Chapter 9: Firebolt


I wake to the smell of coffee, sunlight, and then the shock of a fleeting touch. It's gone before I decide whether it was real. "G'mo'ning." Harry smiles around the charred slice of toast in his mouth, balancing a second slice and a mug in one hand. His eyes shine.

Good? It's impossible!

He flops down to sit on the bed, his unbuttoned shirt flapping open. Coffee splashes. When I sit up and reach instinctively for the mug, our hands touch and it's a revelation all over again. His fingers are so solid and warm. I can still feel them even when I catch my breath and let go.

The coffee stain on his sleeve fades into white but I barely notice. I can't help staring: at his bare chest, at the trail of hair that leads my eye down from his navel to the low-slung waistband of his jeans.

Then it happens again, the same warm shock when his hand covers the mug and touches mine. "Milk'n'sugar," he murmurs awkwardly and doesn't pull away. He must've felt it too.

I'm so disoriented – not by my coffee turning milky, that seems perfectly normal – but by the way he touches me, so casually and so often. Not even Lucius ever cared to do that. "What's all this about?" In an attempt to explain what the question means, I glance around vaguely, instead of down his body where my gaze most wants to go.

"I, er. Thought I'd say sorry for spying on you, when you slept."

"By making another dream?"

"Nah. Made you breakfast." His fingers slip away; I'm too tempted to grab them. The steaming mug and crumbling slices of toast are uncannily real; so is my room, familiar to the last burnt-out candle; so is Harry: all energy and awkward, hopeful glances. Breakfast it is, then. I shift sideways on the bed, leaving space for him at my side.

But he doesn't budge an inch, sitting cross-legged in a nest of blankets. Instead he bites the toast, scattering crumbs all over the sheets. I arch an eyebrow at him; he rolls his eyes and the crumbs vanish.

Fine. If I haven't given him enough of an invitation, I don't know what else he's waiting for. Perhaps, now that he's seen me in broad daylight, he's finally seen sense as well. So I pull up the sheets I'd left turned down for him, trying to cover the scar on my chest as I take a sip of coffee. Where did I leave my nightshirt yesterday? Ah, on the floor with the rest of my clothes.

Harry snorts. "Prude."

"Did you expect a show?"

He nods with a suggestive leer, but his expression sobers quickly. "Relax. S'all right."

Relax? How can I?

"You can worry when you're awake, but now…" He slips his shirt off. "Ta-da."

I must look like a fool, staring at him like this. I feel like a fool. I can't stop myself from saying foolish things, like "What are you doing?"

He takes the mug from my stilled hands, sets it aside. Gives me one of his cheeky grins. "Obvious, innit?"

My gaze follows his hands; I can't look away as they open the button of his jeans, pull the zip down. "Excuse me if I don't find some things all that obvious," I whisper, breathless. They're quite complicated. Harry began complicating my life the day he was born.

He moves to stand and I move with him as if tied to him by my gaze, until I'm sitting on the edge of the bed and he's standing just an arm's length away. His movements are unselfconscious as he steps out of his jeans and underwear. Another of those shameless smiles shines down on me, warm as the sunlight that kindles red highlights in his hair, turns his skin a soft gold. "I can put the shirt back on. Want me?"

Oh, I want him, all right. My hands reach for him, my body answers him without words. I want all of him, just like this. The tense muscles of his thigh, the lean angle of his hipbone, his hardening cock.

"M'not used to this either," he breathes. "I just act like I know what'm doing. Can't help it, y'know, ohh…."

"Typical reckless Gryffindor." I cradle his balls in one hand, rolling them gently in my palm, as my other hand strokes up his shaft with a feathery, tantalising touch.

He pushes his hips forward, angling blatantly for a firmer touch on his cock, but I draw back as he moves, keeping it light. Teasing him. "Am not!" he gasps, smiling as his shoulders lift and his head tilts backwards.

I lean toward him and mouth words around a taut nipple, between gentle, suckling bites. "You are! Treat everything like Quidditch. Never think of the consequences. Just grab the broomstick and you're off." He snorts, but it shifts to a gasp when I curl my fingers around his cock, so hard and hot.

"Dunno, never had enough of a chance to grab your broomstick." He bends, trying to reach for my cock, but damned if I'm leaning back out of the way before I've given his other nipple a good seeing-to.

A chuckle, hitching in the flesh under my lips, is all the warning I have before he launches himself at me: heavy and solid and warm, so utterly alive. As we fall back together onto the bed, I wrap my arms around him and just hold him as close as I can, so tight I squeeze the breath from us both. He gives a panting laugh; my joy is too deep for laughter. All I see, all I hold, all I breathe at that moment is Harry: he fills my world, he is my world.

Kisses, slow, slick, and warm as the melted butter on his tongue, flow from his mouth to mine, coiling between our lips like the smoky tang of burnt toast. At once he pushes against me, rubbing, as fast and insistent as if he's determined to come in the next ten seconds. But this is too incredible to rush, and I roll on top of him, use my weight to slow his impatience, still him until he accepts a more leisurely pace.

His hand slips between my legs, teasing and fondling: persuasive little sod, I should've known better than to expect him to accept anything.

He slips out of my embrace and ducks from view beneath the covers.

No. I can't stand not seeing him, not even for a moment, not even so I can lie back and wallow in the pleasure he'd offer. I reach down and grab the bedclothes, hurl them aside. He blinks up from beneath a fringe tousled by the sheets and my haste.

"When I did this last night, you went all still," he murmurs before he turns to face my erection, smiling when he sees just how hard I really am. He's so close that the soft gusts of his breath brush my sensitised skin. "Like you didn't want to get in my way. You hardly moved a muscle. Only this twitched – yeah, just like that," he licks his lips, the bloody little tease, "That's how bad you wanted it."

"Harry…"

He leans in and touches the point of his tongue to the wet tip of my cock, and just that tiny lick is all that's needed to drive every thought right out of my mind.

"Ssh," he breathes, "Wanna taste you." He closes his fist, so firm and good, around the root of my cock, lowers his head and then his mouth engulfs me: liquid, licking, and slick. I drown in waves of tingling heat, so dizzy I can't see, but I want to see him so much. Little devil, that look's just as wicked as his tongue, and it's got to be forked to swirl like that. That firm grip, the soft, slick slide of his lips is too new and too good, and – no! – I don't want to come so soon. I pull him up, gasping into his unruly hair as I thrust into his hand still fisted around my cock. It's bliss to be tangled together like this, naked and slippery with sweat, so aroused it hurts to breathe.

I clutch him to me – one hand kneads his arse, the other wriggles down between our bodies, seizes and strokes him – and I bask in the feel of veined, hard heat filling my fist. He moans against my throat and works me harder, twisting on the upstroke till I want to sob with need. As he strokes me his other hand dips lower, fondling my balls until I purr and arch into his touch. In reply I slide the hand on his arse inward, fingertips, teasing and slick, slipping down his cleft. He tenses and writhes in my arms, just as mad with want as I am. I smell him – sweat and precome and hot young flesh. His forehead presses against my chest; my face is in his hair and I feel every strand of it, caressing my skin in the rush of our shared, frantic breaths. I savour every shiver down the length of our bodies: mine, scarred and gaunt; and his, scrawny and wiry, all Harry, from curling toes to dry lips and wet eyelashes. I'll never get enough of him.

"Yes, yes, oh god, oh, yessss." Fractured, panting words, mine, his, both, doesn't matter. Every stroke on my cock, every thrust of his cock into my fist, is a plea, a demand, an order not to stop. With every heartbeat I do my best to match his pace. Rising heat hardens my every muscle, tightens the coil of his body against mine, and as he cries out and pours himself into my hands, his own hands seize fistfuls of my hair and hang on desperately, as if I'm all that anchors him here. The twinge in my scalp, even the hammering ache in my chest doesn't matter: not when the shudders ripple through the body pressed so close to mine. Ecstasy spikes so sharply it shocks my lungs still, stifles the cry in my throat. As the last spasms fade I collapse into his arms and let the rest of the world slip away.


We lie afterwards in a shared sprawl of sticky limbs. Nothing this tangled should be half this comfortable. Harry's plastered to my side like a snake to a sun-warmed rock, nuzzling persistently into my sweaty hair, drawing deep lungfuls of my scent, as if it was rare incense. I mouth admissions of my own against his skin, rather than silencing myself completely. "You're incredible... perfect."

What will become of us now? I honestly don't know, and for once, I allow myself not to care. I simply surrender to the sunlight and warmth of this moment, no matter what other unexpected declarations it makes me utter. Perhaps I'll admit that I like this side of him: the carefree, flirting, utterly enticing imp. Or maybe I'll confess how touched I am to find even one person who genuinely likes my company (though I can't fathom why).

Moments like this make me want to believe in the existence of something beyond the mundane. Something like magic. Or love.

"Mm?" he hums the question against my skin. And I can't think of anything else to say that hasn't already been said, one way or another. So I kiss him instead, slow and deep and sweet enough to ache, and show him that there are times when words aren't necessary at all.

When we ease apart for air at last, I murmur, "Besotted brat," expecting an equally teasing reply. It never comes.

"Uh-huh," he sighs, admitting everything, just like that. Beneath the breathlessness, his voice is calm, content. "Never thought I'd have this. Have you. S'like... something – loads of wonderful things – I never thought I'd get." His hands slide over my skin instinctively all the while, stroking, petting, never quite still.

"What kinds of things?" I take one of those searching hands before it closes on my sated, sticky cock; on sheer hedonistic impulse I lower my head to taste the salt in the crook of his arm, and mouth the tender veined skin of his wrist. It's ironic, when he's the one who hasn't felt touch in years, that I crave it just as much as he.

"Mmm." He stretches lazily; his voice is languid as he replies "Like flying, again. On a broom, I mean. Or like fireworks; remember the Twins set off that arsenal all over Hogwarts when they left school? Oi, don't laugh!"

I try to ignore the image of a pyromaniac ghost, wild hair and wild eyes, intent on blowing the entire castle to bits. "I wasn't."

"Always wanted to set off Filibuster Fireworks when I haunted Hogwarts, 'cause it was always so bloody quiet there. But I never could."

His smile fades and I search my mind for a distraction. He shouldn't dwell. But he rouses himself from that sombre moment of his own accord, smiling softly as he tells me, "You're like fireworks. You always were. Used to blow up at me all the time." A flash of a teasing grin, before he meets my gaze and grows suddenly serious, sincere. "And you've always been absolutely bloody brilliant."

Something unexpected jolts through my chest: a poignant clench of bliss and pain, driving me to kiss him with the desperation of a dying man, holding onto the last moments of life.


I still don't believe it. Yet.

It's almost noon and he's still asleep. He should do this more often: let himself rest instead of dragging himself up and out of bed by sheer force of will. He can't be a morning person; he used to catch me all the time roaming Hogwarts' corridors late at night. He just forces himself awake at sparrowfart, out of sheer bloodymindedness.

It's been so long since anyone could touch me that I sort of forgot how good it felt. I never saw Snape reach for anything that way before today; well, maybe some sort of potion or an ingredient, but never a human being. Never me.

He shifts and covers his eyes with the back of his hand. His palm is pale and creased, with a fine white scar cutting across his lifeline. Just as well we learned in Divination that palm reading is a load of old cobblers. According to Trelawney I died weekly. I wonder what that batty old bint would've made of Snape's palm?

His mouth twitches.

"Um. Morning."

His eyes are still closed, but he murmurs something back. I reckon I can count it as an invitation, so I stay next to him and even throw my arm over his chest. Too bad he can't feel it now.

His hand traces the edge of the blanket and he pulls it up to cover his left arm. His eyes flicker from my face to it and back to me. Worried.

"M'staying." I say, before he says something or tries to get up or do something else Professor Snape-like. "You let me last night." And this morning. "Can't take it back."

A pause. Then a grumbled, "Idiot."

"You promised!"

"Do you think me that much of a heartless git?"

"Oh. Now I don't." Just lying next to him isn't enough, so I shift up on top of him and rest my head over his chest. "Wanna stay in bed all day?"

He hmphs. "You are welcome to do as you wish, but how exactly did you intend to keep me here?"

It's going to be wonderful, I just know it. "I'll think of something."


I'm still thinking in the bathroom doorway as he glares over his shoulder. But it's a good sort of glare. "Stop ogling me," he finally says, "impossible…" What's so impossible, I don't get to hear 'cause he sticks his toothbrush in his mouth and the rest comes out as a 'mfft'.

"M'just looking. You've got a grey hair. Right here," I point in the mirror. Just to prove that I wasn't staring without a reason. "See."

"It's a wonder I haven't gone completely grey." He turns around and his eyes go even wider.

"What?"

"Are you planning to get dressed today at all?"

I shrug. "What's the point? No one can see me but you."

The corners of his mouth twitch and that's as good as a smile on someone else's face.

"I reckon I just won't bother wearing anything from now on."

He huffs.

"You don't mind, do you?" I try for innocent, but it comes out impish anyway.

"Of course I mind! But how do you propose I go about persuading you?" His eyes flick down occasionally but he seems too determined to keep his gaze up on my face.

"You'll think of something. I believe in you."

His hands twitch, as if he wants to reach out but stops himself. "Harry," he says dryly, "I suspect you've just given me another of those grey hairs you're so fond of counting."

"Good. I like 'em. Come back to bed?"

"Alarming fascinations," he mumbles. I wonder what he means by that, his hair or Snape himself, but he doesn't clarify, just hmphs and still pretends to look in the mirror, even when I move in front of it. "You'd do anything to get your way, wouldn't you?"

"Depends," I grin up at him, "Is it working?"

He leans closer. "We have an errand to run first." It sounds almost like an excuse, and a familiar one.

"Another one of your Slytherins?"

That smirk grows as he shakes his head. "Unless you know any from Little Whinging."

What? Little Whinging? Does he mean it? "What're you going there for?"

"Isn't it clear by now?" he drawls with that blank look of his: the one that hides the beginning of a smile. "First I'm going to 'pinch your old broom from the Dursleys' as you so eloquently phrased it, and then I'll fly off to Hogwarts, leaving you all alone to explain to everyone where I went."


The sun shone over the perfectly trimmed hedges and Mrs. Leysdur's prized hydrangea bushes as she poked her head out of her kitchen window, the set of binoculars in her right hand. There was nothing out of the ordinary happening in Hedge Drive this morning, and, as she had told Mr. Leysdur on repeated occasions…

… that's just fine with me, thank you very much, and that's just what I'd tell anyone who was clever enough to interview me about my book after it becomes a bestseller (and what with all the drivel on the shelves nowadays, how could it not be a bestseller!). Talk about the exposé of the decade, when people read about the goings on around here, they'll simply die of shock! Privet Drive, the perfect example of a respectable neighbourhood. Ha! For instance, just take that ever-so-respectable Mrs. Tompkins and the way she sneaks out after dark with the hosepipe, and right in the middle of the water restrictions too! Just who does she think she is, better than everyone else? Does she think no-one will notice? As if Prudence Tompkins has it in her to put one over on me! Maybe if I was as unobservant as that useless clod of a husband of hers – working all these years in a bakery, as if being a jumped-up counter boy was a worthwhile career! – maybe then she'd get away with it. But I know better, and just as soon as I get nice clear photographic evidence, so will the council! She won't be boasting about her precious garden any more when they slap her with a nice fat fine, the cow.

Or take the Prentices, for example. Wasting all that money for another car they don't even need, just to park it right next to our house and block the view from our parlour. Appalling! As if that would distract me for a second from noticing when her precious Mr. Prentice sneaks into the house through the front door after dark. The front door! Has he no shame? When everyone knows he's been unfaithful for years, and that silly bint of a wife of his is too blind to see it! All she ever does is brag about her daughters as if they're anything special. Nonsense! My darling Diddykins is doing so well in the world and you don't hear me bragging about him to the neighbours day and night. I always knew he'd go far. He was always such a healthy, strong boy. But that sister of mine, her brat was a freak from the beginning, just like her, and look what happened to the pair of them. I've always said, if the parents aren't normal, you can't expect much from the children.

Oh dear, just look at that dreadful looking man! Some sort of tramp with that awful shabby overcoat. And when was the last time he washed his hair? I shudder to think. Honestly, where are the police when you need them? His sort needs to be moved on, out of decent neighbourhoods! Disgusting!

And just what is he doing in our driveway? Who does he think he is to have the right to sneak and snoop and – whisper things to himself – right next to our home like that?

It can't be just a coincidence. He can't be… What could he possibly want with us? Oh no. Binoculars! Not the sink! The disposal! Where's the switch? Where's Vernon?

Is that beggar really going to knock? He can't really be a beggar, how could anyone like that have the gall to visit us? But who could he be? Oh dear, why did he have to show up today, when the hallway hasn't been dusted yet? What if he's not a beggar? What would people think, we're some sort of freaks receiving guests in a pigsty. Quick!

"Vernon! I think there's an undercover detective at the door! I told you people would ask questions after Harry disappeared!"


A skinny, sour-faced woman stands in the doorway, as thin as her husband is fat. Something in the twist of her mouth reminds me of Lily. The man's bristling moustache reminds me of my predecessor at Hogwarts, Slughorn. Or possibly of a walrus.

"Vernon and Petunia Dursley, I presume?"

"That's us," the man replies brusquely, shifty-eyed and sullen as a brat caught stealing sweets. "And you are...?"

"I am," I riposte, "here regarding Harry. Potter." It's Potter, not Harry. I mustn't forget.

"He left home years ago." Petunia falters. "We haven't heard a word since. What about him? What's he done?" As she speaks, she doesn't spare a glance for me: she's too busy looking right through Harry at the neighbours' windows.

"Wouldn't be surprised if he's dead by now," Dursley grunts. "He was always a bit touched in the head. It ran in his father's side." He continues with a wary glance across the street. "That boy was dangerous around normal people, so if he's not dead he's probably a criminal, or worse!"

Harry snorts. "It gets better! They made up my entire life story. Ask them what sort of school I went to! I bet it wouldn't be Hogwarts." He looks edgy and stressed. I think back to his dreams, where the cupboard appeared large and threatening.

A car drives by and stops across the street. Petunia casts a worried glance over the hedge at its windows. "Do come in," she announces loudly with a false smile. "Vernon and I are delighted that you found the time to visit."

Harry eyes them, then shrugs and slips through the wall before I have time to enter through the doorway.

"It must've been difficult for you to lose touch with your only nephew like this," I say as Dursley shuts the door behind me and escorts me into the sitting room. It's the same house from Harry's dreams, that much is obvious. We walk past the cupboard I already saw once in Harry's dreamscape. I wonder if the bars on the upstairs window are still there as well.

Petunia's expression spells 'terrible ordeal'. "We are still recovering," she says sombrely and disappears into the kitchen.

Harry rolls his eyes. "I'm sure!"

"I assume you have kept his possessions?" I ask Dursley in the meantime.

"P-possessions?" he splutters.

"Yes. He left his broom with you."

"Oh, don't say that!" Harry cries, "They hate magic!"

I arch an eyebrow at Harry – Why? – as Petunia reappears in the doorway with a tray of lemonade.

Harry shrugs. "No reason, just 'cause it's something different, I s'pose."

Sure enough, Petunia's face turns white as she sets the tray down in front of me. "Did you say a broom?" she caws. "Just what sort of nonsense have you heard? Don't you listen to that silly old Mrs. Figg, she's gone quite ga-ga since her husband passed away!"

Meanwhile, Harry drifts past her into the corridor. I hear a faint knock. Do the Dursleys have a pet? No, it seems like it's coming from a cupboard door.

Harry eyes it warily, then cautiously pokes his head through it. He looks back grinning. "It's still there!" he whispers. "It moved!"

"Harry assured me his possessions were left with you," I drawl. He certainly did; just this moment.

The Dursleys seem uneasy, pointedly ignoring the noise. "Why would my nephew even have something like that? Boys his age don't worry about sweeping floors!"

"Watch this." Harry grins and stretches his hand toward the cupboard. "Accio Firebolt!"

There's a loud thump. At least there's no mistaking whose broom it is. Only a magical object owned for years would recognise its former owner even after death.

Petunia jumps and snatches the lemonade she served right out of my hand. About time. It saves me the trouble of pretending to drink it now that the charade is over. I disdainfully wipe my hand off after she takes the glass.

"He's not a detective! What would a normal detective know about something freaky like that!" She spins on her heels, crying shrilly, "He's one of THEM!"

"THEM? But you said their kind was dead and gone years ago!"

"He should've been! Do something!"

Dursley stares at me and his face slowly turns red. Pudgy hands reach for my shoulders. "Take your crackpot ideas and your prying questions and get out of our HOUSE!"

"Not. Without. The broom."

"I- I'll call the police!" Petunia quavers.

I sidestep, putting myself between her and the telephone. "Oh, you really don't want to do that," I growl, "because I am indeed one of Them, and you know what They can do." It works; she shrinks into the corner. I turn and stalk toward her husband. "I know what you did to Harry, you disgusting, loathsome bully." I hiss into his face, watching it go the colour of spoiled milk. My own face, my whole body, declares the murderous intensity of my hatred, with a predatory purity I have not known since I was a Death Eater. The man deflates like a punctured blimp, sagging back boneless and trembling against the cupboard door. "Since you saw fit to jail an innocent child in that tiny cupboard, perhaps I should shrink your bloated carcass and shove you in there! Or imprison you upstairs for the rest of your worthless life, behind locks no thug like you could ever hope to break!"

"Don't listen to him, Vernon! He's harmless," Petunia shrieks, "He hasn't even got a wand!"

The news bolsters Dursley's courage: he swells and bristles like a puffer fish. "How DARE you threaten me!" Suddenly even the air in this place seems too heavy and thick for me to breathe as he stomps up to me and shoves me aside. My shoulder glances off the wall and I have to lean against it to steady myself, as I struggle to take only shallow and quick breaths.

"LEAVE HIM ALONE!"

That cry fills the room like a bolt from the blue; it makes Dursley forget all about bullying me as perhaps nothing else could have done. I never would have thought anyone that fat could move that fast: Dursley backpedals frantically away from Harry, who stands – glaringly visible and incandescent with fury – between me and all harm. Foolish boy. Though Dursley certainly got the fright of his life when he found himself face to face with Harry's ghost, yelling at the top of his ethereal lungs.

"You… you aren't real!" Dursley stutters, and his loud gasps drown out my own attempts to breathe. Finally he turns his head toward me. "It's one of your... your magic tricks! Stop it!"

"He's not doing anything!" Harry rushes forward till he's face to face with his uncle. "I'm real!"

Dursley glares at me, trying not to look at Harry, as if I were the one who was speaking, not him. "Nonsense!" he croaks. "Ghosts don't exist."

"I DO!"

His wife is as white as a sheet in the doorway. "They do." she whispers into the silence that follows Harry's cry. "Lily told me about them."

I glare at Dursley until he inches out of the way. "If you don't want every last one of your precious neighbours to see Harry haunting you, and know exactly why he's doing it, you'll give us his belongings. Now."

"Take them." Petunia nods toward the cupboard. "Take them all," she spits, "And get out!"

In the cupboard, among cobwebs and dust, is the broom: an ordinary broom to the untrained eye, but the graceful curve of its handle has been sculpted for riding instead of sweeping. There is a feather tied on a leather cord to the end. Eagle? No, too large for a bird. Hippogriff. A faint Firebolt logo is etched on the side. I grab it first. A few books are there as well: books which don't deserve to be locked up in a Muggle house. There's a shock of recognition when I spot the thick, familiar spine of my old Advanced Potion-Making textbook, imprisoned between Magical Me and Quidditch through the Ages. Even counting my old text, it's certainly not the Hogwarts Library, but we can't afford to leave anything behind. I scrabble to gather them all, before Harry's odious relatives have a chance to intervene.

"Who do they think they are, robbing us like this?" Petunia sniffs. "I always knew Harry'd end up a criminal."

"You reckon I'm a criminal? I'll show you 'criminal'!" Harry scowls, like a bull about to charge a red flag.

Petunia screams, covering her face with an apron. Dursley cowers behind her, shaking like a blancmange.

"Leave them. They're not worth it." In an attempt to get Harry's attention, I swipe at his head with the broom handle. His hair ruffles. Curious: did that happen because the broom is magical or because Harry owned it? I gather the broom and the books awkwardly into my arms and stalk out. On the doorstep, I turn and fix the Dursleys with my most imperious glare.

"For your information," I declare coldly, "Harry Potter is and will always be a better man than your selfish, intolerant little minds can imagine. Unlike you, he is incapable of an abusive or a criminal act." My stare drills deep into two pairs of blank Muggle eyes, and I smile at them like a manticore. "I, on the other hand," I hiss, viper-quiet, viper-vicious, "have no such scruples." I seize their front door and swing it shut with the full sweep of my arm, slamming it with a BANG so loud it rattles their windows.

The curtain is down; the show is over. I lean back against the closed door. Damn, that felt good!

Harry stares at me with something resembling admiration.


"Impetuous brat. Did you have to interfere?"

"I wasn't about to stand back and let them insult you. They did it to me for too bloody long!"

"Well, I hardly need an attack-ghost to come rampaging to the rescue!"

"You got one anyway. He's got no right to yell at you like that!" What was I supposed to do? Let him? I don't think so! In fact, I still want to go back there, stick my head through the door and say something to make their jaws drop. Like 'This is Severus, Uncle Vernon. We're moving in. Have you still got my old room?' or 'I'm looking for a place to haunt. This is perfect,' or 'Sorry for not dropping by sooner, but I've been too busy making moves on my Hogwarts Professor. This one.'

Um, former professor, that is. Either way, I don't want to even imagine Snape's face if he hears that line. I balance on the edge of the footpath and float over a puddle while he strides down the street, grumbling "Just because you've been called the Saviour of the Wizarding world once or twice and have been sorted into Gryffindor doesn't give you the right to rescue whoever you please."

"I like it, so why not?"

"Why stop there?" he huffs. "Saint Potter, miraculously survived Certain Doom as an infant, saved the world from even more Certain Doom at seventeen, canonized upon death."

"You left out 'died a virgin'," I deadpan. What? No reply? I glance over my shoulder, and a few paces behind me Snape stands frozen, without a comeback for once. I turn away and keep moving: he might recover faster if I'm not staring at him. "I reckon you're just jealous," I keep up the light tone, trying to tease him out of the dead silence I managed to shock him into. "How many people my age can say that about themselves?"

At last, he snorts, "You're no Saint."

Something swooshes behind me. What? "Oi!" Another swoosh and I can feel my hair standing up. When I look back again, there's Snape, swinging the broom at me like a Beater's bat: I'm only just in time to duck another clip in the ear.

"An article of many uses, the wizarding broom. Wouldn't you say, Mister Potter? It sweeps, it flies, and – most miraculous thing of all – it even combs your hair!" He takes another swing at me and this time it comes so close I can feel it tugging at my fringe like a strong gust of wind.

"Bloody hell! Stop that!"

"Now you know how I felt when you kept running through me," he smirks and sets the broom down. "Up," he says, holding his hand over it.

"What? It'll never work!" Maybe if he asks Ginny; she's got magic. Well, for a few more months, anyway.

"Oh, really?" Snape drawls, smug as a cat in a canary cage.

"Yeah." How can it work? His wand didn't. "Stop acting weird. People'll notice."

His smirk widens, turns triumphant. "Notice what? A floating broom? But that would be impossible, don't you think?" My Firebolt! It's not on the ground; it's hovering ten inches above it. He flicks his wrist and the Firebolt jumps up into his hand.

My broom isn't supposed to do that, is it? Not to someone who can't cast a spell. "What did you do to it?"

He snaps his fingers. "Magic."

"Don't give me that!"

"For your information, the Firebolt line has been Squib-accessible since before you heard of them."

"How'd you become such an expert on Firebolts?"

"Since they included rudimentary Legilimency in the steering charms. I was curious." He lets the broom go, and it hovers again, right at his fingertips.

"Stop it, someone's going to see."

"Muggles are notoriously good at ignoring what they don't want to see."

"Ha! This, from the bloke who gave us hell for a flying car in second year?"

Snape snatches the Firebolt out of the air. "Testing this is a necessity. The former was sheer stupidity on your part."

"Uh-huh." I drawl sceptically.

"Speaking of Muggles," he nods over his shoulder toward Privet Drive, "I've never seen Muggles as appalling as that lot. How could you stand them for all those years?"

It wasn't really the Muggle part that bothered me. "I could put up with most of it: the cupboard and the chores and Dudley's bullying. But they knew about who my parents were. They knew, but they lied to me for years, made me think my parents were nobody, nothing. It's the lying I can't forgive."

Snape's face grows serious. For a moment he looks as if he is trying to tell me something, but stops. So I find myself talking instead, just to fill the silence.

"I... er, when I first met you I sort of – now, don't get mad! – I thought you were just like Aunt Petunia. Mental, huh?" I've wanted to tell him that for ages. "But you never lied to me, not once. Not even when you hated me. You always told me the truth, even when it wasn't pretty or nice. I like that."

There's a flicker of something strange – vulnerable – in his gaze. He blinks it away. "It's getting late," he says. "We should go."

I can't understand him sometimes. But the mystery just makes it all the more fun: learning what makes him tick, bit by bit.


"I don't know!"

"Imagine that!" Snape snarks in pure reflex, before he looks up at me from the armchair. "You've heard of it before. I told you about it."

Course I've heard of it. I even saw it explode in Diagon Alley, and Snape's been carrying some of it round in his pocket, ever since then. He took the ampoule out and wrapped it carefully in his handkerchief after we got back. "Albus something, I remember that much."

"Ignis Alba," he enunciates and I can almost hear the implied 'Mis-ter Potter" hang in the air.

"Yeah… um, that."

"Its effects are often confused with Gubraithian fire, though it has one important distinction: its fire completely consumes anything remotely combustible, though it burns slower than regular flame. The ingredients consist of phoenix ash, salamander bile, dragon saliva, powdered ruby, myrrh, erumpent fluid, holly berries and birch charcoal. Combine in a gold cauldron, store in a vacuum inside a hermetically sealed glass container." His tone is as level and clipped as if he was reading it all out of a textbook to a classroom full of students.

He still hasn't closed the curtains. My Firebolt stands in the corner of the room next to the newspapers. He thumbs through my old sixth year Potions textbook as casually as if he'd written it himself.

Wonder if he learned Potions with the same textbook as I did. He must've. That bloke, Borage – I only remember his name 'cause Snape made that into an exam question once – definitely wrote like he was born at least a couple of centuries ago. I should know, I tried to decipher it. My great-great-grandparents probably learned with the same text. I wonder if it was quite that bloody boring back then?

"What are the properties of erumpent fluid?"

Oi, what? Who cares! I knew I shouldn't've let him take all those books with us. That's what started him asking me all these questions. "Er... It explodes?"

"And?"

"You get it from an erumpent." How, I'm not sure I want to know.

"Congratulations. Your knowledge of basic potions ingredients never fails to astonish."

"I never said I was good at Potions!"

"Just as well." His mouth twists. "However, you might have been much less of a disaster had you applied that curiosity of yours to a worthy subject."

"Huh?" Did I hear him right? "Are you serious?" After seven bloody years of 'slice those slimy roots, Potter' and 'don't stir the cauldron this way, Potter' he says something like that? He can't mean it.

"I'm always serious. Ask me a question."

"What'm I s'posed to ask?"

"Anything. There must be something you wish to know. I just listed eight ingredients, half of which you haven't even heard of before, judging by your reaction."

He's wrong. Who hasn't heard of erumpents or dragons? Wonder how they get a dragon to spit? Or get an erumpent to give up his fluids, whatever they are. Perhaps erumpents spit too. It takes one thought of a spitting contest between a dragon and an erumpent, with small explosions and smoking holes all around them, for me to decide that we were bloody lucky Snape didn't make us hunt for our own ingredients.

"If you can manage to force a question out sometime today..." Severus drawls in his Voice Of Utter Boredom, but the corner of his lip looks like he's trying not to grin.

"Most of those things can explode a cauldron on their own," I mutter to myself, before asking him, "How does anyone ever mix them all into a potion without blowing themselves to bits?" Oh, bugger, I don't reckon that was much of a question at all, but I want to know.

"That, Mis-ter Potter, is where the 'subtle science and exact art' of Potions comes in."

He's enjoying himself, I can tell. I should've known I'll never get an answer from him. I'm curious who'd win that spitting contest but I can't ask him that. Probably the dragon; he's got a longer neck; he'd cheat. "Have you ever tried making it yourself then?" There. There's no way not to answer that one.

"In incendiary and other combat potions," Snape declares, voice and face turned up to Pompous Maximus, "there is no 'try'; there is only 'do', 'do not', or 'wish you did not': the latter, with exceeding brevity." Stuffy git! He's ducking my question again, damn him!

"Would've been brilliant if you'd taught us that in Potions." I go for the wistful angle; haven't tried that one yet.

"Taught you what?" he scoffs, "Common sense?"

"No, how to make it. You never taught us fun things."

He snorts. Finally, some sort of reaction! "The only thing 'brilliant' about such a lesson would have been the glare from the burning classroom."

"Fine. So what's the point of my asking anything if you aren't going to answer me?"

"Perhaps the point is to come up with a good question."

"Why?"

"Harry, didn't I just say, a good question?"

"Git!"

"The greatest inventions in the history of wizardkind were made because someone asked a good question, and then made an educated guess as to what the answer might be." He glares at me pointedly. "Your question was how to mix several highly explosive substances together, with life and limb intact. Now would be the time for an educated guess."

"Er. Underwater?"

"Water isn't one of the ingredients. Try again."


At first, I think of sliding a spare key to my flat and a hasty note under Yelizaveta's door. But then I change my mind and knock. The door opens in less time than it usually takes her to shuffle from the kitchen all the way down the narrow corridor.

"Severus. How are you?"

I raise my eyebrow. "English?"

"With this negodyai," she frowns, motioning somewhere behind her. "Irina should teach him Russian long ago!"

A toddler makes his way past her and escapes, barefoot, bouncing up the stairs. "IGOR!" His laughter carries all the way to the upper floors. I never pictured Yelizaveta with a grandson.

"Igor!" she cries. "Your bath!"

"Would you like me to catch him?"

"He come back," she waves. "Your guest, he stay?"

"Yes, he did."

So I thought, she mutters in Russian. You look like you spent hours chasing someone up the stairs too. "Igor, return immediately!"

She lets out a deafening whistle. And somehow that stops the child in his tracks and he slowly, carefully begins to make his way back. Apparently he's learned already that the whistle means business.

When I make my way back to Harry waiting in my flat, it's with a heavy conscience. You never lied to me, not once. I suppose, after all, I do share one trait with those who raised – and abused – him.

I should tell him the truth, even if it'll break his heart to hear it. The lies would hurt him just as much as my confession would… unless I reach Hogwarts. Hogwarts has its books and my potion stores. It has the cures for thousands of maladies, brewed by my own hands, hidden away and warded in my dungeons. I can find them, and Harry doesn't even have to know why I am searching for them. It's a dream, just as foolish as any of Harry's wild ideas. I must've caught that Gryffindor optimism from him, somewhere along the way. That's what I get for letting him stay with me.

That's what I tell myself, anyway. But deep inside, I know that I'm doing this just to postpone the inevitable. Still, I'll do my best to make certain that ampoule in my pocket is never used for the task that's lurked in the back of my mind all along.


"No, you can't pour them; the smallest splash spells disaster."

"But how d'you combine them then?" he cries. It's driving him insane, I can tell. He's gone through every option he can think of.

I wait a while longer before confessing: "First cast a freezing charm on the ingredients, then grind the frozen form to powder and seal the powder into phials before it thaws." Then I sit back and wait for the inevitable explosion.

It's a little while in coming: for a long moment he just gapes at me. "I've just spelled out every daft thing I could think of, and you're telling me a firstie could do it?"

"If it weren't explosive, and if he could cast a good, durable freezing charm, then yes."

He squints. "So, what're we going to explode?"

"Nothing." I give him my most forbidding scowl. "Why?"

"Why else would you've been carrying that stuff around since Diagon Alley?" he smiles.

Damn him, he pays attention when I least want it. "There are other uses for it."

"What, more explosions?"

"An educated guess wouldn't go amiss right now," I tell him, trying to keep my voice even.

Ignis Alba is also used for cremation: the ash which is all it leaves behind cannot be used for Dark magic. But I don't have the courage to tell him so. It's easier to leave him guessing.


Muggles live in a simple, perfectly ordered world. They can draw a map of everywhere they've been, and if they ever lose their way, they can look until they find the place where they're going. They shattered their ancient fortresses, with nothing more complex than ironmongery and a bit of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre. To Muggles there is no question of hiding such a castle from plain view, like Hogwarts' wards have hidden it for centuries, from Muggles and even from the Dark Lord at the height of his power. He wasted years on Hogwarts, trying to enter where he wasn't welcome.

Even a wizard can never chart the Wizarding world with the same accuracy and stability as the Muggles can map theirs. How can one draw a web, a projection of overlapping streets and corridors, rooms within rooms within rooms, roads that change location and direction depending on the time of day or the traveller's intentions? The best anyone, Muggle or wizard, can do at drawing the Wizarding world on a Muggle map, is to mark the gateways between the two.

"But it's got to be on the map somewhere."

When Harry says that, eyeing the atlas on my shelf, I can only reply: "It's not. One can't map a place that doesn't exist."

"What?" He blinks at me.

I take the atlas and open to a map of London; it's not the most recent one but it'll serve its purpose. "Show me Diagon Alley."

In a while, he finds Charing Cross Road, the correct end of it, to my surprise. "Here, somewhere. That's where we went to see the Leaky Cauldron; you know that as well as I do."

"Ah. And where is Diagon Alley?"

"Behind the Leaky Cauldron, of course, straight past the entrance once you get in." He draws a line cutting through the labyrinth of surrounding streets. "So through here."

"Are you so sure?"

"Yeah, I guess. What'd you mean?"

"Why do you assume it goes straight?"

Harry blinks. "Where else can it go?"

"Up, or down, or into a fourth or fourteenth or forty-twelfth dimension; into the future or the past, or any of the directions off the map, or all of them at once. It doesn't really matter. What matters is, for anyone who'd try to find Diagon Alley by this map, it will never exist at all."

He is silent.

I flip the pages to the map of Britain. "Show me Hogwarts, Harry."

"Err... I dunno. Somewhere in Scotland. You probably know where better than I do."

"No," I shake my head. "That's the problem. I don't. No one in the Wizarding World did either."

"But that doesn't make any sense! How did we all get in?"

"Because the castle itself let us in."


"That can't be right."

"What isn't?"

"Hogwarts might not be on the map but it's there, in the woods! Ron and I flew from London right into the Whomping Willow in our second year."

That would be the night I stayed up testing the wards, instead of going over my lesson plans, trying to determine just how impossible that particular trip should've been. I certainly remember that unfortunate incident. I spent the following night deciphering the Anglo-Saxon of the Founders' notes on the wards of Hogwarts, on the Headmaster's orders, just to have Albus flip through my futile research in the morning and mutter: "Harry is full of surprises, isn't he? I suppose it doesn't help that a flying Muggle car was a paradox the Founders didn't consider warding against. Biscuit, Severus?"

"It seemed easy enough back then," Harry shrugs. "It can't've been impossible, or else how could I have done it?"

Ah, but he could. The same way he pulled the Philosopher's Stone out of his pocket in first year. The same way he opened a chamber that had been a secret since Slytherin's time: just by believing he could, just by having a bit of a chat with the locks, in Parseltongue. For the life of me, I can't quite keep the nostalgia from my voice as I reply, "You always were good at achieving the impossible." I sigh and add, "Let's hope your luck doesn't run out."

"What'd you mean?"

"Haven't you guessed yet?" I nod to his broom in the corner. "It's up to you to lead me back to Hogwarts. You might be the only one still capable of getting us there."


I follow Snape up the rusted fire escape ladders on the side of his building. They echo under his careful steps, higher and higher, onto the roof. I begin counting his footsteps but lose the count somewhere after seventy-eight.

Severus seems calm, I only see his grip on the broom turn white-knuckled as he climbs past the third floor, as if the broom was a steady railing. He doesn't look down.

It's beautiful up here. Flat roofs and roads and trees: as far as my eye can see all the way to where the sun rises, vibrating like a golden snitch. But I'm not here to look at the sun. Severus marches to the centre of the flat roof, testing my broom. He leaves it hovering by his side as he claws his hair into a hasty ponytail and ties it back out of the way. His face looks even harsher and more gaunt without all that hair covering it. His nose sticks out like an eagle's beak.

"What is it?" he snaps.

"You look – different – um… younger."

He glares. "You don't have to protect my delicate sensibilities. What was the rest of that? A younger ugly sod, I assume."

I never thought he was an ugly sod. I never expected him to care about his looks, either. He's passable, really, when he isn't about to bite someone's head off. "No, that'd'be me, glasses and all. You're the sod who likes me for some reason."

"Impudent whelp. Who said I do?" He seems pleased though, as he swings his leg over the broomstick and holds on.

"How is it?"

"A bit unstable, but it's the best we've got." He glares pointedly at me. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Get on!" He pats the broomstick in front of him.

Right. We're going to find Hogwarts. Snape reckons I can do it. Maybe that's all there is to it.

"Harry," he's been watching me as I dither, "don't you want to?"

"I do. Really. But… d'you think this..." – It isn't like him. It's risky and dangerous. When'd he ever agree to something like this? I must've rubbed off on him. – "What if the broomstick stops working?"

"I fail to see why you would suddenly begin to worry about falling off a broom, especially in your state."

"Git! S'not me I'm worried about!"

"Ah, I see. In that case, perhaps we should simply go home and forget about it."

"Oi, are you mental? We can't quit now! I have to do this. I owe it to everyone to get it right this time."

"'Owe?'"

"Yes! I fucked up once, now I've got to fix it!"

"No, you don't!" he yells back, staring me straight in the eye, not giving an inch. "It's not up to you to solve all the world's problems. Any debt you think you had, was paid in full when you died. The Wizarding World doesn't need saviours, and neither do I."

His voice is stern, just like when he said: Impetuous brat, did you have to interfere? "What do you need from me then?"

The corners of his mouth curl. "Something I never even knew I wanted before."

"What?" …Did he just chuckle?

"A ghost of my own. And I already have that. Ready?"

It doesn't feel like leaving on the train to Reading or Surrey. It's more like when Hagrid took me from the Dursleys and I knew I wouldn't see Privet Drive again for a long time. The ground below is still dark but here on the roof, the sun's already shining. Snape should hurry before someone spots him from the ground. My old invisibility cloak would've come in useful; too bad it was blown up with me.

When we're high enough, I take in the view, just in case: the tangled web of streets, and far away, the Thames spanned with bridges, among them Waterloo Bridge and beside it the Eye. Somewhere below, Ginny will be waking soon, and Mrs. Weasley will catch the Tube to work at the Cheshire Cheese. Remus, Tonks, and Gabrielle will start a new day at the Leaky Cauldron, but by the time any of it happens Snape and I will already be gone. I don't know what'll happen to us, but I hope it'll be good. I hope we'll find Hogwarts waiting for us at the end of our journey.

He didn't have to do this. Most people wouldn't even consider inviting a ghost to share a broom. It's not as though I can lose him. No matter where he goes, I'll still find him – and not 'cause I'm haunting him, but 'cause he's Severus: as obvious to me as the sun. I tighten my grip; my broom feels different from anything else I've touched. It feels like Hogwarts: something magic, real and warm, like an echo of Severus. Maybe it's 'cause the Firebolt's always belonged to me, or 'cause some of the happiest times in my life were when I flew with it. And that's how I know that the Firebolt won't fail us. It can't, any more than my own arm could fail me. It's part of me. Like Severus.