Chapter 28: The Watcher

Notes:

I forgot to publish to this site. This is not my main site. Mispelled on purpose: AAAA OOOO 333333 dot com as Bridgette_Hayden.

I'm back! Every day has been a journey to get back to posting chapters and stories. If you're a seasoned writer, you know this cycle. Short projects tend to have red hot momentum, but if a story lasts longer than six weeks, you're looking at endurance issues that will compete with your life and exhaust you. Better be sure the story is worth it, if you're gonna drag it out for over a year. My tastes have modified while writing this story, so that's the risk of longterm projects. You're not going to be exactly the same person you were when you first thought up the project. You will have expanded into other areas and ways of seeing things. Never-the-less, I'm still VERY much in love with this story because I just want to show it the way I've imagined it. I can't wait to get to some of the more Snarry scenes, all while respecting what Harry and Draco are caught in. I wish I could tell you what I've been through, but it's better to simply let it go. I'm excited to get on with things. I'm doing great, I hope you are too. I'm a little chatty because it's so great be able to post these chapters after months of writing what I could alongside life-issues. Everything has been slow going, but the passion behind my ideas is still ignited. I couldn't give up on this story if I wanted to. But it has to be finished, finale, the end. That's the only way I'm going to get to my outside novels. It's time to show Snape's side of the story and let love determine what will happen between him, Harry, and Draco. Thank you guys for hanging in there.

Muggle police could hardly access the residential area, for all the onlookers congesting the street. This is partly why Ministry authorities got to Harry first. People abandoned their cars, cell phones held aloft, and chased the action down as Lucius's body was pummeled from one end of the street to the other. A news helicopter managed to get most of it on film and distributed it as breaking news. The sight of one dark haired, erratic young man throwing an older one across hedge after hedge, abusing him in brutally impossible ways, publicly, from one lawn to the next, was apparently newsworthy. The fact that the man with the long white hair kept surviving being smashed and thrown, even being hit by a car, certainly added a dimension of excitement to that evening's top stories. What came to light, was that people were spending more time trying to figure out what they were seeing than why the fight was taking place.

Both men looked out of place. The younger one may have dressed more modernly, but he was smaller than average and moved like a man with twice his physical strength. His grimace had captivated the crowd, whether anyone approved of such a violent display or not. He looked like a murderer in action. His determination was horrifying, yet muggles all over the suburbs could not look away from their televisions. The fact that his efforts should've killed his victim, but didn't, made his appearance all the more noteworthy.

Lucius's silk, bed attire of grey and burgundy gown, trousers, and robe, were generously referred to as "an eccentric smoking jacket" in one report, and "cross dresser" in another, as viewers pondered over his alabaster good looks and how they were being ruined by all that lost skin drug over the asphalt.

There was one in the crowd who disagreed. He wore oversized dark sunglasses and lingered on the edge of the mob forming. He had arrived, not by car, but by apparation. He wore an ensemble of dark, drab layers, but his black leather boots were immaculate and shining. His hair, parted in the middle, swept from his temples in an aerodynamic flow past his shoulders. The little bit of skin showing on him, were the parts of his face above and below the dark glasses. Pale, unsmiling, and judging by the way he kept his arms folded as he watched the scene unfold, unimpressed with the spectacle.

Severus Snape kept calm amid hysteria around him. He arrived with the intention of snatching Harry from the scene and dumping him in some neutral location, under conditions where he would have to calm down if he wanted to find his way home. He kept anti-apparation cells in various locations for exactly that purpose. He wasn't worried about having to answer to Harry. He felt confident that he could render him unconscious or conceal his own appearance, but it never came to that. When he arrived on the scene and heard Harry screaming at Lucius through tears and rage, he made the mistake of listening a second too long. He recognized that Harry's vocal chords were ripping on blades. Shredded by an injustice that wasn't going to be corrected by any law, any revenge, or any power. Part of him saw nothing wrong with letting Harry get in a few swings. And part of him knew that Harry didn't have time for that and would only jeopardize his life with his daughter further, if allowed to vent his rage so publicly.

What he did not expect, was the magic rolling off of him. He could not have rushed to stop Harry's violent spree if he wanted to. He felt it, like a force field, a thickness of air too dense to penetrate comfortably. He didn't know if it was deliberate or accidental on Harry's part. Harry looked like a wizard too hellbent on murder, to premeditate a barrier. His eyes were possessed with madness, his hair and clothes skewed as recklessly as the blood smearing his face. Somewhere in his punches, he'd gotten Lucius's blood on his fists and wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his dirty hand. Snape realized that his magic was more conscious of his surroundings than Harry himself was. Harry's focus may have been narrowed to Lucius, but his magic was looking out for him, as if he was a creature with dual vision and dual abilities. It struck a peculiar chord as he observed him. There was something familiar about it. Something reminding him of hollow, white bone crushed and broken among rocks that lay at the bottom of the ravine at Hogwarts. Scattered magic. Lost magic.

He tasted it. He leaned into it and discreetly tested the field emitted by Harry. It was raw, unorganized magic. Because it was just out there, without clear intent or will, he was able to nudge it with his own. Without a wand, he pushed by way of feel, into Harry's sphere of influence. He felt his rage. He saw Lucius's bloody face through Harry's eyes. He felt the rise of energy as it traveled to connect Harry's fist with a blow intended to dislocate jaw and uproot teeth. Harry's body didn't naturally conduct that kind of kinetic force, and the electrical signals in his muscles struggled to keep up with the lightning speed of his thoughts. He experienced this as resistance, inertia, that pressurized his chest. Emotions spilled out of him in clear streams of snot and tears as he didn't let up, didn't give Lucius a chance to breathe.

Snape saw his memories, distorted as they were. He knew that Harry was deliberately causing himself to focus on the worst of what Lucius had done to him, in order to maintain his fury and energy. He was trying to make himself kill him, because it wasn't coming naturally or easily.

Lucius could take care of himself. Snape knew this, and found it oddly curious that his attempts to defend himself were only half-hearted. Harry's magic was stronger, but Harry could never stoop to the tricks that Lucius knew, that had won him evasion from many a stronger wizard in the past.

He let it unfold. Even when muggle authorities arrived, they were too confused by it all to stay caught up with it. They tried to tackle Harry, intent on separating him from his victim. But by the time they ran to the spot, Harry's magic had already vaulted him and Lucius yards away. There was no telling what muggle cameras were recording. Backup arrived and teams of law enforcement tried circling the men to close in on them. They were interrupted by Ministry aurors, who flashed into view, ready to snatch both wizards from the sights of everyone. There were four of them, wands raised.

Beneath the hem of his black tweed coat, Snape gripped his wand and pointed it discreetly. All four saw their wands leave their hands, flying up alarmingly high. Perhaps it was the shock that caused the wands to appear suspended for an abnormally long time. Seconds. The look of disaster had all of their eyes bulging. Muggles were capturing this, the four seemed to say, as they glanced at one another. Their wands came down, scattering on the grass. After clumsily scrambling to reclaim each to its owner, they realized that Harry and Lucius had rolled into the street and Lucius was picking himself up off the bonnet of a car.

More aurors entered the scene. Snape continued to fire counter measures from his concealed location, until a few of the aurors started scanning the crowd, looking for where the interference was coming from. He shielded himself and his magic when their investigation passed in front of him. He had to hold still, and in that pause, he watched as Harry was subdued from every angle by multiple aurors. Mr. Weasely being one of the senior aurors to appear. "For Merlin's sake, Harry, let him go. Don't make this worse, son. Let him go."

As Snape's body blended into the crowd like the shadow he intended it to be, magical scans passed over him. Out of their path, he sent one more arc of intention aimed at Harry, and willed it to remain impenetrable around him for as long as it could. Skin armor. A shield no broader in range than an inch from Harry's skin. It slipped around him as he lay face down in the grass, pushed there by officials working spells to keep the muggles distracted. The smaller it was, the harder it would be to detect, the longer it would remain in place. They could take him, but they couldn't harm him. Not for a while anyway, and by then, he would see what could be done to orchestrate an escape, if it came to that. The fact that Arthur was there, meant that Harry would be given the opportunity to explain himself and a fair trial. He knew that Arthur would fight for this. That bought them time.

He waited until officials blinked out with Harry and Lucius in their custody, before returning to his subterranean den and the laboratory built there. Externally, it was a well-hidden cave. But inside, it was a many-tiered fortress of bedrock rising from a natural spring. The living quarters were dry and carpeted, lined with wine-colored textiles, varnished dark cabinets, and comfortable furniture, all encompassed by a circular reference library that climbed high against the walls.

Every article and object had been retrieved from trunks predating his time at Hogwarts, and stored in vaults all over the world. From his lab, he could survey his living space and appreciate the thirty-foot drop of the waterfall that spilled from the level where he kept his bed, down into a pool many levels below the sitting area. The constant spray and echo, filled his surrounding walls with white noise, which became a soft resonance as he focused on his projects without distraction.

There was the business to maintain, keeping locals in holistic supplies that convinced them he was simply a well-meaning herbalist hidden among them. He let Ash and Reuse run his store, while he concocted solutions the agriculturalists were realizing they couldn't live without. He kept stores of basic home remedies for the most common ailments that no community could avoid, from colds to venereal cures. His pestles and cauldrons served both muggles and wizards alike, unbeknownst to them, and inventing medicinal improvements was how he achieved any peace from life at all. The rest of the time, he was following Harry's movements, or trying to, and tracking down the progress of his grandchild.

He hadn't given up on curing the boys, but the more he researched their curses, the darker his findings became, until he found himself enmeshed in yet another facade of secrecy. This time, a world Harry knew nothing about, but which did know him. All had to be protected from that world, especially those unwitting enough to associate themselves with him. Ash, that poor bastard, couldn't be gotten rid of. He was useful but always underfoot, and his housekeeper, while enchanting, was another innocent stepping on his heels as he walked into danger after danger. He could not get rid of them. Reuse tended to mind her own business until her boss started letting his tongue slip. The illusory prison that Snape had cast him in, was helpful, but not a permanent solution.

He thought about it. As he scanned the interior, he sensed that something was out of place. His eyes tracked the disturbance to the very object lit from within a dim cabinet. Behind glass and grill, the locked crystal held its own red illumination. It seemed brighter than usual and gave off a faint aura. Snape frowned. It wasn't time to bring Ash out of that sphere. The thing glowed as if reminding him of what he banished. He needed no reminding. He would tend to that matter later. Without using his wand, his magic reached out and slammed the doors closed on the crystal.

He had to be able to concentrate on his grandchild, without worrying about Ash becoming a target. He knew that she was in trouble. He foresaw her struggle the night she was born. Though Voldemort was already dead, he couldn't be near the boys. It was too risky to let them know that he was alive, but he gave guidance to Draco's attempt to deliver her. Through dull obsidian, he sent his presence and focused all of his resources on keeping him calm and persuading her to live. While Draco scoured muggle stores for grain milks that she could digest, he fed her visions of being accepted by Harry. Her spirit was still very much in both worlds, uncommitted to the little body prepared for it. That body was in pain. She had absorbed a great deal of Harry's emotional wounds and could not tell herself from him. In Harry's lowest moments, he wasn't sure he wanted to live. This gave her no anchor upon which to cast her life. He didn't hold her for two weeks. Without his arms around her, there was nothing to dull the pain. It took unwavering determination to break through Draco's reserves and get him to hold her daily. Snape was not a nurturer, but he could clearly see when weakening energy needed to be reignited by a stronger source. This was a mechanic of touch, and he understood from the memory of his own mother, what she could impart to her child.

Finally, when Draco discovered that the act made him feel better as well, he didn't have to be persuaded so much. Picking her up began to feel natural, and not a betrayal to Harry. Draco warmed to the way she slept in his arms, and found out that she gave just as much comfort to him.

Snape remembered the exact moment when Draco relaxed and started to see her as more than a shameful burden. They were still in the cottage by the beach. It was a day of unusual brightness. It pulled Draco outdoors, away from Harry's dark mood, and he took his sister with him. He introduced her month-old self, to the world. Snape himself, was still recovering at the time. A fugitive guest in Ash's home, he watched Draco through his black rock, walk with his sister along an empty shoreline, and willed them to hang on. When he wasn't guiding Draco from a distance, he tried repairing the burnt out wires disconnecting in Harry's mind. He often took out the vial of memories that he'd removed from him and contemplated how to cleanse the brain's hardware and safely restore full emotional functioning. His daughter needed him to be whole, not short-circuiting every time stress hit. He had no cure for trauma, so he'd cut it out, taking valuable connections with it.

Harry would just have to regrow those attachments, which would take time. His magic was off the charts, there was no need to think him disadvantaged in any way. He was just stubborn, knowing full well that he deserved better treatment from life than the shoddy luck he's had to deal with so far. His dark depression was as much a temper tantrum as the baby squalling for his attention in another room. In Harry's worst moments, Snape left his body and forced energetic treatments upon him. Harry never remembered those encounters, but every so often recalled a series of reoccurring dreams, which represented them. To Harry, those dreams were Severus assuring him that he lived on. Snape didn't care, as long as Harry snapped out of it and got back to life.

He couldn't always apparate to Harry in time. He wasn't there the night that Lucius's nocturnal visit left Harry in need of hospitalization on the floor of his hotel room, and front page news.
He saw the papers the next day, like everyone, and vowed to pour Harry's trauma directly into Lucius's brain until he too stroked out from the torment. Perhaps that's what he was saving Harry's memories of the night the curse happened, for. Death was too great a mercy for him.

On the night that Lucius caused Harry's stroke, Snape had taken his eye off of Harry long enough to chase down one of the mediwizards responsible for casting the Unbearable curse.

His mind flashed to that night. He remembered hearing his rib crack under the weight of Collin Reicht's tonus spell, a bit of trickery intended to slam a tremendous amount of weight into his body. He was in the underground tunnels of Marseille, the oldest part of France, running away from the hub of the central Organization, chasing Collin. Both slipped on leaking sewage and lichen, which grew on damp brick walls dating to the tunnel's pre-revolutionary foundations. Even on such cold nights, the homeless did not wander into the tunnels for warmth. Rumors of missing victims, and a putrid vapor wafting up from soft earth and ancient stonework, kept the average citizen from exploring that far off the beaten path.

Collin had faked limping feebleness for two years, convincing everyone around him that injuries sustained during Voldemort's fall, had humbled and defeated him. By the time Snape tracked him down, he had wormed his way into the protection of the Organization by demonstrating that he could deliver to them what Voldemort had promised them, but never succeeded in achieving. Collin was one of the last of the original mediwizards who cast the Unbearable curse upon Draco and Harry. Out of five wizards, only two were reputed to still be alive, and those either dying from war injuries or hiding deep in assumed identities. While Snape made himself indispensable to Voldemort, reporting everything back to Dumbledore, Collin worked on another tangent of the Dark Lord's plans.

Before it became important to kill Harry, Voldemort offered to hand him over to the Organization in exchange for global resources that would allow him to impress upon the non-magic world how much they needed to cooperate with him. Money is of no value to people behind the curtain of world puppetry. But magic gets their attention. They are not wizards, but neither are they the same as humans. They hide behind official administrations the world over, and are not limited to this planet. Individually, the only strength they have, is the ability to absorb human sentience as a bio-energetic sustenance. People generate emoliates. Emotional life force. The Organization is headed by entities who live for eons off of the calamities of human hysteria. Earth is a farm to them. Masses are sacrificed for their nutrition. Magical people are little more than a delicacy. And the very powerful, are kept alive to be used as expenditures when needed.

They scan for energy, their sustenance and the clay by which they mold unnatural life spans for themselves. And Harry's magic, when Voldemort presented a sample of Harry's blood to them, was potent enough to become bargaining power. When Voldemort fell, Collin's survival depended on getting the Organization to believe that, while he wasn't powerful enough to deliver Potter, he could make it possible for them to take the young man and use their own means of converting his loyalty and his magic.

He chased Collin that night, risking Harry's distress signal, over having the cure for the curse in his hands. He was meters away from answers. Scans of Harry had only shown him how dangerous it was to tamper with the Unbearable curse, if he did not know how to unravel it. Collin, one of the five who had cast it, had what he needed. Knowledge.

As soon as he had regained his mobility and independence from Ash's assistance and neediness, he zeroed in on Collin and hunted him through the subterranean tunnels of Paris, to arrive at a battle between wands and wits. The tonus curse could've crushed him, had he not taken the time to reinforce his bodily shields before giving chase. It started six months prior, when he was well enough to send his magic into the portion of Harry's trauma that he had cut out and saved. The vial contained the worst moments of Harry's life, and he subjected himself to it in order to contact those perpetrators responsible. There, he found them. Collin Reicht, Dansby Lonas, Clay Whendt, Elwin Brosby, and Dash Morell.

Though Harry's immediate reaction shut out everything but his need to survive in those moments, his greater, observational mind recorded who was doing that to him. He lay on the floor, at the mercy of those five wands, and Snape, an observer, was able to trace each wand's discharge back to its owner. He studied the curse. It differed from the one cast upon him over a decade before. It was signature based, meaning that it could not be affected by anyone not possessing the originating magical signatures. The identities of those wizards were like keys required to unlock in tandem. All five had to be present. There was no point getting his hopes up for that. His instincts told him they were dead or damaged beyond helping him. But if he could find their wands, then their magic lived in some measure. Their identities were still present on earth, if irreversibly compromised. From there, he used his own magic like a dowsing rod, to lead him in the current direction of each wizard. When he followed the trails, he never found any graves, only new grass where bodies had lain before being defiled and burned. Apparently, he wasn't the only one with a score to settle and most of those wizards got exactly what they deserved.

He already had goblin spies inside the Ministry, and some of them did not need payment to be persuaded to spy. After all the distrust and upset during the war, goblins made a point of being foremost present in wizarding affairs, lest they suffer inequality and slaughter again. More and more were holding offices every year. Most had no idea who set the orders, asked for the information, and paid them in gold. But those few who did, saw Snape's betrayal to Voldemort, as the actions of an ally. They got him any information he wanted. It was relatively easy tracing the wands of those dead wizards to vaulted, archived evidence that sat in velvet lined drawers like a serial killer's memento. The Auror Department kept a treasure of confiscated items and displayed them to trainees every year, to boast of the superiority of their chosen fields. Snape took the wands and stored them beneath his old house. Not even in the basement, but in a concrete cell beneath the foundation.

After determining that three of the five mediwizards were dead, the fourth trail took him to Paris, to cult culture and a secretive brotherhood of spies and disinformation that looped on itself in the form of bureaucratic camouflage. To get to Collin, he had to get the attention of hidden leaders and elite crime bosses. Rather than bank on his association with Voldemort, he invented a weapon to get his foot in the door. A tool they could not ignore. If the mediwizards had been Voldemort's doctors, then he was his chemist, among other things.

He refused initiation among them and was forthright. He presented an herb based elixir that could suppress magic in most wizards for forty-eight hours, long enough to render them magically helpless and vulnerable. The act demonstrated a ruthless lack of concern for his fellow wizards and convinced the covert organization that his skill merited their attention. His demand was simple. In exchange for the elixir, he needed them to hand someone over. The meeting took place in secret. Twelve,10 ml vials, for one Collin Reicht.

In spite of his promises to lead them to Harry, Collin was not particularly valuable to them, but a show was made of the exchange. Once the vials were tested on captive subjects and deemed acceptable, Collin was left, wand broken, wrists tied, mouth gagged, and eyes bulging at Snape and the audacity of the group to drive away in their black Mercedes, leaving them alone in the tunnel.

"What have you done?" Collin asked as soon as Snape jerked his wand to remove the gag. The binds on his wrists fell away. "You've no idea what I had to do to convince them to take me in."

Collin was a compact little man who's spectacles shook to the end of his nose within seconds after pushing them up habitually. He had a short-clipped mustache and a distrustful glint in his eye that dared anyone to question how he became a mediwizard in Voldemort's highest ranks, yet could not manage to cure his near-sightedness. Few people knew that his optical handicap was due to a curse that had blinded him ages ago. The eyes were transplants. Muggle transplants, and magically kept from being rejected by his immune system. Wizard eyes proved to be resistant to his magic and could not be fooled to take to him, especially when he had to kill their owners to get them. Unfortunately, it took a number of victims before he worked this out and found a suitable pair. The glasses also belonged to the dead victim.

Now, his stolen eyes shifted, looking for an opportunity to run as he stalled. "It took me months to earn their trust."

Snape sneared. "You're not that naive. No one trusted you, they acquired you as a bargaining asset, which has now paid off. And if you didn't know, now you do, that they are not to be trusted. They didn't fear Voldemort and there's no reason for them to respect you."

"I was doing just fine until you showed up. I didn't give you away, why would you hunt me like this?"

Snape threw himself on Collin, pushing him against the bricks. Mist huffed from his words, ejected into the cool night air. "They know exactly who I am by now. The fact that I didn't advertise my work for Voldemort tells them that I don't want to be associated with utter failure."

"Then they also know how you double-crossed him. It was in the papers. That boy showed his memories of your memories."

"That only proves that I rely on myself, not the one giving orders."

"You're a Death Eater, same as me. That drug you just gave them, spells disaster for all our kind. Why would you invent something like that?"

"I had to convince them that I'm on no one's side and that I can't be bought. They don't have spells. The elixir is the only way they can fully disable a wizard."

"They'll kill us all. They'll want more. They only tolerate us now because we know how to protect ourselves. We make good henchmen."

"Relax. These people are above any legal system. If they wanted us dead, we would be dead. I'd say they will use the drug for a select few, when other measures fail. They want to control wizards to do their dirty work, not to kill us."

"And you just handed us over. For what?" Collin's breath misted in the dim lighting. "To talk to me? I've washed my hands of the past. I suggest you do the same."

"I intend to. And I've handed no one over. The elixir I gave them is only half potent. The first batch was at full strength. With this one, any wizard can override it within two hours and it contains a time-released antidote to bring the body back to normal within a day."

"All it takes is a second to be killed or kidnapped."

"Any wizard likely to be killed or kidnapped by your friends, must surely know what he's done to piss them off long before I got involved. They should already have protective measures in place. And speaking of which, this organization seems to harbor you only because you've promised Harry to them. I realize you've joined them only because they can afford your security, however, your concern for your fellow wizards are disgustingly hypocritical, even for you."

He panted, "Of the two of us, at least I've given our kind a fighting chance."

"Now Severus, I only told them that to gain their trust. Their help. There was no where else I could hide. I'm stringing them along. I already saw Harry kill the wizard I couldn't. Do you honestly think I would just hand him over? I'm not even capable of that."

"What makes you think they don't already know that?"

Collin's hands went up. "Look, I don't know why they took me in. I got lucky. I convinced them that I might know something, I don't know. I'm just a desperate person now, I'm not looking to hurt anyone. I'm done with war."

"What did you tell them about Harry?"

"Nothing. They know about Harry the same way everyone else does. Newspapers. Media. Hell, Voldemort used Harry's name to negotiate resources. You know as well as I do that he dreamt of quantifying Harry's magic and dangling it in front of his enemies. He started it. He wanted to sell Harry to these people, in exchange for a seat at the table where world economics are played like chess. The only problem was, he wanted Harry for himself. He was the one who first started saying he could give them the boy. You don't know these creatures. They look like people and we call them people, but they're not. They took one whiff of Harry's magic, as it lingered on Voldemort after he'd defended himself, and they decided that he was worth acquiring. They have uses for magic like that.

"The creatures call themselves Backaals. They fake looking and acting like us. It's second nature to them. They've done it for thousands of years. They don't reproduce, they just live long, so they're small in numbers, comparatively. But they live for hundreds, even thousands of years. They don't really measure time the way we do. It depends on their food source."

Severus knew about Backaals from Voldemort himself, but had already surmised that Voldemort had nothing to offer beings of that much longevity. Their intelligence and experience would've been too vast to be compatible with his. They were just another life form going unnoticed in a sea of diversified life on the planet. That included werewolves, aliens, vampires, and witches. It wasn't possible to keep up with all the non-human entities and those that only mimicked humanness, so a new, ancient species didn't phase him. Lots of things lived, that were supposed to be extinct. Lots of civilizations went underground, rather than be hunted and killed as a certain Homo sapien started to bully everyone.

"Truth is," Collin was saying, "They live off of pure energy. They always have a food source. They fear nothing, which is why we're nothing but agriculture to them."

"Then why do they want Harry?"

"Harry's magic is unique. The night Voldemort tried to take him and that oaf on the flying bike, Harry struck him. He told the story to the Organization, himself. He let them have his sleeve, still stinking of Harry's retaliation. The Backaal tasted energy. They predicted that Voldemort would lose to this superior magic. Voldemort laughed and argued that Harry had stolen magic from him, and that it was actually his power they were tasting and analyzing. Their representatives claimed to feel Harry's influence in a way they did not feel his. The piece of sleeve was presented to the oldest among them. A queen, you might say. The surface world holds no interest for her. The Backaal, it is said, have dwellings like temples underground, and they live in caverns of inner Earth so vast, they are said to look like cities. I'm not in good with them enough to have seen this for myself.

"But she's so old, she doesn't need extra energy to feed off of at all. She stays youthful in appearance. About thirty-five, to look at her. And that's only when she chooses to take human form. Apparently, there was a time when they could produce children, but no one ever remembers a human body being able to do so. When she took the sleeve, she had a way of squeezing Harry's residual magic from it, in pure form. She inhaled it, and spoke of its quality. She said it was a new energy. For a time, she was magic. She didn't do spells. She focused on the thing she wanted most. Procreation. Voldemort's defeat proved her assessment of Harry to be accurate.

"She sent spies after Harry. He was very reckless after the war, didn't care what company he kept. He was easily provoked and too sensitive for his own good after that. Every confrontation, every need to defend himself, and of course every scandalous encounter in those dark dance halls that young people frequent, left him exposed to anyone who might want to sample his magic. The queen collected what she could through others. They have a way of doing it, I don't know how. A few months later, she presented her body and said that she had mated to achieve pregnancy. A thing no Backaal had done in recent memory."

He saw Snape's expression darken, and quickly corrected the assumption. "No, not what you think. It took a male of her own kind to do it. Backaals don't have one specific mate for life. Why would they, since they live virtually forever? She was only able to accomplish this because she replicated human DNA and wore a body. She had to mate with her own kind, which are inherently neither gender until they acquire a body. But in the past, the body was just cosmetics, not really needed in order for them to function. Once she got a taste of Harry's magic, her cosmetic body began to function biologically. It could make and carry a child because that's what she wanted the magic to do.

"The Backaal, some of them dream of having children and expanding what they consider to be their world. Others feel they have paradise and want no such inevitable competition. Some envy the creativity of humans, in industry, in art and technology, as well as biologically. When you can live to enjoy, but you don't have the capacity to invent, because you don't dwell at the level of necessity, you're just stuck in a human body, which isn't native to them. It loses its charm without humans to entertain them."

Snape said, leaning in, "So they think they've found a way to breed their kind through Harry's magic? That doesn't explain why they tried to kill him."

"That's what I'm getting to. That woman gave birth to a creature that was hybrid. A female. It comes and goes from the body, but only when inside the body, it has a wizard's magic. Her physical body grows at a human rate, but the intelligence within, is not human and does not have to wait. They aren't sure if the child's body will be sterile or capable of reproduction, but this development has caused a division among them. Since that time, the queen has tried to produce another child, without success. She wants Harry alive. But many of her race feel threatened by that. Another faction of them are trying to kill Harry before his magic infects their ecosystem, as they call it. I'm afraid he's caught in a revolution he knows nothing about."

Snape held on as Collin sputtered, but some part of him recoiled, jerked back to a tremendous disturbance in his memory. Why did the theme of children keep repeating itself? For every crime among wizards, some new soul entered the picture as sure as Trelawney predicted Harry's arrival and defeat of Voldemort. As sure as his own arrival, and his grandaughter's, through acts that pushed magic to its limits. He loosened his hold on Collin.

Like something he thought he'd buried long ago, black earth caved in on an empty grave. Secrets whispered that they were still alive and he had not killed them just because he was a different person now. He came from a powerful witch and she would always be a part of him. His mother. Her jars. His magic. Harry's magic. Harry himself. It was magic denied its first appointment to live, and it would keep on coming back in the form of children who had not been allowed their births.

Witches cackled vengefully in the back of his mind.

Collin lashed out quickly. Snape's instincts were not surprised, and he held onto his wand as Collin tried to grab it. After a useless struggle, in which it only took one strike before Collin had to kneel on all fours to find his glasses, and beg Snape not to kill him, he screamed, "Just let me go! I said whatever it took to stay alive. I mean Harry no harm. I don't want anything to do with him. I've answered your questions, just let me go."

"You haven't begun to answer my questions. You and four others cursed Harry and Draco. I need to know the counter or the cure. You're still alive because you're sitting on that information."

Collin dusted himself off. The memory of the curse distracted him for a second. Long enough to determine that he was about to die because he didn't have the counter. But, maybe if Snape thought he did, he'd live a little longer.

"It's a complicated spell. I couldn't do it alone." He licked his dry lips. Snape watched his eyes dart from side to side, as if looking for a way out.

"How do I get the boys back to normal?"

"You don't. It isn't just a one and done spell. It has to be done in increments, it has to be let loose the same."

"Let loose?" Snape's suspicion eased out of his voice.

"I'm going to be honest with you, because I want to live. I'm asking for my life, for my honesty. You and I go way back."

"Not as far back as all that."

"We survived Voldemort together. You know as well as I do, that makes us brothers in a different way. Everyone shat the bed when it came to him. I have no interest in hurting anyone. Lost my liking for it years ago."

Snape extended his wand. "How do I undo it?"

Collin nodded shakily. "There's an incantation. It's layered and cyclical."

"Go on."

"And, I'd have to check my notes. Four other wizards were in on it. We came up with the structure together. It was designed for Draco, the counter might not work with Harry. We improvised. There is no counter for him."

"Where are your notes?"

"What wasn't burned, was stowed away in a church in Glowcaster. I come from a long line of vicars and country doctors, who kept the secret of magic. Every spell I invented for Voldemort, I sent a version of transcribed magic to the vault beneath the alter of my family's church.

That made no sense. A mediwizard of his capabilities would've had his spells archived in one of the many research libraries Voldemort had called his own after his hostile takeover. There were camouflage facilities all over England where experimentation and development produced volumes of ways to overthrow muggles and subdue fellow wizards.

"Then we will retrieve them." He stepped toward Collin, to call his bluff. They would either apparate to the spot or prove that Collin was lying and stalling.

"I can't take you there. It's protected by my family's magic. Anyone who isn't family, who disturbs the church, becomes violently ill. Let me fetch them. There's no point in my running, I know you'll find me. Let me earn your trust by bringing my notes to you."

"I don't think so. I'll take my chances." He reached for Collin, whose broken wand shook in his hand.

The rejection ripped Collin's mask off. He bared his teeth, lifted one arm to block Snape, and flung a deflection spell from his defective wand. It misfired, displacing both of them a few feet apart. This gave him enough time to dart out of reach, but before he could apparate, Snape shot a confinement barrier around him, trapping him from magical movement. It would wear off in minutes, but that was plenty of time to corner him.

Collin knew that he was more valuable to Snape alive than dead, and couldn't let himself take the chance of having his secrets tortured out of him. He had no real rationale for running, only that he was afraid of vengeance, knowing what he had done to so many, and knowing whose side Snape was really on. When he discovered his inability to apparate, his panic worsened and he twisted awkwardly, mid-run, to hold the pieces of his wand together and fire off a tonus hex. His execution was clumsy, his aim off, and his wand incapable of translating his intent accurately. But it produced a blunt burst of energy that went out in all directions. He got Snape, but he got himself. The fallout crushed Snape against the wall. He had already shielded himself before confronting anyone in the tunnel, and this is what allowed the weight to roll over him instead of crushing him completely. But it did break several ribs.

The mobility impairment spell that kept Collin from apparating, is what protected him from rupturing under the impact of his own attack. He recovered faster than Snape and got as far as the end of the tunnel.

Snape could not catch his breath. When he saw the other wizard getting away, he compromised the desperation of his force and aimed enough impact to cripple without killing him. Unfortunately, he did want to kill him, and his magic factored that in. Instead of pushing Collin's legs out from under him, the sculpted thrust lashed like a crazed punch and burst into Collin's back, exiting out of the front of him. It left his organs intact, but crushed his spine and left his rib cage open and protruding through his skin like a human rack of chops. He had to smother Collin's scream by withering his vocal chords. There were less painful ways of subduing him, but he wasn't too bothered by the wizard's discomfort. Not when he thought of what this person had done to Harry and Draco.

When he caught his breath, remaining bent, he sent a mending surge of magic into his side to dull his pain. He drug himself to stand over Collin's twitching legs. That wizard gurgled as his hands flopped uselessly. His pupils saw nothing through his pain and his mouth couldn't stretch wide enough to let it out. His tongue, beet red in his throat, looked as though his mouth was giving birth to something.

Snape made a point of leaning down, ignoring his own pain. His hair fell forward.

"That's for them."

He waited a full minute for Collin's body to seize through as much pain as it could handle, before extending his wand to keep him alive. He made sure that he did not lose consciousness.

"Your time is up. I suggest you spend the precious few breaths you have, telling me everything I want to know. I will heal you just enough to let you talk. Your fate after that, depends on what I learn."

Collin choked. His eyes bulged as he suffocated. Snape waited for life to dim in his pupils before jerking a plug of blood from his windpipe and restoring the range of vertebrae responsible for his breathing.

Death was too good for this wizard, yet he couldn't get sidetracked by the temptation of pouring Harry's trauma into Collin's neural synapses and forcing him to feel everything Harry felt that night. No, he was saving that for Lucius. Besides, the sociopath would only be awed by the experience, no matter how painful it was. Harry only suffered to the extent that he did, because he still believed in good and decency. He was still innocent, no matter what Voldemort had put him through. He still saw light in life and in the people around him. No matter what they did to him, they couldn't take that away. This pathetic wizard knew nothing about innocence, so he couldn't hurt the way Harry hurt. Those memories would be wasted on him.

As Snape looked at him, he regretted not being the man of demonized proportions that others attributed to his reputation. He regretted not knowing how to make a sociopath feel the pain of his victims. But if nothing else, he could extend Collin's life while he watched bits of himself being fed to some of the darker creatures kept under the Ministry's radar.

This thought, at first interesting, followed by distressing disgust. That wouldn't do. That brought back too many close memories. Memories he had to close his eyes against. Even if he'd never done it, he once thought so long and hard about feeding his enemies to animals, that it became so vivid, so tactile, and so loud in his ears, that he vomited and never considered it again. Until now.

He blinked away the memory of James Potter and his cruel friends. He grabbed Collin's jacket, removed the mobility shield, and apparated the two of them in the next second.