If he could get the wand …

Severus Snape was no stranger to hopeless causes. Fighting Albus Dumbledore, when the Headmaster believed that he was right and everyone around him dangerously wrong, was near the top of the list.

The familiars were wildcards. Mimikyu would likely rush to protect her master, but Albus wasn't targeting Harry.

Fawkes would protect Albus, possibly, or else stay out of it.

The Banshee … he wasn't sure. Squibs were immediately discounted in magical duels; her mistress was in no danger, so long as she stayed behind himself and Andromeda.

(If only he could get the wand.)

###

Dumbledore glanced at the door as Mimikyu and Misdreavus flew back into the infirmary. Andromeda cast a silent Accio and closed her eyes, hoping her aim was true.

"Eyes!" she snapped, trusting in Snape's quick reflexes. A moment later, she felt a soft, tattered blanket settle over her outstretched hand.

Dumbledore shouted — in pain, she thought — and there was a lightning-bright flash.

That damn phoenix.

###

Griselda was positive that her sister's favourite professor had gone mad.

In the middle of an American Western standoff, wands drawn and about to blaze, Snape suddenly turned and tackled her to the floor. Somehow, he managed to wrap his cloak around her to cushion the fall. Itchy wool covered most of her face.

"What in the nine bloody hells —"

"Close your eyes!" the man hissed. "Don't look at her, we don't know what happens to Squibs!"

The Headmaster yelled, sounding very unhappy, and then came a flash so bright she saw spots on the inside of her eyelids.

Dree shrieked — not her ear-piercing wail, but a cry of pain — and Griselda tried to stand up. She felt the soft brush of Dree's hair and tried to scoop the little familiar against her side. Just as she made contact, Snape grabbed her by the waist and yanked her back down.

Unfortunately, this dislodged the corked vial containing the Dark Lord's soul fragment. It was charmed against breaking, but the sound of glass rolling across the stone floor was the only clue Griselda needed to realise what had just happened.

She grabbed blindly for the vial just as someone (Dumbledore, she assumed) tried to Summon it. The glass slipped through her fingers, but the cork did not.

With a pop, the Dark Lord was freed from his prison of roughly forty-five minutes.

###

The soul looked like dirt ground into the cracks of a tiny cupboard.

The soul felt like static and smelled like ozone.

The soul barely struggled as it slithered from its glass prison to the stones of Hogwarts. It writhed like a snake made of smoke.

Mimikyu gave it no time to enjoy its sudden freedom. Ignoring the incredibly rude phoenix who had just blinded them all (except for herself), she swooped down like an avenging raven and swallowed the disgusting thing whole.

It was the purest lump of dark magic she'd ever ingested, and Mimi was briefly afraid that it was too much. She had no idea what would happen, if this were the case. Perhaps she'd vomit it up? She didn't think she could explode …

The foul thing gave one last, nauseating wriggle, as though she'd swallowed a live fish, and was still. She felt the darkness begin to break down, particle by particle, to be remade as the smoke of her limbs. It would join the dark magic she'd siphoned from Harry's scar over the years, the same miasma that she had so patiently broken up and ingested in tiny fragments from Severus Snape's Dark Mark.

Unlike a Dementor, Mimikyu was choosy about her food.

###

No one saw what had happened. Snape and the exorcist were flat on the floor, Dumbledore had just been struck blind at the sight of Mimikyu's true form, and Madam Pomfrey was dazzled by Fawkes' flame.

Griselda's vision came back first. She rolled away from Snape, who was still pressing both hands to his eyes (while keeping hold of his wand, which seemed dangerous), and looked for her vial. A sooty black stain on the floor proved that the soul fragment had leaked out, but gave no clue as to where it might have flown or leaped or crawled. She looked to Harry, but Mimikyu was calm by his side and he had no new burns.

Andromeda staggered toward her, one eye open and watering. "Get his wand," she said in a harsh whisper. "You don't need magic to grab a stick!"

Feeling oddly that this was cheating, Griselda walked up to the Headmaster and plucked the wand from his hand. When he turned wildly, demanding to know who was there, she simply took a step back and slipped the wand into her rucksack. It felt so warm, almost alive, seeking for something ... and then the feeling passed, and it felt like all other wands in her hand. Just a glorified stick.

Fawkes seemed unbothered by his master's disarming, so Griselda assumed that it was really the right thing to do. For the greater good and all that.

"What happened?" Snape demanded. "The vial —"

"The spirit dissipated," she said. "It must have been very weak indeed. It's possible that one bit of stone is now cursed, but otherwise, Voldemort is gone. That fragment, at least."

"You have no idea what you've done," Dumbledore said.

"Isn't this what you wanted, Headmaster?" Snape enquired, eyebrows raised. "Or did you attack myself, Madam Tonks, and an unarmed, non-magical woman for no useful purpose?"

"There are other fragments tying Tom Riddle to this world," Dumbledore said. He sounded twenty years older and not a little miffed, Griselda thought. "That fragment, the terribly mangled soul that left Voldemort's body on the night of his defeat, knew the nature and location of all its fellows, by virtue of being the most recent. The same cannot be said for certain of any other piece."

"And how were you going to make it talk, Headmaster?" Snape asked, sounding unimpressed. "Thumbscrews? Cruciatus? Spray-bottle of holy water?"

"I had hoped to consult Miss Foy—"

"Torturing a captive soul is punishable by Dementor's Kiss, sir," Griselda said. "How could you even consider such a thing?"

"A fragment of soul is not a soul," was Dumbledore's reply.

"You're a politician at heart, Albus," Andromeda said shortly. "Madam Pomfrey, please be aware that the Headmaster will likely need the same treatment as my nephew. Per Miss Foy's recommendation, I will leave my son in your care, but I will be staying and so will his familiar. Severus, be so kind as to stay with Harry until my return. I need to inform my husband that our son has been attacked at Hogwarts."

###

Harry slept through the first Quidditch matches. He slept through the holiday break, although by early November, the Tonkses brought him back to convalesce at home. Mimikyu stayed near him for every moment of his healing coma. Daphne and Hermione visited him via Floo from Hogwarts. They read to him and talked about their studies. Both girls visited after Christmas and left their gifts, as well as Draco's, in a neat stack on the mantel.

Andromeda Black noticed that the girls seemed to have formed a real friendship. She was touched that her nephew dared write his name on a gift for Harry Potter, and cheered by the knowledge that he was friendly with a girl for whom his father wouldn't have cast an Aguamenti if she were on fire.

But most of her emotion and energy was reserved for her son. Ted took leave from work so as to share caregiving duties. Harry would wake up soon, Madam Pomfrey assured them, and so did the experts from St. Mungo's. He was healthy, and he wasn't in pain. He just needed time to heal and replenish his magic.

When he opened his eyes, it was spring.