Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter! As for whether this fic is still a WIP, yes; I'm writing it as I go along. I'm posting this chapter now because I won't have time to write it in the morning.

A note about "fruitful" in the title of the chapter: It does not mean productive so much as reproductive.

Chapter 37—Fruitful Mistrust

Rufus looked around the Headmaster's office. He knew he should feel honored and privileged. He'd barely returned to the Ministry with the Death Eaters' bodies, including the corpse of Bellatrix Lestrange, when the summons had come from Dumbledore. He was invited to meet of the Order of the Phoenix. They would be secret no longer. The Headmaster had judged the time had come to share information with his most important ally.

But Rufus had barely returned to the Ministry with the Death Eaters' bodies, including the corpse of Bellatrix Lestrange. He was tired, and heartsick in the way that seeing the aftermath of Dark magic always made him. He'd be fine with a few minutes' rest, but he could not have that. He had to move, and immediately. And he was morbidly sure that Dumbledore still wouldn't trust him with everything; there would be more secrets to come, and Rufus might only find them out when it was too late.

He sat in a chair towards the right wall, and watched as people filed in. The Weasleys, of course, and a few of his Aurors, including Kingsley Shacklebolt, Alastor Moody, and, not much to his surprise, Nymphadora Tonks, though she reddened and avoided his eyes. An older wizard he didn't know, but who looked shifty enough that Rufus was tempted to haul him up in front of the Wizengamot on general principles, joined them last of all, and then Dumbledore waved his wand and the door shut with a sucking sound that Rufus knew indicated a powerful locking charm.

"I summoned you here for an important reason," Dumbledore began solemnly. "It seems that two missing members of the Order have surfaced again—together, and with intentions that are not the best." He nodded to the twin Weasleys, and leaned back behind his desk with a sigh.

Rufus gave the twin boys a surprised look. He knew the Death Eater attack had happened in front of their shop. Had they seen Potter and Snape ambushing the Death Eaters? And why was that a bad thing? Surely they must have known that Severus Snape, of all people, would use Dark magic.

"The Death Eaters—" began one boy.

"—showed up just at nine," said the second.

Rufus found himself growing dizzy as he listened to the leaping motion of their conversation, flowing back and forth between them. After a few minutes, he grew used to it, and managed to put the coherent narration together. It helped that their voices were so similar.

"We recognized Bellatrix Lestrange at once, from all the descriptions we've heard of her. So we remained in the shop and watched through the windows. We thought our wards could stand up even to the likes of her.

"But she didn't even try to attack. She just froze, and then she started screaming. And then someone started casting curses at the Death Eaters with her. One of them put up a bit of resistance, but he was decapitated. And all the time, Lestrange was screaming."

The twins paused then, and swallowed as though their throats were dry. Rufus wondered what was coming next. Perhaps Snape had used some particularly awful curse.

"And then—we saw her die. And then Professor Snape revealed himself, and went towards someone on the side of the shop. He'd been hiding, and even then he only showed his head, but we saw him clearly." The twins paused again, and Rufus didn't think they were doing it for effect; the news they had to announce was so momentous that the pause was an instinct.

"It was Harry."

Harry wanted nothing more than to retreat to his bedroom in Bolthole, lay his head on the pillow, and sleep.

But it seemed Snape didn't have the same idea, or perhaps he was concerned that Harry might do something stupid like cry himself to sleep. He made Harry remain in the kitchen, and made a cup of tea himself, without summoning the house-elf. Harry looked around the kitchen in silence while that happened. It was much larger than the Dursleys', and even magnificent in a way, though the cupboards managed to look just as gloomy and solemn as the Potions stores cupboards in Snape's office ever had.

"Drink this."

Harry accepted the cup, and sipped from it. He couldn't taste any unusual flavors in the tea, but then, Snape could probably poison him undetectably if he wanted to. And, sure enough, a moment later an unusual feeling took him over: soft and floating, as though his shock had turned to contentment.

"What is this, sir?" Harry asked, with a tongue that felt clumsy.

"A potion that will calm you enough to talk," Snape answered, standing across from him and watching him intently. "It will not cloud your perceptions, and, ultimately, it cannot help you sort out your memories and tell you what to think about your actions. You must do that for yourself."

"I don't really want to think about them," Harry said, honestly, and took another sip of the tea. Unfortunately, the floating feeling didn't increase.

"You must," said Snape. His voice was neutral. Harry didn't think he'd ever heard it like that before. Even when he was trying to teach something, when it would probably benefit him to remain neutral, Harry thought Snape was incapable of it. He had contempt for anyone but students who got what he was trying to teach right on the first try. "This is another part of not hiding from yourself, Potter. You must move past denial, which is the refuge of the coward and the fool. Think about it. You told me you felt it was needless. Why?"

Harry hesitated, then put the cup of tea down on the counter next to him. He didn't want it to fall and shatter if his hand began to shake. "What you said about murder, sir," he said. "Even if it's true—does anyone deserve to be just a murder victim to me? Just a sacrifice? I think I can confine my murderous impulses to Bellatrix and Voldemort alone, but what if I can't?"

Snape's eyes were calm and confident and unfathomable, rather like the eyes of the Sphinx Harry had met in the maze in the fourth year. "Rest assured, Potter," he said. "If you become only a killer, I will kill you myself."

Relief washed through Harry, loosening the tight knot in his chest. "You do mean that?"

"Yes." Snape shifted his shoulders, as if he were accepting a burden. "And, unlike your friends or the Headmaster, I shall not make excuses for you, and try to imagine you as better than you are. I can draw my wand on you without the slightest remorse. You know that."

"I do," Harry whispered. He picked up and sipped his tea again. He knew, on some level, that he shouldn't have been so very reassured by this, any more than he should have found Snape's scorn of his suicidal impulses the path to healing from his grief for Sirius. But, both times, Snape's cure had worked. Maybe what he really did need was just less coddling.

Or maybe Snape saw a strength in him that no one else could, and knew he could bear with harsher treatment than he'd received. There was that possibility, too—not that Harry thought Snape would ever admit it aloud even if it were true.

"Now," Snape said, "this does not help you to face your demons. Describe to me what you did to Bellatrix."

A babble of voices broke out at once. Rufus shut his eyes, but could still hear people exclaiming that Harry must have learned about the attack and been there to stop it, or that he would never have helped Snape, or that it must have been someone who looked like Harry, because he wouldn't have left his training.

Rufus knew it had been Potter, and he wondered, he did wonder, just what Snape had been teaching the boy.

Dumbledore's voice outsoared the babble. "Describe the rest of what you saw to us, please, Fred and George."

Once again, the two separate voices mingled into a single narrative in Rufus's weary mind. "Snape came and knelt down in front of Harry—spoke to him. Harry said that he 'tormented her when he didn't need to.' Snape reassured him with some nonsense about everyone needing to kill once in hot blood. Then they Apparated together. It looked like Harry went with him willingly."

"The git's got him under Imperius—" said a voice that Rufus recognized as belonging to Ron Weasley.

"Harry can throw off Imperius, Ron, you know that," said Hermione Granger's voice. Rufus hadn't seen her come in, but when he looked, she sat next to the Weasley boy, her hand in his, her face deathly pale.

"But Harry would never help him!" Ron had sprung to his feet and was shouting, his own face red. "And he'd never torture someone! Harry's not like that!"

Dumbledore spoke before Granger could, his voice soft and soothing, but no less a command. "We do not know what happened. Remember that Professor Snape is likely to have killed the other Death Eaters. What Fred and George described is powerful Dark magic, the kind of spell he would know."

"But what about what Snape said?" That was Kingsley, his eyes so wide that Rufus thought they were about to roll out of his head. "That he tormented 'her'? Was Potter really responsible for Lestrange's death?"

Dumbledore held up a hand and shook his head. "We cannot know," he said. "The whole thing could have been Professor Snape's doing, and that would prove that he is still fighting for our side. He was increasingly—erratic in his treatment of Harry during the last months they were both at the school. He may have wished Harry to think and believe that he was responsible for Bellatrix Lestrange's death. There are potions, if not spells, that can compel such obedience." He hesitated for a fraction of a second. "He did try to use a suggestion potion on Harry about a month before their disappearances."

Granger nodded emphatically.

"So he wants to make Harry look bad!" Ron Weasley seized on that explanation.

"That could be it," Dumbledore acknowledged quietly. "The major problem is that we simply do not know."

"Why haven't you tried to get Harry back from Snape if he has him, Headmaster?" That was the Weasley matriarch, leaning forwards. "I don't doubt that Severus is loyal to our goal in his—in his own way, but surely his home isn't the best place for the boy."

Rufus turned his eyes to Dumbledore in interest. He let them believe that he had complete control over Harry's training. What is he going to tell them now?

Apparently, Dumbledore chose the truth. Perhaps it was wisdom, perhaps simply the knowledge that he couldn't lie much longer, Rufus thought. "The truth is that Severus apparently took Harry to an unknown location when he fled," the Headmaster said. "All my efforts to locate them both have proven futile."

The Order began to exclaim again, but it was an even shorter time before Dumbledore seized control of the conversation. "I realize that this situation is serious," he said. "Trust me, we will make every effort to trace them and reclaim Harry before—" He checked himself, as if he did not want to speak a word that would implicate Potter in the Dark magic Snape had used. "We will reclaim him. I agree that Severus does not make the best teacher for him, and whatever he learned under him, Harry can learn equally well, and faster, under better teachers."

"I'd be happy to train him," Moody growled, his magical eye revolving through his skull. "Never did trust Snape, the bastard."

Granger looked up, and said, in a pause between one speaker and the next, "Headmaster, what will happen if Harry's really—I mean, I know he'd never do it willingly, but he could be tricked into it—I mean, what if he's going Dark? What then?" Her eyes were wet with tears, and Rufus could almost trace the progress of her thoughts. She knew, having read the will, that Potter hadn't been sane when Snape abducted him. Her strong-willed friend might not be in danger from the temptations of the Dark Arts, but her mentally weakened friend could be.

Dumbledore hesitated long enough that a tense, listening silence filled the office, and everyone in it leaned forwards.

Severus kept his eyes locked on Potter's as the boy fed him, piece by piece, the tale of his battle with Bellatrix Lestrange. And, as he went on, Potter's voice steadied, even as the potion wore off somewhat and his expression became horrified. When he finished, he almost did not seem to notice that he had, standing with his eyes fastened on the far wall, deep in thought.

"Your technique was admirable," Severus said at last, verbalizing what he truly felt.

Potter started and looked back at him. "Thank you, sir," he said.

"And what about the other things you must confront?" Severus leaned forwards. The boy's answer would determine whether his training in logic or his training in Legilimency would be more intense over the next few weeks. "What about your moral standards? Do you consider yourself a monster?"

"I think I could be," Potter said, after a moment's grave silence.

Severus shook his head slightly. "Not good enough. Everyone could be, in the right circumstances—just as the Dark Lord might have been a creature of sweetness and light in a far brighter home. Not everyone will make the decisions that you have. What do you think of yourself? What will you do when the war finishes, and you see your friends again? Can you tell them that you were responsible for Bellatrix Lestrange's death?"

Potter's face paled. Then he straightened his shoulders and said, "I don't have any choice, do I?"

Severus pursed his lips. "You do. You could lie, or soften it." Merlin knows I did that often enough in my reports to Albus about my activities among the Death Eaters.

"But it would be a lie."

"That need not matter."

"I meant—" Potter crossed his forearms in front of his face and stared at the ground for a moment. Severus let him be. The boy still had trouble finding words for his thoughts. He would never be eloquent, probably, or at least it would take more training than Severus had the time to give him right now.

"I didn't mean that I had to be honest, or else," Potter finally said, in a voice as soft as a shadow. "I meant that if I lied, if I let myself hide that way, I don't think I could face up to anything else, either. The world inside my head and the world outside my head have to match. If I accept lying to my friends, I accept lying to myself, too." He looked up at Snape and shook his head slightly. "If I could keep them separate, I would, but I can't."

Severus stood still a moment. He wanted to let the silence linger long enough to impress the boy, but not long enough to intimidate him.

"Congratulations, Mr. Potter," he said at last. "You have achieved something that many people never do."

"Being honest?" Harry looked no more than mildly interested, though Severus could guess the emotions churning just under the surface of his Occlumency shields.

"No," Severus said, with a slight shake of his head. "A realistic assessment of your strengths and weaknesses, and a plan to cope with them both. That is—rare. So incredibly rare that it deserves congratulations." He put out his own hand.

After a moment, Harry shook it.

"If he is going Dark," Dumbledore said at last, "that is all the more reason for us to help him. We will teach him morals as well as spells, if need be, Miss Granger." He smiled, and Rufus felt the strength of that smile touch him, distantly, like sunlight. Dumbledore was pouring all the considerable strength of his magic into reassuring the people around him. "No one has gone so far towards the Dark that they may not be reclaimed, unless they have the years and years of degradation and depravity that Voldemort has sunk himself in."

Granger nodded, and even managed a small smile. Rufus could see her fears were only soothed, though, not defeated.

He, himself, had much to think about, even after Dumbledore outlined a plan to the Order to try and find Snape and Potter. He wondered if he had been wrong to trust Snape. He remembered the dark shadows in Potter's eyes, and the calm, confident bargain the boy had made with him in Hogsmeade.

Someone like that could be capable of going Dark. Or, rather, if there was even a possibility of his going Dark, it had to be taken seriously, because of how dangerous he would be if he did make that transformation.

Then, when Dumbledore dismissed the Order, Rufus had another ethical dilemma to face.

Do I warn Snape that the Headmaster is hunting him, or not? His killing of Death Eaters does suggest he still shares our side, at least. But he may not do it for the right reasons.

And whatever he—or Potter—may have done to make Lestrange scream like that…

There are some things that simply cannot be condoned, even in the name of war.

Rufus went back to his office, to pace, and think, and worry, until the small hours of the morning.

And, not incidentally, to await the results of the examination he had ordered on Lestrange, to find out how she died.

He had waited perhaps two hours when a frantic pounding sounded on the door of his office. Rufus wrenched it open, expecting some horrific news about Lestrange's death.

Instead, Tonks stood there, still in the same robes and with the same face she had worn to the Order meeting. "Sir," she said faintly. "Azkaban's been attacked, and every Death Eater imprisoned there is gone."

Harry lay on his bed and breathed slowly, normally. Snape had offered him a sleeping potion, but Harry had refused it. If vomiting or bad dreams came to seek him in the night, he wanted to be ready to face them.

He turned the memories and the thoughts he'd confessed to Snape over and over in his mind, looking for weaknesses, looking for signs that he misunderstood what he'd done and had to correct it. He couldn't see any, though.

He had done a horrible thing.

He had done a thing that many people would not do.

He had let the torture go on for too long.

He would kill Bellatrix again if he had to, though this time he would choose less pain.

Harry blinked when he confronted the last revelation he'd drawn forth from the depths of his mind.

He had done something that might lose him his friends. Even more than the sheer fact of killing Bellatrix—a woman he thought neither Hermione nor any of the Weasleys would mourn—there was the torture, and the fact that he'd put Fred and George's lives in danger. He would have to tell them everything, when the moment came to tell.

But he would still kill Bellatrix again if he had to. And Snape was right. Only an ambush could have taken her, and the only target that Bellatrix would have considered convincing was Harry's friends. Harry supposed he could have tried to lure her to him, too, but he couldn't risk compromising Bolthole, and a dream with him randomly appearing in the middle of the country would have seemed more suspicious to Bellatrix than his friends appearing in a shop they were known to own.

Or so I tell myself. Wouldn't risking myself have been better?

Not unless—

Harry swallowed.

Not unless someone else can actually kill Voldemort.

It was the first time that he'd consciously decided his life was more important than someone else's. He'd fought for it, of course, but he'd also fought for other people, without much self-preservation instinct. And, just a month ago, he'd been perfectly ready to die for Sirius's sake.

So. There was the reality. Harry stared it in the face, and he didn't like it much, because it was so ugly, but he kept on staring. He was going to do whatever was necessary in Legilimency to kill Voldemort. He would avoid torture, but then, he didn't think he'd have to use it. If he did—

He could use it. He'd proved that today.

Harry took a deep breath, and closed his eyes at last.

Severus studied the boy in silence from the doorway, and nodded as he heard Potter's breaths even out in sleep.

The boy was very far from all right.

But he would not break, and being that strong was better than being all right.