Warnings: See first chapter.

This chapter in particular: Angst?, Introspection, Lemon Drops, Anti-Gryfindor sentiments.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to Severus Snape, he just doesn't know it yet. I expect Voldie has sold his soul to the devil by now, so I don't own him either. The Hogwarts Staff all belong to Dumbledore, who in turn serves the Wizarding World. Witch, fortunately for all but me and perhaps a few rabid fans, belongs to J K Rowling and not me.

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Shadow Magic - Part Two, In the Shadow of Death

"Goodbye Sev," Harry whispered, before moving on, resisting - barely - the urge to keep running. The castle had been Harry's home for a long time, in a way that the Dursleys' could never be, but now everything in it felt wrong.

~Dislocation.~ It described what he was feeling perfectly. He felt as if he were some puzzle piece that had had to be fitted into place with a hammer.

~I don't belong here. I don't fit this cage anymore.~

The doors were locked and bolted and not even alohamora would open them. He slipped out a first floor window, carefully closing it behind him before dashing across the grounds towards the Forbidden Forest.

~I'm going to my death.~ Acceptance mixed with shadow dark joy. ~I'll see Sirius again. My parents.~ Painstreaked hope. ~Maybe people will stop dying because of me now.~

Harry found it irritatingly easy to escape from Hogwarts. With the war as it was he would have expected some safeguards at least. ~So you can't apparate but there's nothing to stop someone from nipping over the wall on a broomstick. Hah. Voldemort would be laughing his head off if he knew.~

The green in his eyes faded even further to gold, his pupils slitted as they adjusted to the darkness. Even the stars were shrouded in clouds tonight. It looked like it would rain soon. "Death and tears. How appropriate." ~but at least I can see.~

Harry, on his firebolt, wound an intricate path through the canopy of the forbidden forest. Several of the trees snapped at him irritably as he flew past, as disgruntled at the weather as he was, and appreciating none of the irony. Even with the shadow of his imminent death hanging over him, he still felt the bright stab of joy he always did when flying. Tightening his grip on the handle he urged the broom still faster, zipping past trees with barely enough time to dodge and certainly not enough to think about anything else.

Minerva frowned. It wasn't like Severus to be unconscious, particularly not in the middle of one of the corridors. Still, Poppy wasn't worried, and that in itself was unusual enough to convince her that whatever was going on was not serious. Not 'bad' serious anyway, she qualified. "Why isn't he waking up?"

"I'm not sure." Poppy answered indifferently. "There's nothing wrong with him, exactly."

"Hmm?"

"His magic's acting differently from usual. It's as if he's too busy somewhere else to take the trouble of waking up."

" So what do we do?"

"We wait."

Harry pulled his broom to a halt abruptly. The clearing looked more than slightly familiar, despite the fact that he had never been there before in his life. ~It was,~ a sarcastic voice in the back Harry's mind commented, ~probably something to do with his having dreamed about it last night. In great detail.~ Even in the dream he had mysteriously known his way around the clearing.

He stretched, easily completing the animagus transformation that had begun with his eyes. The black lion was more suited to sleeping in a forest than the human Harry Potter. Even so it was a long time before he slept, curled around the trunk of a massive oak tree.

Severus regained consciousness slowly. For someone who was in the habit of waking up instantly, it took the ex-deatheater a remarkably long time to work out that he was in the hospital wing. It took him even longer to realise that he was Severus Snape and not Harry Potter. He at least did not know the time and place of his own death.

"You're awake." Poppy said lightly, resting one hand on his shoulder. "I was beginning to worry."

Startled from his thoughts, Severus hissed at her, his eyes changing rapidly from black to gold, as the tiny corner of his mind that usually told him that he could, if he chose, turn into a golden eagle, also informed him that he could become a black lion instead if he wanted. ~Control, Severus~ Even as the mediwitch went to draw back, the dangerous expression was replaced by one of his usual disdain.

"It seems, Poppy," he sneered, "that you still retain your talent for stating the obvious. Congratulations."

As he slipped into his sweeping black robes she studied him carefully. "Good morning, Severus. Are you planning to tell me how you ended up unconscious in the first place?" she asked him curiously.

"I will discuss it with Dumbledore later. Now if you will excuse me, I have a class to teach." Without waiting to see whether she actually would excuse him, he left.

Poppy translated his last sentence from Snape-speak. It had meant "No I am not. This is important, and I need time to think about it before telling Dumbledore. Goodbye."

It also meant, Poppy thought resignedly, that this was yet another secret that she would know only a fraction of. Her ability to keep secrets without knowing why, or in many cases even what it was she was concealing, was one of the main reasons she was Hogwarts' mediwitch in the first place. The other was, of course, that she was very, very good at her job. And if most of the students didn't choose to look past the stereotypical over-protectiveness she displayed, so much the better.

Professor Snape surveyed his fourth year Ravenclaw class with well concealed satisfaction. The students were studious enough that they shouldn't need help, intelligent enough to not interrupt him unless they actually did, and less likely to cause explosions than almost any other class he had taught. It was, in short, the best chance he was going to get to straighten his thoughts out before the headmaster came and straightened them out for him. Effective though that was, he preferred to do his own thinking first.

A few things were crystal clear, the first rising to the surface his mind with the swiftness of long habit. ~This is all Potter's fault. ~

The corollary was harder to accept. ~Most of the other things however, weren't. Not exactly, anyway.~ He knew, because he could read the boy's - young man's really - memories almost as easily as he could his own.

Somehow Potter had managed to bind their minds together, at a moment's notice, using - by instinct alone - a spell he did not know and which probably did not even exist. At best, he was guilty of seriously underestimating the Boy Who Lived. At worst. . . He'd hurt one of the few people who had even a chance of understanding him.. ~Fool~ he remonstrated himself sharply, ~there's time enough for regrets later. I'm not going to make an uninformed decision again, not this time.~

Severus sifted through his bonded's mind, noting the boy's intense loyalty to his friends and the sort of personality that would dismiss his own blind terror as irrelevant. The careless indifference towards rules and authority that came from growing up with rules that were impossible to follow, and authority figures that would never help him. ~Never ask for help. They won't understand. Yes I know.~

Bitterness at never being seen as himself because of his fame, and his father, blended with the bitterness of a young Slytherin whose own dreams and ambitions had been ignored in favour of his Snape heritage. The Snapes would always be potions masters.

He knew all too well that expectations could hurt, yet he had inflicted his own upon the boy. He had seen a mirror image of his own worst enemy, and assumed that the cruel thoughtlessness and mockery would also be the same. He had seen the laughter and unfeigned happiness, but not the shadows behind them. Not the flashes of green lightning and haunted dreams or the half-buried fear that he himself could turn out to be equally as evil as Voldemort.

That fear had been all that kept the boy from being Sorted into Slytherin, back when he was too young to understand shades of grey, and that Slytherin didn't necessarily mean evil, or Gryfindor good. ~Not that there are many adults who aren't so mentally retarded that they can't grasp the distinction either.~

Potter understood well enough that Slytherins could support whatever side they chose, but the second part, ~you would hope that with Pettigrew as and example of Gryfindor bravery he would get it, but no. . .~ "The darkness can never belong in Gryfindor," he remembered Harry thinking, some time ago. ~Idiot.~ He was wrong. Courage and deception were not mutually exclusive. It would serve Voldemort well enough for his spies to come from Gryfindor, they were less likely to be suspected.

He despised Gryfindors, had done so even before the marauders' relentless mockery had hardened that disdain to hatred. Despised them for their hypocrisy, for claiming the be the best of the four houses, as if they had a monopoly on integrity and courage just because they were supposed to be brave. Hated them for being carefree enough to ignore injustices done right under their noses, to commit those injustices themselves and never think of the consequences. And to get away with it as he could not, because they were Gryfindors and he was a Slytherin.

He had hated them with a child's passion and bitterness, the desire for revenge powerful enough to send him to Voldemort, until the dark lord's sadistic cruelty and arrogance - and his way of treating even his own followers like dirt - had sickened him. What had he to gain but the power to do the same to those beneath him? Even after becoming a spy and a teacher he had never forgiven . . . never forgotten.

~Life will never be fair, those brats will learn that lesson early.~

He hated them. And he had hated the boy who represented them. Their perfect little hero. Harry Potter, the boy who lived. ~But. . . I did not know him. Not Harry.~ His loathing for the Gryfindor golden boy did not extend to the young half Slytherin hero who was so exactly like himself in more ways than should have been possible. And now that he knew him. . .

~He cast this spell to hurt me, and it worked. Even if he doesn't hate me, he'll still die in three days.~ He struggled to breathe around the lump in his throat. ~I hate caring about people~ he thought passionately. ~It always ends like this.~

The Ravenclaws stirred uneasily when class ended and their teacher continued to ignore them, his expression giving away nothing at all through the changing intensity of his glare. Leaving without his permission was a dangerous thing to attempt at the best of times, which these rather emphatically were not. They were still collectively undecided when Dumbledore arrived.

"Still here are you?" He asked them cheerfully, glancing from the students to their professor then back again. "I see your difficulty. Very well then. Off you trot." Dumbledore's command - for, despite the light hearted tone and abnormal phraseology, it was a command - was obeyed instantly and without question.

He transfigured one of the chairs into a sofa and leaned back in it, studying his potions professor intently from behind half-moon spectacles.

Severus' glare focused abruptly, boring into the headmaster's bright blue eyes with an intensity that made their usual twinkle freeze.

"Potter has decided that it would be amusing to link my mind to his, then run off to fight Voldemort. He appears to be suffering from an acute case of hero complex." Revulsion dripped from the potions master's every syllable, uncharacteristically venomous even considering that he was talking about Potter.

It didn't take someone of Dumbledore's mental acuity to realise that this was something that bothered Severus, personally, very much indeed. ~Linked minds? Harry's fighting Voldemort? Please no, he's not ready.~ With the ease of long practice, none of his surprise ~terror~ showed in his face.

He unobtrusively reinforced his personal shields against the glare, feeling relieved that Severus had the level of control he did, and had not turned that particular gaze on the students. ~Looks could kill, indeed.~ The twinkle in his eyes gradually unfroze and started dancing again, warily. "Perhaps you had better start at the end. When you reach the beginning, stop."

If Severus was irritated by this light-hearted approach to a serious subject, it didn't show amid his already incensed expression. ~Then again, we all have our ways of coping.~

"It ends, Albus, in three days time - less now - when Potter dies defeating Voldemort." Carefully the potions professor recounted the relevant events of the last ~next?~ day ~few days?~, sometimes in reverse, but just as often not as he saw fit. Omitting, of course, what he had seen of Harry's memories and his own reactions to them. Those details were both private and . . . ~if Albus can't work it out for himself he doesn't deserve to know~ . . . not something he was fond of articulating anyway.

He concluded with the precise words Harry had used for the spell, which for whatever reason, he could still recall clearly. "Whatever elucidation you can provide as to this meaning of that gibberish would be. . . appreciated." The inflection on the last word politely indicated that for the benefit of his health, Albus would be well advised to provide such elucidation promptly.

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled thoughtfully. "I believe that was a modified version of the soul-binding spell. But it should not have worked, unless. . . . He broke off in mid sentence, managing not to say his next thoughts out loud only by drawing on his years of experience as the Leader of the Order of the Phoenix. ~You do have a chance of truly understanding each other. . . of loving. And that's . . . . ~

He looked from his cynical ex-deatheater spy to a random point in the classroom, running through his recent memories of the Boy Who Lived. Impetuous, self-sacrificing, head-strong, mistrustful, half-Slytherin Gryfindor. Those qualities matched Snape almost as well as they did Harry Potter. ~. . . perhaps not so unlikely as I had assumed.~

Severus scowled in irritation. Dumbledore was being inscrutable again. A low growl started in his throat, the black lion expressing his displeasure most effectively. Albus hastened to explain.

"That spell had a purpose - to forever bind together two souls who love each other. Harry also had a purpose - for you to understand him. And since he cast it in anger, I really can't tell which effects the improvised spell might have."

"But you suspect. . . ?"

"Between you and Harry, you have two minds and two bodies. I suspect that these resources are not only interchangeable, but blendable. You could swap places with him if you want. You'll get to know each other better."

"I don't suppose there is any chance of this wearing off in the next day or so?" Professor Snape didn't sound as much hopeful as he did doomed. ~With good reason, of course.~

"I'm afraid you're stuck with him, Severus. As far as I know, nothing short of death is going to separate your minds."

"Hn." ~Like his death is avoidable anyway. Harry made his choice, I will not take it from him.~

"Lemon drop?" Albus offered him the tin, smiling. Severus accepted ungraciously.

"Thank you." He bit down on the offending sweet, rather wishing it was the headmaster he was crushing. Albus gaped at him, astonished. ~Severus never accepts lemon drops. This defies all reason.~

"Well" he said briskly, shaking off his surprise, "in any case we can't let Harry get himself killed. Since you can read his mind, I believe that you are the best person to retrieve him.

"No." It was the most unequivocal refusal Albus had ever heard from him.

"My dear boy, surely. . ."

"No" the potions master interrupted flatly. "Nor will I inform you of his whereabouts."

"Then he's going to die." Dumbledore looked anguished.

"Potter knows what he is doing" Severus snapped. "It is his destiny. I am sorry Albus. I will not aid you in this. My loyalty no longer lies with you alone."

The headmaster's eyes lightened a fraction. "This is for Harry then?"

"Of course."

There wasn't much more to say after that. Once Albus left, the next clump of brats shuffled in, and Severus returned to teaching, distracted only by the restless dreams ~nightmares~ that filtered through from Harry's side of the bond.

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AN: I really am sorry this took so long, the reviews were inspiring and delightful, and - I'm beginning to suspect - addictive. If you reviewed, review again so I know you haven't forgotten me.

Review Replies:

me-chan: I hope for your sake you used cut and paste for that. I have Harry's death scene all written out *mwuhahahaha* But don't worry, it's not permanent, Sev'll get him back to life no trouble.

Cassa-Andra: Glad you like it. Most of your ideas I won't use - for obvious reasons now - but some of them sparked brand new ideas. You'll have to wait until Harry's finished being dead though.

Setsuri: Thanks. I hope this lives up to your expectations

Prophetess Of Hearts: 'Go Harry' you say? Is this any way to talk to someone who's about to die? Huh? Is it? More is on the way.

Sylvester: Mmm, desciptive review, I like it!

Savage Damsel: *backs away nervously* eep, a reviewer with mood swings. Would you like a frying-pan of doom? They are traditional, you know.

KizunaSpring: Have grabbed interest, will now strangle it, yessss!

risi: What's with this 'can't wait' business? You are doomed! Doomed!! DOOMED!!! to wait.

alyssa: Good use of repetition there, very effective.

selua: HARRY WILL DIE! He just WON'T STAY DEAD. Snape has a headache, I expect.

Kethhry: Thanks! It will get longer

MaraWeaves: Will do.

too lazy to sign in: Yay! Someone who loves exclaimation marks as much as I do! Incredible work may shortly take a turn for the gruesome!

Request: Please someone, do a Petunia Dursley/Peter Pettigrew get together fic. I don't mind if you kill off Vernon or even Dudley to do it. Sorry - random idea. Disturbing I know. But if it was done well it would be unique it say the least.

Until next time my friends, languish in anticipation.

Eris, Goddess of Discord, Darklady of the Spire, and Patron of Chaos.