Harry wondered if it was too early to call. He faced another day of seminars and practicals, however, and he didn't think he'd get a chance to borrow a fireplace until lunch. And he couldn't place why, but something told him not to wait until the weekend. Hermione'd had a point, and even if it was already Friday, this whole thing had started Wednesday night.

He Flooed Snape's house, crouched down, and stuck his head into the fire, grimacing against the vertigo.

"Hello?" he called to the empty room, feeling ridiculous. "Sorry, are-are you awake? It's Harry."

He wondered what the etiquette of fire-calling was for wizards. Somehow he hadn't asked that yet. He was treating it like a muggle telephone but it's a bit more invasive, he thought to himself, skimming the bookshelves for the umpteenth time. He imagined Snape crouching upstairs, pretending not to be home.

Harry was just about to throw caution to the wind and actually cross over when Snape finally slouched in from the kitchen, looking wrinkled and wan in what appeared to be yesterday's clothes.

Harry made a split-second decision. He'd just meant to ask after him, but-

"Can I come in? Are you busy?"

Snape looked around the house, lingering on something behind him in the kitchen.

"No," he said slowly. "I don't suppose I am."

"Right, good. Um. One minute."

Harry pulled his head back out and dashed a memo to Robards on a scrap of parchment. Personal day-will explain later. He folded it up and muttered the spell to send it off, then jumped back into the fireplace before either of them could change their mind.

But Snape was right where he'd left him, looking dazed, a mug in hand. He blinked and seemed to snap back to the present to usher Harry into the kitchen. He thumped down on one of the chairs.

"Never been much for a full spread," he mumbled, adding a little milk to his coffee. He pointed at a half-full french press on the chipped laminate counter behind him. "Get a mug from the drainboard if you like."

Harry grabbed it. He noticed it was otherwise empty save a whiskey glass and two potion bottles, already dry, and this bothered him.

"Do you usually drink coffee in the morning? I never noticed it at breakfast before."

Snape frowned. "Is that really you, Potter? That's entirely too observant."

"I have my moments."

Snape snorted and took a long gulp. He seemed to visibly come back into himself, and Harry thought that he couldn't be doing that badly if he was still making back-handed compliments. He loaded his own cup with sugar and milk and wondered how much he had to drink to be polite.

"Now. What's so urgent that you've gone to the trouble of skiving off work on a Friday morning to come here?"

He shrugged and didn't meet Snape's eyes. "I've been feeling a little off since the other night."

"Not surprising." He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry."

Harry just shrugged again. "S'pose I've seen worse. I'm-I should apologize to you. I assumed…"

"Not without reason."

"Yeah well. Doesn't excuse it."

"Is that what you came here for?" Snape looked bemused. "Apologies?"

"Not... exactly." He bit his lip. Honesty had worked with Ron and Hermione.

"Actually, I wanted to see how you were. Before work. And then I figured-maybe don't have this conversation with my arse hanging out of a fireplace in the Ministry? But this is, what, your second near-death experience in as many months?"

"I'm fine."

He said it like it was a threat, with an obstinate jut of his lower jaw.

Snape did not look fine.

He took a deep breath.

"I don't think that's true, actually. I don't think that's been true any of the times you've said it. It was-what happened, whatever I thought, you can't just be fine ."

Snape rolled his neck with audible popping noises, but clearly the gesture was just as much about rolling his eyes as gratuitously as possible. "You came to my house at 8:30 in the morning to call me a liar?"

"Only if you keep lying."

"Would you like to get fired for trespassing?" he spat back. "I know you're already building a case for absenteeism but you've always been ambitious in your defiance of authority."

Harry reared back and opened his mouth-and then shut it again. If he lost his temper and stormed off, he'd just be leaving Snape alone again. He remembered the look on his face and thought maybe that wasn't such a good idea. Right. Tactical retreat.

"Look, I'm sorry, that came out wrong. I just-I'll drop it."

Snape stared at him like he didn't understand what he was seeing. Then slumped a little in his chair.

"So. What is this potion I've been taking all summer?"

"I wondered when you would get curious enough to ask about that," he said darkly.

"Hermione gets the credit, actually."

His brows shot up. "You told her?"

"And Ron."

"And?" Snape leaned forward.

"Wasn't as bad as I expected. I think it'll be better, the next time. I think they'll help."

"Good. That's good. Well." He took a deep, shaky breath and straightened his posture. "The potion. Never bothered with a name. I can tell you it's based on the Elixir to Induce Euphoria. I'm sure Granger noticed.

"I didn't come up with it until 1984. My father had my mother committed. She-struggled, similarly. The muggles gave her something called Tryptizol. A flawed precursor to Prozac. It helped. For a while. And it was very trendy for wizards to take the euphoria recreationally in the 80's. I moderated its influence and tried to extend its duration. A nudge, not a rocket. Something to lift one's baseline mood to a more normal level and enable one to get on with it."

Harry saw his opening.

"So why aren't you taking it now?"

Snape froze, mug halfway to his mouth. He put it back down. Direct hit .

"I did, for a long time. I had a good few years. Then it wasn't necessary. And I found I preferred as few outside influences as possible when occluding."

"That's not what I asked though. You didn't answer me. Why aren't you taking it now?"

"I take lots of things, Potter. They don't all get along."

Harry raised his eyebrows and leaned back in his chair. "I can wait."

"Why do you need to know so badly?" Snpe scowled. "Worried your own head will pop off?"

"Sure. If that's what you want to think."

"There's nothing wrong with tapering off and then starting again later, if you feel like you need it again. I haven't. Felt like I needed it."

"It would be alright if you did, though, wouldn't it? Unless you've been trying to poison me all summer and I've just called your bluff." Harry smiled, trying to soften the words. "That was Ron's theory. Anyway, Hermione thinks you should patent it. She wanted to get a look at the recipe."

"She would," Snape muttered. "Fine. Give me a chance to transcribe it and my notes and I'll send it to her."

He remembered what Conrad had said. He certainly wasn't a seer, but again, something pushed him to say, "I'll stop by for it, actually. Tomorrow afternoon? If that's alright with you."

A look Harry couldn't parse passed over Snape's face as he said, "Alright."

Harry didn't bother going back to work. Even if it turned out he couldn't lean on being The Boy Who Lived for a three-day weekend for a very good cause (though he really shouldn't make it a habit), that was Monday Harry's problem. He spent most of the day at Gringott's anyway, being shuffled from one goblin to the next, filling out forms and then filling them out again when one contradicted another.

He imagined they might've still been sore about the break-in, but it was still his vault.

And it was worth it in the end, because what he hadn't realized in all those quick trips for petty cash was that Fleamont and Euphemia Potter valued, above all else, their son James, and they had kept an absolutely dizzying array of his childhood belongings packed away in trunks. He even found a Nimbus 1001 tucked into a far corner. He made plans with Ginny for the following weekend to go flying together, to test it out, and then… maybe he'd tell her about how he'd been.

Definitely after flying, though, because he figured she might hex him the next time he tried to get more than a few feet off the ground.

He didn't think about Snape for whole minutes at a time.

He finally Apparated to Spinner's End earlier than they'd originally planned-but no.

He'd given Snape a time, and he'd rushed and gotten there an hour early, and shouldn't he not be able to do that? He whipped out his wand and crashed into the door and it was exactly what he'd feared, the shelves half empty, books piled everywhere, a dark figure...

Snape turned around slowly, hands raised.

"I thought we cleared this up already, Potter," he said, as if he was not being held at wandpoint again .

"I thought. Jesus." Harry dropped his arm and looked around the room.

The shelves were half empty, yes, but the books were neatly packed into boxes. Snape still held one dusty volume. The curtains were folded and placed neatly on the armchair. Snape himself still looked like he hadn't been sleeping but there was a core of stillness, of calm, to him that had been lacking before.

"What's all this?"

"I'm moving. McGonagall suggested I retire to Spain," Snape said archly. "I believe she was joking but a change is likely overdue. Here."

He handed Harry a length of parchment filled with his spidery, cramped handwriting and copied arithmancy tables. His notes. And then half of a torn photograph, and one page of a worn, yellowed letter.

"I think this is better left with you as well. Did you-you found the half? In Black's bedroom?"

Harry took it gingerly. "I did."

"Good." He frowned at the artifacts for a moment, as if debating snatching them back, then shook his head. "For the potion, I've given you the core ingredients and instructions as well as my notes. It's best tweaked for the arithmatic name-value of the drinker. I've left my adjustments for you. I don't doubt you can handle it. When you deigned to focus, your performance was always adequate in my classes."

Harry's heart pounded in his ears. He hardly heard a word Snape said because Proudfood had passed out pamphlets, hadn't he? Thursday, before they all left. Warning signs.

"I'm not stupid," he croaked. "You say adequate but you've always treated me like an idiot. I thought maybe after all this you'd changed but you must still think so because I'm not buying it, that you're just. Moving to bloody Spain."

Snape's eyes darted around the room.

"I changed my mind," Harry insisted. "I don't even want the recipe. Why would I want anyone but the best making it?" He held it back out. "If you're really moving to Spain you'll just have to keep owling it to me. Unless you're lying again."

"Back to this as well? I don't know what you mean, Potter."

"That's rubbish and you know it." He clenched his hands, wet with sweat, at his sides, and found that he could not stop once he had started. "Just like yesterday. You don't want to admit anything's wrong because you don't think you deserve the help. And you don't think you deserve it because you have this need to see yourself as a bad person, because it's fine if you're a bad person who has done some good. You've 'exceeded expectations'.

"But if you're a good person who has done all these shite, terrible fucking things, then you're just… just not good enough. You're just disappointing. And you can't stand that, can you? Well. It's too bad.

"You're just a person, Snape. A person who has done bad things, and good things, and you don't need to turn yourself inside out in penance but you also can't do this to me! I won't have it! Everyone leaves me and it's not fair!"

"Potter!" Snape advanced on him, grabbed him by the arm with a bruising grip. His face was stone. "Get a hold of yourself."

Harry drew in a gasping breath and wiped his face, trying to brace himself for calling in an emergency, duelling the other man if he has to, to drag him in. He tried-not very hard-to pull away.

And then Snape plucked away the length of scroll and stepped back.

"Fine. But you must fix the hole in my yard."

"W-what?"

Snape gestured out toward the back door, beyond the kitchen. "The Fiendfyre. Bad for resale value. I was going to fix it myself but perhaps you can save me the trouble since it was your bloody idea in the first place."

He paused, then continued, looking almost embarrassed, "I really am just moving. I've secured a cottage in Dorset until September."

Harry collapsed onto the sofa. "Jesus."

Snape pressed his lips together. He rounded the sofa and sat down, facing the floor, hands folded between his knees. His hair curtained his face. They sit together for a minute. Then two.

"Harry." He swallowed audibly. "You're not wrong."

He didn't dare interrupt.

"I have been trapped," he goes on, gingerly, selecting each word with care, "in a very unpleasant mindset. Not just this summer, though this certainly hasn't been my finest. And I have very effectively isolated myself-it was conducive to my cover as a spy, made it less work, but it is admittedly less than ideal otherwise."

He tilted his head toward Harry, face still hidden.

"You've handled yourself admirably. Far better than I would have, obviously. I think leaving Cokesworth, maybe even leaving England, is something I need to do in order to become 'just a person', as you say."

"You're not-" the words strangled him.

"Going to kill myself?"

He finally brushed his hair aside and looked up at Harry, eyes glittering. Not with malice. "I don't think I can promise you that. Not if you don't want me to lie. But I don't plan on it."

"You'll keep in touch at least? You'd-you'd let me know if-"

"I don't know if that's wise," he says carefully. "But I will reach out to someone . And you can always reach out to me."

Harry let out his breath in a rush.

"Is that all? Is that really all? You can't promise… That's bollocks. All the hoops you've had me jump through, and I feel better, but, and you're just going to 'reach out to someone'?"

Harry thought he really was going mad because he could swear he heard an echo of Snape's laughter wafting up from the open trick-door to the stair.

"Fine. I will make arrangements with a healer. Does that satisfy your highness? I'm twice your age, for Merlin's sake."

He took a deep breath.

"It's a start."