ELEVEN

Now, he thought, is the time where I slip out the way I came in, go to my library, find Ron and Hermione, and all of us get back to our rooms before anyone suspects anything. He knew damn well he wasn't about to do anything of the kind, but it was best to get the formality of thinking it out of the way--rather like playing "Rule Britannia" before opening the Quidditch Cup Tournament--as sort of a prelude to a riot. Hermione had known this was here. No; she'd only said there was a suite hidden behind the bookcase. Hermione wouldn't have been able to stop herself from telling one of them about a way into another Hogwarts. At the very least, she would have warned him tonight before she set him off alone to pillage the bookcase.

He wandered toward the front desk, his face carefully blank, trying to seem as much a browsing student as possible while his brain raced under the implications. Miss Pince was there, stamping books with a heavy, practiced hand. That much was the same.

If this was--say it, Potter--if this was the past, Harry could see the damage that might be done. It was like all those horrid films Dudley was keen on, where some blundering idiot went hop-skipping into the age of the dinosaurs and stepped on a beetle, and then came back to a world where Wellington had died a crib-death and everyone spoke French. Until just then, Harry thought those films were drivel; now he wished he'd seen a few more of them. What would happen if that girl he'd just spoken with was really a manic-depressive who went back to her room and swore herself to a life of celibacy because he'd dumped her, and then her daughter would never be born, and the daughter was supposed to grow up and forge a lasting peace between wizards and Muggles . . . this was already giving him a headache. It was also giving him too many ideas.

What if I could find my parents and tell them to steer clear of Peter Pettigrew, how's that for an idea? What if I could find him myself and just . . . just take him out? Wouldn't even need a spell for that; I'd push him out a window and then run like hell back through the passage before anyone could stop me. What if I could tell Dumbledore about some of the Slytherins going over to Voldemort's side? Maybe he could stop them. Voldemort might never come to full power. People would still be alive: my parents, Cedric Diggory . . . .

He put a lid on those thoughts, fast. It was exactly what Snape had warned him against. He tried to recall the exact conversation between Snape and Evensong, but the black spot had been there then, and it got in the way. The gist of it was clear: don't go snooping, and don't try to alter anything.

Which meant Snape had known he would do this. He had also said that everything had to come to him of its own accord, but that was impossible since he already did realise the significance of what was going on. Sort of. A little. He only had to do exactly what he would have done if he'd found this place by accident, without the warning.

At this thought his whole brain seemed to cramp. It was impossible. There was no way he could behave exactly the way he would have done if he hadn't known, because there was no way of not knowing what he did know. His head whirled as it struggled to find some level ground in this churning muddle of ramifications.

Right now all that was coming naturally was an insistent urge to use the toilet.

He tried to ignore it, but it was one of those things that only got worse the longer it was disregarded. There was a bathroom just outside and up the hall from the library. He could make it there and out in five minutes, tops. Then he would go back to the real library.

Please, please, don't let me screw up the course of history by needing to take a leak.

He left the library through the main doors. The empty passage was just the same: right would take him back to the stairwell and Gryffindor--his Gryffindor or otherwise--and left led to the Astronomy hall, the narrow stairs to the Divination tower, and the boy's loo. Nothing would get accomplished by his hiding in any version of the dorms (and, he reasoned, the password would be a little ahead of its time), so he started left, where voices filtered through classroom doors, telling him that in this Hogwarts, classes were almost done for the day.

He was just leaving the bathrooms when a bugling voice nailed his shoes to the floor.

"Potter! What are you doing here?"

Hurrying toward him was a strange woman with shoulder-length, startlingly white hair and a long oval face. Around her waist she wore a silver chatelaine similar to McGonagall's, the cumbersome loop of keys jangling against her hip, and the Gryffindor Head-of-House badge on her shoulder, but she certainly didn't look like Professor McGonagall or anyone else Harry knew. She bustled swiftly up the hallway, frowning. "Why are you still in the halls, Mister Potter? If you get one more demerit--"

Stepping into the light, she seemed to get a good look at him at last and paused, confused.

"Oh, I'm sorry, lad. Thought you were someone else." Her face hardened to its former severity. "But whoever you are, I'm sure you're late for something. Go to."

"Yes, Professor, I was just leaving." He trotted dutifully down the hall away from the library, trying his best to look like a obedient, well-behaved pupil despite his lack of books, and thanking whatever powers that watched over wayward students the woman hadn't noticed his off-colour robes. As soon as he was safely out of sight, he doubled back and peeped around the corner. Damn! She was still there, now chatting with another professor right in front of the library doors.

Harry headed down the corridor, down the same passageways he had known for years, everything familiar and yet not, until he came out on the third floor balcony overlooking the games yard. This was what he would be doing, he justified, if he'd come into this position unaware: he would snoop.

The sun was wintry-bright, the air brisk and chill. The four house pennants fluttered on either end of the field, making sharp, rippling snaps in the high wind. Quidditch practice was in session in the yard: players in Gryffindor red and gold zipping in and out of patterns, shouting to each other, laughing as someone took a Bludger to the tail of his broom and pinwheeled sideways like a bicycle spinning out on a patch of ice. Watching them made Harry feel oddly homesick, a stranger even though he'd never left home.

Fascinated, he slowly descended the steep stone stair to the yard, crossing the old walkway without taking his eyes from the players in the air. He wasn't alone; some older boys on their free period sat on the front of the stands, watching the practice. He didn't dare to go sit with them for fear of someone asking who he was and what he was doing here, but he couldn't help drawing nearer to the edge of the field, close enough to have a good view of the action, far enough not to attract the attention of a wandering Bludger.

The Keeper got behind a fast-moving Quaffle and kicked it back to the playing field as someone else--it came from the direction of the Seeker but Harry couldn't be sure--cried out. With his own keen Seeker vision Harry spotted the fall of something small and glittering, big enough to be the Snitch but the wrong shape. Just as he reached the edge of the field, someone in the air shouted, "Hold!"

The players paused in midair, groaning and muttering, as the Gryffindor Seeker broke formation. Descending to only a yard or so above the turf, he moved slowly across the edge of the field, squinting as he scanned the grass. One of the boys in the stands laughed, "Next time you lose those things, I'm Spellotaping 'em to your head!"

Shading his eyes, the Seeker gave him an exasperated look. "You might give me a hand finding the blasted things, Sirius; we're not going to get much practice done with me running into people every ten seconds."

Harry, fortunately, had noticed where the whatever-it-was had landed. Trying not to attract a Bludger--both of which were still hurtling about, dive-bombing players--he crossed the lower field, hunting in the dead winter grass until he came to about the right spot, then scouting until he discovered a forlorn pair of wire-rimmed glasses. A rather large chip was missing from one of the lens, a lump of tape attached the earpiece to the frames, and the right hinge was held together with a bent hairpin, as if the owner might have crash-landed a few too many times for safety.

Waving the glasses over his head, he signalled to the Seeker. "Oy, over here! I've got 'em!"

The Seeker did a smooth midair turn and whizzed to Harry's side, breaking with admirable control. "Yeah, cool. Thanks."

Harry's palms were damp as he handed the glasses over. It was hard to tell while he was still on his broom, but the Seeker looked perhaps an inch taller than Harry himself. He was angular, skinny, with a wicked grin, black windblown hair swept back from his face, and a small scar on his chin--not good-looking, but the grin made up for a lot. The word that came to mind was dashing, which was a word Harry associated with knights in armour, not a fellow Quidditch player in grass-stained red-and-gold. The broom was a imported Thorshammer 500, which Harry had seen only in the "One Hundred Best Brooms of the Century" issue of Which Broomstick. As he recalled, the Thorshammer was somewhere in the top twenty.

"You're really great up there," Harry said, inadequately. "You're really . . . um, great."

"Well, I like to think so." He settled them on his nose, blinking a few times to adjust. "There, much better. I'm terrifically farsighted without 'em."

"Yeah," said Harry, his throat gone suddenly dry. "I'll bet you are."

From far above, the Keeper called, "Are you going spend all day blethering with your slacker friends, Jim, or are we going to play?" In the stands the aforementioned slacker friends hissed and mimed casting hexes on the Keeper.

"Duty calls." He gave Harry a strong, dazzling smile. "Thanks again." The Seeker ascended, and before Harry could stop himself he called, "Jim?"

Jim waited expectantly, the broom bobbing in the air above Harry's head.

He intended it to sound casual, but the words came out with more emotion than he knew. "Take care of yourself, why don't you?"

"Will do." Jim gave him the thumbs-up, then ascended to join his impatient team.

A knot came up in his throat. Quietly he returned to the comforting shadow of Hogwarts, which would always be there, and ascended the stairs two at a time, back to the third floor entrance.

Classes were just letting out, and students queued in the halls, trying to get down the main stairs for dinner. In this throng he might be able to get back to the library without notice. He slipped into the flow of bodies, jostling along with the rest, when a very bony elbow came out of nowhere, aimed dead at his nose. He ducked his head just in time, but the blow caught him on the side of the temple hard enough to make him chomp down on his tongue and knock his glasses askew.

A smirky voice that sounded exactly as if it belonged to the elbow came from nearby. "Sorry. Perhaps you'd better use the midget passage."

Harry straightened his glasses, shut his eyes, counted three, and thought to himself, When I look up next I am going to see a very tall, skinny Slytherin.

He opened his eyes. It worked. Only there wasn't just one Slytherin, there were three, all of them hurrying away chuckling to themselves, and if the one in the middle wasn't Draco Malfoy's dad then Harry would eat peppermint until he chucked up. Same pinched ferrety face as his son, same fair hair. Portrait of the bastard as a young man. The thin, mean-mouthed boy to Malfoy's left was unfamiliar. The one on the right seemed like a chunkier, blue-eyed edition of Gregory Goyle.

He ran his bitten tongue over his teeth, tasting blood. "Hey, Lucius!"

Lucius looked around, seeming surprised when he saw Potter standing firm amid the rushing students, his arms crossed, his face resolute. Harry guessed that his usual prey never talked back. Looking at young Lucius, it occurred to Harry that one swift, hard kick to the cods now would make his entire school career that much less bothersome thirty years later.

"Heard you got a tattoo over the summer," Harry told him. "Can I see it?"

Lucius went three shades more sallow than Harry thought possible for anyone not afflicted with terminal liver failure. He wanted to come after him, that was certain, and his bully friends looked as if they would be glad to do the job for him, but there were too many people around and all four of them knew it. That look of disbelief, the childish dread of being found out, told Harry everything he needed to know: Lucius Malfoy had taken the Dark Mark as early as his final year at Hogwarts. He had a weird moment of perverse sympathy for Draco. Growing up with a dad like that . . . Malfoy never had a chance.

Right. So I've seen my father play Quidditch, and I've scared the fear of Potter into Lucius Malfoy. If I die tomorrow, I will have lived a full and happy life.

After a moment's conference, the three Slytherins broke free of the pummel and headed back the way they had come, toward Slytherin Hall. Harry would have given anything for his Invisibility Cloak and a clear shot at following.

On the heels of that thought came another: in this Hogwarts there was a way to obtain both of those things, if he could only figure out the password to Gryffindor.

A young Gryffindor girl, possibly a first-term, sat on a nearby hall bench. She and her equally young friend kept sneaking glances at Harry, then turning to each other and giggling like gossiping sparrows. First-years. Perfect. Ones who no doubt had never been within Bludger-bashing distance of the real Jim Potter.

Harry smoothed down his hair, tried to imitate Jim Potter's devastating smile, and, feeling as if he were in a rather bad play, sauntered up to the girls. They froze, going from dead white to pink to hot furious magenta. The first girl's mouth dropped open, exposing a half-chewed piece of gum stuck between her teeth.

"Look, girls," he said, with as much sophistication as he could muster--and it did come easier when he was supposed to be his father rather than just plain Harry Potter who lived with Muggles during the summer. "I must be going mental, but I've totally forgotten the house password. Do either of you know what it is?"

The first girl seemed in a trance that Jim Potter would deign to speak to her. The other, more level-headed, managed to stammer, "It's ah . . . er . . . 'peppermint toad'. I think."

It would be the one sweet on Earth that I hate. "Thanks."

He headed back toward the Fat Lady's portrait. Behind him the girls burst into a new flurry of frantic twittering, this one sounding more mouse-like than sparrow-like.

"Peppermint toad," he said, and hoped it would work.

The Fat Lady squinted down her opera glasses at him. "Have I seen you somewhere before, young man?"

Without thinking he blurted, "This morning, after breakfast. I was the one who forgot his Potions book and had to get back in a hurry."

No doubt the Fat Lady had heard similar tales of woe throughout her entire career at Hogwarts. Graciously, she nodded, and the portal swung wide. Harry dashed in, startled at the sheer number of lies he was accumulating as he moved through Hogwarts and wondering if one of them might come back to haunt him. Oh, well. In for a Knut, in for a Galleon.

He got a few curious glances from the few students that remained in the Common Room, but answered them with smiles, nods, and a sense of purposefulness. He didn't want to stick out in anyone's mind as unfriendly. From constant confrontations with various Slytherins he knew that unsociable people were easy to remember, but friendly ones who seemed to belong tended to fade into the background of one's mind. A smile and a flash of the Gryffindor patch seemed to satisfy most of them, and he moved unhindered up the stairs to the boys' dorms.

Now it would be a problem of trying to figure out which room had been his father's. Was his father's. He thought he was going to have to walk into random rooms until he found a set of occupants who didn't shout at him to leave, but the reality was much simpler. One door in the boy's dorm possessed a small hand-lettered notice reading "Plotting in Progress. Trespassers Will Be Hurled Violently Backwards by Lupin's Morning Breath." Beneath this declaration was a set of initials: P, W, M, & P.

In the middle of all the chaos, this was the thing that checked him. He laid a hand on the little sign with a feeling of near veneration. P, W, M, & P. Padfoot, Wormtail, Moony, and Prongs. Boasting it right out in the open, where no one would assume it was anything more a bunch of odd nicknames--Potter's crowd acting weird again. Until only a few years ago, even Dumbledore hadn't known about the unregistered Animagi in their midst. They had been a bold lot, his father and his friends.

That inexplicable, heartbroken feeling of homesickness washed over him again, stronger than before. Ron and Hermione were great, the best friends of his life, but knowing that did not erase the knowledge that he would never have friends like these four had once been. He almost wished he could leave them a note warning them that they were coming to an end. In only a few years Wormtail would betray them, Padfoot would spend twelve years in prison, and Prongs--James Potter--would . . ..

He pushed the urge away. That would definitely be changing too much.

He knocked timidly, plotting a story about borrowing a quill-knife. When there was no answer from within, he pushed the door open.

The room was empty. Of course it would be: they were probably still all down on the Quidditch field, or else at dinner. Either way, he had at least another half-hour, but it was best to pretend they could walk in at any minute. The prospect of being caught stealing by a young, bad-tempered Remus Lupin or Sirius Black--or, somehow even worse, Jim Potter--was not a comforting one, but it made for a wonderful incentive to hurry it up. Inside, the place looked very much like the way Ron left a room, only more so, since Harry had a habit of tidying the place up and it looked like this lot never did. He stood in the centre of the room, trying to think. If he were his father, where would he hide a Cloak of Invisibility?

With no clues forthcoming, the best he could do was rummage. Here the messy room was an advantage, since it already looked as if it had just been looted, but the drawback was that in the chaos he couldn't remember where he had already searched. When he found it at last, he had to laugh. It was exactly the same place he would have hidden it--in a false bottom under his trunk.

He pointed his wand at the trunk. "Incantatem dispellarmus."

Nothing seemed to happen when the Charm-Breaker Spell hit the trunk. Harry gingerly pried off the false bottom, noting as he did so what a trusting soul his dad had been: no traps or charms to keep off would-be thieves or roommates who might double as occasional borrowers. As soon as he had the cloak, he swung it over his shoulders, noticing as he did that it felt different--heavier, thicker. Newer. It was safer to keep it on for now, as eventually someone was going to realise he wasn't Jim Potter or a Duplicate thereof or even a new student who happened to look like him. He left Gryffindor house with only a perplexed look from the Fat Lady, who wasn't yet used to being opened by non-visible parties.

Malfoy was out there somewhere. And Snape. But, he reminded himself, so were his mum and dad.

Invisible, he slipped down the hall and took the unfamiliar left-hand turned toward Slytherin tower.

* * *

The stone serpent warded the passage to Slytherin. Harry sat in its shadow and waited. It had been close to an hour since he'd left Gryffindor. Dinner was long since over, and someone should be hurrying back to their dorm, as he doubted that Slytherins were any more fastidious about returning to their dorms on time than any other House in Hogwarts. Less, if he could venture a guess. The waiting paid off as two girls, a very small one who looked like a third-year and a much older one with a auburn braid swinging to the middle of her back, approached from the far end of the hall. Harry fell into silent step behind them as they came under the watching snake's cold shadow.

"Pass-s-s-word?"

The girl with the braid stepped briskly up to the statue, her chin in the air. "'Now'."

"Enter." The serpent slid back to reveal an archway behind it. The taller girl marched inside; Harry followed behind the younger one. The giant statue undulated its stone neck. "Not you."

"I'm with her; I'm just going to my room."

"Not you." Harry could have sworn the eyes flickered, focusing on him.

"But I've been here for five years," she protested. "Look, you let me in or you're a eight-foot-high pile of rubble."

She was still stamping her foot and asserting her rights as Harry slipped around her and headed into the dorms.

No immediate sense of doom pervaded him. There were no Hands of Glory or amulets of Saturn's Might arranged in immediate display on the coffee tables, no skulls of lowerclassmen from rival houses exhibited atop the chimney ledge, no glossy posters of Voldemort on the walls. It was only another room, this one upholstered in silver-grey and emerald, with the same style of ugly, comfortable chairs and desks. Even the glowing fireplace was in the same spot. Students lounged about, doing studies or chatting; two of them were seated at the chessboard, locked in a debate over whether or not adjusting a piece meant that it had to be moved. It would been easier to tolerate if there had been bloodstains on the walls instead of all this . . . all this ordinary.

Curled contentedly in the fireside corner--what Harry would be doing right now if he had his way--the auburn-haired girl was seated on a footstool next to a dark-haired young man whose chair, pushed into the corner, provided a excellent view of the rest of the room. With his boots propped up on a second footstool, he flipped through a book, and the girl leaned against his armrest as she silently read over his shoulder. Harry registered the book's title--Moste Potente Potions--and placed it just seconds before the second Slytherin girl marched into the Commons, nearly walking into Harry.

At once he flattened against the wall and held his breath, but the girl was too miffed to feel the graze of his cloak against her leg.

"The stupid snake wasn't going to let me in," she complained. "Thought I was going to have to threaten its miserable life to get through."

"Isis, you couldn't threaten a doorknob."

"Shove it, Amarantha." She threw her books down in a huff. "I hate that snake. First it decides to change the password all on its own, then it sits there hissing 'Not you, not you,' until you want to cut off its head with a garden hoe."

"It only does that," remarked the young man from behind the protection of his book, "when someone who doesn't belong is trying to get in. Are you smuggling Hufflepuffs into the dorm again, Isis?"

"I couldn't very well tell him kiss off, Severus, he's my stupid kid brother. Six generations of Slytherins, and look who's stuck with the reject. Somebody give me a cigarette. I'm dying. That McGonagall's a full-blown harpy."

The boy in the chair reached into his robe pocket and passed her a pack, then lit it for her. The pack made the rounds to Amarantha before he took one himself and put the rest away.

It was Snape. Only a year older here than Harry, totally changed from the man he knew as a professor, but still striking enough that under a different set of circumstances Harry would have mistaken him for Snape's son, or a much-younger brother. The hair was longer and thicker, and the face clean-cut, with razor-sharp cheekbones and jaw and none of the stark lines in the forehead or around the mouth. The eyes were exactly the same: midnight black, glittering like fractured obsidian, aloof and untouchable. Only one person in the world could hold an expression that way, in control and yet wholly inscrutable.

The first girl, Amarantha, said, "McGonagall doesn't have the belly for Transfiguration. You watch. She'll be packing her bags by next September."

Isis took a deep pull, held it, and puffed smoke like a dragon when she spoke. "By Christmas, if I have my way."

Harry couldn't pull his eyes from Severus. It was unbelievable the changes time had wrought. At the same time a cold injection seemed to pump through all his limbs, replacing the fluid in his backbone with ice water. Even knowing how Snape would turn out in later years didn't help the reckless fury he was feeling now, the blind urge to reach out and wrap his fingers around the man's neck.

Severus kept glancing away from his book. Harry watched his eyes closely. From here it looked as if he was reading the same few lines, over and over, only moving along when Amarantha nudged him to turn the page. Finally he shut the book, keeping his finger in to hold his place.

"Do you ever get that feeling of being watched?" His words seemed to be directed at the two girls, but they carried to the whole Commons.

Oh, bloody hell.

"Something going on, Severus?" Amarantha asked.

"Something's always going on." From another person this might have sounded derisive. From him, it came out as a mere statement of fact. He closed his book and stood. "If Malfoy ever turns up, I'll be in my room."

"Shifty Sevvie." Isis slipped around to occupy his vacated chair. "You and Lucius are thick as thieves nowadays. People will say you're in love."

He disappeared behind a tapestry that seemed to depict a large sea-serpent swallowing a whole lion, and his heavy boots reverberated up the stone stairs. Harry made a dash for it, not pausing when several people saw the tapestry flipped back a second time on its own. Here Harry had at least two advantages--silent, soft-soled sneakers, and the sound of boots on a hard floor to cover any sound he might make.

Snape entered his door and let it swing shut behind him, giving Harry barely enough time to slip under his outstretched arm. There was a small, automatic clack of metal on metal; Harry would think about it later. Snape took off his cloak, hung it on a hook, and went to his desk with his book.

So this was Snape's dorm. It didn't look as if anybody else had been here in ages; all but one of the bed looked as freshly made-up as if they were waiting for students on the first day of the year. He wondered if Snape had managed to talk his way into a private room, or if there were just so few Slytherins this year as to allow single occupants.

Maybe he killed off his roommates, Harry thought. On second thought, that wasn't remotely funny.

Directly behind him came a knock at the door. Harry jumped, then automatically slipped away to avoid being struck by the opening door. Severus sighed, and Harry recognised it as the sigh Hermione let out when she was pestered while reading. "Who's there?"

"Lucius."

He snapped his fingers. The bolt on the door flew back. "Come in."

Malfoy came in, turning around at once to draw the bolt, which straight away registered the circumstances as questionable. So far as he knew, student rooms did not have bolts. He wondered if it was a Slytherin thing or strictly Snape.

"Amarantha said you were looking for me," said Malfoy. "I was hoping you'd still be up." He pulled up a chair and sat across from Severus, who gave another enormous sigh and returned Moste Potente Potions to the top of a pile of similar tomes.

Malfoy gave a sharp, fleeting scowl. "Sorry to tear you away from your one true love, Severus, but something rather pressing's come up. If you can spare a moment of your time."

"Better reading than knocking books out of little girls' arms in the hallways, Lucius. I understand that seems to be your lot's strong suit these days."

"You've got a bit of a lip on you, don't you?" Malfoy settled himself into the chair, crossing his legs and raising his chin a notch. So that was where Draco got that pose.

Harry drew to the far corner, where he could still see everything but ran no risk of being trod on or collided with. Near his hand, on a bedside table, sat a large cut-glass vial: hold it by the long end, smash it against the stones, go for the eyes. No, that was a stupid idea. Instead, he took out his own wand and held it hidden under the cloak, waiting his chance.

Severus's black eyes focused like a hawk's. "You look uneasy. What's gone on?"

"Something odd happened earlier. Really odd. Some Gryffindor stopped me in the middle of a crowded hall and asked to see my tattoo. He knew exactly what he was talking about, Severus, I could see it in his eyes."

"Who was it?"

"That's the trouble, none of us know. Brawnson thought at first it was James Potter. So did I, until I heard him speak."

"What did he look like?"

"Black hair, shaggy. Glasses. About Potter's size, which is what threw me at first; there's not a lot of people that small at Hogwarts. And a Gryffindor."

"Anything else?"

"No. He shook me so much, we headed off the other way. Didn't see him at the dinner hour. I even asked What's-His-Name, Rattail, about him. He said he'd never seen anyone like. Have you spoken to him at all this week?"

Rattail? Wormtail.

"Not recently. He's got that look about him, though. I believe he's going to be fair game, if he can be talked up a bit more. That would be your job, Lucius. He doesn't seem to like me. Get him alone. And don't bother with Lupin again, no matter how much he tries to bait you. Last thing we need is for you to get bitten some night; there's a menagerie running about this place after dark as it is."

"Besides," said Malfoy, sounding as if he were quoting, "Lupin belongs to you."

The cold demeanour fell to the wayside. He stood up, pacing. There was a worn spot in the rug on the path he had chosen. "Those bastards set me up. I damn near got myself killed over that. Just because Sirius Black and Moony Lupin thought it might be interesting to see the look on my face. I'm not fond of jokes, and I'm not entirely certain that Jim Potter wasn't chuckling up his sleeve at that one as well."

"He pulled you back out of the passage."

"He probably got weak-stomached over the notion of seeing blood. He's a coward, a big talker. All flash and no bang."

"And he took Lily," Malfoy said softly. He seemed to be enjoying it.

Snape turned sharply on his heel. "Give it up, Malfoy. You honestly don't still think I was ever seriously interested in that sparrow-brained little mudblood, do you? Jim was welcome to her, as far as I was concerned. I was glad to have the sex-mad bitch off my hands. Gave me a chance to breathe in private."

Harry very nearly threw back the cloak then and there. He only just stopped himself by biting the sore spot on his tongue until it started bleeding again. The taste subdued him. He could wait until Malfoy left before he made a move.

There was a long, deadly quiet between them, Malfoy with his hands behind his head, looking very much as if he were enjoying a really good play. Severus folded his arms around himself, looking taller and more gaunt than ever. His face was a carefully cultivated blank.

"Methinks the wizard doeth protest too much," Malfoy said at last.

"It doesn't matter," Severus said, not moving. "He'll be taken care of, sooner or later. And frankly, I don't care if Lily goes up with the boom."

He went back to his desk, took Moste Potente Potions from the top of the stack again, and, flipping to find his place, began to read.

Malfoy stood up. "I enjoy these chats of ours, Severus. Is that it? You start up reading again, and I'm supposed to leave?"

"That's the idea," he said, without looking up.

"What about the Gryffindor?"

"If you see him again, find me. I want a look at him."

"And then what?"

"And then I'll handle it," he replied simply, still reading his books. From his tone he might have been talking about the weather. Harry had never been so chilled in his life as he was at those five straightforward words. Suddenly even Voldemort didn't hold a candle.

Malfoy paused, one hand on the latch. "You're the one around here who's supposed to know what he's doing. Don't throw it all away on a girl and a stupid prank. There are bigger things at stake, Severus. Think about it."

He left, leaving Harry shaking and white with rage.

The Slytherin password was a good one: now. He pushed back the hood of his cloak, and was treated to the unnerving sight of watching himself materialise in the full-length mirror across the way. He picked up the glass vial, lifted it over his head, and smashed it on the floor.

Severus didn't look up. "Are you still here, Lucius?"

"You know," said Harry coldly, "an otherwise intelligent man once told me that one tends to be defined by one's associates. What should I think of you?"

With a swiftness born of expertise, Severus's stood up in a rush of black robes, his left hand going to his inner pocket.

"Snape. Turn around. And keep your hands where I can see them or so help me, they'll find you imbedded in the wall." His voice trembled with ferocity, though he fought with everything in him to keep control. Snape had been a duelling master when he was younger. It was going to take every particle of concentration to keep himself one step ahead, although two steps would be preferable, but if he could manage it, he might make it out of this walking nightmare alive.

His hand did not withdraw. Before he could pull out a wand Harry's was up, the tip pointing at Snape's face. "Where I can see them!"

Severus paused for a moment, then the hand crept with nothing more threatening than his cigarettes and a lighter. Not the gold one with his initials, but a smoky green one patterned with dragon scales. When he clicked the button, the lighter burned with a bright blue flame.

"God, I've sidestepped into Hell." He got the cigarette started, setting both the pack and the lighter on the arm of his chair. "The Potters are multiplying. Very funny, Jim. Invisibility cloaks, sneaking past the door-guard--do you have no sense of self-preservation, or do you just have to have one last hurrah at my expense before you graduate?"

"I'm not James Potter. I wish to God I were. Because he wasn't a coward, no matter what you seemed to think. He saved your life once, and you never had it in you to be grateful. Lupin would have killed you, if he'd caught you, and it would have been your own fault. Nobody forced you down that tunnel. You went on your own."

Harry advanced, wand out. He knew about six really nasty spells, spells that would stop someone or hurt them really badly, but one good one was all it would take.

"What are you, his brother?" Severus stepped closer.

"I've always meant to ask you what your problem was with James Potter. You've always seemed to have it in for him. Now I know." His father's name had been spoken in hidden places by this man; he had won over Peter Pettigrew, who sold his parents to Voldemort, and now all had come full-circle to Harry. It would be worth it, he thought, to destroy everything that came afterwards to bring this whole miserable game to an end.

Severus tossed the half-finished cigarette to the floor and ground it out. Harry stepped into the ring of torchlight, well away from Severus, trying to remember everything he'd read about duelling. All he remember was to never look at the opponent's face; always watch his body, and keep track of every move.

Severus's eyes widened briefly as he got a clear look at Harry at last. They narrowed at once, the expression of alarm vanishing as if it had never been there, but Harry had seen his shock and they both knew it.

"I should have known," he said softly. "You have Lily Evan's eyes."

Severus shook out a second cigarette from his pack and drew it toward the burning lighter.

"Those things will kill you, you know," said Harry quietly.

"Probably," he agreed, and, spitting the cigarette from the side of his mouth, blew hard across the tiny flame, which mushroomed to a dragon-like gout of fire leaping directly at Harry's face.

It seared him, seeped under one lens of his glasses which exploded outward with the heat. He heard a crackling near his ear, smelled burning hair. Frantically he swatted at one side of his face. The sleeve of his robe caught briefly and went out. The pain in his face was bigger than the world; it totally excluded all rational thought.

From behind him: "Mobilarbus!"

A piece of quartz the size of a Quaffle lifted from the desk and slammed into Harry's side just under the armpit as he raised his own wand. It hurt to breath, but he managed to choke out, "Incendio!"

The front of Severus's robes flared in bright green fire, leaping dangerously close to his face, and in the time it distracted him Harry managed to point his wand again. "Expelliarmus!" In his panic all sense of proportion was lost; the wand snapped out of Severus's hand hard enough to wrench his entire wrist backwards.

By the time he recovered his weapon, Harry was on his feet--one hand pressed to his ribs, the other locked around his wand--scrabbling at the bolt, and flying through Slytherin's Commons, jumping over a student on the floor and pushing another out of the way on his way to the door. His shoulder slammed hard into the stone snake; he could no longer see from his left eye and didn't know whether the blindness had been caused by the brilliant flare, the rapidly swelling blisters on his face, or if the fire had damaged the eye itself. It hurt too bad to wonder long. As long as he had the one good eye and feet that would take him, he was going to get out of here.

He took the back halls, clambering down the steep dark steps from Slytherin, past what would one day later be Snape's potions hall, and through a tiny passage almost too narrow for his shoulders; he had to turn sideways, stone scraping his belly. Footsteps pounded up the halls behind him as he wiggled out on the other side. No time to think; just run just run--

He was within sight of the back steps to third floor; he and Ron had used this passage on hundreds of occasions, most memorably the time they'd used Polyjuice to sneak into Slytherin. It was the best way to get almost anywhere on the third floor unobserved. Halfway up the stairs, the unclasped cloak fell from his shoulders. He skidded to a halt, turned around, scrabbling for it--and then was flying off again for the library as Lucius Malfoy squirmed from the narrow passage. Severus was right on his heels. Harry missed a step, tripped, turned the fall into a roll down the stairs just as Lucius's voice rang out, "Stupefy!"

It missed him on the ground, but if spells had mass then Harry might have felt the wind off it. The fall had knocked the wand from his hand. On his back like a turtle, no way to run, he shouted with as much intensity as he could muster, "Avada kedavra!"

Lucius stopped in his tracks, his blue eyes widening, one hand grapping for his heart, while Harry clambered back to his hands and knees, snatched his fallen wand from the third stair, and got to his feet under him. Running was agony, and he wasn't sure he'd make it to the library. It felt like pencils jabbing between his ribs, into his lungs, but satisfaction kept him moving: Lucius Malfoy had fallen for the bluff.

Severus started for him, and this time the spell wasn't anything he'd learned at Hogwarts.

"Crucio!"