Thanks to reviewers. Hello, Chainmailgirl and Potions and Snitches.

By popular request, a quick update...Would be nice to get over the 100 reviews mark with this chapter??? - so I can have a party...

Harry crashed out of the Floo in Dumbledore's office with his usual lack of grace. He leaped up without bothering to flick the ash from his robes.

"I think Snape is dying," he heard Hermione's voice saying, over and over in his head. "Snape is dying.. Snape is dying…"

He was clutching the Marauder's map; he scoured it urgently by the light of his wand. And there it was: a little speck labelled 'Severus Snape', completely unmoving, by the gates of Hogwarts. To Harry's relief, the map showed the Castle to be empty otherwise. No Death Eater invasion then.

Snape was on the map. Did that mean he was still alive? Would the map still show someone if they were…dead?

Harry charged through the darkened castle, and burst outside. It was still quite some way to the castle gates.

"Accio, Firebolt!" he called.

He hopped up and down nervously, and then saw it, whizzing towards him through the night. Yes! He grabbed it, and flung himself on to it. In this way, he arrived at the gates with remarkable speed.

Snape's body was difficult to see by the faint light of starlight and Harry's wand. Cloaked in black as he was, and screwed up into a tight ball, he blended into the shadows.

Harry hurled himself off his broomstick. His chest was heaving as if he had actually run the distance from the Castle.

He knelt by Snape's side, and tentatively reached out a hand. "Please," he whispered. "Be alive still…I should have realized, I should have come sooner….please, still be here…"

Snape was alive. Harry closed his eyes briefly in relief. But as he crouched by the huddled form, he realized that, even unconscious, Snape's body was racked by fierce, deep tremors. His face, to Harry's questing touch, was pouring with sweat. What was happening here, he wondered, bewildered. Cruciatus, gone on too long? But there was no-one else present. And why was Snape at the gates? He must have known the emergency wards would not let him pass.

Harry was shaking too, in panic and anxiety. If the Fireheart was right, Snape's tortured body couldn't last much longer. His systems were failing. Harry had to figure this one out. Hermione, he moaned to himself, if only I could have brought you with me…

At this point, Snape convulsed. His fingers, claw-like, reached blindly for the gates. Harry saw the lightning shock blast his body. The wards, he thought, in horror. He yanked at Snape's robes, and rolled him quickly away from the gates. Snape mindlessly clutched towards them. Harry, arms around him, could feel Snape's heart stuttering like a dying bird in his chest. He clutched frantically into his pockets, where he had stowed the bottle of Griffin Elixir Snape had given him just that day. One-two-three-four – he counted the maximum dosage out with care. Hang on in there, he thought desperately.

A compulsion, some sort of compulsion...A summoning… The Siren spell? Harry knew this, yes, he did, he had studied it with Flitwick. Finite Incantatem didn't work, but there was a counter-charm, and he knew it, he knew it….

"SIRENUM SILENCIO!" he yelled. His breath caught, had it worked…?

It had. Snape's body shuddered for a long moment, and then went still. Harry touched his face; he was still breathing, although very shallowly, and his muscles had relaxed into the normal slackness of unconsciousness.

Harry let out a long, quavery sigh. Thank goodness…But still, Snape had been through a terrible ordeal. He needed to get him back to the castle. He couldn't conjure a stretcher; he did not know how yet. Vaguely Harry recalled from Muggle medicine that you needed to keep people still after major trauma. He had an idea that flopping Snape's body all over the place under his inexpert levitation would not do him any good. "Petrificus Totalus!" Snape's body snapped into frozen stillness. Maybe that hadn't been quite the right spell to use, Harry thought uneasily. "Mobilicorpus!" That was right, he was sure.

Levitating Snape's rigid body before him, Harry made for Snape's chambers. He took great care navigating Snape's body so he did not suffer further hurt. With relief, Harry arrived at Snape's dungeon rooms. He still knew the password, fortunately.

The rooms were lit. Harry winced when he saw the state of Snape's hands and knees, which were raw, bloody and encrusted with dirt. He did not like to intrude into Snape's own private room, so he laid him down on the spare bed where he himself had stayed. Shock, Harry thought. People who have been hurt badly suffer from shock. Need to keep him warm…He slung several blankets over him.

He wasn't entirely sure what to do next. He hoped his friends had managed to get hold of Dumbledore.

It was like being reborn. The white-hot agony vanished, instantly, as if doused by buckets of icy water. I still shook and ached and throbbed with the after-effects, but oh, the relief! So Dumbledore had come after all…gratitude surged through me in great rolling waves. I had thought I was about to disintegrate into the final void, and yet my vital signs felt surprisingly steady. I understood why when I recognized the taste of Griffin Elixir on my tongue.

Although fuzzily aware, my mind still seemed disconnected from my body and I was not able to move or speak. I was unable to make response, then, when I gradually realized that the voice I was hearing belonged not to Albus, but to Harry Potter.

I had absolutely no idea how Potter came to be back at Hogwarts when I had personally sent him on his way – was it really earlier that very same day?- but at that point I did not much care. I was simply too relieved.

Full body bind was not precisely the spell I would have recommended, were he able to consult me, but still, never mind, never mind. From the taste in my mouth, the boy had attained unexpected heights of intelligence in giving me some of his elixir. He was also managing to transport me home in a relatively pain-free manner. One had to be grateful.

A soft bed…blankets…this was all good. I would even have thanked him, if I could. Only he had not yet taken the body bind off me. I would have quite liked to try the experiment of movement round about then.

I could sense his presence, sitting on the corner of the bed next to me. He seemed uncertain what to do next.

"I'm so relieved you're alive," he said. As I was unable to respond in any way, I presumed he was simply expressing his feelings aloud. I would have rolled my eyes if I could. "Don't worry, Dumbledore should be on his way. He'll know what to do."

I could have told him myself. If he would just take his binding spell off me…

"You look very still," he said anxiously. "I do hope you're all right…I wish you would move, or something."

Move? I thought indignantly. I cannot move, you idiot boy, because you have put me in a full body bind.

And then, apparently, forgotten this small fact.

He gave my shoulder a clumsy, familiar pat. "I couldn't believe it, when I realized what was wrong with the Fireheart. I'd never have forgiven myself. The stone had been telling me all day that you were in trouble, and I just kept on ignoring it. I don't know what I'd have done if you'd, if you'd, well, died… I still feel so guilty about Sirius, you know…"

He babbled on in this vein for quite some time, plucking at my robes occasionally like a three-year-old. 'Sirius this.' 'My godfather that.' As the pain in my body receded, my irritation rose. Why couldn't the boy save my life, well, silently? The human body is an amazingly resilient thing. Less than one hour after fearing for my life, I was reflecting woefully on the prospects for my sanity if I had to listen to Potter on the topic of his godfather for much longer.

Perhaps I had not been rescued after all. Perhaps I had died, and this was instead some sort of special inner circle of hell, reserved uniquely for Severus Snape. I was doomed to lie there, unable to move, while Potter pawed at my body and spilled his adolescent angst into my unwilling ears.

"I do hope you're going to be all right," he said again. He sounded very young. "I really don't know what more to do. I hope the elixir has done you good. I hope Ron and Hermione manage to find Dumbledore…I daren't even go back to Headquarters myself to ask for help, in case anything happens to you while I'm away…"

Very touching. Noble Gryffindor idiot that he was, he would probably have done as much for any tramp he found in the street. I should hardly be flattered by his concern.

"You know," he went on, "Hermione reckons there's some kind of connection between me and you now. Isn't that funny?"

Oh, quite. Hilarious. Watch me laugh without my lips moving.

"She says it's because you've saved my life so many times, and probably that's why you gave me the Fireheart, without even realizing it…"

Hmm! Granger might even be right about that, I thought with surprise. I hadn't really considered the matter. It had just seemed an appropriate gift after my encounter with the Dursleys, and in the face of the knowledge I had acquired about his deplorable upbringing.

A further thought struck me.

No. Oh, no….

I thought it rather likely that Potter had indeed saved my life. Just as I, so often (too often), had saved his. I meditated with misgiving on what might happen to the wizard life-bond in such circumstances. Especially when he wore my own old Fireheart round my neck….I would have flopped back with a groan were such an action possible for me. As it was I could only sink more deeply into my own depression. If I were fated to share such a link with anyone, an unwanted intrusion into my solitary and self-sufficient world, why on earth did it have to be with Potter?

"You know, I actually think it's kind of nice," he burbled on.

I knew he didn't think I could hear him. I wondered if he never talked to his friends, since he seemed to find it so necessary to inflict the inner workings of his head onto my apparently unconscious form. I supposed it was true I made a more effective listener when in this condition.

"I don't really have a family any more. Friends are great, and I've got lots of those…but I sort of like the idea of someone being there for me, well, just because…whether or not they even like me…"

And did he think this might apply to me???

"That's you, really, isn't it? I know you don't like me. But you're always looking out for me. I don't think I ever really said thank you to you properly for that…"

Finally: he had said something which showed a glimmering of sense. No, Potter, I thought acerbically: you never did appear even to notice, let alone appreciate, what I was doing on your behalf.

"So I am sorry about that. But you can't really blame me, can you? You were so horrible to me from the minute I arrived here, glaring at me and shouting at me, and saying I was arrogant and all that…"

Because, I thought indignantly, that was quite true! But another part of my mind was whispering that actually I was being rather unfair. An abused and neglected orphan, dropped suddenly into the magical world and finding himself a celebrity, a star Quidditch player, the child wonder of the Wizarding World: and I knew it hadn't all been joy and glory… Those times when he had faced the Dark Lord..Well, though, he really had brought all that upon himself, hadn't he, with his rule-breaking and nosiness?

It was also true he had suffered miseries when his schoolmates and the Daily Prophet were deriding him and teasing him. Fêted as he was normally, however, I had just thought it would do him good, and that maybe he would learn some much-needed humility from the experience.

"No-one ever thought I was anything before I came here," he continued. Even talking to himself, as it were, his voice trembled. "The Dursleys..they hated me..they told me I was a freak, and less than nothing, and locked me in the cupboard and then the smallest bedroom, and they couldn't even be bothered to feed me, or buy me clothes that fit, I think they hated me. They just wanted me out of the way as much as possible. And everyone picked on me at school because they were afraid of Dudley…"

I supposed it was possible I had been wrong about him needing lessons in humility.

"And then last year, when Sirius died…Dumbledore said it wasn't my fault, but it was…I didn't try hard enough at Occlumency…"

Now that was entirely true. I still could not think about those sessions without rancour.

"…and so I got tricked, and I should have known better….I miss him so much…"

Doh. Sirius again.

"…and I don't see how I'm going to do it!" Now he was nearly crying. "They want me to kill Voldemort! How am I supposed to do that? And if I don't, no-one else can, or so Dumbledore tells me…what if I fail? I will fail. They'll all die, and it will be my fault…I won't have been strong enough…and they'll be dead… "

Compassion burned unexpectedly in my chest. That truly was a burden too heavy for any one person to bear, let alone a boy just turned seventeen who surprised me sometimes by managing to tie up his own boot laces unaided.

At what followed, I would have jumped off the bed if I could. Unfortunately I had no option but to remain immobile, without so much as a twitch. Potter collapsed onto my chest and sobbed against me. His tears were running down my neck. Granted, I felt sorry for the boy, but still…..

Fortunately Dumbledore arrived before my robes were too sodden with his weeping.

"Severus! Harry!"

I heard him sweep into the chamber. Harry jumped up.

"Harry.. it's all right, now, it's all right. Shh. Harry, what happened? Why did you find it necessary to put Professor Snape in a full body bind?"

Dumbledore gently drew back the blankets and took stock of my injuries.

"B-b-body bind?" Harry repeated blankly. "Oh! Erm. I did it so I could move him without hurting him, and then I forgot…."

"Finite Incantatem!" Dumbledore said.

I opened my eyes. They were hazy and unfocussed but I could make out Harry standing anxiously over me, his face swollen with crying. Dumbledore was looking at me gravely.

"Oh!" Harry said again, understanding dawning. "I'm sorry, Professor, I didn't.. erm, can people in body binds hear?

"Harry," Dumbledore said, kindly but firmly. "I think it best if you return to Headquarters now. The password is still Jelly Slugs. You know the way from here to my rooms, I believe."

"But – "

"I need to take care of Professor Snape's injuries now. You have done all you can, Harry, and I thank you. I will see you in London."

Harry hesitated, clearly unwilling to leave. "But…oh. All right, Professor. Good bye. Good bye, Professor Snape. I hope you feel better soon."

As he trudged slowly out of the door, it occurred to me that I ought perhaps to have thanked him.

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