"Quick, bring me the Bezoar!"

"We don't have one! I didn't think to pack one!"

"I know it's in there, Mione, I saw it when I passed the dittany. Now GIVE IT HERE!" Harry screamed. In front of him, beneath his blood covered hands, was Severus Snape. "I need the dittany too."

Hermione pointed her wand into her bag and accio'ed the requested items, all but throwing them at Harry the moment they landed in her hand.

"Come on now, Snape. Swallow it. No, I won't collect your goddamn tears. You will live and tell me yourself, you hear me?!" The anger in his voice simply covered up the fear he felt.

Reluctantly the bezoar was swallowed, and Harry began to move his hands to the side and apply the dittany to the wounds.

"There's a book in there, Mione, one on healing. I know you packed it." She summoned it, then used a spell that flicked through the pages to the section she knew Harry was looking for.

Harry's wand was in his hand, his eyes scanning the page as Hermione placed the book in front of him. The wand movements were complex, harder than he had thought they'd be.

"I'm not sure you can do it, Harry." She sounded sad, worn down by what they'd already been through and ready to give up hope.

"If we don't try he'll die anyway." The words were subdued, leaving less room for argument than if he'd shouted at her.

In line with the right shoulder, down to the left hip, figure eight over the victims wounds, the back to eye level. Three sweeping passes diagonally across the face, from right down to left, then chant the incantation whilst making clockwise circles around the victims' wounds and heart alternately, keeping pace with the slow, clearly enunciated chant.

This was almost as complicated as one of the potions the man he was trying to save would have assigned. If it wouldn't have ruined his concentration, Harry would have laughed.

Sana animam tollere dolor. Signa vulneribus exuret egritudine. Claudicatis in vestigio mori.

Heal the heart, remove the pain. Seal the wounds, burn out disease. Halt death in its tracks.

Three times through the incantation, keeping his wand movements in time, before Harry began to see signs of the wounds closing. Four, then five, and finally it looked like the wounds were closed. He stopped chanting, finished his wand movements, and looked at his Professor's face instead of where the snake had savaged him a mere hour before.

His eyes were closed, his skin paler than usual, but he was breathing.

Harry let the breath he was holding go, rocking back on to his heels and risking a glance at Hermione and Ron. The looks on their faces matched his. Relief.

He was glad that neither of them had tried to say anything. Snape had killed Dumbledore, but there was so much death surrounding them that every life that could be saved should be.

"Let's get him back to the castle."

The climb had been a steep one, the hundreds of stairs seeming more like a climb up a mountain than anything else. Thankfully they had remembered to levitate Snape before attempting to drag him up the stairs.

Harry's energy was waning. He knew that Hermione hadn't read the paragraph before examining the spell, or she would have seen the passage that he had noticed on his quick scan through. The spell used energy from the caster to heal the patient. The more times through the incantation had to be read, the weaker the caster would get. A spell to be used with caution, and traditionally only by professional healers. Not knowing your limit, or how much the incantation could take out of you, could be fatal for the healer, and depending on the level of damage there would be little to no guarantee that your patient would survive even as you drained your own life.

Ron wanted to run back up the steps, Hermione too, but they could see Harry was taking longer than them. He waved them on.

"I'll bring him back. Go see if they're okay."

The look of gratitude on Ron's face made Harry's heart fall. Sure, he cared about whether the Weasleys, Remus, Tonks and Kingsley made it out of this alive, as well as the classmates he had known for all the years he had been at Hogwarts, but he didn't have that same connection to people, that same fear that Ron felt now. Even Sirius had meant less to him, as much as it pained him to realise.

Of course Sirius had been important to him, but Ron had spent his entire life being surrounded by these people, teased, looked after, but most of all loved. Harry had hardly known Sirius before he was gone again. Harry's love for Sirius was strong, but not matured, and at least partially assisted by the promise that Sirius would take Harry away from his aunt and uncle.

Not that any of that mattered now, he realised, climbing up the stairs one step at a time, keeping Snape bobbing along behind him. Something made him believe that he wouldn't last to the end of this war. Snape had probably thought the same.

It was a sobering thought. The terror his aunt and uncle had caused him was nothing to the way others felt at the hand of Voldemort, yet Harry had little cause to fear for his own safety. If sacrificing himself meant that everyone he cared about could live then it was entirely worth it. If he lived and lost more people that he cared about, he would never be able to forgive himself.

The top of the staircase was suddenly underfoot, and Harry stumbled a little as he lifted his foot for the next stair and missed, simply because there wasn't one. His energy hadn't replenished much, but he felt a little better for not trying to race up the stairs.

He began to jog, Snape's unconscious body floating behind him, following the same up and down movements of his body. Where could he leave him? The Great Hall wasn't really an option, seeing as most of the people in there resented and hated Snape for what he had done. They would sooner kill him for allowing the atrocities that had happened than let him recover in peace. No, he needed somewhere away from the others.

The potions class room was the closest room that Harry could think of, and what more appropriate place to leave the former Potions Master than in his old teaching grounds.

He propped the man up in the chair at the front of the classroom and wrote a quick note on a piece of parchment telling where he had gone, in case Snape woke up while he wasn't there. He then ran back up to the Great Hall, willing his legs with all his might to make it there so that he could see if anyone he cared about had suffered a horrible fate.

The atmosphere in the Great Hall was subdued, bodies lying on the ground and friends and family standing around their fallen loved ones. The Weasleys were all huddled in a group near one of the bodies, but with a quick count of the red hair Harry could tell that they were okay. Instead, there seemed to be a shock of pink hair in the middle that told him who they were comforting.

It took three seconds for his mind to make the connection. Remus.

If Tonks was being looked after then Remus must be dead.

Harry ran, weaving in and out of the groups of unhappy people, heart pounding harder than it had even when Sirius had died.

It can't be. It just can't.

But it was true. There, lying on the ground, paler than he had ever been, was Remus. Tears slid down Harry's face, but no sound came out. He couldn't sob. He felt like his voice had been ripped from his throat. He'd lost so many, and here was another example of his failure.

The Weasleys hadn't noticed he had come in, nor had Hermione or Tonks. None of them turned around as he left, running faster than he had before. He had to end this. No more lives were allowed to be taken from him, from them. It was time to end this.

Severus was awake. He had found the note, read it, and now he was waiting for the return of the boy he had spent so long protecting.

What he had not expected, he realised as he watched the boy charge back into the room, was the look of utter determination on his face. Something had happened, he knew, but the boy should have expected casualties during a war.

"Tell me," Harry demanded, and Severus was half tempted to ask what the boy wanted to know, despite knowing full well that he wanted the details of the memories Severus had tried to give him.

"It was Dumbledore's idea." The look on Harry's face was completely blank, so Severus elaborated. "For me to kill him, in Draco's stead."

Conflict, that was the next expression to pass across the boy's face. "Why?" was all Harry allowed himself to ask. It was as though there was no time to ask more.

"The ring. The horcrux that Dumbledore found. He put it on, and it cursed him. It was killing him anyway, and he knew that killing him would secure my place at Voldemort's side, despite trying to be a spy for the light. He knew it would spare Draco from the horror of being a murderer."

"How does that help me?" Harry asked, quiet and unsure what to say.

"It helps you trust what I will say next." Severus had never wanted to tell the secret that Dumbledore had given him, but from the look in Harry's eyes he wouldn't rest until the Dark Lord was dead and gone.

"You are the seventh horcrux." There was silence.

"The night he tried to kill you, he managed to bind part of his soul to you before he was destroyed."

"I have to die." There was no surprise in those words, no horror at the thought of having to give his life up for the others out there.

Severus could only nod. It had been hard enough to tell a seventeen year old boy that he had to sacrifice himself for the good of everyone else, but he had not expected this determined, unfazed attitude that he was presenting.

"There's still one left."

Severus hadn't even realised he had looked away from Harry until his head snapped back up to look at him again. "One horcrux?"

Harry nodded. "The snake, Nagini."

"Very well," Severus nodded. "Do what you must, I will make sure the snake is seen to."

"Thank you, Professor, and good luck."

"Good luck to you too, Harry," Severus replied, hoping that, against all odds, this young boy would be able to survive the monstrosities of this war. Somehow his stomach couldn't quite handle the idea that Dumbledore would martyr the child so young in his life.