TUESDAY, 14 JULY

Harry picked up his mail from the kitchen table, his nameless owl perched on the back of a chair and staring at him expectantly. He thumbed through his letters while he wandered across the kitchen, finally opening a drawer and tossing an owl treat at the bird, who caught it and swallowed it whole.

He spied Mrs Weasley banishing weeds in the back garden through the window, but did not see Ginny about. Ron and George had stayed behind in the back room at Wheezes to work on some project that involved a lot of bangs and noxious lime-green smoke that made Harry cough violently.

He ripped open the first letter. Neville had finally replied to him, his letter talking about a trip to Germany with his grandmother. The letter was light and full of frivolous details of their itinerary. He seemed happy and, more than anything, like a normal seventeen year old. Harry tried not to feel envious of his old housemate.

He paused at the next letter. Professor McGonagall had wasted no time sending him a response this time.

Dear Harry,

I am glad to hear from you and I hope this letter finds you in good spirits.

Firstly, I want to let you know that I finally received a reply from Andromeda Tonks regarding her daughter and son-in-law. They were cremated shortly after the battle and their ashes interred in a very private and small ceremony. I know you would have wanted to be in attendance, but Andromeda explained why it was done secretively, primarily due to Remus Lupin's condition.

Had too much attention been drawn beforehand, it might not have been possible for his remains to be placed next to his wife's, I am afraid. There are many unfortunate rumors about werewolves, false ones, that even their remains may spread contagion, even ashes. I hope you will be understanding about this and not hold ill will toward your godson's grandmother. The Black family have long used an old pureblood cemetery and her concerns are entirely valid – lycanthropy aside, they were both half-blood and that alone may have raised objections.

The other matter you had expressed concern about earlier has been dealt with as well. I passed your concerns to the Ministry when they came to retrieve Voldemort's remains. I do not know if they have followed your desires, but you may be able to find out from somebody at the Ministry later. I am sure Kingsly Shacklebolt would give you an answer should you write to him and ask. So far there has been no official announcement made on the matter. The newspapers, at least, seem to have forgotten the matter entirely, as I have not even seen rumors on the subject. I suspect it will be handled quietly, whatever they end up doing.

As to your latest request - I admit I am not altogether certain it is a wise decision to attempt to visit Severus at his home, but I suppose you are old enough to make your own choices at this point. As you know now, he grew up in the same town as your mother and aunt. It is an old mill town called Cokeworth somewhere in the Midlands, and his home is on a street called Spinner's End. It is a thoroughly Muggle settlement and, I gather, not one of wealth or renown.

You will probably need to consult a map to find it, and getting there will require Muggle transport, as there is no floo access that I know of, unless Severus has had his own home added to the network, although if he has it is probably protected for his own use only.

I would caution against it, but if I know you at all, I know you will be thinking of it. If you must go by broom, at least have the sense to use that cloak of yours, or at least a concealment charm. I know you still wish to be an Auror, and a breach of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy will not work in your favor come August, especially if the Ministry's Aurors have to drop in to Obliviate a lot of Muggles due to an indiscretion. Neither will your father thank you for having attention drawn to his home.

Speaking of Severus, I feel I should let you know that he has more or less resigned his position as Headmaster. I still hold out hope that he may be convinced to return to teach in September. I am not certain what his plans are otherwise and I fear he may not have bothered to make any. His mood is not exactly cheerful at the best of times, of course, but I must confess that he has been deeply unsettled since the end of the war, though one can hardly blame him.

I have hesitated in making any attempt to check up on him, as he rarely reacts well to such overtures. If you are willing to take on the task, then I must admit I find myself somewhat relieved. If you find him in any sort of trouble or difficulty, however, I must ask you to let me know as soon as you can. Despite his insistence otherwise, he is an asset to Hogwarts and on a more personal level, I consider him a friend.

Additionally, despite his earlier censure, you are welcome to visit Hogwarts at any time. Hagrid has asked after you several times now and I am certain he would not mind if you and your friends came by.

Please Give my regards to the Weasleys and Ms Granger.

Minerva McGonagall

Harry read over the letter twice more, and then set it on the table in front of him, staring at it. The amount of affection hidden within it was practically gushing by McGonagall's usual standards. He'd never considered, really, that anyone much had ever cared about Snape, other than perhaps his mother Lily, when they were both still young enough to be innocent. Even Dumbledore had always seemed more concerned with the use of him than with his wellbeing, insofar as he was not compromised in his position as the Order's spy.

Harry hadn't been prevaricating when he'd thanked the man, earlier. He'd meant it at the time, even if he hadn't really planned it beforehand. He'd had ample time to mull over the past in recent weeks and it was beginning to sink in just what the man had actually done .

He was the walking embodiment of both bitterness and self-denial, and yet he had been instrumental in deposing Voldemort and his lackeys. Harry never would have survived long enough, and never would have known what to do in the end, without him. The personal costs to the man, too, were beginning to dawn on him. He had handed his life over in its entirety into the hands of Albus Dumbledore when he'd confessed to telling Voldemort of the prophecy.

In a way, Snape's life had been more even more closely fettered than Harry's had, and it was no prophecy holding him there, only his own wounded conscience. He could have walked away from it at any time, though, gone back to Voldemort in earnest, or even fled as Igor Karkaroff had done. Unlike Karkaroff, he might have been clever enough not to be caught.

His poor temperament was somewhat easier to understand these days, although he still felt he also owed the man a hard slap or two for his sharp tongue along with gratitude.

He knew if he waited too long, he'd lose his nerve. Part of him wished, now, that he could have attended his seventh year at Hogwarts, if nothing else, then get his appartion license from the Ministry, as he'd still been sixteen and thus ineligible when Ron and Hermione had attended the requisite course during their sixth year. McGonagall had both cautioned against a broom and suggested the invisibility cloak in one breath. He could borrow one of the old cleansweeps, perhaps – they weren't the fastest or most agile brooms but they were reliable. He just needed to find a map.

THURSDAY, 16 JULY

He did not know how much time had passed, but the sun had set and risen again, at least once. He was bound hand and foot not only magically but also with rough ropes that bit mercilessly into his wrists and ankles. He had not been gagged, but there was no need. Repeated applications of Cruciatus had seen to his ability to speak; he'd screamed his throat raw. His wand had rolled away under a cabinet somewhere, apparently unnoticed by his attacker.

If any of his elderly neighbors heard, they did not care, although there was certainly nothing that Muggle police could accomplish against a raging witch. More likely, though, a silencing charm had been placed over the room, to prevent any unwanted interruptions.

The witch alternately sat before him, making an attempt at boring a hole into his head with her burning stare, or paced through his house muttering to herself, ripping books off shelves and tearing them apart or smashing random objects, occasionally stopping to turn to him and apply another curse or to physically strike at him. Usually it was Cruciatus , but occasionally something more... creative. His clothes stuck to him where blood had dried and he'd suffered more than one bout of incontinence at this point. At least with his nose broken from an earlier kick, he could not particularly smell anything.

The woman had revealed nothing of her identity or her motive, although from her mutterings, he had gathered that she'd had a son, who had died during the attack on Hogwarts in May, and had laid blame squarely upon him.

Whatever improvements had been achieved with St. Mungo's nerve potions were now history. The full-body tremors he'd suffered in the days immediately following Nagini's envenomation were back in full force, and had the company of electric shock like pains shooting up his spine, courtesy of repeated use of Cruciatus .

The part of his mind that was not clouded over with pain and exhaustion noted that the witch never kept him under the Cruciatus curse for very long, even if every second felt like years. At one point in the long night, she'd grabbed him by his jaw and nearly drowned him with an Auguamenti , although he'd managed to swallow enough of it, which had probably been her intention.

So, she would not kill him outright, then. She wanted him alive and suffering, then, at least until such time she tired of her vengeance.

FRIDAY, 17 JULY

It had been surprisingly difficult to find out where Cokeworth was actually located. He'd gone into London the day before and visited several Muggle bookstores and corner shops, and it had taken a while to even find a map that included it. A settlement of no wealth or renown, indeed. It barely registered at all, apparently. He'd finally found a detailed road map of the region that had it listed, a tiny black dot next to a blue line representing some minor river.

Mrs Weasley had packed up a sandwich as a snack for him and given him a tight hug when he'd informed her of where he was going. Ron and George had expressed their affection for him by calling him nutters and wishing him luck in not being hexed six ways from Sunday. George, at least, had lent him a broom compass.

In the end, he'd folded up his invisibility cloak and shoved it in a pocket, using a concealment charm instead. The thought of flying that distance underneath the cloak was unappealing, given that the rising heat and humidity of the day already had him breaking out in sweat before mid-morning.

He could stay fairly high up for most of the distance, and pull the cloak over himself as he began his descent near the mill town of his mother's youth (and his aunt's, but he didn't care much to think about her at all).

It wasn't a bad day to fly, in the end. There were a few fair-weather clouds but mostly the sky was a clear, vivid blue and rivers flashed like threads of silver below where the water reflected the sunlight.

He would stop and pull the map out, gripping it in the stiff breeze and balancing on his broom. Translating the criss-crossing lines of the map to the actual roads below him was somewhat tricky, particularly where there were a lot of overhanging trees obscuring the view. The map did not include much in the way of landmarks beyond rivers and larger tributaries but finally he turned the map around and managed to find the line of the one along which Cokesbury lay.

Pulling the cloak out of his pocket and wrapping it around himself, pulling it partly under his bottom and gripping it against the broom handle to keep the wind from ripping it away, he began his descent into the gray, depressing rows of housing, trying to recall any landmarks from the memories in the pensieve that might lead him to a street sign marked Spinner's End. If he could just find that solitary, tall brick chimney...

Why can't she just get on with it?

If he could speak, he would beg Death to take him. It simply did not matter , anymore. He'd outlived his purpose. Fate, it seemed, wanted to remind him of that. He should not have lived. He did not deserve to draw breath. And he would not for much longer, but his end would not come swiftly, would only be meted out in small increments of searing pain.

Consciousness came and went. He did not know what time it was, or what day, or where he was. Only the harrowed face of his tormenter remained, as she stood over him and filled him up with her pain.

Finally, Harry arrived. The street sign stood at an intersection like a dozen others nearby, the pole crooked and the paint faded and peeling, but there was Spinner's End. Rows of narrow brick houses in varying levels of dilapidation stood cheek-by-jowl on cramped lots. If there were living souls hidden within them, none emerged into the daylight.

Which was his, though? They scarcely varied from one to the next, all clearly constructed as a block project by some developer, decades ago, looking to cash in on a post-war manufacturing boom which had clearly gone bust in the intervening time.

He tried to imagine his mother living in a neighborhood like this, somewhere further up the main road, wandering down the riverbank on a summer's day, looking for some break in the gray monotony while her sister trailed behind her. One such day, she had met his father as he, too, had wandered away, trying to escape from a troubled home.

He tucked the broomstick up under the cloak, wandering down the street slowly, listening to the distant hiss of traffic. Nothing living moved, no birdsong twittered in the background. A light breeze stirred in the stale, hot air of late afternoon.

He reached the end of the road. The home to his left was marked Number One and was clearly abandoned, with boarded windows and a padlock on the door, probably placed by a mortgage bank some time ago after the owner had failed to make timely payment.

Directly ahead the street ended in a dead end, turning into a winding dirt path, once well-traveled but now overgrown from years of disuse. A few spindly trees stood about it. The sound of flowing water reached him from below a dip in the earth.

To his right, another indistinguishable house marked Number Two. The tiny garden was somewhat less overgrown and the door knob less tarnished, clearly handled on something like a regular basis. The solitary ground-level window facing the street was blocked by the back panel of a wooden shelf or cabinet, only a slight gap at the top showing the leather binding of old books stacked up to obscure the rest of the view.

He knew he'd reached his destination and pulled off the cloak. He hid his broom along the low fence surrounding the patch of weeds underneath the window and folded the cloak, stuffing it into a pocket.

He walked up to the door and hesitated. Instead of knocking, he stood and listened. He pressed his ear up to the peeling paint of the wood door, trying to suss out if Snape was even home. The thought occurred that he might be left waiting on the doorstep for quite some time, if the man had gone on some errand, or had left not intending to return at all.

He could hear movement within, but the cadence of the footfalls was off. He'd long memorized the stride and fall of Severus Snape's walk as he ducked and dodged the man on many a nightly wandering at Hogwarts.

He stood back for a moment, somewhat baffled. He couldn't imagine who might be visiting, other than himself or perhaps McGonagall, but she'd said quite plainly in her letter that she'd left off dropping by.

Harry almost knocked, but something stalled him again. He pressed his ear back to the door and could hear a muffled voice. It was most definitely a woman's but no one he recognized. She sounded... angry.

It receded and for a moment there was silence. Then, as though from a great distance, a hoarse, half-strangled scream.

"Alohomora!"

He'd tried six times, now. He wracked his brain, trying to remember the more complicated unlocking charms he knew of, anything he'd ever heard of or witnessed Hermione use.

On the twelfth attempt, the bolt finally slipped from the doorjamb.