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Chapter Six

"It's too much," he said. "There's so much we don't know, and I feel time running out on me."

"Harry, are you sure you should be saying this?" Hermione asked. She was staring, puzzled, between the two of them. Harry could see her mind working, but he knew she didn't have enough facts to fit it all together just yet. She could probably guess though.

Ron, on the other hand, didn't move his eyes away from Snape. "You can't just give it up, mate, not on his word alone. He's a vicious little snake, Harry."

At that Harry shook his head, it dawning on him how much he already trusted Snape's word over what he had witnessed in the Astronomy Tower. When he thought back to that night now, he saw Dumbledore's calm visage and heard again his plea, "Severus, please." He looked back at Snape. "He pled with you to do it, didn't he, to kill him?"

Snape's dark eyes bored into his own, and Harry momentarily thought he would take over his mind, yet after a moment, Snape merely inclined his head in a 'yes'.

Horror welled up inside him. "How awful. How could he ask that of you?" He clutched at his stomach in revulsion.

With remarkable cool, Snape said, "It's the same he is asking of you, to kill the Dark Lord. A simple necessity in war."

Harry was shaking again, and he saw that Snape was shaking a little, too. "But it's still murder," he said, still unbelieving that Dumbledore would have trapped them both in such promises. "Is that really all we are, his pawns?"

Snape snorted. "I play more of the Bishop's role and you the courageous Knight, but yes. He has been using us to win this chess match against the Dark Lord, and there are still many turns left to play before the game is decided."

"The game can be won dozens of moves before the end," said Ron, bringing the focus back to himself and Hermione, still standing by the doorway. "One or both of the opponents may not know it yet, but the choices are already set out."

"Then let us hope this path has the best outcome. There are not that many moves left." Snape sneered at Ron, but Harry felt it was more about the whole situation they found themselves in rather than at Ron's chess abilities.

"But Harry did see you use an Unforgivable and then run off with the Death Eaters. How can we ever be sure you're on our side? I don't trust you." Hermione's voice was firm and insistent, showing no fear and only a trace of anger.

Snape turned his sneer on her. "Ever the brave lioness, Ms. Granger. Think what you will; I am used to mistrust, even expect it around every corner … except one." He pivoted his gaze back to Harry, pinning him with betrayal-filled obsidian eyes. "I had hoped for more from my mate."

Harry keened at the pain he could visibly see in him, the misery he had caused by not believing foremost in his mate, rather than in his mentor. "I'm sorry!" he shouted. "I'm still learning, still so new to this, and there's no one to guide me! I sense now that you wouldn't lie to me, but I had nothing that night to go on, only an instinct that screamed at how wrong everything was!" Harry was on his feet, fists balled up, arms and wings tense with frustration.

"You feel sorry for yourself for dealing with it alone for a few bland weeks," Snape said coldly. "I've had a lifetime of questions and second guessing, then I had to console myself to the fate of the mateless, of drowning the itch and distracting the shakes."

He shook his head. "Severus, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you, to hurt us. I didn't want to leave, but I couldn't control the magic that brought me back in time. Dumbledore said it would just happen on its own and it did."

"Then maybe you should have left me alone and not mated us together!" Snape was screaming at him by the end, the others in the room forgotten until they both gasped, fully understanding what had taken place back then.

"Oh, don't play innocent, Snape, you wanted it just as much as me! If you thought it was such a bad idea, you should have mentioned it, but there was something between us that wouldn't be denied. I want you! I need you, even all through this past month when I thought you'd betrayed us. Please." He didn't know what else to say; he just held his hand out to Snape, as he had once done in the Slytherin common room.

Snape stared at the hand for a long moment, not moving, barely breathing, but Harry could sense the emotional turmoil underneath his impassive veneer.

Neither said anything and nobody moved.

Harry feared that Snape would reject him after all this time, so he gave a little more of himself. Raising his other hand to match the first, he said in a low, contrite voice, "Please, forgive me."

The dark eyes flicked up to his face, gauging the sincerity writ there, and suddenly the air was clear and Snape gently laid his hands in Harry's. Both men moaned at the contact, and Harry's stamina gave out at the release of so much tension that he found himself falling forward into his mate's chest. Both of them shivered uncontrollably in the embrace of the other. It felt so good after such a long drought. Harry didn't even notice when Snape's own black wings came out, but he felt them caress his skin.

He did register Ron's squeak, however, and the shocked question, "He's one, too?" He looked up at his best friends' faces and nodded.

"Perhaps you'd better tell us what happened in the past, Harry," Hermione said, her tone saying that she was a bit put out that he hadn't confided in them sooner.

He pulled away from Snape just far enough to allow them to sit on the undamaged sofa that had been across from the other one Snape had incinerated minutes earlier. "I wasn't ready to tell you this. I doubt I ever would have felt ready, actually. You should sit down." They took his advice, and over the next hour he recounted all of his interactions in the past, with the Hufflepuffs, with Regulus, with Poppy and the revelation of his Veela status, and his actions with Snape.

Hermione listened in silence, though Ron weighed in with expletives a plenty.

It was Hermione that asked the burning question. "Why didn't you just tell him, Professor Snape? Why have you let this go on for over two months?"

Snape looked away, almost abashed by her directness. "I have a role to play, am still playing. I had to leave with the Death Eaters to avoid suspicion and then spent the next week housebound at Malfoy Manor. Once released I did come here looking for Harry, but the place was deserted, and upon reflection circumstances appeared futile between us."

"So why come back now?"

He was quiet for a minute. He didn't say anything, just looked at Harry, finally pulling Harry's hand to his chest. Harry knew that Snape had been feeling as lonely as he.

Snape glanced back at Hermione to answer her question. "Once the Ministry fell, it seemed like a likely choice of hideouts, one of the few places Harry knew of that was still under Fidelius protection. I knew the Order would not meet here any longer, as Mad-Eye Moody is quite a bit more paranoid than myself."

"So what do we do now?" asked Harry from his position next to Snape, who then turned bitter eyes on him.

"Now you will tell me all that the Headmaster refused to disclose to me concerning your mission. I have three tasks that I still must fulfill to appease him, but I will have the whole of 'why' and 'what' first." Letting go of Harry, though keeping one thigh touching his mate's knee, he crossed his arms and gave Harry his best teacher's stare. "What are you searching for?"

Harry looked away and licked his lips in nervousness.

Ron interjected before Harry could speak. "You don't have to explain this, if you don't want to, Harry."

Snape turned his death glare onto Ron, but it wasn't needed as Harry began to talk, "We're hunting Horcruxes."

Gasping, Snape whipped his head around to look at Harry with revulsion.

"What?" Harry asked with some alarm.

"Dangerous does not even begin to cover the level of Dark magic in those items. He couldn't have asked that of you!" Snape seemed truly terrified of the prospect on Harry's behalf.

"It doesn't seem any more dangerous than what he asked of you," Harry returned in imitation of Snape's earlier sentiment. "Anyway, yes, he did, and yes, we are. There are six, we think."

"Why six?"

Harry furrowed his brow in concentration. "While still in school, Tom asked Professor Slughorn if it was possible to break a soul into seven pieces. I'm not sure why that number, though. Hermione?" He looked to her in question.

Still looking between Harry and Snape, Hermione licked her lips and visibly went into lecture mode. "We know from Arithmancy that seven has sacred properties. Not only is it important in many magical spell creations and potion making, but it also has significance in many Muggle religions. Seven is the perfect number representing wholeness and infinity. He wants to make himself the ultimate being, immortal and all powerful, so it makes sense that he would break his soul into six little pieces to place in various containers for safe-keeping - the Horcruxes - and save the larger seventh piece for his current body."

"That does reason out," said Snape. "Do you know what these items are?"

Harry answered this time. "We know for sure the diary I destroyed in second year was one. Remember, his spirit took over Ginny and opened the Chamber of Secrets. And I remember how evil it felt, how it screamed when I stabbed it with the basilisk fang and it leaked ink like blood all over the floor." He shuddered at the memory.

Snape reached out and put a hand on Harry's thigh.

He looked back again into his mate's eyes, seeing reassurance and concern there, buried in the deep pools. Before he could drown in them, he looked away and carried on with the explanation. "The next was the Gaunt family ring. Volde -"

"The ring? The one Albus put on last summer and -" he stopped speaking and abruptly stood up. Pacing, he began muttering to them. "That thing was vile, unstable. It had a curse on it."

"That blackened his hand, yes," said Harry.

"That's why he was dying, why he asked me to -" He cut off again, clearly not able to talk about Dumbledore's death, and Harry didn't want him to either. "He destroyed it with the Sword."

Ron piped in this time. "Yeah, 'Mione read in one of those books that only certain powerful items or spells could destroy one, basilisk venom being one option, which the Sword of Gryffindor is infused with. Also some horrible fire spell will work."

"Fiendfyre," Hermione said, "but none of us knows how to cast it."

"I do, but even so, it is very dangerous. It takes immense control or else the conflagration spreads everywhere without stopping." Snape rubbed his face and the back of his neck in agitation, beginning to pace again. "What else?"

"We're pretty sure Nagini is another, but we don't know how to get her alone or how to attack her."

"I might be able to help with that one. Next."

"Then the other three, we think, are items owned by the other founders of Hogwarts: Salazar Slytherin's locket, which we now have, Helga Hufflepuff's cup, which is missing from the rest of her set, and Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem, which is nowhere to be found." Harry sighed at how desperate the situation really was, at how little they knew and how little Dumbledore had told them. He ran his own hands through his hair.

"You have the locket?"

"Yes. Here." The trio trekked up to Sirius' bedroom and retrieved the locket from its protective box, then Harry brought it downstairs to show Snape, touching it as little as possible. The evil aura still radiated from it, making his skin crawl.

Snape's eyes widened in shock, quickly narrowing into horror, not daring to touch it himself.

"We have to destroy it immediately."

"We know that," Harry said in frustration. "We just don't have anything that works. We were hoping to ask Professor McGonagall to let us into the school and get the Sword, or barring that, for me to go back into the Chamber and get some more basilisk fangs."

"If you know that fire spell, you could destroy it," said Ron, still a bit unnerved at Snape's presence here.

Snape thought for a few seconds. "Yes, I could, but it's too dangerous to perform here. We would need a warded room to cast in - there are some in Hogwarts - yet it would be better to obtain the Sword. In fact, it was one of my tasks, although Dumbledore refused to tell me why you need -" Again, he stopped, only this time he froze, staring at Harry as his face went deathly pale. "No," he whispered. "No, it can't be …" He said nothing else, just stared, mouth agape.

Harry's eyes darted to the side and back, wondering what he'd missed. "It can't be what?"

Putting one hand against his mouth, he pivoted away from the group and froze again. Harry thought he might be shaking, but he didn't know why.

"Severus? Is something wrong?"

"Nothing, Potter," he snarled back at his mate, Harry's eyes enlarging with shock at the sudden bitterness and anger he heard there. "I have no say with Minerva at present, but I'll do what I can." Without looking back, Snape fled from the room.

"Severus, wait!" Harry raced after him, only to hear the front door open and a pop of Disapparition occur. He stood in the entryway for long moments, staring into the vacated space in front of the house. A chill wind blew, though it was the middle of summer, and Harry's heart turned cold. Snape had left him. He shivered for what seemed like an hour, until Ron came to bring him back inside. All of him felt numb.

Harry raged for two days after. His magic flared, igniting books and furniture which Hermione and Ron raced to put out before all of Grimmauld Place burned around them, but he also took to physically throwing things, sweeping trinkets off shelves and swinging coat racks at any mirrored surface, everything shattering upon impact. His friends repaired what they could and, more important, tried to calm his spirit, but nothing worked, and instead they got caught up in yelling matches with him. Finally, his fury died out when he collapsed near the hearth on the evening of the third day, his body spent, his soul in tatters.

"Mate, maybe you should go lie down, yeah?" Ron asked.

Harry just shook his head, falling back into numbness, the ache in him all-consuming.

Hermione ventured into the room. "Well, I braved a Wizarding bookstore in Manchester and bought a copy of Skeeter's new book. It's a good thing I went today; they were almost sold out. Shall I read it?"

"Make it out loud," Ron said. "I don't think Harry's in any mood to read such high literature."

Hermione snorted at that. "Right." She began reading and made it through the first chapter before dinner and another two that night. It was exaggerated writing and none of them could tell truth from fiction, but it distracted them all from the present atmosphere.

"Do you think we should head over to Godric's Hollow then?" Ron asked after listening to the tale of Ariana and Grindelwald. "It would be nice to interview that old hag."

"Ronald," Hermione scolded. "She's probably a very nice old lady whom Skeeter tricked into divulging neighborhood gossip. Don't judge her until you've met her."

Ron had that nasty habit of pre-judging people, and Harry could tell it irritated the hell out of her. He wondered if they were ever going to get together or if they even should. There were lots of days that they seemed to feed off each other's negative energy, but now he wondered if that was due to his own Veela influence. It seemed his fate to never have peace around him.

With a sigh, he said, "I would like to finish the book first, have all our facts and questions laid out before we go. And I really don't feel up to traveling just now."

Hermione nodded in agreement. "Okay, Harry. We'll wait a few more days. Let you get your strength back."

"I wish Severus was here," he said very quietly with soul deep yearning. Both Ron and Hermione's faces changed to pitying looks. It was then that he knew they understood his situation.

They'd made it halfway through the book by the next afternoon when the front door suddenly opened. All three teenagers sprang into action, ducked for cover, and pulled their wands before the intruder had even closed the door.

Snape stepped into the foyer and paused, eyeing their drawn wands with disgust. "Still playing at spells? A competent wizard would have changed the locks by now."

Harry's face heated up at the insult. "How dare you, Snape? You know we don't have that kind of magical training, but you hold it over our heads anyway! Why the fuck are you here?!" he screeched.

Snape gave him a long bitter stare before saying, "I came to deliver news that the Dark Lord has appointed me Headmaster of Hogwarts for my stellar performances of late. That actually feeds in nicely to my third task, which is to keep the student population relatively unharmed while they are in attendance. It also dovetails nicely into getting you the Sword and in finding a warded room to cast Fiendfyre."

"But you hate me! Why would you help me now?" Harry's eyes blazed in hurt as well as anger.

"What, pray tell, gave you the impression I hated you?"

"You just walked away from me with a sneering comment and more spite than I've heard from you all last year! And let's not forget how you've treated me the previous five years, although you had to know I was your mate! How could you?" Rage overflowed from Harry, his magic swirling around in sparks that threatened to ignite all the ancient wood in the house.

Utter stillness came from Snape. He was not moved by Harry's fury and was not intimidated in the least. Instead his own dark eyes hardened in bitter sentiment. "Oh, yes, I knew, from the moment you stepped through the door with the other eleven-year-old students in your class, ready for your sorting. It was only then that I understood what Fate had done to us … to me."

Harry shook his head. "Then why be mean to me?"

"I am a Dark Veela, Harry. I felt bitterness and hatred at your abrupt leaving twenty years ago. How do you think I would respond at the prospect of seeing you again but having to watch you grow up, unable to touch you, to hold you, shackled from even speaking to you about our future, Occluding at all hours of the day from both of my masters, and burying my feelings as deeply as possible until the day you would come back from the past!" Snape's voice had risen in volume, finally allowing his resentment to surface.

Harry felt a sharp twist in his chest at these facts. He hadn't fully grasped how desperate was Snape's position on this matter. There was nothing he felt he could do to make it up, either, except physically go to him, but when he tried to move forward and embrace his mate, Snape held up warning hands. "Why not?" Harry asked with confusion.

"It's too late, and we have other matters to contend with. Go and fetch the locket and we can proceed to Hogwarts."

Harry shook his head firmly. "No. It's too dangerous to travel with the locket. None of us like to even touch it, and something else might happen along the way. Can we do it here?"

"I don't think it wise. This house is not as well warded, and it has its own Dark magic inherent in its walls that might mix with the Fiendfyre spell."

"I was thinking you could do it in the locked box we already have it in. Can you cast Fiendfyre in there?"

Snape thought for a moment. "Possibly. Let me see it."

They walked up to Sirius' bedroom, Snape sneering at the horrid choice of decor. For once, Harry agreed with him on his tastes, much preferring the more elegant greens, browns and creams of Regulus' bedroom to the garish reds and yellows that were splattered all over here.

Snape zeroed in on the box, casting magical detection spells to check the wards for effective blocking of the cursed fire spell, adding two extra spells of his own to seal the container. "Take out your wands and be ready to run if this does not go to plan. Pack what you need now."

Ron and Hermione, who had been silently watching the exchanges between Harry and Snape, suddenly blanched at the unexpected order. They had not considered that their sanctuary might be breached. With a snap from Snape, they hustled into action, forcing everything they had brought to fly in a haphazard order into Hermione's sequined bag. When everything was settled, they nodded to Snape.

"Stand back. Do not try anything foolhardy." He gave them his worst teacher's stare.

Focusing all his might on the box, he cast. "Fiendfyre."

As the box began to glow red, then yellow, then white, and finally blue, a horrible shrieking emitted from it. "NO! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN GREAT! YOU COULD HAVE TAKEN YOUR MATE AND HAD GREATNESS UNDREAMED OF!"

But Snape ignored it and continued concentrating on the spell.

"YOU COULD RUN! YOU COULD HIDE! NO ONE WOULD BE ABLE TO FIND YOU! IF YOU STAY, YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING! HE DOES NOT THINK YOU WORTHY, BUT YOU COULD TAKE HIM, MAKE HIM SEE REASON!" The box started shaking, the vibrations moving through the floor and walls so violently that knick-knacks fell off shelves and Ron lost his balance. Harry's scar flared and he screamed. Suddenly the box exploded with energy, knocking everyone to the ground.

When the dust cleared, Harry, still panting from the ache in his head, got to his feet and looked around. There, where the box had been, was a charred mess of ashes. Ron and Hermione got up unharmed, but Snape was on his knees, wheezing.

Harry couldn't hold back any longer. He went to his mate, wrapping his arms around Snape's chest. "It's okay. You did it."

Snape could only nod in assent.

After Snape took a welcome kip in Regulus' bed, the four of them reconvened in the downstairs parlor. "Tell me what you know of the Hufflepuff cup," he started without preamble.

Hermione answered. "We know that it's made of gold, shaped in a goblet like this -" she said, marking out a customary shape in the air with her hands, "- with the Hufflepuff badger engraved on it. We found three others, one for each house, in her home in the Highlands, but that one was missing. Harry says that he looked in the Hufflepuff dungeons and didn't see or feel anything strange located in her display cabinets."

"That will be difficult to acquire. I know of no one who has ever spoken about it. And the Ravenclaw diadem?"

Harry spoke this time. "Legend has it that it was lost, and we found reference to it in some old Black diaries that possibly her daughter stole it and took it to the forest of Albania. I know he stayed there for some time."

Snape nodded his head. "Yes, with Pettigrew for a while until the ritual with your blood. You believe the Dark Lord found it there?"

"Yes, but we sent Kreacher there to look for it, and he couldn't sense it anywhere in the forest."

"It's possible he brought it back with him," Snape mused.

"Yes," said Hermione, "but when and where did he put it?"

They sat there in confusion until Ron said, "Perhaps Peter knows. I mean, if he was with You-Know-Who all tha' time …"

"Ah, yes. And I know just how to lure him to Hogwarts." Snape's face gleamed with action. "Give me two days to get settled as Headmaster and set a trap for Pettigrew. I'll send my Patronus when I'm ready to receive you."

"You can cast a Patronus?" Ron said in amazement.

Snape just sneered his worst and strode out of Grimmauld Place with renewed purpose.

Harry watched him go with renewed longing, which he failed to hide from either Ron or Hermione.

A/N: I hope you all are still enjoying this. Remember: reviews are love!