There could be high-stake bets placed on this: how long will Harry Potter and Severus Snape last alone together in a small room?

The office is spot lit by a single lamp above our heads. Our chairs face each other. A pen spins in each of our hands. Potter leans back and stares at the parchment, crossing his arms as if he is personally offended by its presence. Hard work always did repulse him.

"You could stand up, say junky winky wonky whump and succeed, such is the weight of your undeserved name," I say.

Undeserved? A lie. He's no longer the lolling toddler who survived by chance. He is a highly qualified adult, who has destroyed any flicker of uprising from the remaining tangles of the Dark Lord's web with mighty easy. He was once, not too long ago, a horribly willing teenager who was asked to die and said 'okay'.

But my own reputation is undeserved. It took years drenched in firewhiskey to realise that I have punished myself enough, which is why I have finally let him help. His name – his deserved name – is what will save me from the ever-increasing storm of letters, all with the same message (wouldn't one note between them be more succinct?): you deserved to die from Nagini's bite. The letters that I have now culminated in a trial.

"I think you overestimate the weight of my name, Professor Snape, and underestimate their prejudice."

My fist tenses at the patronisation, his calling me Professor Snape when he had long refused to. Where had this flippancy come from? Where was the burning, righteous rage? Now, he stares at me as if I am the student, unworthy of emotion weightier than pity.

"Really," I say, not bothering to keep the ice from my voice. "I'm not in much danger of doing the latter. I used to think I was a pessimist. Then came the Dark Lord, and I realised I was a realist."

Potter leans forward like he actually cares. "Then you understand."

"Are you incapable of speaking plainly?"

Potter smiles at me like a doctor would to a patient, a winner to a loser. "It won't be easy. My name is undeservedly-" there is that word again, but I cannot not bring myself to disagree – "admired, but their hatred for..."

Potter pauses here and flushes. I feel more comfortable: this is the embarrassed, unsure boy I used to enjoy taunting.

"Spit it out, Potter."

"The hatred they feel for you," finishes Potter, still with a touch of unease, "will not make it easy."

I lean back.

No, it will not. But Potter's support will make it less impossible.

I imagine the might of the Ministry, their hands clawing at me and dragging me into a cell with the likes of Lucius Malfoy, as if he and I were no different.

"But life goes on," says Potter. "If our first plan fails, I will find another and then another. Life goes on, Professor."

"When did you start channelling Albus Dumbledore?" I bite back.

He has the tenacity to grin.

"Sir," a slip of black enters, an anonymous messenger, a non-entity, an opening and closing of the door. For a moment I think he is addressing me, but of course I am not the sir here. The ministry worker glances at me and then at Harry. "You might want to leave the room to hear this…"

"Anything you have to say," he says, "Severus can hear too…."

Severus. That hurts. But I can do nothing: power shifts, almost always unfairly.

"Sir, really-" the shadow says, but Harry Potter gave him his harshest gaze. A pathetic thing, but it makes the man's legs quiver.

The man nods, then whispers in his ear so all I have to go on is the changing face in front of me, like some awful pantomime. A plethora of colours to rival any great painting: red then a resigned, stripped white and then a soft pink. There is some more whispering, then the sharpening of words and Potter's face too. The man slips back into the black corridors of this Ministerial labyrinth.

That was a minute ago.

Now, Potter is still staring.

"Merlin, slow down Potter. I can barely keep up."

It is the fortnight before my trial and even more exquisitely jarring because of it. I stand to leave, not wanting to witness anymore of Potter's reaction to the news he's received. It doesn't seem like a birth of a child or a bout of luck. Rather, something that punches the air out of you.

"I…" says Potter.

I give him space, seconds to complete the rest of his sentence but nothing follows.

"A complete sentence includes a noun and a verb too".

My hand tenses round the door handle, but it doesn't turn. He has power over me: the rest of my life, no less.

Potter's head jerks up as if he's been awoken and he turns to the desk. "Let's continue then, shall we?"

I stand by the door, move towards it and then away again. Frown and frown and frown and still it makes no sense. Then face him, the silhouetted back of a single man at a desk for two. Severus Snape – Innocent is the title of one of the parchments in front of him. Unnaturally brighter than the rest, the beam of sun choosing it, as if Dumbledore has control even from the afterlife.

"You forgot how to speak for the last minute and you want to just... carry on?"

"No, no," says Potter. "It was nothing to do with me."

His eyes are on the parchment. I slowly walk around the desk, take a seat opposite him, frown again. His eyes are still on the parchment. Was he really eleven years old once? The beginnings of a beard, grey-flecked stubble around his ears (but the hair on his head still sticks up like a child's).

"I must enquire as to why the man talked to you then?"

Potter shakes his head. I don't know whether it's to stop me talking or something else. I am left waiting for him to actually communicate something.

"The human race has discovered language, you know," I say.

I stand up again, but he talks before I can turn the door handle, always pulling me back the last second before freedom.

"I know you don't really care but given I'm helping you with…" he gestures loosely at the desk. Given he's helping me with my life…"Could you help with this?"

Should I leave or go? And, after this trial, will I have freedom or none? I doubt it he would be so cruel, so cunning, as to let one affect the other, but this is a man in a shifting situation, so debilitating that he can no longer speak, and this is a man with power over me. Who knows what Potter could do in a moment of madness?

Potter is not asking much. He is asking if I have basic decency or whether I am, after all, a moral wasteland. I am tempted to say "No I will not help you. Yes I'm a moral wasteland," and shut the door behind me with the bang of disappointment. Instead, I do nothing.

Potter scrapes around in his chair, pushing it back into the desk like its forgotten and walking over to the door towards me, surely closer to my face than socially polite.

"It can't be her."

And I see that no, it can't be her whoever her is. It can't – not because I don't think it is, but because Potter is disintegrating in front of me. He puts a shaking hand to his neck.

"It can't be who?" I ask.

Potter isn't listening: he is staring at the floor, arm still on his neck, expression stretched with wandering eyes. His body is controlling him. Where is his mind?

"It's a bit embarrassing, really," he says, nodding, and I can't think of anyone he's agreeing with apart from himself. "Administrative mix-up. It can't be her. There was a muggle car crash... A coma. Just...terrible and made even worse with the mix-up. So much worse for the family. It can't be her. I mean...I hope she doesn't have children. I... can't imagine if I had children. What that would feel like-"

I feel like if I say nothing, Potter will just continue talking and unravel like a ball of wool in the claws of a cat. How long would it take for him to lose shape completely? I want to throttle him. Pin him down in his idiocy. Force some other, more coherent brain into him.

"You are rambling... Who?"

Does he not realise the importance?

"I feel so bad for the husband... The real husband. I can't even imagine what he's doing through. It can't be her-"

"Go!" I say, twisting my hand to indicate a spin. "Find the Gryffindor."

"I haven't even told you who it is-"

"I'm talking to Harry Potter and I can use statistics. I'm guessing their house. Now, go!"

"Er…"

"Where is she?" I say when it's clear he's going to do nothing, so forcefully that my teeth ache.

Potter shakes his head, gaze sliding to the side as if his thought has fainted. "A muggle hospital," he says. "But it's not her."

"Potter. Who?" I ask, bending my knees slightly so his gaze is caught on mine. Squirming, but trapped. He looks at me, through his eyelids, green eyes dim behind his glasses, is enough.

It's Ginny Weasley, that freckly, fiery, idiotic girl.

"No one. Um – Let's just get going on this, your case, what we're here for," he says, as stubborn and stupid as a Hippogriff. "We're running of time. Let's just let them sort out the…administrative mix-up-"

"The name of the hospital, Potter," I say. Potter's tongue moves like a flobberworm. "Merlin - you've lost your mind not your memory!"

"Er, J…" he says. "John Radhill?"

"John Radcliffe - Oxford!"

He nods, eyes on the floor, empty. I think about my emptiness, which still doesn't go. I want the boy back who defied me and anything else fate threw at him.

"It will be so embarrassing when I walk into someone else's hospital room," he says

I take his arm more tightly than I need to and spin.

We land as close to the John Radcliffe as I can get from my hazy memory - a booming night of headaches, music, and giggling at muggle pubs, before hospital doors, shaking heads alone. Potter trips, disorientated beside me. The centre of Oxford is sickeningly similar to Hogwarts (can I not get away?).

I raise my hand for the nearest taxi, chuck Potter in, consider making a run for it and leave Potter to whizz away into the distance alone, but find the door closing behind me.

"John Radcliffe!" I say, sitting opposite Potter who is staring out the window, exhibiting the first signs of nervousness: a tapping finger, eyes that reflect more than usual (wet).

After a criminally long time, the taxi slows next to a grey building that looks more like it harbours death than care. I lean forward to confound the driver, but Potter shakes his head.

"Money," he mouths.

"Or we could just use magic-"

But he has started rooting in his pockets, fingers fumbling over a chocolate frog wrapper (valuable to no one), a photo of Mrs Potter that is frayed as if a portion of it has been ripped away (valuable to him, probably, but I cannot imagine a taxi driver accepting it as payment) and then two crisp fifty pound notes (finally).

He hands one to the taxi driver, then makes his way out, apparently forgetting the concept of 'change'. I raise an eyebrow, following him. Oh well, his money.

"Mr. Weasley makes us carry it for emergencies," he says. "I tried to explain that a hundred pounds is a lot, but he has no idea."

The doors slide open in a muggle attempt at magic. The situation I'm in slowly dawns on me. I hope it's a dream, though I should probably see some kind of therapist if that turn out to be true.

"Ginevra Potter?" I ask at reception.

"Do you have any ID?"

"Yes."

I reach in my pocket for my wand and wave it under the cover of the desk.

"Wonderful! Room 243. The doctors are with her now."

We walk over to the lift. Well, I walk over, Potter kind of limps. It is strangely silent between us – and not the peaceful kind I've been wishing for all these years with him jabbering in my class. It is a silence that sucks thoughts from my head, words from lips, colour from my surroundings.

A trolley enters besides us, full of syringes and bottles, bits of paper and needles and a clinging sharp smell that I associate with poison, not healing. Potter eyes it. I open my mouth to say something, but I don't know what so I close it again.

I hit the number two on the lift; Potter raises his eyebrows slightly as if he hadn't thought that one of the greatest Potion Masters alive could work the floor from a room number. The doors open and it would be there, wouldn't it? Number 243. There is no walk to delay it.

Potter opens the doors. There is crowd of white by the bed, babbling words that are surely meaningless. Potter is almost gliding, pushing past people like they're not there, until his hand lands on the bed like it's lost all energy and his eyes find their default position on the face of Ginevra Potter. Ginny, I believe people call her. The fire of Gryffindor who escaped my wrath again and again with the sheer skill of knowing how to not get caught. We almost admired each other in the end.

That fire is gone now. Water and ice remain. There is only the lack of her.

I am by the bed before I know it. Next to me, Potter's legs are gone, though he doesn't seem to notice, as a chair is pushed under him. His fingers interlock with his wife's like water flowing through cracks.

A woman in a white coat stands awkwardly by the bed. "Hello. I assume you're family?" She looks between us. "We weren't told you were coming up. I'm sorry. I'm not sure why. So it's important we check your names."

Potter, who shows no sign he's being talked to, rubs his thumb on Mrs Potter's pasty forearm, as if the whiteness is a powder he can rub off.

"Severus Snape," I say.

She gives me a small smile I don't return. "What is your relationship to Mrs Potter?"

"Colleague."

Colleague? I've never worked with her in my life. What else could I say? There are only a certain amount of answers they will not throw me out for. Hated ex-Potions Professor wouldn't be one of them.

"And who is…?"

"He can speak," I say, perhaps stupidly.

"Harry Potter," I hear, surprising me. A grisly voice, but a voice. He has passed my low expectations - wonderful. "Husband."

I move to the other side the bed, through the cluster of doctors who part like gas, to face Potter.

"Very well, then," says the woman. "If you could both take seat…"

A seat is pushed under me too, like I'm going to faint. Almost hilarious. Mainly irritating.

"There was a car crash on the A40 towards Oxford…"

My eyes slide to Potter, who is looking nowhere but at his wife. His wedding ring scrapes against hers.

"Mrs. Weasley was in a hired taxi…"

At that, Potter's head falls into his fingers, which pinch the bridge of his nose like a balancing act.

"A speeding van crashed into the back of their vehicle. She was the only one who suffered a serious injury. In the six hours since she arrived, we operated on her head injury, which went as smoothly as it could, but we are not sure if she will wake up – and what cognitive issues she will face if she does."

I arch my back. I hadn't seen it before. Buried in the red burning of her hair is a bandage, so slim, so meaningless – rather like a decoration, a diadem, rather than anything potentially fatal.

"I give her a 25% chance of survival and a 90% chance of brain damage, if she does wake up. I'm so sorry."

I want to strangle. It is an ache of maths, spat out like sales figures.

"We apologise for the delay in contacting you," she is saying. "You see, there was no mobile phone on her body. No identity cards. Apart from one thing…."

He gestures towards the side table. An open purse. I don't see it at first, among the scraps of paper, the galleons (what had the muggles thought of those or had they noticed?). The general rubbish of a Gryffindor.

A photo. Frayed at the edges. As if the other person had been torn out of it (well, that's one mystery solved.) Harry Potter blinks in the photo so subtly that the muggles must have missed it. He has the beginning of a beard, staring into the camera with eyes that match the grass around him and laughing. One of his hands is lost around someone (Mrs Potter) who is ripped away (in his own wallet).

Then names at the top: Harry and Ginevra Potter, 2001.

And, in blurred writing on the scrap of white in the opposite pocket of the purse, is a ghastly verse that reminds me of Slytherin laughs down a corridor. The deliciousness of his and her embarrassment. Words that I had forgotten.

Her eyes are as brown as coffee,
Her hair is as red as a coral sea,
How is she mine?
She's really divine,
The heroine who conquered me.

Embarrassment? No more for him: it's all mine now. I really have to leave. I can't stay here, with this dying, dead, close to it – I can't tell, but it's not life - ex-student and another who looks not much better.

"I should go.…" I say. "Potter? I will see you soon…"

She is a chameleon on the bed sheets. The only colour is her clotted blood being sucked out by tubes as if they're feeding on her, coiling around her like a snake.

"No."

He looks up at me. Green eyes on mine, and how can I deny any request?

No, I am Severus Snape, who can walk back to my life with potions, work on the trial on my own. Screw Potter and his parasitic problems...and hasn't he been through enough? But hadn't I been through enough when she died?

"Potter, really, I-"

Ginny looks like Lily. Beyond the blood, seemingly the only other colour in the room is her red hair. That is where her fire is still burning.

I nod.

Potter turns to the nearest doctor, eyes glistening fiercely. Fear shoots down my spine. "Could you give us some privacy?"

It has all the hall-marks of a question – the inflection, the tone, the word choice - but it's not. The doctor leaves like a shaky first year Hufflepuff whose careful work I have just belittled every detail of. Yet it wasn't me who spoke.

The moment the last doctor leaves, Potter jumps up, somehow supported by those same knees that gave way mere minutes before.

"It's okay, sir! She-she's a witch. She's a witch! All we need to do – all we need to do is just get her to St Mungo's. We just need to get her out of here. Muggle technology doesn't interact well with magic, right? Er, I could apparate, sir. She essentially had a broomstick crash, kinda – which is ground or, er, first floor I think."

Potter grips her arm as if she might float away, so hard that it would bruise me yet her skin doesn't turn red under the pressure. He is looking wildly, gaze somehow landing on mine – through luck, or some kind of retinal magnetism, I will never know. He is begging for my thoughts.

"We cannot," I say, unable to speak louder than a pathetic whisper. I cough to hide it. "She'll lose blood." I sound more confident now. I continue on, more fiercely, more logically: "And we can't just rip out any old tubes…Muggle treatments do actually help, even if your relatives have lead you to believe that they are all complete morons-"

"What do we do then, sir?"

Sir, again. The hallmark of nerves if there ever was one. Have a panic attack and get it over with, Potter.

"Potter," I begin. "You're not thinking straight-"

I'm glad he interrupts. I had no middle or end.

"No you're right. We can't move her. We could summon the Order! They'll know what to do! Not Mrs Weasley and... They shouldn't have to go through that... That uncertainty."

(And you should, Potter?)

Enlightened with the idea, Potter picks up with his wand; he barely touches it before a stag explodes. Galloping to help. Now, to wait, to watch...

More of her bandage is exposed as Potter kisses her cheek; the flame of her hair shimmers as it move under his touch; her heart rate doesn't even rise.

A constant beep. Beep. Beep.

What would I want if I were him? However it much it hurt, I would want to know; I wanted to know. And I have to do it now, before the Order come; I cannot give him more moments of not knowing.

But statistics won't work. His reaction to the doctor's words proved that. He needs something more.

He needs certainty.

Beep. Beep.

"Potter, please listen…" I say, and he looks up, opens his mouth, pausing for a moment to register the please, the betrayal of my weakness.

Beep.

"I…" I draw my wand, the weapon it is, this sleek piece of wood that does too much. "I can tell you," I say eventually, then stop, slightly shocked that those words came out of my mouth. My magic tenses up; my whole being tenses up. "I can tell you if she will live. I can tell you whether she will live or die."

"What do you mean?" Dry words. He puts both hands on the mattress, leaning towards me as if he's an over-exerted boss leaning on a desk. Like he's just in a slightly stressful meeting.

I look at Mrs Potter, Ginny. Her eyes closed, so I can't see the brown. They could be green.

I do it, before he can argue. I walk slowly over to the bed and rest the tip of my wand on her temple. The magic is warm and buzzing, up to the tips of my mind, and I am transported somewhere else for a short time.

It takes a kindness I didn't know I had to leave. To greet the white hospital room again. The husband, the wife.

To decode the message.

The overwhelming message that…

"There is nothing anyone can do," I say. Potter looks at me, as if I'm a liar. As if I'm a traitor. As if I'm the Dark Lord. "Nothing, Potter."

Potter draws his hands to his mouth, breathing into them like they're a paper bag. You are teetering on the edge, Potter, of the fall I know all too well. Potter just looks at me as if I'm mad.

"She will not wake up," I say.

Potter runs his hand through his hair. Looks at Ginny, looks at me, looks at Ginny. Looks at Ginny.

( I am no longer in the room for him. This is an intrusion of the highest degree.)

Potter moves to her.

"No," Potter says to no one but himself and her. "Gin?"

He cups her face, actually peels open her eyelids, sees the unresponsive flashes of brown.

Then he rests his forehead against hers, as he squeezes his eyes shut.

Soon, he gives up completely and melts into her, fingering the embers of her hair, quietly burying himself in it.

(I am too awkward to stare at anything but the clock: it is ten minutes, twenty two seconds before he moves again.)

And kisses her softly on the lips.

He whispers something in her ear, so softly that I can't hear it, even in this silence.

Then his gaze greets mine, glassy.

"She needs to go now."

(I carefully unhook each wire and tube, each mechanical help to that emotional, beating body. I do not think to use my wand.)

Her last breath is slow.

Her hand might have twitched in his direction.

But then Ginny Potter moves no more.

(I leave the room and lean against the wall. My mouth tastes like ash.)

The sobs begin.

Heavy, ugly.

(I apparate before the Order can arrive.)

The body is at the Burrow, under the gnome-infested garden, surrounded by brothers.

(There is no better place.)

I pick at news like a scavenger: Shacklebolt says he is coping, Molly says they're all as good as they can be.

"No, he's bad," says Hermione.

Men have survived worse, I intend to say. I've watched hearts been physically ripped out of bent ribs...

Then, is this any different?

I had drowned, but "Potter has people to pull him to the surface, doesn't he?" I ask.

"Well you might help him, Severus," says Hermione and I act like I hadn't set her up to say that.

If you leave me, Potter, I will crumble. You've re-opened wounds. Don't let them bleed.

We begin meeting for drinks, the habit of it unmentioned.

He looks even scruffier than usual. I look tidier, to balance it.

"Why her?" Potter asks, offhandedly like he hasn't thought about the question countless times.

Potter eyes his drink, as if that might offer a philosophical answer.

I fill in for the fire whiskey. "Why not?"

"You're young enough to find someone," I say. "I'm sure I will disapprove of her."

Potter looks at me - not a rarity, but it's odd to feel like he's actually recognizing me. The shadows under his eyes drag like weights.

"I don't want to find anyone," he says.

By Merlin, I understand that.

Once or twice, he speaks about it with no prompt.

"It was for a present, you know. Arthur's birthday," Potter's gaze meets mine as if daring me to deny it. "A car ride. She wanted to test it before she gave him the gift."

We are becoming more silent. I don't think I'm good for him. I don't think he's good for me. This hurts; I don't want to feel it, yet don't want the pain to end.

At the end of the trial, I am still in shock and Potter actually does it: stands up and says "junky winky wonky whump". There was tumultuous, if uncertain applause. I have won. We have won. And I am a free man now, determined he will be too.

"I feel sick mentioning this," I say to him as we leave. "But to echo a patronising Gryffindor, I am reminded that life... goes on."

I work to make sure their flames don't die, even if they themselves are gone.