Seek and search and find nothing,

Only Death will come in the way.

But we'll meet under the stars alight,

Just for an hour of every day.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

They are headed towards the dungeons, where else would Snape be. Harry is not sure what to think anymore. Is Snape here? Is he in the castle? Is this the same echo he has seen and the others see him as well? Or could it be that he has been mistaken all along and the Snape he saw was not dead at all? Questions, and too many of them make Harry dizzy.

He follows the other three blindly, not even seeing where he steps. A fourth shadow joins them, but his eyes do not focus on the person. They turn corners and walk up stairs then go down on a different flight. The dungeons seem eternal and so are Harry's thoughts.

What if Snape's alive? What if he had lived here all along hiding from the people who still wish him dead for betraying Voldemort? And if they truly met in the forest, did they really kiss? Did Harry kiss more than a shadow there? Could it be?

Or, a darker thought occurs to him, what if Snape is dead. His body has never been found after all. What if that is what McGonagall talks about? Did they bring him back to the castle to bury him next to Dumbledore?

Which is it? Dead or alive? Harry can barely walk, he is shaking so badly. He has a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. It is almost like they are not alone. As if a different shadow not just the ones cast by the torches would be following them down here. A stranger, more eerie shadow with a face of a fox's skull and a long, black, mangy hair.

He finds himself in front of a door, a huge black oak. McGonagall is talking to someone Harry does not know. She is the forth shadow that had joined them, an older lady, about the same age as their Head of House. Though she looks a couple years younger than McGonagall, her hair is pure white, eyes dull brown and tired.

She is the one who steps forward, her name irrelevant to Harry at the moment, and waves her long thin wand in front of the oak door to grant them access to the room behind. She is also the first to enter, followed by Minerva, then Ron and Hermione at last. Harry cannot will himself to walk in.

What will wait for him inside? Is it going to be Snape? Is he dead? Is he alive? Just one step, that is all it would take to find it out, yet Harry does not feel brave enough to move. He does not want to know, not truly. Strolling in the forest with Snape has been like a never ending dream – a nightmare, a daydream all at once – and walking into this room now would make it a reality.

He is shaking and shivering, feeling the fox in his heels, gnawing at his flesh already, hindering him from marching into that room. He does not know what compels him in the end, but he steps forward. Once the first step is made, there is no way back, and no way to slow down either.

He stumbles the first few steps; over the threshold, is if invisible clawed fingers were holding him back, catching at his feet, but then he all but finds himself running toward the white bed in the white room.

On top of pure white linen, lies Snape eyes closed, unmoving.

His presence, his face, his physical form hits Harry in the chest like a wrecking ball. He staggers against the bed, his mind screaming, his heart breaking into million and one pieces which then scatter around his whole body piercing his innards, causing so much pain.

White skin, hollow cheeks, black hair, closed eyes – dead. The terrible word echoes over and over in his mind, in his soul, banging the doors he so well guarded a long time ago.

Snape is dead.

Of course, he is, he has known this all along, the man walks with Death for Merlin's sake, and yet seeing him like this, spread out, lying covered by bright white linen, looking as if he would be just sleeping, it is killing Harry like nothing else. How cruel, he wants to scream, how absolutely horrible of McGonagall to rip even the last of hope from him that Snape might be alive. What a bastard Snape is to die, to come back but not really, and to haunt Harry like this.

"Harry…" Hermione whispers to him, holding his hand in hers. He wants to pull away, he wants to pretend it is all well, but it is not. Snape's warm touch, his lips on his plague him more than anything now that he sees those lips, can reach out and actually touch the man, yet still there is no man to touch. That thing lying on the bright, crisp white linen is just a vessel that once held a great man, but now is nothing more than rotting flesh.

Hermione holds his hand firmly and guides it closer to Snape's body. He resists now, fighting, pulling back. How could she know what he wants anyway? That he wishes to feel the warmth on the man's skin, hear his gasp, his voice. Those wishes will never come to be, the fox made certain of that; the fox and Voldemort and Snape too, that stupid moron. Who is he to sacrifice himself for Harry? No one had asked him to do that.

Now, Harry is angry. He is angry at everything, at Hermione for wanting him to touch Snape's dead body, at McGonagall for showing him this… this empty vessel, at Ron for just standing there, gaping. He is angry at the white linen for being this bright, at the world for not weeping in grief that a brave man has died, at Snape for dying, for leaving him then coming back, for kissing him, for walking with him in the forest and most of all, he is angry – furious with himself for being stupid enough to fall in love with a dead man.

And yet once his fingers touch the pale white body, he immerses in the sensation. It is cool, dry skin under his caress, soft and covered with small imperfections. He can feel a subtle stubble, sharp cheekbones. Hermione quietly gasps next to him when he strokes the soft lips. A phantom breath ghosts over his thumb and he feels like crying, screaming.

He does not just want to destroy the Hallows, he wants to annihilate Death. He wants to smash that skull bone with only his fist and demolish whatever creature hides beneath. He wants to wrack havoc in the Land of the Dead until whatever barrier there is, will cease to be and the living and the dead will walk the same world.

He feels it again, a second outbreath, light as a ghost's touch on the tip of his thumb, but warm like the kiss of the sun on a cold winter afternoon. It is no more than a sigh and Harry lets out a sob.

"It feels like he's breathing," he tells Hermione on the verge of tears and insanity.

"He is, Harry," She says and Harry does not understand why she is so cruel to him. Then she adds, "Take his pulse."

It takes some time until Harry finally believes it. He needs to feel the constant, but slow pulsing of Snape's blood, and hear the Healer's explanation of all what has happened to Snape so far until he sits on the bed close to euphoria.

Snape was in a magical coma. He was in St. Mungo's until last week, when he suddenly showed signs of mental activity. However, when they pulled him from the coma, he was still unconscious. As St. Mungo could do nothing more to him, they (being mostly Minerva and his Healer) decided to move him back to Hogwarts. Their plan did not, however, go as well as expected. Snape has not woken up since then, and even worse, his health started to deteriorate.

What Harry wants to know and is too scared to ask is, could it be that this Snape wakes with the dead and at midnight he starts roaming the Forest with Harry?

There is only one way to find out the truth to this, without getting confined to the insanity ward of a magical asylum. He needs to wait for midnight to come once again then go to the forest and find either Snape or the last Hallow.

He does not move from Snape's room until the moon comes up. McGonagall and the Healer come and go, bringing food, taking away the food, Harry just sits there on the edge of the bed, watching Snape's chest rising.

Up and down.

Up and down.

Up and down – so go his own hopes as well as midnight approaches. He does not know what he hopes for. Whatever should he? That Snape will never wake and they can meet again in the forest? That Snape does wake and they might never see each other again? Is the Snape in the forest the same soul as the one lying right here?

Questions and riddles more and more come and slowly second by second, so does midnight.

Harry watches eagerly the well-known face for any sign of awakening. A twitch would send him over the moon with happiness, eyes opening would make his heart stop. Yet none of those happen. As the Grand Clock finishes, and only the echoes of its chiming reverberate in the castle, Harry realizes, it is not just Snape, who has not come alive tonight.

First time in nearly four months, the echoes are gone as well.

The absence of the dead should fill him with relief, should make him happy, yet all he feels is a terrible loneliness in the pit of his chest, where his heart used to be.