Hey all! Sorry this took such a long time, but it contains a dream sequence which is pretty long and it took me awhile to get it straight in my head. Can any one guess what it all means? Everything in the dream represents what has happened, will happen, or a person. Who can get it right??

Sorry, but my updates probably won't be as regular as before. Too much to get done. I will get them out pretty quickly though. I promise. Sorry!!

Enjoy!



Snape sat against the demolished Labyrinth wall, not noticing as it magically repaired itself. He stared, unseeing, at the last place he had seen Harry. He thought of the last four years, of all the times he had thought he would lose the boy. He thought of all the effort he had gone through to ensure he wouldn't. He thought of all the crazy luck the boy had had to get into and back out of trouble alive.

Mischievous green eyes danced in front of his eyes and windswept black hair bounced around a pale smiling face. He wondered where and how a student had managed to make it past his shields; a Gryffindor student named Harry Potter, no less! He wondered how drab his life would become without at least the knowledge that Harry was out there safe somewhere, even if he wasn't currently sitting frightened and cowed in Potions class.

Snape shook his head, not noticing the small rat that crept towards, careful to remain in the shadows. He was too busy picturing Harry's funeral and wondering if he could be there for it.

His mind revolted and his chest squeezed painfully, drawing a loud gasping from him. He couldn't be dead. He couldn't be. He was alive. Somehow Harry Potter would survive even this.

"I don't care who your father was," Snape whispered to the voice that reminded him what Harry's true parentage was. "James Potter is dead. He hasn't seen you grow up. He hasn't protected you. I have. And I'll find you, somehow."

Finally Snape stood and looked at the chaos that was left of the maze corridor. He straightened his back and began to pick his way through the rubble to continue on his way, wishing as he went that he could shake that little niggling doubt that lingered in his heart -- right next to the fragile star of hope.

A faint hope shone in Snape's heart, the first in a very long time. He would find survive this and he would find Harry. Voldemort could not take this, at least, from him.

A small figure crept in its rat form after him, though hesitantly. He had a lot to think about and little rats just couldn't think too quickly...

***********************************************************************

It was a clear autumn day. The sun was shining as a few stray fat cirrus clouds drifted across the light blue sky. A light breeze sent rainbow swirls flying past as leaves fell from the trees.

Harry stood amazed. 'Wasn't it just the middle of summer,' he thought as he glanced over the meadow in which he now stood. 'And wasn't I just in a labyrinth with Snape?"

At the thought of Snape, Harry spun quickly around, calling, "Professor!" A panic had welled up in him at the memory of just why Snape had left his side. Frantically, he began search so some sign of the dark, forbidding figure of his professor.

The panic began to overwhelm him as he search and the air itself seemed to suffocate him. Harry tried to calm himself, but his chest continued to tighten painfully and his breath came in agonized gasps. Harry fell to his knees, sure that if he only called out one more time Snape would hear him, but he had breath enough only to fall to his knees. From there he fell onto his side and curled up, praying for it to end. Harry squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on continuing to breathe.

When he opened his eyes again, it was a clear starry night with the brightest waxing moon Harry had ever seen. He stared at it, his eyes a bit pained by its bright light, as a lingering cirrus cloud drifted over to partially cover it. He finally looked away from it and his eyes landed on the constellation Taurus. He was immediately reminded of drawing star charts the past year with Ron for Divinations and then of his current circumstance.

"Is this Heaven," Harry asked aloud to himself. He reached over with one hand and pinched his other arm.

"No, I don't think it's Heaven..." Harry said with a flinch. He surveyed his skin curiously as he dimly recalled that pinching himself was supposed to hurt a lot more, and feel less like the sensation one would get in a foot that was asleep.

"Maybe I'm dreaming," Harry said to himself. "Yeah, that must be it. I'm dreaming this and that's why it's all so strange."

Satisfied with this explanation, Harry stood and brushed the loose blades of grass from his cloak. Noticing the cloak, Harry smiled and nodded his head, sure that he had found the right explanation.

Harry turned and began to walk. He didn't know where he was going, but he knew that he'd get there eventually. He walked for what seemed to be only minutes and yet somehow he knew that a much longer period of time was passing. The sky began to grow dark and clouds soon rushed in to plunge Harry in darkness.

From behind him, Harry could feel a dark, malicious presence. He felt that it was chasing him, that if it caught him he'd be dead. Harry began to run, tripping over the uneven ground. He willed himself to an even greater speed, though, as he felt the thing behind him gain. Soon he could hear its breath as it breathed and its feet as they too pounded the earth.

Harry screamed for help and looked back over his shoulder. Only darkness met his gaze and he turned back to concentrate on his running. He could feel long, inhumanly smooth fingers begin to grasp and pull at his billowing cloak and screamed again.

Up ahead, he heard an answering howl and then a huge dog and a large wolf appeared ahead of him. They matched each other's strides head for head as they ran towards him and Harry knew that they would help him.

The thing behind him chuckled, "They will not be in time, MY boy."

Harry screamed and the dog stopped its advance. The wolf kept running, though, and with a fierce growl it leapt at the creature that now held Harry in its grip.

Harry felt the creature's long hands grasp him painfully as the wolf wrestled it for him. It was painful, but the wolf finally managed to pull it away from Harry and drag it away to a mountain cave that Harry was sure hadn't been there before. The wolf tossed the creature in and rolled a stone in front of the opening, ensuring its quarry would not attempt escape. Harry could still feel it howl, however, and the howls seemed to ignite his blood.

He looked down at his arms and chest and could see huge gashes that were oozing blood. He tried to stop it, but the more Harry attempted to stop his blood, the more it bled until finally Harry was too weak care anymore. And then something remarkable happened; a snake formed from the blood that was dripping down his body.

The snake, a beautiful green and silver creature, wrapped itself around Harry before slithering slowly away to lay coiled at the foot of a tree. Lightning flashed and Harry was startled to see that the snake was hurt. It hadn't been hurt when it was formed, Harry was sure of that.

Thunder rocked the ground beneath him and another flash of lightning lit up the earth around him. Harry saw himself with widened eyes as he glance back down to keep his footing. He was healed. All the blood had seemingly disappeared.

"What," Harry gasped, his voice drowned out by another break of thunder.

A soft chuckle, somehow louder than the thunder had been, danced to Harry on the rising wind. He searched the area in the next flash of lightning but found nothing. A flutter of wings announced the arrival of a large bird and Harry finally glanced above him.



A phoenix flew above him with wide wings and an even longer golden tail. It circled overhead a few times before flying back to land on the wolf's shoulder. There it began to sing. The storm died down immediately, the thunder vanishing from the air almost instantaneously, though the creature's howls could still be heard.

"You have been given a choice, young one," the phoenix told Harry finally. "How you choose may well decide everything, so choose well. As you can hear, death still wants you and he will be a fierce foe for you to fight back."

"I - I don't understand," Harry said uncertainly.

"Yes, you do, my boy," the phoenix told him. "But I will make it perhaps a bit clearer. This wolf is all that keeps that death at bay for now. That dog is the path back to your body and back to your friends and safety. The snake is the way back to Professor Snape."

The phoenix paused for a moment and waited for Harry to think a minute.

"So I must choose whether I live or die," Harry asked.

"In a way," the phoenix replied. "Death would be a very good path to choose. There will be no more pain or fighting there for you. The dog is another good path. There you will find everything you hold dear in this life. The snake is the riskiest option. If you return to Professor Snape you will continue as you were and be in just in much danger of dying. Only the next time, you may not come here. You will go to the place with the strongest pull."

Harry listened to the howling of Death and shivered. No, he would not like to go there.

He looked at the dog and smiled as he thought of his friends and Sirius. They were all the family he had and he did not want them to be worried for him any longer than necessary.

Now he looked at the snake and felt fear creep its way up his spine. He didn't want to leave Snape, he was just getting to know him. Harry was fascinated by the kinder side of his cruelest teacher and wanted to understand just exactly why Snape treated him as he did. Harry knew by now that Snape felt something for him, something he didn't want to admit to. Harry'd always missed not having the love he should have had growing up and so he instinctively knew that he could find perhaps some of that love with Snape now, if he only he could weather the storm finding it would stir up. Unfortunately, he also knew that that storm itself could destroy them both, if Voldemort didn't get there first.

And then there was the memory of his existing in limbo. That had been an experience Harry was not in a hurry to repeat. He'd felt so helpless that way. He couldn't touch, do magic, HELP Snape in anyway. What good would he be like that? Wouldn't he just get Snape killed that way?

"Hurry and choose," the phoenix told Harry. "The doorways are closing and soon you will have no choice.

As Harry watched in horrified disbelief, the dog began to trot away and the snake began to slowly climb the tree it had lain under.

"No," Harry cried, quickly making a decision. "Wait!"



Next Chapter: Searching Once More for Its Sound