better.

            “So,” Dumbledore said, and he was trying to keep his voice serene and his smile calm, but Harry could see enough even from this slightly distant vantage to know it wasn’t working, “what did you have for me?”

            “I have seen the way Potter fights, Headmaster.” Snape could keep his voice in the dead calm waters that the Headmaster only wished for, and Harry admired him for that. He knew he would have been tempted to go up and punch Dumbledore in the nose by now. Snape blinked once, twice, as if slightly bored—or strengthening his Occlumency shields. “He will make a fine warrior on the battlefield, under guidance, but he has no discipline. The best way is to point him at a target and stand back.”

            Harry grinned. Snape was the one who had suggested that particular deception as the one Dumbledore was most likely to believe, but Harry was the one who had made the memory real. And he thought he could see the shudders running down Snape’s spine even now.

            Again, his voice echoed in Harry’s head, as it had yesterday after they put together their little faked scene to become a memory Snape could place in the Pensieve. I cannot bite my nails for fear of swallowing Potions ingredients. But I am tempted to begin.

            “That’s bad news, Severus,” Dumbledore said. Everything in the room seemed to droop along with him, Harry thought, even watching it through the crystal. That was a way Dumbledore had with him; he could make everyone else happy or sad no matter what he was feeling. What he wanted them to feel was the point. “We have need of another fighter, one who can make some of his own decisions in the heat of battle.”

            Snape lifted his head and blinked faster this time. “But I thought you were worried about Potter’s independence of mind, Headmaster,” he said, his voice thick with wonder. “This at least shows that it does not extend to all his actions.”

            “True independence of mind,” Dumbledore intoned, “consists of listening to other people when you must, and making the right decision regardless of the circumstances.”

            And that right decision is always listening to you, is it? Not bloody likely!

            The vision in the crystal wavered as though it was water Harry had breathed across. He pulled his face away from it and closed his eyes for a second, counting backwards from ten the way Snape had told him to. The crystal was a pretty powerful tool, but it was a delicate magical artifact, too, and it would react to unexpected emotions from a strong wizard like Harry by stopping the vision.

            Do you realize how much like Snape you sound?

            Harry rolled his eyes. That was the other danger; he might not become a Slytherin, but he might become a little Snape-clone, and trust the man too much. As Draco would say, or at least claim. Harry focused on the crystal again, and decided he must have missed part of the conversation, because Dumbledore had a grave expression on his face and Snape’s hands clutched the arms of his chair.

            “The virtues you mention are incompatible,” Snape said, and it sounded as if it weren’t the first time he’d repeated this. “Thinking for oneself essentially means that one cannot exercise perfect obedience.”

            “I disagree, Severus.” Dumbledore’s face had gone so calm that he looked as if he were standing in a pretty garden staring at the Fountain of Contemplation or some shit like that. Harry clutched the Elder Wand and focused on the warmth running through it to give himself a distraction. “One can think through his positions and realize that obedience is in one’s own best interests. My concern is that Harry does not take the long view. He seems to think that he will and can fight on his own, without realizing the wealth of experience and talent that he has to draw on in the Order.”

            Snape massaged his forehead and sighed. “Can you blame him? We did not tell him the truth at first, and he must constantly compare us to the very different people he knows in his own world and find us falling short. Well, not me, perhaps,” he added, with a slight twist of his mouth. “He appears to trust me most because I am so very different from the Severus Snape that fought beside him. But Black did not raise him, and you are dead in his world, Headmaster. What else can we do but try to win his trust, and offer him truth?”

            “I said that we needed a warrior,” Dumbledore said, and in his voice was the sound of strained patience that often made Harry want to hit something. He was impressed that Snape kept his hands off his wand. “One like Harry, but not like him. One with different traits.”

            Snape made a thick noise. “If you will allow me time to work with him, I think I can train this version of Potter to respect other people and stop thinking he can save the whole world by himself. But, Headmaster, it will need time. And you said yourself that bringing other people into this war is useless, because Potter is the only one who can defeat the Dark Lord.”

            “Yes, of course,” Dumbledore said, and sat there, his twinkle going on in his eyes as though he’d lit a Muggle lamp, and waited.

            Snape stared at him. Harry wished that it was real acting, but he had the feeling it wasn’t, that Snape was staring because he was simply bewildered by what Dumbledore was hinting at or had done. Harry felt the same cluelessness, and also a sparking fury deep in his stomach. If Dumbledore had done something to someone else, coerced Ron and Hermione into pretending they were his friends, or if he planned to cast the Imperius Curse on Harry…

            Come on, then, you fucker. I can resist it, how about that?

            “Severus, Severus,” Dumbledore sighed at last, and sounded exactly the way McGonagall did when she was clucking over a favorite pupil, like Hermione, not knowing the answer to a question in class. “We must have Harry for the prophecy to work, but a Harry with different traits. The obvious solution is to summon a Slytherin Harry who has defeated his Voldemort from a different world.”

            The vision in the crystal blew apart as Harry felt strength and momentum gathering in his stomach, enough to shatter the whole entire world, and a real snarl broke past his lips, and the Elder Wand leaped gladly into his hand.

            No! No, you fucker! Not someone else whose life you’re going to tear up, not another one who’ll never have the chance to see his world again!

            Harry clutched the Elder Wand with one hand, his temple with the other, and tried to fight down the pounding headache and nausea that wanted to take him over. He had to save the other Harry, yes, but he couldn’t do that if he didn’t know what Dumbledore intended. And to know what Dumbledore intended, he had to watch the rest of this meeting.

            He had to calm down.

            He opened his eyes, and the vision in the crystal was back in front of him. Harry blinked, then smiled, a smile that made him feel as if his teeth were about to cut his lip open.

            Of course. Of course. He wanted to watch what Dumbledore was doing and stop him more than he wanted anything else. He was capable of being calm when he wanted to; he just didn’t want to often.

            Harry smiled another smile that made him feel as if his mouth was filled with razors, and wondered how soon Dumbledore would learn that he was armed, now, that he knew he could resist being manipulated if he wanted to. It was just a matter of wanting to long enough.

            “I did not think we could do that, Headmaster,” Snape was saying, and his voice was poised, Harry thought, like one of those stupid cauldrons he had shown Harry the other day, when he was still fixated on teaching him Potions theory that was obviously not going to work. “I thought that once we had a version of Potter in this world, that one had to stay until he died, and only then were we free to summon another one.”

            Harry swallowed. Snape’s act was perfect; he had many emotions humming under the surface of his voice, but none of them were positive. He heard Malfoy’s laughter in the back of his head, this broken Malfoy’s laughter, and the murmur of, He was a spy and the prime actor in Dumbledore’s service for years. So sure you can trust him?

            “The obvious solution is to send Harry—this Harry—home,” Dumbledore said, and the twinkle was back in full force. “As he wants, and as I believe young Miss Granger is close to discovering a way to do.”

            Harry caught his breath. That sliced at his throat like razors, too. He swallowed the razors, and then thought, You clever, clever bastard. You had to know this would be the perfect temptation.

            He closed his eyes and thought of Hermione and Ron. He had heard their voices just yesterday, but the thought of being able to see them, feel Hermione hugging him and Ron punching him on the shoulder…

            Of being home, and able to sleep in his own bed, and resume his interrupted life. That was the most wonderful thought he’d had in weeks.

            Then his hand slipped into his pocket, and touched the coded diary that he’d found hidden in the bed in the original Harry’s room.

            And how could he do that? He couldn’t. Not when leaving would mean some other poor Harry dragged into the middle of this, and perhaps dying, and then another one, and another one, without end, until they finally found someone who could win. And then they would probably never bother getting him back home, just think that he should be happy to stay here with the people who “loved” him.

            And there were the mysteries that Harry hadn’t found the answer to yet, like why the original Harry had died.

            And who knew if he would ever master the Elder Wand or get it to work for him?

            Harry swallowed, and hoped that Snape could feel his head shaking, his beliefs turning utterly against this shitty compromise that Dumbledore offered. He rejected it. If Snape accepted for him, unless it was part of an act, then Harry would part from him, too, and fight on alone.

            I will not be used like this, as bait in a trap to bring someone else in. Fight your own war, Headmaster.

            “I…will need to consider whether he would be willing to go home, at this point,” Snape said finally. “He might think it his duty to stay until the Dark Lord is dead.”

            “Explain the point to him,” Dumbledore said, with a soft smile. “Harry is reasonable. I am sure he will understand.”

            You mean “easily manipulated.” You mean that you think I’ll give everything up the minute you find me a way home because that was what I wanted in the first place. And maybe I would have. I’m not perfect, I would have taken the first portal someone offered me before I understood everything.

            But now I do. And I’m not fighting for you, Headmaster. That’s the part you don’t get.

*

            Zip: Thank you! You do get to see some of Dumbledore’s intentions here, although the reasons that Harry and Snape think might be his might not really be.

            unneeded: Well, one mission accomplished! But another one coming right behind.

            heartstar: Harry trusts him enough to be going on with.

            kyandoru: I feel like chapters of this story have to be really good, and also they’re longer than most of the others I work with.
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World in Pieces