SEVENTEEN.

'I don't care one whit about your blizzard!' Severus's hand met the desk with a big sound. The multitude of glasses and candles on it shuddered and sang. 'I need the sleds and I need all the faculty you can spare—'

'The faculty I can spare to the white-out?' Karkaroff asked calmly. 'That would be no faculty, I'm afraid. I will not spare one dog and I will not spare one squib to a sure death, Severus.'

'You dare speak to me of a sure death? The boy—'

'Last time you raised the alarm, Mr Potter was out sledding.' Karkaroff took a swig of wine from a golden chalice. Outside, snow beat against the window, the scream of wind rattling the glass. 'It is like that story of the boy crying wolf, isn't it? What makes today any different, Severus?'

Severus's hand itched to take hold of his wand. He thought of killing him. He thought of killing him now and in his absence assuming control of the school—of killing anyone else who dared get in his way—

'What makes it different, you damn fool, is that I had Krum and Bogdanova in my office not ten minutes ago panicked because they did not know where he was! There is a sled missing and Potter doesn't know how to drive one—he's afraid of the dogs, for Merlin's sake—'

Karkaroff sighed. 'There we go then: another student must have taken the sled without permission and Mr Potter is somewhere in the castle, taking advantage of the pleasures of solitude. This is the story I am reading.'

'Would you like to know what story I am reading?' Severus hissed. 'I am reading a tale of a recklessly stupid headmaster who is taken to court after he was told the Boy Who Lived had been kidnapped by a serial murderer, and did nothing!'

'And how does Sirius Black enter this tale?' Karkaroff leaned forward over the desk, looking up at Severus with perfect equanimity. 'For the moment, that sounds like quite the wild assertion.'

Severus hesitated. There was nothing for it. 'I believe he has infiltrated the school concealed as a stray dog,' he said. 'The dog is missing, too.'

'Is Sirius Black an Animagus?'

'Not to my knowledge, but—'

'Not to your knowledge. Let me tell you what I know, Severus. I know that the storm outside is pure wild magic. It will not be controlled or fought by a mere wizard, and I will not risk my staff's life on your tales. And, well, if Mr Potter really is gone, who is there to say that the blizzard isn't his doing? He is capable. Perhaps he doesn't want to be found.'

Severus started forward. He had no plan: he wanted to feel Karkaroff's skin under his fingers, he wanted to shake him or hurt him or strangle him—he wanted to make him feel the indignity of it—but another's hands found his chest and yanked him away, stealing breath.

'Thank you, Ludvig,' said Karkaroff. There was a trace of emotion in his voice now, though still faint. 'Get him out, please.'

Severus thought about fighting. Then he looked Karkaroff in the eye and he saw his first and biggest mistake. He had shown Karkaroff exactly where to strike to hurt him most, and here in Karkaroff's face was all delight and no remorse. He had assumed that Karkaroff's interest in Harry Potter surpassed Karkaroff's hatred of everything Severus represented. How wrong he'd been.

He could have thrashed in Ludvig's hold, he could have pulled out his wand, but for what? The Floo network was dead for the duration of the white-out. The staff, save perhaps for Vernyhora, would be all too happy to ignore Severus in favour of ingratiating themselves to their Headmaster. He was alone.

He let himself go lax in Ludvig's hold. He let himself be led out the door, down the stairway, their steps on the stone echoing in rhythm with the heart that thundered through his body. He could feel the beat in his throat, in his teeth and eyes.

'I will take you,' Ludvig said suddenly.

Severus turned to look at him. The squib's face was impassive, but his eyes were set in what Severus thought was closer to anger than any emotion he had previously seen on him.

'I know the land,' Ludvig added, as though Severus needed convincing. 'I will take the best dogs.'

Severus's lungs seized. He knew he should thank him, but he could not. Instead, he only nodded.

They rode through a white that was absolute. Severus could make out the edge of the sled, frozen over and slippery with ice, and he could make out his own hands if he lifted them up to his face. He could have been alone in the sled and not known the difference. Ludvig could have been thrown off, a dog could have fallen over from exhaustion and been dragged beside the sled by his equally blind pack, they could have made their way off a precipice and begun their drop into death. Severus would not have been able to tell.

Hours, it lasted. He cast revealing spells, tracking spells, he cast every spell he could think to cast, and when they returned to him nothing, he didn't even know whether to trust it. The blizzard could have been confusing his magic.

All at once, he hated it. Magic. He had never hated it before, not when it was used to hurt him and not when he had used it to hurt others. Even when it cost him his last hope of building a relationship with his own father, Severus had chosen to hate the father and not the magic—because how could he hate what made him?

Now, he understood. What made him had come at a price, and today was the day he paid up. It was all his fault and no one else's: hadn't Tobias Snape told him that the magic would break him? That it would use him, take him, that it would change him into someone he did not wish to know? Hadn't he told Severus to come work at the factory, to leave his spell books behind? He should have taken Harry. At the first mention of Sirius Black's name, no, at the first sign that Harry showed promise, at the first mention of the Dark Lord's return, Severus should have taken him and gone.

Instead, he let the boy have too much. He let him make friends who took him into town. He let him distract Severus from fear with gummy bears and logical fallacies when he should have been on high alert, checking the sled and sweets and dog for curses. He allowed the boy to take his meals with his friends, to spend time away from him, to go to the doghouses alone—to ignore the rules of his detention in favour of doing what he wished, away from Severus, pursuing goals and whims Severus was not privy to—

When Severus found the boy, he would be dead. And it would be all Severus's fault, all over again.

A presence.

Distorted by the storm, the spell wielded no more than that simple message: something living was out there, where the yellow afterimage of the magic hung like a length of golden thread. On trembling legs, Severus rose, reaching out into the blank nothing to touch Ludvig's shoulder.

'There!' he screamed. 'Follow the light!'

The sled swerved. Severus fell sideways, grabbing blindly for purchase.

He saw him.

'Black!' he roared. Don't kill him, he repeated like a mantra in his head, like a plea—don't kill him yet. First, you must find the boy—

Black turned. He looked nothing like Severus remembered him, but nothing like the photographs in the papers, either. He was thin, caving, he was bone and skin and impossible age.

From Severus's wand, a string of red light shot in Black's direction. In his mind's eye, Severus saw him freezing in a rictus of pain, his mouth screaming a silent scream as he crumpled—

But he did not crumple. The spell flew then faded in the snow, swallowed by the blizzard.

A sound like thunder pierced the air. Black staggered backward, left shoulder yanking back. The scream of pain that came from his throat was as alien to Severus as the sight of his face.

Ludvig stood atop the sled, gun in hand poised for a second shot.

'Stop!'

Harry.

He'd risen from inside the sled, where he must have sat on the floor or lain or suffered—he'd stood up on a bench, forcing himself between the sights of Ludvig's gun and Black's sack of organs, arms splayed wide before him.

Severus leapt out of the sled. The snow reached his knees. If he got close enough, the blizzard would no longer hold off his spells. They would hit before they faded. Now that the boy was here, now that the boy was impossibly alive, now Severus could kill Black—

'Get away from him,' he ordered. 'Move, now.'

'I can't. You don't understand—'

'I'm not talking to you, Potter,' Severus barked. 'Move away from him, Black.'

'He didn't do it.' Neither Harry nor Black had moved. 'It wasn't his fault, it was Pettigrew—'

'Move away, now!'

'Harry,' Black said. Blood was gushing down his side. 'Step—step away—'

His hand came to Harry's shoulder. He turned him just enough, just enough for Severus to get a clear line of shot—

When the Cruciatus hit, Black went down like a stone.

He hit the snow before the sled, staining the virginal white an ugly red. He screamed again, louder, more gut-wrenching—and Severus had removed the spell already, had given him barely any pain, certainly nowhere close to what he'd earned—pathetic, Severus thought—

'You have always been pathetic, Black,' he said through the echo of Black's scream, which sounded again and again in his ears. 'James Potter's favourite friend, desperate to share in the light he cast. But you were nothing like him, were you? Oh, you were arrogant like him—you were hateful like him—but underneath all that poise, you were a dirty, damaged, pathetic little boy who would have done anything for attention.'

Black was breathing hard. Although the spell had ended, the aftereffects of the Cruciatus still ran shivers down his body.

Harry fell to his knees before him, searching his face for signs of lucidity. When he turned to look at Severus, the emotion there stood out stark and obvious. 'You don't understand! I really don't think it was him. Can you not—just Leglimise him, or let's take him back to Durmstrang and you can brew Veritaserum—because he says that it was all Pettigrew, and that he's alive—he's an Animagus, too, he was a rat, and we think that Ron—'

Severus had come close enough to touch him now. He stared down into Black's eyes, trying to find in them the boy he remembered. This would be so much more satisfying if he could find the boy he remembered.

'And when James Potter's attention wasn't enough for you, you sold him out for a scrap of the Dark Lord's regard,' he continued leisurely. 'Merlin knows what you sold for the regard of your fellow prisoners in Azkaban. I imagine that unlike Harry, they required a little more than a sad lie to fool them into compassion—and compassion for what? A worm? A human deformity—'

'You're not listening to me!'

Harry had thrown himself at him, clutching at his arms and wand—Severus shook him off easily, without even having to look. He was not going to let himself be distracted again.

'You killed them,' Severus said softly. There was no need to shout anymore: the blizzard had quietened, had eased away, and in Black's face there was no more fear or madness, only quiet recognition. 'You killed Lily and you killed James Potter, and now I am going to kill you.'

The sound that split the silence made everyone stop.

They stood, hardly breathing. Severus stared at Black and Black stared at him. Harry had stopped trying to get his attention, sprawled in the snow in perfect stillness. The sound had come from all too near, just behind the wall of flittering snow.

It was different now from what Severus had heard in the distance sometimes, peering out from the castle's battlements. The roars then had been distant, almost mournful. They made one think of cold and of death, but only idly, as though they were concepts one read about in a book.

This one was not even a sound. It was a feeling: a feeling of being taken by the world and forced to remember what was fabrication—sticks that made light, school bullies and growing up, hatred and bitterness—and what was real.

The bear.

It emerged from the snow already towering above them, made bigger in the eyes of fear, its gaze empty black, its mouth stretched wide open around teeth. Each claw the length of a human's hand—it struck—

'Protego!'

Ludvig screamed. The bear was halted by Severus's magical shield but did not rebound off it, only hovered above Ludvig—shifting weight, climbing—the shield shattered—

'Harry, your wand—' It was Black's voice. 'Where's your wand?'

Ludvig's gun had disappeared in the snow. Severus saw Harry searching, fingers desperately feeling for the familiar shape—he clutched him by the neck and pulled him away—

'Accio my wand!' Harry yelled to him. 'Give it to Black—'

Severus shoved him. 'Get in the sled!'

Black was attempting to rise to his knees. Severus kicked him down. He cast a Stupefy at the bear, and another, and it was making so little difference—

He grabbed Black. He lifted him up to his feet. He was taller than Severus, and yet so very light.

'What are you doing?' Harry cried. 'Forget him and cast at the bloody bear!'

'I have a better idea,' Severus whispered. Their faces were close now. He half-expected Black to spit at him. From here, he smelled of raw meat and fever. 'Why don't we give the bear something to snack on?'

Black did not spit at him. Instead, he reared his head back and, before Severus could curse himself for not thinking of it, headbutted him in the face. Severus's nose erupted with pain and his hold on the tattered clothes loosened—Black fell into the snow—the bear roared again, the wood of the sled behind which Ludvig had taken shelter splintered with a whine—the dogs were tugging, wrenching, fighting desperately to run but halted by the spells placed on each sled—

And the ice cracked under their feet.

Hot water erupted from within, striking the bear in the snout—it roared, burnt—Severus staggered back as the heat slammed into him, his feet slipping. The crack advanced, running longer and longer in two opposite directions, a wall of water and propulsion deadly to the touch and impossible to cross, cutting off Severus and Ludvig and the bear from Black.

And from Harry.

He stood so close to Severus, just the other side of the barrier. Even through the rapid movement of the water, Severus could see his face. It was the first he truly saw of it since he had caught up to them—since he'd first cast at Black. He'd avoided it because somewhere deep down, beneath his fury and his fear, he knew what he'd see there. Stripped raw of pretence, Severus would see finally that which he'd fought and schemed so long to avoid seeing—but it had only ever been a matter of time before Harry looked at him the way James Potter had looked at him. Only a matter of time before he had seen the truth.

Only there was no revulsion in Harry's face. There was no fascinated pity. Worse, there was none of the quiet understanding that would sometimes smooth out James Potter's features when their eyes met.

There wasn't any of James Potter in Harry at all. There was only Severus.

The turn of the mouth. The naïve shock. The stupid confusion. The fear realised.

Was this how I looked, Severus thought, when I looked at my father?

'Harry,' he said. 'Stop. Come to me.'

No reaction except a wince. Severus's knees went weak.

'Harry, don't—listen to me!'

Harry drew in a sharp breath. His face changed.

'I did,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'

Then he turned, and grabbed at Black, and together they mounted the dogsled.

The sled flew at an impossible speed straight into the mouth of the blizzard, where it was swallowed whole.