SIXTEEN.

Harry could not wait for Easter.

'And it should have stopped snowing by then,' Ella said as she slotted onto the bench at Harry's side. 'They'll pour the water out for an ice-rink in the courtyard. Can you ice-skate, Harry?'

'No, but you'll teach me,' Harry grinned. 'I can't break anything before the first match of the season, though. I'm saving up major bodily harm for the game.'

'I'm going to steal a snowmobile,' Blom mused from over his soup. 'It is so loud and so dirty, this thing. I will steal it and we will ride wearing leather jackets.'

'I can't go to town again, even after detention's over.'

'You don't have to go,' Blom said. 'I will steal it and I will bring it here.'

Ella exchanged a look with Harry that spoke volumes of her confidence in the fantasy. Harry bit his lip to trap the laugh.

Just then, the kitchen doors flew open. Harry straightened, about to wave them over—it was not easy to find any particular person in the bustle that were the kitchens at lunch time—but he stopped short when he saw Inna tailing Krum, wearing a stormy expression, with no Danila to balance her out the other side. It was like looking at a painting where everything had been cramped into a single corner.

'Where's Danila?' Harry asked when they came to sit: Krum at Blom's side, their hands meeting in a tight grip for a brief shake, Inna in the spot Ella had made when she scooted to the right.

'He is not eating with us today,' Krum said.

'Why? Did you tell him I invited—'

'He said no.'

Harry frowned. Neither Blom nor Ella reacted to this any except to stare down their plates. He felt like he was missing something. 'Is he ill?'

'Merlin, Harry, the dickhead isn't coming!' Inna exploded. 'Leave it be.'

Harry was not going to leave it be. Danila and Inna were practically one person, and though Harry hadn't known him long it was clear that Danila would never have said no to Krum unless for a good reason. Something had to be wrong. 'Where is he?' he asked. 'Maybe I'll go—'

'Don't bother,' said Inna. Her face was dark. 'Not worth it.'

'He was going to the doghouse,' Krum said.

Harry grabbed a piece of bread for the way and he went, ignoring Inna's thunderous glare. He ran up the stairs, taking three at a time, and out into the anteroom to throw on some clothes. He was willing to delay his meal some for Danila's sake, but he was hardly going to freeze for him.

He found Danila cross-legged on the floor of the doghouse, one bare hand resting in the dirt to prop him up and the other busy petting the stray they had found that day in Longyearbyen. The dog looked better, cleaner if no less sickly. Danila, with his bare hands and lack of coat, looked worse than Harry had ever seen him. He had always taken particular care to dress warm. He caught colds easily, he'd told Harry once, and he did not want the skin on his hands to crack and come out in a rash, which it tended to do when Durmstrang winter hit.

Though his back was turned on the door, Danila must have heard Harry come in. He said nothing, only continued petting the dog. Now that he was here, Harry had no idea at all what to do.

'Are you okay?' he asked. God, it sounded so stupid.

'I'm fine.'

He still had not looked at Harry. Harry swallowed. 'Inna said you don't want to eat with us today?'

A snort. Harry was sure he'd heard Danila laugh before, but it had been nothing like this.

'Oh, Inna says. If Inna says, then that must be true. She's a stellar truth-teller, isn't she?'

Harry didn't really know what to say to that.

'Maybe I don't want to eat my lunch while fifty squibs are ogling me like I'm an animal at a zoo. Or maybe I don't want to give my classmates any more reason to say how cute it is I'm trying to learn the muggle ways for my new daddy, just because you want to play the rebel.'

Struck dumb, Harry could only stare at the line of Danila's back. He had never heard him speak with such venom—come to think of it, he had never heard him speak quite so much without any prompting. Had he just not known what Danila's voice sounded like when it kept on for longer than one sentence?

'It is alright for you: you can go on your little adventures down into forbidden land and it doesn't matter, because everyone knows you are nothing like them.'

Harry felt anger rising in him. 'My mother was a muggleborn, you know.'

Before he could add anything else, Danila spun around on the floor, face contorted in fury, and shouted,

'And so what? So what, when you are who you are, when you've done the things you've done? Both your parents could have been muggles and they would probably still have let you into Durmstrang, because you are someone, Harry! You are the kid that defeated Lord Voldemort. You are the kid who can bend the storm to his will. I have done nothing. I am no one.'

'You're not no one,' Harry argued, too shocked to know quite what to say. 'And you're very young, I mean—I'm sure you'll do lots of important things when you're older. Like when you're a Healer. And anyway, I'm really not special or anything, you know. Just because I happened to—'

'Oh, and he's modest, too,' Danila mocked. 'It's no wonder even Karkaroff and Snape adore you—they should hate you, you know that? Both of them should hate you, considering.'

Harry's blood went cold. He thought he knew exactly what Danila was alluding to. 'How do you know about that?' he asked, voice dry.

Danila scoffed. 'Maybe I don't have Krum's talent or Inna's influence, but I have eyes and ears. I pay attention. And I know they shouldn't and yet they love you anyway, because how could they not? You're thirteen and you've done more in your life than most of us will ever do.'

'No, you have it all wrong—'

'Don't talk to me as if you know anything! You have no idea what it's like to be me, Harry! You have no idea what it's like to have something and then have nothing, and then to see that when it all goes away you are no one in the end, that you yourself have nothing at all that's worth anything anymore—'

'Yes, I do!' Harry yelled. 'You have no idea what it's like to be me, either!'

'I wish I did,' Danila said coldly. 'You wouldn't dare talk over me then.'

He shoved his way past Harry, shoulder knocking painfully into shoulder, and left with a thunderous slam of the door. Harry's hand came reflexively to the seat of the ache. He remembered now the first time he'd ever seen Danila. They had knocked shoulders then, too. Harry had forgotten that he'd suspected once that it had been on purpose.

He was left shaking now, confused about what to do with this new Danila he hadn't seen before. Had they been talking over him all this time? Had Harry, without realising, joined in on this, too, had he been taking up all the room Danila might have used to speak his mind? Had it been his fault, somehow, for not having seen him?

He turned to go, unsure if he was going after Danila or only after some solitude in which to think, but before he could take even one step, he felt two arms strong as vices encircling his ribcage—and a terrible, horrible blackness of shock blinded him when he recognised the thing digging into his chin for the tip of a wand.

'Petrificus Totalus,' a throaty, grating voice whispered in Harry's ear. It smelled of dog and of illness, and Harry did not need to wait until he was flat on his back at the bottom of a sled, secured with pelts and blankets, until he saw the profile of the man who whistled at the dogs to pull—he did not need to wait until then to know the man for Sirius Black.

Harry's mouth had frozen in a gasp, and through this gaping hole winter air invaded his throat and lungs. Black had thrown a reindeer pelt over him before they'd set off but hadn't done a very good job of it, because with one eye Harry could still see the skies above him, endless and white. Of course it hardly mattered that he could be seen. Who would see him? A ptarmigan, passing through the desert with a letter from home? An arctic fox, burrowing behind a rock?

Snow was falling harder and harder with every minute. It got into Harry's wide-open eyes, where each flake melted painfully to drip down the side of his cheek. It was crying without the effort of making tears. Harry heard Black curse, urge the dogs on, mumble something to himself, much of the sound swallowed up by the wind. Why had Harry not died yet? Why couldn't Black have done it then, in the doghouse, why couldn't he have cast a spell—the room filling with green light, the dogs howling and beating against the walls in frantic fear—why couldn't Harry be dead on the dirty floor now where Danila had sat, why couldn't it be over? He wouldn't have had the time for fear. He wouldn't have had the time for the anticipation of pain, of horror, of, finally, death—it would have been over before Harry had been able to think about it, and now there was nothing but thought. For the rest of his life, Harry would do nothing at all again except think about how he did not want to die.

He felt a weight fall at his side. With his one eye, he spied Black, who'd abandoned the dogs to their work and made his way here to Harry. He was drawing his wand again, unsteady on his feet, everything taking longer than it should. It gave Harry something. It gave him an edge. It gave him one last chance not to die at the bottom of a dog sled in the middle of nothing, a chance to think things again that weren't death and to do things that weren't thinking—and so he thought of the frozen ground beneath him thawing a little, of the few resilient plants that nestled in the cracks blooming from the melting snow, of life pushing impossibly through the dead stillness of winter.

And just like that, he could move again.

He folded himself in half, head slamming painfully into the side of the wooden bench, colour and shapes erupting in his vision—and then he kicked at Black's legs where he could reach them, and kicked again, and felt Black's wand falling somewhere, into the sled or out of the sled he did not know, and he rose to his knees and threw himself at Black—

'Stop! Fuck—'

The sled swerved, the wind picked up, Black was clawing at Harry's back, long fingers scraping and catching and bruising, and Harry slammed into him again, holding onto the jutting kneecaps that felt revoltingly fragile in his grip—

'Harry, we're both going to fall out!'

Horribly, one of Black's legs came loose. A kick to Harry's hip. The pain stilled him. Black had got a hold of his neck and now pushed him down, chest flat against the bottom of the sled. Harry felt real tears prickling at his eyes when he felt Black's hands palming at his coat and robes. When he'd found what he'd been looking for, he released Harry and leapt away, gripping in one hand the reins and in the other Harry's wand, aimed between his eyes.

'I'm so sorry,' Black said. 'Don't move.'

Harry didn't move. The snow was everywhere now. He could barely see Black through it.

'You have to stop the sled,' Harry managed through a cough. 'It's a white-out. The dogs can't see where they're going. We'll fall into a crevice and both die.'

Black regarded him a moment, and that moment nearly robbed Harry of all hope he would listen: there seemed to be nothing in his deep, black eyes except madness.

But he pulled on the reins and stopped.

'I'm not going to hurt you,' he said hoarsely. 'I would never hurt you, Harry.'

Harry almost laughed. His hip pulsated with pain. His back was on fire. His wand was still aimed squarely at his face.

'I needed to get you out of the castle,' Black was saying, his speech rapid, his voice grainy. Harry imagined he couldn't have had many opportunities to use it lately. 'It's not safe for you there. It's not safe—I don't know where he is, where he's gone, but I know you're not safe in that place with them—but I'll find him, Harry, the moment I've got you to safety I'll find him, and I'll make sure the tip of my wand is the last thing he sees—'

This was the moment it dawned fully on Harry that Sirius Black was insane.

It made sense, of course. Everyone had been saying it. The newspapers had said he was insane and everyone around Harry had said he was insane, because surely it took insanity to murder thirteen people all in one go. But Harry realised now he had not believed it. Harry had killed before and he thought he knew a little what it was like, and he did not want to think that it took insanity to do it. He hadn't been insane when he killed Quirrell. He'd only felt like he had a good reason and little choice. He had imagined Black must have felt a similar way when he betrayed his parents and when he murdered his friend, and even when he killed all those innocent muggles right alongside him—that even if it had been misguided, he had made that choice himself, and Harry knew exactly what to hate him for.

But even if Black hadn't been insane then, the twelve years he'd spent in Azkaban must have done it. There was such sincerity to what he was saying that Harry was sure he believed it, that he really did think he was saving Harry—would he still be thinking the same as he killed him, Harry wondered?

And it dawned finally on Harry that he might have to kill him.

He had thought about it. He would never have admitted it to anyone, but he had fantasised sometimes about killing Sirius Black. He had all this magic at his disposal, and for what? For making rainbows in water springs and calling sea serpents to wave their tails at his friends? He'd told himself maybe his mother had given him this power not by accident, but on purpose: that she had understood in her dying moment who had orchestrated her tragedy, and left Harry with the exact tools he would need to enact revenge.

Only that was just a story. Harry had understood that. The story had little to do with real life, because Harry had killed someone before and he knew what it was like. And if he'd been someone else who'd never killed, if he'd thought deep in his heart that he couldn't actually ever do it unless he were insane, then perhaps he would have enjoyed that fantasy a little more often, perhaps it wouldn't have left him feeling sick and empty.

But Harry knew he could do it. He could kill Black like he had killed Quirrell, and it would be real and here and now.

'Can I sit up?' he asked Black.

'What?' Black barked. It really did sound like a real bark. Harry remembered Danila petting the dog earlier and felt nauseous. 'Of course you can—damn it. Yes, sit, come on up—I'm so sorry, Harry—are you alright?'

This time, Harry did laugh out loud.

'You're not alright,' Black translated, surprising Harry with this stroke of clarity. 'Sure you're not. Why would I even—you must be terrified. Don't be—'

'That's fixed it,' Harry muttered, and glanced up startled when Black chuckled. It was such a normal, human sound. When he'd made it, he hadn't sounded crazy at all.

Perhaps if he could play for time. Well, there was little to do but play for time—he hadn't lied to Black when he'd told him they needed to stop until the blizzard passed. If only he hadn't given up studying the Patronus spell! If only he'd been a little less absorbed with feeling sorry for himself, if only he'd predicted he would be stranded in a dogsled with a madman—he might have been able to send a Patronus to Snape, to increase at least by a small margin his chances—

'Harry.' Black lowered his wand, though only to his thigh. It was still aimed roughly at Harry. 'I know what you must think of me, but I really did come here to protect you. This is not a place for a half-blood child like you, and Karkaroff and Snape are Death Eaters—'

'Used to be,' Harry corrected. 'And yeah, I know.'

Black frowned. The expression of surprise was all too human. It made Harry need to look away. 'You know?'

'Yep. I mean, what's new. You're a Death Eater, too, aren't you?'

Black looked for a moment as though he'd been struck. Then, he started tugging madly at his sleeves. Harry only now remarked on how little he was wearing: the ratty shirt and coat would have barely helped him against the mild British winter.

Black's forearms were covered in tattoos. Some looked like Ancient Runes, others were strings of numbers, others yet pictures. The phases of the moon were there, and animals with awing jaws, and masks and motorcycles. But there was no Dark Mark.

'That doesn't prove very much,' Harry said carefully, not wanting to upset him. He'd calmed down now, and the longer he stayed calm the longer Harry had to decide if he was going to kill him. 'You killed my parents and you killed Peter Pettigrew. I know all about it. You didn't need to be a Death Eater to do any of that.'

He had expected Black to argue. He had expected him to laugh. What Harry had not expected was the sheen of tears, barely visible through the staticky white that blew all around them, and for Black to say, almost too softly to be heard,

'I know. But I never meant for Lily and James to die. Can I—will you listen to me if I explain?'

And Harry had nowhere to go, nothing to do except stay here and kill another man—or listen to him.

He chose the latter.