Title: (Chapter 29)
Author Name: creamtea-from-FAP
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: PS/SS, CoS, PoA, GoF, OoTP, HBP.
Genre: Book 7. Adventure, thriller.
Main Character(s): H. D. Beta: Anise. Some test-reading by SUM.
Ship(s): Ships are touched on as part of the narrative, but the story isn't about the ships. Ships are: H/L, D/Hr. These ships: H/G, R/Hr, D/G are included – but not in a good way!
Summary: ALT BOOK 7: STORY ALREADY WRITTEN AND BEING PUBLISHED WITH FREQUENT UPDATES. FORTY CHAPTERS. What's it about? Love potions; emotional shoot-outs, expulsions, hex-fights, fist-fights, kidnappings, bank-jobs, secret weapons and castle-battles. And … DRACO!
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Chapter 29

The past: the ultimate place to hide a secret. No written records. No clues. Nothing that could be found by the wrong person. As Harry stood in the Head's Office, with Professor Dumbledore seated almost apologetically behind the desk, he understood why he had never been able to find a message from the Professor: he hadn't been looking in the wrong place, just in the wrong time.

Professor Dumbledore had used the Hogwarts time-turner, amending it to also act as a Portkey then transfiguring it into something innocuous that would be activated only by Harry's touch, and then bequeathing it to Harry in his will via his brother, Aberforth – someone he totally trusted. That way, attention would not be drawn to it as it would if he'd bequeathed it directly to Harry, and he knew that Harry would only get it if he, the Professor, had already died.

He must have done it the very night they had gone to the cave.

He must have done it 'tonight'.

Foolproof.

Harry thought off all that as he screamed himself hoarse at the Professor.

"You can't say that! You can't say you won't change time. You have to!" He felt his voice splinter, torn between rage, frustration and grief. "You don't know – you – things have happened! Luna's dead, Ron's gone, they died just minutes ago in a battle by the lake -"

At that the Professor's eyes closed and he let out a low moan, Harry hurtled on seeking any advantage, "Snape kills you! Why won't you listen?"

Luna Lovegood was dead and Ron was … it was so horrible that it was easier to believe that Ron was dead too. Easier to believe that he had died very quickly, rather than was trapped underwater even right now, battling against hopeless odds, fighting to try and hold onto his last breath even as the stale air burned in his lungs.

Harry forced himself not to tip over into hysterical weeping. He only had minutes and he couldn't waste them. The Professor had told him that they were having this conversation in the five minute gap between him – his earlier self – having just hurtled from the office, and before they would meet up again in the Great Hall to go on their doomed mission. The time-turner would return him in five minutes: Harry had furiously tried to tear it from his grip to give himself extra, but it would not come loose.

But if he could just get the Professor to change what happened tonight, to not die, to agree to alter history, then the rest of it could not have happened: Luna would not be dead, Ron would still be here.

Harry had told the Professor all that – well, shouted it at him anyway – and the Professor had closed his eyes and let out a grieving, shuddering sigh, but he would not agree to change time.

"But they're dead. And you're going to die too!"

"I am sure I shall, Harry. We all do in the end. It is how we meet it that counts."

"But you can save them!"

Professor Dumbledore closed his eyes again, "I cannot, Harry, I cannot alter the course of history."

"But you can! You're murdered tonight. It hasn't happened yet. We went to a cave -"

Dumbledore nodded: he knew they were going to the cave tonight, that was already his plan.

" – but it was a disaster! We didn't even get the proper locket -"

At that, Professor Dumbledore did blink. The Professor obviously hadn't anticipated the night would be so unrewarding for all its dangers. Harry thought he saw an edge and pressed on.

"You had to drink stuff from a font to get the locket. It was horrible, you didn't want to do it, it made you weep, it was like you were having horrible nightmares of awful things -"

"Ahhh," Dumbledore raised his head sadly. "The Draught of Despair … Yes, that does sound like something Tom would use."

Harry tried to shut out the Professor's sad tone. He didn't want the Professor to take it all so fatalistically. He couldn't let the Professor take it all so fatalistically. The Professor had to be shaken out of his complacency!

He had to be made to see how terrible it all was. He had to be made to see that he must change time!

"You made me make you drink it! You ordered me to do it. I had to do it, even though it was killing you -" He felt his voice break and ruthlessly suppressed it. "You've got to listen! We can change everything. You're -" his voice fractured again, "- you're the only one Voldemort was ever afraid of. I need you. You have to come back."

"Harry, I can't change time."

"You can but you just won't!"

Dumbledore held his hand up for silence, but Harry wouldn't be stopped, "The school is invaded tonight. Malfoy lets the Death Eaters in -"

"Ahhh – so it went that far?"

Harry was momentarily aghast – he had forgotten that the Professor had known that Malfoy's task was to kill him but had done nothing to intercede with Malfoy all school year. "But you can stop it. You can stop it all from ever happening!"

The Professor's interjection was quick, incisive, "Are any of the school-children killed? Any of the Order?"

"No, it's," Harry had blurted his answer out before he could think, "it's just you! Don't you understand: you get murdered!"

"Harry, we have very little time and I need to tell you things -"

"We have all the time we want, we can change time. It's just a law against it – that's all. We can break it. We can change the future. I can tell you what happened and you can evade it. No-one will ever know that anything even changed – as far as they're concerned, nothing's happened yet. They won't ever know if it happens differently this time around. There's no reason not to do it! We can -"

"And did Draco kill me?"

The question was so incongruous that Harry felt as though he'd been hurtling along in a car when someone had whipped the handbrake on, causing them to squeal all over the road.

"What?"

"Did Draco kill me? When I am murdered, is he the one who kills me?"

"Of course he isn't! Killing you? - he didn't have it in him!" Harry abruptly realised that sounded like an insult to both Malfoy and the Professor and scrambled to rectify it. "Look, he's spent the last few weeks saving my life and not dobbing me in it! You offered him a deal to save his family and he wanted to change sides on that Astronomy tower -"

"Oh – the Astronomy tower? So that is where I die?"

Harry rode over the horrifyingly resigned tone and, frustrated and frightened, lurched about for something that would tip the Professor into seeing that he had to change things.

"You make Malfoy a deal and he wants to take it. He wants to change sides. He lowers his wand against you. He isn't going to kill you – he never wanted to! When it gets to it, he knows he can't. But it's all too late. The Death Eaters come and -"

His voice broke: he, Malfoy, Ron, all of them – they all seemed so trapped in their fates.

"So, Draco did not kill me? I did hope he would not."

"Of course he wouldn't! He has you helpless. All he has to do is shoot – but he just talks and talks. He can't make himself do it. When you made him your offer, he started to lower his wand, it was almost a relief for him – he wanted to stop!"

"And Draco has tried to help you since? So he has changed, or is at least trying to? So tonight does have an effect on him – the greatest effect I could have hoped for: the saving of a boy's soul. I think that is worth the price of an old man's death, don't you?"

"But it -" Harry heard his fractured voice become streaked with a frustrated laughter. This was absurd! It was - "It wasn't worth it. You didn't 'save his soul'. His soul was already safe – because it turned out that he couldn't kill you anyway. He wouldn't kill you on the tower – he couldn't – no matter that the Death Eaters were trying to make him do it. You didn't need to die to save him – because he didn't need saving!"

"But he did, Harry -"

"He didn't!" Harry now felt a blaze of half-laughing, half-shouting frustration - why wasn't he getting through to Dumbledore? He was making sense, he knew it. Why wouldn't Dumbledore listen to him?

"Look – Malfoy wants you to stop him! He wants you to do it tonight, before it all goes too far. He said so. We were stuck in a bank vault together, he was practically crying – he couldn't understand why you hadn't stepped in and helped him when you'd known all along. He wants to change. He told me stuff there – trying to protect Neville, asking why hadn't you stopped him before it all went too far. But you could do it now. Why don't you just stop him!"

"Because it's not up to me to stop Draco, the whole point is that Draco stops himself."

"But he'd stop himself now if you just went outside that office door, got him and stopped him! I can even tell you where he is – he's in the Room of Requirement!"

"But he would not stop himself now, Harry. He would not stop himself if I were to do as you say: I would stop him."

"But you stop him when you make your offer on the tower! Why can't you just make it now instead?"

"But don't you see, Harry? It was only when things got the killing point, the unavoidable killing point – no nonsense with wine or necklaces - that he learned that was not what he wanted. Only by coming to the very point of killing a person face to face, did Draco realise the limits of his morality. Realise that he could not do it. Were I to go and stop him now – he would always be chaffing, always fancying himself a killer: never changing towards some redemption."

"But that's just -! He -"

"Draco cannot be 'told' anything, Harry. Draco is the sort who can only learn his limits by experience, by tottering along the very edge of them, threatening to fall. Draco has to learn for himself. I could not simply teach him by telling him."

"Trust me," Harry's voice was hoarse. "Right now, he'd be quite happy to skip the lesson if he could just have you back!"

"Of course he would Harry – now. But only after he had learned. If he had not been at the very point of killing me, killing an innocent person, then he would not have learned that he was unable to do so. He wants me back now, precisely because he came so close to killing me then – so close, and yet chose to veer away."

What the Professor said made a horrid sort of sense but -

"He wants your help!"

"And he has it, Harry, he has the greatest help I can give him: I died to save him."

Harry felt as though he had been abruptly smacked to a stop, as though he'd been hurtling wildly along a blind corridor and then had been forced to a screeching halt by an unforeseen sharp drop, tottering, arms whirling, stomach sucking in, toes over the very edge as he flailed for balance.

He felt as though the Professor had cheated somehow: that he had known all along that the drop was there and had let him run on without warning.

But he couldn't just give in! There had to be a way!

"You're just playing with words! You could change time if you wanted to. You could change history if you wanted to. You could stop it all. You can control the future, you just won't!" He wanted to scream with frustration. "You had the time-turner all along. If you'd wanted to, you could have gone back and saved my mum and dad that night – you could still do it now if you wanted to!"

"I cannot, Harry. I cannot change history."

"Stop saying that, you can but you just won't! You -" he flailed about for some unassailable, crushing point that would make the Professor see it his way. "You changed time to save Sirius! I know you did. You and Hermione, you did it between you. You knew she was doing it, you practically told her to!"

"I saved Sirius, Harry, as there was hardly any history to change – he had been Dementored only minutes. History had not moved on. In undoing his death, I was not undoing and re-stitching anyone else's life."

"You're just making excuses!"

"I cannot and will not go back and avert the deaths of your parents, Harry. I cannot and will not avert the events of that night."

"You can!"

"And undo the fact that you vanquished Voldemort that night? Saved us for ten years? If your father had not been killed, Voldemort could not have got to your mother, if he had not killed your mother, he would not have been overcome by the rebound of his own spell when he attacked you. Without him being overcome, the whole of history would have been changed. He was winning up to that night, Harry. He was at his most powerful. Had he not been dispatched, he would have destroyed the whole world as we know it. The children you know at school – half of them would not have been born, and half the rest would have been killed. Remus would have been dead years ago. Draco Malfoy would have been brought up rendered a total, conscienceless monster, never to be recovered. The Weasleys and all those like them would have been interned or wiped out."

Harry got that tottering-on-the-edge, over-rotating, unbalanced feeling again.

"Fine! Then send me back so I land a few minutes before I took off tonight! That's all! I could save Ron and Luna. We can at least do that. Almost nothing's happened between now and then. It's just like with Sirius - I can save them without 'un-stitching' anything!"

"But something has happened, Harry: you have come here."

"But -" Harry almost wanted to laugh at the craziness of it, "- I would come back here whenever I got the time-turner! If I did it tonight or in six weeks time, it doesn't make any difference!"

"It will 'make a difference' if you are dead before you get the time-turner, Harry. Or if Severus is dead when you learn what I tell you."

Harry put his hands to his head and forcibly held back a scream.

"I understand that my brother, Aberforth, must have only just managed to give you the time-turner, as if he had managed it earlier, you would have set off sooner, so to speak. And am I correct in suspecting that Aberforth was alerted to your presence by events at the lake?"

Events -?

"Stop talking like that: they're DEAD!"

"But it brought you back here, Harry, so I could tell you what you need to know about Severus."

"What about -? I don't care about him! He kills you. And if what you've got to say is that important, why didn't you tell me five minutes ago before I set off down those stairs!" He flailed an arm in the direction of the staircase down which 'he' had gone just minutes before. "For God's sake – why did you wait until you were dead? Why have you left it all too late!"

"Because to help protect his life, I could only tell Severus' secret when I knew I must, Harry, and I would only have to if I were dead."

Harry fought down a scream – why wouldn't the Professor see that this was all stupid? "Snape -? That filthy - ! He was the one who -"

"Harry, whatever you think is so to Severus' detriment, I do not need to hear the details: you have already told me that he 'kills' me. Indeed, I already know the worst about him: I know that he betrayed your parents to Voldemort. You forget, I told you so mere minutes ago before you left this office. I know the worst about Severus, and I also know the best."

"I'm going to tell you everything I know! I am going to tell you and I dare you not to use it!"

"I know Harry, hence I always intended to remove my memory of this meeting immediately upon your return to your own time: remove it to my pensieve and then destroy it there."

Harry was so breath-takingly enraged, that he roared out everything he could think of: about the box in his mother's grave –

"Yes, I know. It was left at Godric's Hollow. Severus buried it there to glean for it whatever magical protection could be got from your mother's love."

Harry gasped – all the secrets that had been kept from him! A glimmer of unwanted memory: Dumbledore had a habit of being secretive Harry …

"The cup!" he screamed, "It was in the Black vault! I got it when Malfoy and I were stuck in the vault!"

"Yes, when Draco tried to protect Neville, which is another reason why things ought to stay unchanged – that Draco is learning where his limits are and is taking great risks to stay within them."

"The missing Horcrux! It's a tiara! Malfoy said the unknown Horcrux was a tiara. That's why we were all at the lake – to trade information!"

At that, the Professor did look surprised.

"Ah! I had it all along and never knew … no wonder no-one could ever find out why she died when experimenting upon it. The Horcrux had been destroyed in the experiment. There was nothing to find …and all the time it lay twisted and battered in the storage provided by the Room of Requirement."

Harry juddered to a halt. He had seen that very tiara. One more Horcrux gone then … No need to look for that one …

"It killed an Unspeakable when she had been experimenting upon it." Dumbledore sounded almost apologetic. "There was one witness but she wasn't able to tell anyone quite what had happened, Harry …she was too young you see, only a child at the time …"

Staring at Dumbledore as Dumbledore stared up at him, Harry got a cold, clammy feeling …

"She was only six years old at the time, Harry. Even her memories of the event were confused."

Harry stared at Dumbledore.

It was Luna … the death she had seen had been her mother's …

Dreamy, odd, Luna – the craziest yet the sanest person he knew. And now she was dead. And it was unbearable. Because he only realised what he could have had by the very act of it having been taken away. Because weird, wise Luna …

He lunged for the door. He wanted to howl like a dog.

"I'm going to tell myself everything! If you won't change it, I will! I WANT A SECOND CHANCE! I'LL MAKE IT TURN OUT DIFFERENT!"

The door locked with a click at the wave of the Professor's wand.

Teeth set, Harry got both hands on the handle and yanked, it didn't open. Harry then had a foot against the door jamb and leant back, trying to lever the door open with all his strength.

"As a teenager Severus tried to brew up some Felix Felicis in order to, I believe, 'skew the odds'." The Professor paused. "He brewed it up incorrectly, either that or it was tampered with – I suppose that's always possible, after all, the young can be very thoughtless …"

Harry was now arching every muscle into opening the door.

" …and the result was a disastrously unlucky life."

Harry's grip on the handle snapped and he collapsed back, only just managing not to sprawl on the floor. He swiveled on the Professor. "He's not unlucky – he's evil! He loathed Sirius and my dad – he sneered that they couldn't even protect my mum!"

"Yes, Harry, but his greatest regret was not that he had endangered your father by telling Voldemort of the prophecy – his greatest regret was that he had endangered your mother."

There was a long, shocked silence and then Harry laughed. He remembered Hermione's statement at The Burrow: about how the Professor had been ill, old and losing his grip. He tried to swat aside the treacherous thought but couldn't: he's turned into a batty old man.

"He hated my mum!" Harry was laughing almost with hysteria now. "My mum was Muggleborn. I saw it in his own memory – he called my mum a Mudblood!"

"Yes, that was always Severus' worst memory, when for the first, last and only time he called your mother that name. He did that when she had been his friend."

Harry crunched to a halt … "NO!"

"She was a Muggleborn and he was a Half-blood, they had a lot in common. He used to go to your mother's house as a boy during the holidays and tell her everything he knew of Wizard lore. Oddly, your grand-parents quite liked him, though for some reason your Aunt Petunia thought he was an 'awful boy'."

That awful boy …

Of all the strange things: Harry was persuaded to believe Professor Dumbledore by something Aunt Petunia had said.

Harry felt almost in a fever. He felt ill. Snape? That filthy, foul, greasy -? His mother's friend? At her house? Talking to her? Swapping stories? Her guide in her new world?

"Severus held your mother in a great fondness, Harry, but after his mishap in his efforts to brew the Felicis, his bad luck began to bite and he and your mother fell out. Their friendship finally crashed that day by the lake when Severus said what he did: his worst memory."

Harry did not want to hear this. He bent over a chair, gripping the chair-back.

"After that, Severus' luck simply deteriorated: he fell in with poor company and became a devotee of Voldemort, partly out of bitterness, partly out of lack of options, and partly because if he were to be rejected, then he was determined that he would 'show everyone' how bad he could really be."

Dumbledore sighed.

"Of course, it all ended when he learned that he had betrayed your mother in relating part of the prophecy. Even as bitter and venomous as he was, there were places Severus would not go. And secretly he held Lily in such regard. Privately, she meant such a lot to him. I sometimes think he may have seen even more in her than there really was -"

Harry's guts clenched with cold resentment.

"- I feel she represented some last, redemptive vision of goodness, that if she would just have him, accept him, then it was proof to himself that he could not be so far flung into the darkness as he secretly feared. I don't think Lily is now real to him – perhaps she never was? Instead I think she is and was some almost abstract image of goodness …"

Harry's fist twisted the wooden chair-back.

"… He tried to reverse what he had done. He spied upon Voldemort – risking terrible tortures, doing anything he could in a desperate effort to avert the disaster he had set in train."

Harry was breathing heavily now, half sick.

"But despite all his efforts, she died. And to Severus' mind, your mother died because Sirius and James made a mockery of their responsibilities."

Harry drew a seething, livid breath.

"You see, Harry, Severus originally believed that Sirius was the spy. Then, when Severus found that Sirius had not betrayed them but had instead unintentionally handed them over to Peter Pettigrew, he despised Sirius for having failed to uphold the responsibility of Secret Keeper himself, and to Severus' mind, James was at Godric's Hollow but failed to stop her from being killed."

The chair-back now actually creaked under Harry's hand.

"Severus will always believe that had he been at Godric's Hollow, and not James, then he could have put up a better fight or realised earlier that they had to flee."

There was something almost sneering in Harry's voice. "And exactly how does Snape imagine that he would have been there?"

"Because he loved your mother, and could easily, in his dreams of another reality, imagine that he, and not your father, might have been there as her husband."

Harry's head whipped up and he hissed his words: "Stop it!"

"That was why he originally brewed and drank the Felicis which destroyed his life: he loved your mother – or fancied he did - and it was a desperate effort to get her to love him back."

"Stop it!"

"Severus loved Lily – as much as he could love anyone - he never loved anyone else, and then she died. And part of him knows that part of it was really his fault and he has to live with that every day. He also knows that when she died, if she recalled him at all, it was as someone who hated her, and now he can never have the chance to apologise and tell her how he truly felt."

"Stop it!"

"Do you recall how you have your mother's eyes in your father's face, Harry? Every time Severus sees you, he is plunged into the painful recognition that Lily chose James over him, and plunged into the pain of his role in what happened to her."

"I don't want to hear this!"

"Severus' actions leading to your mother's death, were the greatest regrets of his life. Since then he has waited and waited, steadfastly looking for the chance to bring down the creature who killed Lily Evans."

"Shut up!"

"I knew it would be uncomfortable, Harry. But I do think you need to know. Severus is one of the most powerful opponents Voldemort could yet have. I do not want you to reject him."

"He shoots you with the Avada Kedavra! He shoots you off the tower with it!"

"Ahhh – Severus: still trying to the last. Avada Kedavra doesn't work unless you truly mean it, Harry, it has a blasting effect, that's all. Surely you remember that from your own efforts with an Unforgivable upon Bellatrix Lestrange at the Department of Mysteries?"

"He threw you off the tower!"

"Perhaps he desperately hoped I would survive the fall, yet it would still look as though he had tried to kill me?"

"The Avada Kedavra killed you!"

"I doubt that, Harry. I rather think the fall kills me."

"You could survive the fall! You're a great wizard!"

"Not were I to be fatally weakened by the potion which I drank in the cave."

There was a horrible, humming silence.

It was like the 'close down' on Mrs. Figg's old-fashioned Muggle telly. The colour and sound snapping to a single white point of light as the set sang with a high electronic note before the final fade to blackness.

And then a crashing collage of memories: that the Avada Kedavra was instant but on the tower, Harry had only been free to move many seconds after the Avada Kedavra had hit – after the Professor had fallen, his death deleting the binding spell.

The fall had killed him …

That explained why Malfoy could not see Thestrals: he hadn't seen the Professor die, because the Professor had died on the ground and not on the tower.

Snape hadn't killed the Professor, the fall had – because Harry had weakened the Professor to the point where he could not survive it.

Harry became aware that the Professor was still speaking.

"I did not want to put that to you, Harry, but I must prevail upon you to trust Severus, and to that end I must make you understand that he did not murder me. I had already insisted he keep the Vow to complete Draco's mission so as to protect Draco. In effect, when I insisted he keep the Vow, and then later tonight when I insist that you force me to drink the potion, I murdered me."

"No! I -! It was Snape!"

"No, Harry. The person who murdered Albus Dumbledore, was Albus Dumbledore."

Harry wanted to shout, but words wouldn't come, only roars. He began roaring out everything which had happened to him since the Professor's death: about love potion, Tonks, the Horcruxes, Malfoy. And even as he screamed it all out he could feel that tug at the navel and knew that as soon as he was gone, the Professor would remove any memory of this five-minute meeting and eliminate it – he knew it had been done, he had seen the burn-marks in the pensieve earlier …

Whirling unwillingly through time and space, screaming with rage as he went, he knew that the last thing he had roared had gone completely unheard by the Professor: about how it was that Dumbledore had been so concerned to save Malfoy from any taint of murder and yet, later that night, would order Harry to make the Professor drink the lethal potion.

He had been so concerned to save Draco Malfoy from the coils of murder, yet had plunged Harry into doing just the same. He had been at such pains to save Malfoy from being a killer, but he had almost casually made Harry into one.