Harry turned his back on Dumbledore and stared determinedly out the window. He could see the Quidditch stadium in the distance. Sirius had appeared there once, disguised as the shaggy black dog, so he could watch Harry play ... he had probably come to see whether Harry was as good as James had been ... Harry had never asked him ...

'There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry,' said Dumbledore's voice. 'On the contrary ... the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.'

Harry felt the white-hot anger lick his insides, blazing in the terrible emptiness, filling him with the desire to hurt Dumbledore for his calmness and his empty words.

'My greatest strength, is it?' said Harry, his voice shaking as he stared out at the Quidditch stadium, no longer seeing it. 'You haven't got a clue ... you don't know ...'

'What don't I know?' asked Dumbledore calmly.

It was too much. Harry turned around, shaking with rage.

'I don't want to talk about how I feel, all right?'

'Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human -'

'THEN - I - DON'T - WANT - TO - BE - HUMAN!' Harry roared, and he seized the delicate silver instrument from the spindle-legged table beside him and flung it across the room; it shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall. Several of the pictures let out yells of anger and fright, and the portrait of Armando Dippet said, 'Really!'

'I DON'T CARE!' Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. 'I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANY MORE -'

And while he said those words, Harry realized they were true. He realized that he never stopped before to ask himself if he wanted in. He just did. And Sirius was so proud of him ... But now ...

Now Sirius wasn't there to be proud anymore. His parents were gone too ...

Harry felt like a fog had entered his brain and wouldn't leave. He would sometimes yell at Dumbledore while the old Headmaster tried to explain. When the Occlumency lessons were brought up in the conversation, there was nothing more to explain. It was clear that for Dumbledore, Snape could be forgiven for his actions against Harry, the living reminder of his father, but it was not the same for Sirius, who hated Kreacher, the living reminder of his parents.

Harry yelled, but let the old man continue with his story. He heard the prophecy, it felt like a dream ... no, a nightmare.

'So,' said Harry, dredging up the words from what felt like a deep well of despair inside him, 'so does that mean that ... that one of us has got to kill the other one ... in the end?'

'Yes,' said Dumbledore.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. Somewhere far beyond the office walls, Harry could hear the sound of voices, students heading down to the Great Hall for an early breakfast, perhaps.

That day, Harry still felt the fog in his brain. While his friends were talking to him in the hospital wing, he took part in the conversation but ... He couldn't bring himself to care anymore. He cared about his friends but ... He couldn't do it anymore. And that prophecy was really the worst of it. How could he ever kill that man and make it out alive?

Harry wasn't the smartest student of Hogwarts but even he could see that it was just impossible. Voldemort had years of learning and practicing magic behind him, magic that was said to be so terrible, no one even dared to think about it. And Harry ... Well, he was just a teenager who had just lost his godfather. And it was because of him ... and Snape.

Snape who had taken his childhood hatred against him. How was it OK for Snape to do that and not OK for Sirius to hate Kreacher? Harry was lost. He had only one thing left in his mind: He wanted out. He didn't want to die, he wanted to live. Have a normal teenage boy life, without a prophecy deciding that he had to die. He was done losing people he cared about. His parents, Sirius ... If he didn't find a way to stop it, it would soon be Hermione, Ron, the Weasleys, or his friends. Luna and Neville didn't deserve to die for helping him during that false rescue mission.

He wanted out. And Snape owed him. After all, if he had been able to see him, Harry instead of James, maybe his Occlumency lessons would have prevented that ... But he was not the only one seeing James instead of Harry. Sirius did that too.

Still, Snape owed him for the lessons and for Sirius. And Harry had a big favor to ask.

The very same evening, after saying goodnight to Hermione and Ginny, Harry went to his dorm, as usual. He lied down and took one more hour to think. What about Hermione? She would never be safe with Voldemort alive. But she was smart. Voldemort would never be able to take over the whole world, she could go to France, or any other country. She was smart enough to find a way out too.

During this hour, while drowning in grief, Harry thought about what the consequences of his decision could be. He had tears all over his face, thinking about how he was abandoning them. But he wanted to live so much. And that fight in the Ministry made him realize that he wasn't a match to any of them. He couldn't fight a Death Eater and win, so going after Voldemort was madness. Yes, he had to learn how to defend himself, and that was the whole point of the AD ... But he couldn't kill. He couldn't even cast a Crucio. He needed a way out.

After an hour, when he couldn't hear any sound, he took his invisibility cloak, the Marauders Map, and went out of the Gryffindor Tower. He stopped to hide behind a column and consult the map. He could see that professors were patrolling the corridors more than usual. They were probably all on high alert. But he had only one in mind. Snape. He needed to find him and get him to pass a message.

After a few minutes of research, he found him, he was heading down to the dungeons. Harry kept looking until the little dot stabilized in a room just beside the potion ingredients reserve. He never bothered before to know where the man's private quarters were, why would he need it, right?

Harry began his trek down to the bowels of the school, avoiding teachers and ghosts on the way, making the most use of the secret doors and passages that he knew. Once he finally arrived in the dim lighted corridor that was just next to the ingredients reserve, he stopped. There was no door and no portrait in sight. Remembering his excursion into the Slytherin Common Room with Ron, he concluded that the door must be hidden into a wall. Now, how could he get to open it?

He thought about using Parseltongue, but there was no snake in sight. And then he realized that he didn't need to go in, if he could get Snape to come out of his lair. With a decided look in his eyes, he aimed at the wall.

'Bombarda,' he said. The wall didn't move but the noise of the explosion was enough. Harry took his invisibility cloak off and waited. Soon enough, another part of the wall opened, just a few steps to his left.

'What are you doing here Potter? Don't you think you've done enough to bring attention to you lately? You need to come and bother people in their sleep?' said Snape, with fury in his eyes. The man wasn't even out of his work robes, he could hardly claim that he had been asleep! But Snape wasn't known to be fair, especially not to Harry.

'I need to talk to you ... it's about ... what happened in the Ministry.' said Harry, not really knowing how to get Snape's attention to move from the explosion to why he needed to talk to him.

'I don't care about what happened, Potter. And if you think that I am going to cry over your dog -' Snape began.

'I want out.' Harry interrupted him. He knew that if Snape talked about Sirius, he would never get to the point. Snape looked at him, this time Harry could see questions in the man's features.

'Out of what, Potter?' asked Snape.

'I want Voldemort to -', Harry's voice was shaking but he was determined to be heard.

'Don't say His name, Potter! And come in here', Snape grabbed Harry's arm and pulled him violently through the entrance.

Harry saw his surroundings quickly while being forced to sit on a brown armchair. It looks like he made it into the snake pit. The first thing he could say was that Snape clearly liked his comfort. The armchair he had been sited on was scratched but quite nice to be honest. The rest of the furniture looked used but well taken care of. Harry could see a small side table beside him with a cup of tea, waiting for its owner on a coaster. Harry paid little attention to the fireplace on his left and turned his head to the right where he could see a dinner table filled with books and papers, surely homework. Harry could also see a single other door leading, he could only guess, to the professor's bedroom.

His attention went to his teacher when he heard him begin to speak.

'Now tell Potter, what is so important that you would come to me in the dead of the night, talking nonsense about the Dark Lord?' asked Snape.

'I know that you are in between the two sides of the war ... Dumbledore trusts you and so does Vol -' began Harry.

'DON'T - SAY - HIS - NAME - POTTER!', yelled Snape.

'Why?' asked Harry, completely confused but the older man insisted. 'There's no one else but you.'

'Of course, the Almighty Mr. Potter wouldn't lower himself to do the tiniest research about the war that killed his parents. You are so full of yourself that you -' And this time, it was Harry's turn to interrupt.

'I WANT YOU TO TELL VOLDEMORT THAT I WANT OUT OF THIS WAR, I DON'T WANT TO DIE, I AM DONE FIGHTING. AND DON'T YOU DARE TALK ABOUT MY PARENTS.' Harry was breathing heavily but continued. 'Don't talk about them, not when you are not even able to tell me and my father apart ... You are just like Sirius; you are stuck in the past. Well, guess what? I am not. I am not my father and I refuse to die because some crazy woman said so.'

There was a short silence during which Snape could have killed Harry with his eyes.

'I don't want to know how you will do it, but I need you to make sure that he receives that message and leaves me alone.' he said.

Severus Snape looked at this young man in front of him. This boy looked so much like James Potter. He just hated bullies. And the boy had dared to compare him with the mutt! But he swore to protect him. A long time ago ... He did it for his beautiful Lily. So, he looked closer ... He could see grief all over the boy's face. And fear. The boy feared for his life and Severus was bound to protect him. Severus knew at this very second that whatever he was going to say would change the events of this coming war. So, he took the time to breathe, to calm down, and looked again at this boy.

He wanted out. Severus knew it was absolutely impossible. Even if he found a cave to hide the boy, The Dark Lord would never stop searching him. But he also knew that a truce, of sort, was the only scenario where he could stay alive. The vow he swore tied his very life to this boy. And the boy was so reckless, so ignorant ... Severus would die because of this Gryffindor recklessness if he didn't put a stop to it. And now, this ... this idea of not fighting ... could it be his way out of the vow? Going all in with the protection, to go all out with the repercussions? The more he thought about it and the more he liked the idea.

'You know that will never happen, but I can try' said Snape, surprisingly calm. 'Do you have any idea what to do if He refuses your ... offer?'

'Well ... no ... but I figured, maybe ... I will continue to study, and then find a job I like.' said Harry, looking at his hands. He had been so focused on getting out that he didn't think about what would happen after.

'Potter. In a few days, people will start looking at you to save them again. To defeat the Dark Lord like you did all those years ago' said Severus, putting his hands on the armchair, his face close to Harry's face. 'Do you really think that He is going to let you walk around, being a beacon of hope?'.

'Umm ... No, sir.' The well of despair was back in Harry's stomach, and he could feel his heart inside his throat.

'No. We will need the Dark Lord to accept your offer, and we will need to make you disappear.' said Snape.

'What?' yelled Harry, 'I just told you I don't want to die, that's the whole point, and you tell me -'

'I am telling you that Harry Potter must disappear. That doesn't mean you will have to die' Harry looked at his professor with wide eyes, not understanding what he meant by that. And for a second, he could have sworn that he saw the ghost of a smile on his teacher's face.

'In a few days, I will come to you and ask you to follow me. You will do it, no questions asked. I will have an answer for you.' said Severus. Three days before the end of the year. That should give him plenty of time to think about what had just happened and decide on the right actions to take.

Harry couldn't believe his luck. It worked! Snape was going to help him! He still didn't understand how or why, but the most important was that he had been able to find the door that would let him get out of this mess.

When Severus closed his door behind the teenage boy, he collapsed on his armchair and stared at the fire. He had three days to find what to do. For now, he was only sure of three things. One, the Dark Lord would never accept Potter's idea and let him live his merry life in peace. Two, Dumbledore must never know that his Golden Boy was more of a chicken than a lion right now. And three, if Severus wanted to stay alive, he needed to hide the boy, time for him to be responsible and stop being a coward like his father. If people knew that Potter had abandoned them, the war was lost even before it had officially begun.

Of course, this hiding situation couldn't last. Well, if he was thinking only about his own survival, it could, but he had to be a better man than that. Potter had the power to defeat the Dark Lord. The boy just needed time to figure out what it was and master it.

So, he needed to hide the boy where he could still have access to information, books to learn magic and time to grieve and calm down. After all, he was just a frightened child who just figured out that he had a target painted on his back.

It came to him during the night. As he was turning in his bed, unable to find sleep, he realized that he had the perfect way to hide someone. It wasn't without flaws, but no one suspected anything as it was one of his pet projects.

After the last year, when Barty Crouch was using Polyjuice, Severus had wanted to study the potion a bit more. If brewing Polyjuice was quite difficult, understanding the delicate balance between the ingredients, the motions and the temperature was only for the gifted. Trying to change this balance to improve the outcome ... That was Severus' true passion since his days as a student.

He never achieved the result he wanted with Polyjuice. He wanted the potion to last longer than an hour before letting you revert to your original form. So far, he had only been able to make the change permanent. This could work as a cloning potion if only he wasn't confronted with a little problem: the age wouldn't adapt. Which was really infuriating as Severus has always been able to find solutions before, but that potion was proving itself to be more difficult to change than he had predicted.

But in this case, his failure could be his greatest achievement. And so, he began to plot a masterpiece of deception to get Potter out of the Dark Lord and Dumbledore's clutches and, hopefully, save his own life in the process.

The fire was roaring, and Harry's hands were wet with anticipation. He was back in his potion teacher's quarters. Three days had passed. Three days with everyone looking at him again and whispering things about him. Three days that he couldn't bring himself to be with anyone. It was like all joy had left him. He was desperate. He needed it to work. He didn't want to lose someone else. He needed to leave as soon as possible to prevent any more death.

Severus Snape was sitting in front of him in another armchair that must have been conjured for the occasion.

'You are going to listen to me, Potter, and I don't want to be interrupted. At any moment. If you have a question, you can ask it at the end. Understood?'

'Yes, sir.' answered Harry, not willing to blow his chance.

'Good ... I didn't give your message to the Dark Lord. I said, DO - NOT - INTERRUPT - ME - POTTER!' yelled Severus, staring into the green eyes of his student. 'As I was saying, I didn't talk about our conversation to anyone, not the Dark Lord, and not Dumbledore. None of them would let you disappear into the wild, and that is exactly what you need to do if you want to avoid fighting.'

Harry closed his mouth, without trying to say anything else.

'Don't be fooled Potter, I am not doing it for you. I am merely taking advantage of an opportunity. I have a way to permanently change you. You will become someone else. There is no turning back from that, the moment the potion enters your body, Harry Potter will cease to exist, and you will take a new identity.'

Severus gave Harry a few seconds to fully understand his offer and continued.

'As you are still a minor, you will need a new family. People that will be in the known ... Unfortunately, we can't afford that. The more people know, the more at risk you will be. Which is why, if you still want to go through with this idea, you and I are going to be family. You are going to change into a younger version of myself. My parents are long dead and won't see any inconvenience in a new addition in the family. You would be presented as my little brother. You wanted to study both muggle and magical schools, so I enrolled you in a muggle boarding school and you are learning magic during the summers, which is why you are not registered in any magical schools.'

To say that Harry was shocked was an understatement. That was never going to work, he couldn't have Snape for brother. They would kill each other within a week! That would be trading the Dursleys for Snape. And even if he would be able to do magic ... It was Snape!

'Now, before you go into a panic attack, let me tell you something. I have seen during our Occlumency sessions how your muggle family treats you and I can assure you that you would be treated more respectfully if you were to come and live with me. I do not intend to starve you, Potter.'

Harry felt shame slowly filling up the emptiness that he had felt for the last three days. He knew. He knew about the humiliations, the cupboard, the hunger. He knew.

'Now, if you accept that proposition, I have a room that can be rearranged to your taste, and I can take care of everything else while you are on the train. I have clear instructions for you to follow in order to make your grand escape. I simply need you to think very carefully. There is no turning back.' said Severus, still using his calm and professional voice. As if what he had just explained wasn't life changing.

And while his professor was serving himself a cup of tea, Harry began to think. No. He couldn't do that. He would be trading a bully for another. The only improvement would be that he could use magic during the summer. But part of him still thought that it was because of Snape that Sirius had died. And this could be a trap. He didn't really see how but that didn't mean that it wasn't a trap.

So, if this was a trap, he would be running into Voldemort's arms, and if it wasn't, he would have to put up with Snape for two months before he could go to a muggle school and live a normal life. Harry didn't feel like gambling it all on a man that was so biased against him. He couldn't forget five years just like that.

'Why are you doing this?' asked Harry, 'you said you were taking an opportunity. What's in it for you?'

Severus took the time to settle his cup on the side table before answering.

'I will be honest with you Potter, but I can't tell you everything, that would put me in too much danger. I am, after all, stuck in between two sides of a war. Neither side fully trusts me and if some information were known, it would mean my death in the most awful way.' Seeing that he had Harry's full attention, Severus took a deep breath before continuing.

'First, I must say that I like the idea of getting rid of anything that could remind me of James Potter. It may seem childish to you but that man ... our hatred ... It made me make the worst mistakes of my life. I can't live with his face walking around in the same corridors he used to torment me in. I am willing to start over with you, Harry ... But I can't do it with Potter.' Severus stopped for a moment to let the child try to understand.

'Then, the main reason why ... I would say that it's because you deserve to be protected. And because that day ... when you lost your mother ... I lost my best friend. I owe it to her.' That was the most Severus could say without lying. He couldn't talk about the Vow, and he didn't really care for the boy.

Harry was surprised, to say the least. Everybody knew that he wanted a family that cared for him, but the man didn't even mention that. If it were a trap, he would have. Harry wouldn't have believed him of course. Harry couldn't think for a moment. Then he started to process the information he had been given. Severus Snape was likely being honest with him. He couldn't stand the sight of his face but was willing to try, if Harry said yes. He had been James Potter's enemy and also Lily Evans' best friend. No wonder the man was acting all weird with him! And then Harry saw a new opportunity. No one had ever really talked to him about his mother. But Snape could. And he was willing to protect him in her memory.

Harry knew that Severus was right. People wouldn't leave him alone if he didn't change his identity. Voldemort would always be after him because of the prophecy and Dumbledore ... well, for the same reason. And no one should know.

It took him a long time to make his decision. Yes, in a way, he was betraying his father. But he sacrificed himself so Harry could live, and that was the best way to do it. Yes, he would live with Snape. But only two month every year and he already survived the Dursleys. Yes, he would be stuck in between two sides with his new brother. But he would be in a grey area, and with something resembling a family. Something that Harry needed more than anything else right now.

'Alright, I'll do it.' said Harry determinedly.

It was Severus' turn to be surprised, but he quickly continued.

'In that case Potter, be prepared for the most important lesson of your life. You will have to remember everything that I will tell you tonight and follow it to the letter. Am I clear?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And call me Severus, you need to get used to it.' said Severus, reluctantly.

'Okay, Severus.' said Harry, with a smile on his face for the first time since Sirius' death. He was doing it. He was getting out of the war, saving his own life.