A/N: Once again, many thanks to Procyon Black for her excellent beta and the changes she suggested.

A/N2: The Half-Blood Prince has stalked onto the scene, and so Prometheus Bound is officially AU and non-canon. Oh well. Carry on.

Chapter 20: The Bitter Glass

So Harry was quite miserable for the next few days.

Whenever he met Hermione, at meals or in the library or in the Common Room, they would pretend to be strangers, glancing away disinterestedly with the casual uncaring of the ignorant. Harry had felt at first irate (he could pretend to be indignantly and self-righteously silent, too), then bewildered (alone in the corridors, he felt like a ghost, wandering without truly being alive), then anxious, as though a rat were gnawing at his heart. The feelings seemed to spring anew more relentlessly every time he tried to suppress them with arguments of why it didn't matter, of why he shouldn't care at all. Harry hadn't anticipated playing this game of silence with Draco—in fact, he had planned to talk to Draco and convince the Slytherin that he really wasn't a dark wizard and he couldn't really cast the Cruciatus; but the look on Draco's face led him to wait for the next encounter, and then for the next encounter, and then it was too late.

The same sort of thing happened with Dumbledore—though, Harry thought guiltily, it might have been somewhat reversed. He was conscious of the headmaster's penetrating blue gaze at meals, and the few times he actually saw the expression on Dumbledore's face made him sick with sudden guilt. Perhaps as a response to that, and maybe to the presence of people in general, he ate breakfast and lunch very early, and dinner very late; and on Tuesday the following week, he realized that he could count the words he had spoken in English over the past few days on one hand.

But with Tuesday came Potions and Healing and Snape. All through Potions class, during which he worked like a zombie with the rest of his mind on a level of hyperawareness, and Healing, which was once again with Madam Pomfrey, he felt a maddening sense of restlessness, as though he were eagerly waiting for Snape to enter with a disdainful glance and slice open his chest with a slew of caustic remarks. Harry wondered morbidly if he was a masochist at heart, if what Vernon had done to him had left marks that went beyond even a change of mind and nature. Or was it part of his inheritance package? He hadn't cared to present the snake with this quandary; the reptile seemed much more concerned with the lack of puffskeins.

So Tuesday passed, as did the rest of the week, in the same restless fashion; but with Saturday came not Snape nor Hermione nor Draco, but Ron.

After a very early breakfast, during which Harry was alone in the Great Hall with only a few solitary Hufflepuffs, he went to the library to finish Professor McGonagall's Transfiguration assignment, which was an essay on Animagi through history. The library, too, was mostly empty, though Harry really only noticed that neither Hermione nor Draco were there. He settled at a table near the far back of the library, his parchment and quills rustling unnaturally loud in the stillness. The silence, which had beset him the first few days like a Dark curse that entangled him in a vast, lightless web of solitude, still struck him bewilderingly. It was, he admitted, rather depressing—though, he told himself again, scowling as he did so, it hardly mattered that Hermione wasn't sitting next to him, that her quiet whisper wasn't there to dust away the silence and the loneliness; all that mattered, he told himself firmly, irritably, was that he finished his task.

But he found it difficult to concentrate, and when he was halfway through one roll of parchment, he set down his quill and muttered to the snake, "It all feels a bit pointless, somehow."

The snake shook itself from its stupor. "How so?" it asked.

"I really can't see how outlining the history of Animagi can help me defeat Voldemort," Harry replied. "Unless of course I wanted to bore him to death. But then I'd find Professor Binns."

"Some things don't have immediate applications," said the snake in a knowing tone. "And at any rate, you may want to become an Animagus, as that's highly useful, and learning a bit about the history—"

Harry had stopped paying attention, for at that moment, Ron entered the library. Harry was on the verge of looking away and hoping that the redhead wouldn't notice him, but their gazes met across the many empty tables, and Ron froze. An unreadable look appeared on his face, one that seemed anything but pleasant to Harry.

"It's your old friend, isn't it?" said the snake.

"Yes," said Harry, lowering his head as Ron began making his way towards them. "My old friend."

Ron pulled out a chair and slumped into it, and even as Harry tensed, ready to spring away from any hint of danger, he found the movements achingly familiar. "So," said Ron, his lips twisting with hatred. "It's Potter."

"Hello, Weasley," Harry said coldly. The voice and the sneer on the redhead's face, however, seemed to belong to someone entirely different. "Did you need me for anything?"

"Yes, now that you mention it, I think I do," said Ron. He leaned forward, and Harry stiffened even more. The snake was hissing quietly—so quietly that only he could hear, but hissing menacingly all the same. "I know what you really are," Ron continued, his hot breath condensing on Harry's face. "You're a mole. You're not really Harry. You're an intruder, and imposter—the son of Snape."

A fleck of spittle flew out from Ron's mouth at the last words, landing on Harry's cheek. "Indeed," Harry drawled, wiping the spittle from his face.

"You think that you're a good actor, that just because you've tricked Dumbledore you can trick the rest of us," Ron continued in a low, quivering voice. Harry watched with a mixture of detachment and unease as the redhead began to froth slightly at the corners of his mouth. "But I know who you are. You can't trick me."

"Really?"

"Really!" Ron snarled, lurching closer. Harry felt the coldness at his fingertips sharpen. "I know the truth, and I've told everyone. And even though they won't believe me now, they will in the end." Ron was breathing heavily, and a wild look was in his eyes. "Oh yes, in the end, they will." He settled back into his chair, repeating under his breath, almost as though he were unaware of doing so, almost like the whimpering of a beaten dog, "They will. They will. They will."

"I imagine so," Harry said quietly. The hostility and wariness he had felt just a moment ago had changed. So the general opinion of Ron's demagogic speeches seemed to have gone down, thought Harry, easily seeing Ron gesticulating wildly in the middle of the common room, with the other Gryffindors ignoring him irritably. Harry rubbed the tips of his fingers, easing way the last of the coldness of the silver thieves. Some part of him shuddered: would he have used them on Ron—upon what had once been his loyal friend, and was now this miserable, pitiful wreck? Pity: that was what he felt. They ached, he realized dimly. The tips of his fingers seemed to have been numbed by ice.

"You're right," Harry said in a brisk, hard voice. "I am not Harry Potter. I am an imposter. Harry Potter is dead."

Ron drew in a sharp breath. "You—killed him? Did you kill him?" His hands clutched convulsively at the wand inside his robes. "I'll kill you if you killed him!"

"I didn't kill him," said Harry solemnly. "Do you know who killed him?"

Ron gave him a distrustful look. "You-Know-Who did," he said. Then, carefully, painstakingly pronouncing each syllable, he enunciated: "Vol-de-mort."

"Not even him," Harry said gravely. "Are you sure you want to know?"

Ron's eyes bristled with suspicion. "Well? Who did it?"

"It was you. All of you."

"Liar!" Ron snarled, slamming a hand onto the table. "I didn't kill him. You did!"

Harry shook his head. "It was you, all of you," he said in slow, measured tones. "Not directly, no. But you let him die when he needed you most. You see, he began to die on his birthday." Ron was staring at him now, transfixed. "That was the day his uncle burned his books and wand and magical things. That was the day his uncle killed one of his first friends, his owl. That was the day his uncle locked him in his room and began to beat him slowly to death."

"You're lying," Ron muttered through clenched teeth, but his blue eyes were staring, and Harry looked back, fancying he could see something familiar at the very end of the tunnel.

"I'm not lying," Harry said simply. "This is how you killed Harry Potter. It wasn't a quick or painless death, either. It went on for weeks. At first, when his uncle chained him down and hurt him over and over, Harry Potter was strong. He told himself that his friends would rescue him. Even though he couldn't do anything himself, he was sure his friends could. He was sure they'd realize something was wrong and come to check. But he was mistaken. Dreadfully mistaken. For as the days passed, nobody came, and he was utterly, utterly alone. And when nobody came after he wished and hoped and prayed for days upon days and nights upon nights, when he realized that nobody would come at all—that was when he died."

Ron's eyes were wide and unblinking. Harry, meeting that gaze squarely, could almost imagine that this was the old Ron. He could almost imagine that he was telling this story about another person, a person he had met and become friends with and lost and grieved for. He could almost feel the warm fireplace in the common room and see the pile of Chocolate Frogs between them dwindling to nothing more than a few wrappers and discarded cards. Any moment now Ron would say something simple, something plain, but it would nevertheless ease the trouble in Harry's heart, and make him feel that the covers to the story he'd just told could be solemnly closed, and he could and return the sad, unfinished tale to a shelf high out of reach—

"You're lying," Ron spat. "You're a liar! You killed him, not me! His uncle didn't kill him—you did! I know it because he wrote to us through the summer, saying that he was all right, that he just wanted to be alone. You're just trying to trick us, aren't you? But I can't be tricked. I was his best friend."

"As you wish," Harry said stiffly. He picked up his quill. "If you would be so kind as to remove your presence—"

"I want you to stop tricking Hermione," Ron interrupted with a snarl.

"I'm not tricking her," Harry replied impatiently.

"You are! Do you know what she did this morning at breakfast?"

"No."

"She sat with Malfoy."

Harry felt a spike of irritation stab his heart. "So what? They're—friends now." But even as he spoke, admitted that he had felt unsettled that Tuesday morning several days ago when Hermione had marched away from Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil's whispers and over to the Slytherin table—to Draco Malfoy. Harry wondered if anything like that—a Gryffindor sitting openly with a Slytherin—had ever happened in the history of Hogwarts.

"You can't trick me," Ron hissed. "I know you want to make them all lovey-dovey, so Malfoy can kill her like you killed Harry."

Lovey-dovey? Harry thought with alarm and annoyance. "What are you talking about?" he snapped. "You ought to see Madam Pomfrey about the hallucinations you're having, Weasley. There's nothing lovey-dovey going on."

"I'll be watching you, Potter," Ron spat. "You've taken Harry, but I won't let you take Hermione!"

Harry sneered. "What'll stop anyone from taking you?"

"Are you threatening me?" Ron snarled, leaning forward menacingly.

"No," Harry said in a bored tone. "Just wondering."

Ron stood, his face twitching. "I'll be watching you, Potter," he hissed. Then he turned and stalked away.

"Crazy," Harry muttered in Parseltongue, as Ron stumbled over a chair and knocked into a table on his way out of the library. "That brain did him more damage than I thought."

"So none of what he said is true?"

Harry nearly broke his quill as he slapped it onto his parchment, splattering ink everywhere. "Don't tell me you're believing all those lies like Draco and Hermione!" he hissed, then quickly masked his face when the few others in the library turned to glance at him.

"No, not the part that was untrue," said the snake hastily. "I meant—the part about your two friends."

"That's untrue as well," Harry snarled back. He would finish the stupid essay later, he decided as he stuffed the parchment back into his bag.

"They did seem rather close during meals, especially on Thursday," said the snake in thoughtful tone.

Harry snorted as he stalked out of the library. "How would you know? You didn't look."

"But you did, arglwydd," the snake said pointedly, "and quite a few times, too."

Harry opened his mouth but found it difficult to argue against that, because, he realized, it was true. On Thursday—he thought back, combing his mind for details—on Thursday he had skipped breakfast and had a very quick lunch in the kitchens; but at dinner he distinctly remembered thinking that Draco looked troubled and pale. Harry had managed to filch a copy of that day's Daily Prophet, but there was no mention of Death Eater attacks or of Lucius Malfoy (or any Malfoy for that matter) at all. The only thing that might've affected Draco was a report on how the investments by the richest families in Britain were in jeopardy due to the instability of the value of the Galleon, but Harry thought it unlikely.

But had they been lovey-dovey? Harry ran through every memory he could conjure, but now the grateful look Draco had given seemed deeper and more familiar than it should; and the smile Hermione had given in comfort seemed something more than consolation. Had they been lovey-dovey? He felt split by simultaneous urges to find the two and observe them from shadows or to demand an explanation at once—

"You tell me, snake," Harry said, pacing back and forth in the corridor. "Had they been—well, l-l—" The words came strangely in Parseltongue, so he switched to English. "Lovey-dovey?"

The snake shifted itself daintily. "What exactly would constitute that condition?" it asked in a self-important voice.

Harry threw his hands up in the air. "I don't know," he muttered, staring at the ground. "Maybe they—maybe they stare at each other more than usual, like a pair of cows?"

"Well, they did stare a lot," said the snake in a careful voice.

"You don't know, do you?" Harry said irritably. "If only—"

If only Ron were here, he completed in his head, but it couldn't be so—wouldn't ever be so. Ron was… was… Harry crossed his arms and hunched inwards as memories of what he had told Ron and Ron's subsequent reaction flooded into his mind, struggling with thoughts of Draco and Hermione. He had—he didn't know why he had said what he had said. Pity? Revenge? He wondered how Hermione would have reacted (he didn't think he'd ever tell it to Draco); she would be effusive with compassion, that was for sure, but—would she understand? would she be able to do what Ron had been able to do, once upon a time, a long time ago? would she—

"Agh!" he muttered, as the image of Hermione whispering to Draco came up again. "They're—it doesn't matter if they're lovey-dovey, it—doesn't—matter!"

"Doesn't it?"said the snake.

Harry paused. "You said it didn't," he hissed. "You told me it didn't. You said that there would never be a resolution, that I was the heir of Slytherin and the child of the Prophecy, and thus I must carry out the deeds of my line and my heritage."

"Yes, that I did, but I never said that you had to suppress any or all feelings and turn yourself into a weapon!"

"A weapon," Harry repeated, tasting the word as he said it as though he had never said it before. It sent a chill tingling down his spine. "Why shouldn't I turn myself into a weapon? Why shouldn't I do it?" An unfeeling dagger, he thought: no more pain, no anger, no hurt, no grief—nor happiness or love, that was true, but those two were overrated, especially in the face of darkness. "I'd kill Voldemort that way, wouldn't I?"

"Perhaps," the snake conceded, "but it's not a matter of whether or not it would defeat Voldemort; it's a matter of whether or not it is possible for you." The snake's voice became insistent. "You can't be a weapon, arglwydd—you can not. If you had been born a different person, then perhaps it might be so… but you can never be a weapon, just as you can never accept that there is no resolution."

The words stung. "But I can't otherwise," said Harry, as he ran a hand distractedly over the snake's length. "What choice have you let me? I—"

"I don't blame you, arglwydd," the snake added quickly, apologetically. "I blame myself too, for I have lived many more lives than you, and should know more of that thing which you call the human heart. But you are so hurt that you can't see beyond what despair would require."

Harry had the ridiculous urge to reply: of course I can't see, I'm blind, don't you know? But Harry knew this had nothing to do with the green orbs within his head that moved with as much purpose as two feverish stars. This was something else—something that he had not thought about, so caught up by the brute pain of his hurt or the keen tenderness of his impossible hope. Perhaps the snake was right, he thought. Perhaps he had been so used to the crumbling of hope that he had taken the only defense he could assemble: the miserable defense of despair and finality. What was it that the snake had said? that he could not see beyond what despair would require…?

"Require," Harry breathed. "Maybe—" He stopped. "Do you know the Room of Requirement?"

The snake hesitated. "Vaguely," it said with a faintly indignant tone. "I have heard of it before."

"It is a Room that gives you what you really need at the moment, whether it be chamber pots or a room for practice with Defense Against the Dark Arts," said Harry, hurrying to the corridor where the Room was located.

"Ah, I see," said the snake in a wise voice. "So you want it to reveal to you, through the castle's enchantments, what you really require for defeating Voldemort?"

Harry nodded. "Yes, but it might not work, of course. Usually it needs something more specific."

"Is it not a part of the castle's enchantments?"

"Yes," Harry replied. They were nearing the corridor where the Room was located, and Harry began to wonder what he might find. A statue of Slytherin to mean the gifts he received? A piece of parchment upon which were written two words: Avada Kedavra?

"You may not know, but the castle can do its own thinking," said the snake. "You are its last heir, so I imagine it would obey your commands more than any other's."

"Maybe."

"But I think it will show you," said the snake with a tone of finality in its voice. "It is you, arglwydd, who must defeat Voldemort."

"So I'll see myself?" said Harry doubtfully as he slowed to a stop.

"Yes, perhaps as a mirror or a portrait," the snake replied. "So are we there?"

"Nearly," Harry said. They were in a corridor now, and the door was not there. "Now I've got to pace and think," Harry explained. What did he need, what did he require?—obviously a way to defeat Voldemort. Any way? He thought of the words Avada Kedavra (they would be written in green, like the letters of Tom Riddle's name); what if, though, he found a heavy tome of Dark Arts, turned to a page that awakened something from the well of knowledge gifted to him by Salazar Slytherin—something that was of an unutterably dark nature, something more terrible by far than the Unforgivables? And a new thought entered his mind: what if the room was blank? what if there was no conceivable way for him to defeat Voldemort…?

As if on cue, the door appeared.

"Go on," said the snake when Harry hesitated. "It's there, the door."

"Right," Harry managed. He stepped forward, turned the knob, and entered.

"It's empty," said the snake. "The room is empty."

"Yes, it is," Harry replied, feeling his mouth go dry. The room indeed was empty: nothing more than bare walls, bare ceilings, bare floors, covered with the faceless stones of unadorned Hogwarts walls. So is there no way? thought Harry despairingly. No way at all for me to defeat him? no way at all…?

But he turned around, and stopped. "A mirror, as you said—" he began, feeling a measure of relief flooding into his heart, but he broke off and stared fixedly at the surface.

"Yes, it's a mirror," said the snake. There was no response. "Arglwydd?"

"Snake—" Harry began brokenly. "Can you—can't you see? Don't you see?"

"What? what? See what?"

Harry took a shuddering breath. "What do you see, snake?"

"You, arglwydd," said the snake in a bewildered tone. "You, with me wrapped around your neck, and you looking like death warmed over."

"No," Harry whispered. "No. I look—happy." He turned his gaze upwards to the mirror's frame. "I thought so," he muttered.

"What?"

"This is one of Dumbledore's inventions, the Mirror of Erised," Harry replied. "It shows your heart's greatest desire. But perhaps it works only on humans, and not on snakes…"

"I see only what's there," the snake said, returning to stare at the surface. "What do you see? You need it to defeat Voldemort."

"I see—" Harry broke off. The ground seemed to have been knocked from his feet, and he was falling, falling through air from a dizzying height, with white clouds of blindness screaming past his ears. "There's you around my neck," he said, "and Hermione and Draco and—my father beside me. We're standing in this room, alone." He took a deep breath. "We're… smiling." He thought wonderingly: that's what my father looks like when he smiles. That's what it looks like. That's what I look like. Harry reached out a hand, and the person in the mirror reached out a matching, fine-fingered hand. I look like my father, Harry thought, and met the finger of his grinning mirror image.

"Then you need this to win against Voldemort," the snake said. Its voice was slow and grave.

"So the castle thinks," Harry replied in a quiet voice. His mirror image had turned away to smile at Hermione, who had nudged closer and laid her head on his shoulder. Harry shivered and felt a strange, gnawing hunger. He watched, fascinated, as Hermione gazed up to him and he returned the gaze with that look he had seen only once—in the photo of his mother, Lily, and her love, James: the photo that now was ashes in the wind. Hermione stepped onto her tip-toes and whispered something in his ear, and he laughed.

So this is my heart's desire, thought Harry, feeling thunderstruck yet strangely unsurprised. This. The sight of Hermione's tender eyes, the contented look on Draco's face, and the love and joy on Snape's sent a tendril of aching curling in his throat, and he closed his blind eyes, though the images still remained.

It will never happen, he thought with infinite sadness. These dreams will never come true. He remembered Snape's voice, hesitant in a heart-wrenching way, asking him if he would like to live in the dungeons, and he remembered how he had rejected the offer, as furiously and categorically as Snape had rejected him that day so long ago. He knew why he had done it, could still feel echoes of that untamable anger and hurt and rage, but now the world was drabbed in hues of sorrow and regret. There's nothing more terrible in the world than regret, he thought. Someone must have told him that, sometimes, somewhere; and it is true, he thought: sorrow and rage and hurt were eased by the blanket of madness, hemmed in by the unbearable weight of the moment, but regret was a pitiless thing, stretching down the empty halls of time, as a lucid as a mirror staring him in the face. And I do regret, thought Harry, a hammering at the back of his eyes. I regret; how I regret—

"I have to go," Harry said hoarsely, in English.

"Where?"

"Away from this," said Harry, wrenching his gaze from the mirror. "There is no use wasting my life staring at dreams and illusions," he said coldly as he opened the door, "especially dreams and illusions that will never come true—"

He left the room and walked right into Hermione.

"There you are!" Hermione exclaimed, as Harry rubbed his chin where it had smacked into her forehead. "I was looking everywhere for you."

"Really?" said Harry, feeling again as though the ground had been ripped from his feet.

"Yes," said Hermione, who was cupping her forehead where it had run into Harry's jaw. "You weren't in the library, or your dormitory, or that special room with the funny portrait, or wandering about the dungeons"—Harry wondered, at that point, why she thought he'd be wandering about the dungeons—"and I hoped you hadn't gone back to the Chamber of Secrets. But you're here. What were you doing?"

"I—was—" His mind careened through a myriad of lies, but in the end he said, "I was thinking for the Room to tell me what I needed in order to defeat Voldemort."

"Oh," said Hermione in a surprised voice. She continued, quietly, "Did it… show you anything?"

"It did, but I'll tell you later." He added, "I promise."

Hermione gave him a somewhat curious look, but nodded. "All right. Anyway, I was looking everywhere for you because—well, because of many things, but right now because Dobby is missing."

"Dobby?" said Harry, puzzled. "Don't tell me it's some spew thing…"

"Don't worry, it's not S.P.E.W.," Hermione said dryly as she began walking down the corridor. Harry followed. "It's that we need Dobby to spy for us."

"Spy?"

"Yes, spy. Draco should be the one telling you this, but…"

"Is it his idea?" Harry asked, feeling, against his will, a spark of irritation.

"No, it's mine, actually," Hermione replied, and Harry thought he heard—though it might only have been his imagination—a coolness in her voice. "He received an… ultimatum from his father."

"Ultimatum?" Harry echoed, his heart quickening. "From Lucius Malfoy?"

"Yes," said Hermione grimly. They were nearing the kitchens now. "He got it on Thursday."

Thursday— A bolt of realization flashed through Harry's head. So that's why Draco and Hermione had been so… close on Thursday. He felt a relief drain into his heart, and then a gnawing guilt: here he was, feeling glad that Draco had received an ultimatum from his father, just so that there hadn't been anything lovey-dovey going on. And why hadn't they told him? He decided not to ask now; he thought he might know the answer, and it gave him no comfort.

"What did it say?"

Hermione reached up and tickled a pear. "Basically, it told Draco to return to the allegiances of his family, or face the consequences that I imagine would be rather dire."

"So it's a threat," said Harry, stepping over the threshold.

"Yes, basically," Hermione agreed. "We thought—or I thought, really—that we might get Dobby to go back to Malfoy manor to spy for us, to see exactly what that threat entailed." She stopped. "So, will you call for Dobby?"

Harry stepped forward. The place, as usual, was swarming with house-elves, all running about in their tea cosies and giving the two humans occasional, expressionless glances. "Dobby?" Harry called. He half-expected a pop and the elf, wearing his tower of hats, to appear and bow; but nothing happened. "Dobby!"

Hermione sighed. "If he's not responding to you, he can't be here, can he?"

"No," Harry said reluctantly. "I don't suppose so. Have you asked Winky?"

"I thought of that, but no," said Hermione.

"Winky!" Harry called, running his eyes across the teeming mass of bustling house-elves. "Winky!"

"Winky is here, sir," said a squeaky voice at Harry's feet.

"How are you, Winky?" Hermione asked in a polite tone.

"Winky is busy, Miss," the house-elf replied, giving Hermione a rather cautious look. She turned to address Harry. "Is young Master and his Miss wanting something from Winky?"

Harry felt a slight flush at the mention of Hermione as his Missy, but quickly dissipated the thought. "Yes—have you seen Dobby?"

"Not since many days ago," Winky replied. "A man came and asked for him, and Dobby left and he is not back. Maybe," said Winky in a dark tone, "he not be faithful to his young Master and find another one. Winky is faithful to her master, oh yes!" she said stoutly.

"Right," Harry said, cutting the house-elf short. "What was the man like?"

"He is a Professor," said Winky. "He is the one who teaches the young Master about spells to make dark things go away."

"Cinna," Hermione said immediately. "Was it Professor Cinna?"

Winky nodded, her ears flapping about her face like a wrinkled elephant's.

"Thank you, Winky," said Harry, and the house-elf left with a last, deferent bow. "So Cinna took Dobby," Harry said slowly, turning to face Hermione.

"Why?"

"I don't know," Harry said, leading the way out of the kitchens. "I… don't quite like Cinna."

"He's a good teacher," Hermione said defensively.

"He is," Harry agreed, holding the portrait open so that Hermione could step through. "But he was—he had once done something terrible to my father, I think."

Harry walked on, his hands at his side, but from the edge of his vision he saw Hermione glance at him. He couldn't see the expression on her face, but her next words were spoken softly: "Something terrible?"

"Something terrible, but I don't know what it was," said Harry. "I—he tenses up whenever Cinna is around, gets nervous in a way I've never seen in any other situation, the way"—he began to falter—"I do when… he's around me. But Cinna knows it and he—enjoys it almost. And—I don't think I've told you about the Order meeting?"

"You said you couldn't tell me."

"That was only because Draco was there, and I wasn't sure yet about him." He paused. "I'm not sure now, either, not with the ultimatum…"

"I don't think Draco will return to his father," Hermione said firmly. "I'm almost sure of it."

Harry shrugged his shoulders. He wondered if he would tell her about what he had seen Draco write, about the feelings Draco had towards his father, who now presented him with a cold ultimatum. He wondered if, perhaps, she knew already from Draco himself. He said. "But let's not speak here."

"Your room, then? The one with the portrait."

"Yes," said Harry, leading the way. As they walked, he thought that there might be a spell upon the room and the area surrounding it preventing others from coming, for the number of students he met diminished steadily until they were alone, walking down the hallway with the tapestry of the scraping tree.

"I planned to tell you about the Order meeting when Draco wasn't around," Harry said as he shut the door, "but I never got around to it."

Hermione seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but she stopped herself and said, merely, "Yes."

"But Cinna came with a bloody sack that contained Peter Pettigrew's head."

"What?"

He found himself telling her all about the meeting, how Dumbledore had guessed that the kidnappings were for a terrible ritual Voldemort was planning, how Caius Cinna had entered with Pettigrew's head in a bag, how Cinna had answered Dumbledore's queries in his mock-innocent, sneering manner. Harry found that he could stare openly at Hermione while she talked, for she was looking attentively at his sightless eyes, not noticing that the snake was gazing at her face.

He ended with telling Hermione about what Mrs. Weasley had said about Ron.

"That's terrible," Hermione said in a small voice. "I was sure Ron couldn't have just changed like that, but I never knew…" She lowered her eyes, and they met the snake's intent stare. Then she frowned, seemingly peering closer at the snake's eyes, and Harry quickly looked away, the snake moving its head with his.

"Is that why you let Ron hit you?"

"Yes," Harry replied, looking up at the portrait on the wall. "I'm not…" He forced his gaze back to hers, and this time, she was staring directly at the snake's eyes and into his mind. "I'm sorry that I got mad at you all the time. I'm sorry I never told you anything when you asked about me and S—my father. I—"

"It's okay," Hermione murmured. "I understand, and really, I should be—"

"Don't say it," Harry said, smiling slightly, and Hermione, glancing up at his face to see his expression, returned the smile. "But it's hard," Harry went on, sobering. "I don't really understand it. I don't understand anything at all."

"I'm sorry."

Harry quirked his lips. "Didn't I tell you not to say it?"

"Well, you can say it," Hermione said, pretending to be indignant. "Why can't I?"

"Because I'm the one who behaved badly and you didn't."

"No, because you think you have to carry the world on your shoulders and you don't."

Harry paused before he said his next words. "You heard the Prophecy, you know I—"

"Yes, but even if you're going to follow that Prophecy to the letter, it doesn't mean you must be alone." Her eyes flickered to the expression on his face, and then she moved closer, her gaze intent. "It doesn't mean you have to be alone, Harry, without friends."

Harry felt torn between looking away and falling into her gaze. "Hermione, I… do you think I am a—Dark Wizard?"

"No, no—that's another thing, I shouldn't have even thought it. I was just too angry and frustrated and confused—"

"It doesn't matter," Harry said soothingly, though his heart was singing inside.

"But even if you did decide to do Dark Arts, I would still—I wouldn't condemn you, because I know you." She fixed him with her gaze again. "If you ever decided to do them, it would be for the good of the world. You would—you would throw yourself off the top of the Astronomy Tower if that could save the world, though a year ago you'd have done it with a lot more complaining."

Harry chuckled. She was right. "I only wish it were so easy, then everything would be so much simpler…"

"Don't even think about it," she snapped with more vehemence than he'd expected. "Don't you even dare think of doing something like that—"

"I was only joking!" Harry said, laughing. "I—" He stopped, listening attentively. "Someone's coming."

The doorknob turned moments after Harry recognized the footsteps, and then the door pushed open to reveal Draco, looking more bedraggled and weary than Harry had ever seen him.

"You're here," he said. "Both of you." He turned to Harry. "So you've decided to speak to us," he said coolly.

"I've decided? I thought you—"

"Yes," Hermione interrupted loudly. "We tried looking for Dobby, Draco, but we couldn't find him—Professor Cinna took him, for some reason, and I told Harry about the… letter you received from your father."

Draco said nothing in reply as he shut the door and slumped into the chair. That was the first place I really met him, Harry thought. Me in the portrait, and him sitting in that same chair.

"Would you like to read it?" Draco said, suddenly addressing Harry.

"I would," Harry said, and Draco took a piece of folded parchment from inside his robes and handed it to Harry. Harry unfolded it. The words were written in an ornate style in the rusty brown color of dried blood.

"'Redeem yourself your trespasses,'" Harry read, "'or pay it in blood on the next full moon.' Next full moon?" He stopped. There was something about the next full moon that he knew was of deadly importance—but he couldn't remember—

"It could mean that werewolves are involved," Hermione said when she thought Harry had finished, "but there are many rituals that can be done on the night of the full moon that it doesn't necessarily have to—"

"Ritual!" Harry exclaimed. "That's—" He smacked his forehead. "I forgot—I cannot believe I forgot." He glanced up; Draco and Hermione were looking at him as though he were in need of a visit to St. Mungo's. "When is the next full moon?"

"Tonight," Draco answered.

"Tonight?"

"Yes," Hermione said. "Why?"

"Remember the kidnappings that were going to be used in a bloody ritual?" Harry said grimly. "It's taking place tonight. And the Order is going to try to stop them."

Hermione's eyes went very wide, but Draco asked sharply, "The Order of the Phoenix?"

Harry nodded.

"Father mentioned them," Draco mused, "but that would mean that… would mean…" He paled. "But he wouldn't," he said, voice like broken glass. "Not to me, he wouldn't." When he glanced up at Harry, his eyes looked haunted.

"Well, the ritual will probably not take place anywhere around Hogwarts," Hermione said confidently. "All you have to do is make sure you stay in the castle. Then you'll be safe."

Draco nodded, but he didn't seem to have heard anything. Harry watched anxiously, sympathetically. It was… nearly impossible to imagine how shattered he'd feel if his father decided to sacrifice him in a terrible ritual for someone else.

"I'm sorry," Harry said quietly.

Draco shook himself out of his reverie. "There is nothing for you to be sorry for," he said stiffly, with a cold, defiant arrogance. "The choice was mine and mine alone. But you had better find a way to kill Voldemort, Harry Potter." He narrowed his eyes in a glare. "You'd better, and soon."

Harry nodded wordlessly, but he felt a fierce flood of compassion swelling in his heart. "Just stay safe tonight," Harry said. "But I promise I'll find a way, Draco." I already have, he thought, remembering the Mirror of Erised. He saw, again, Draco and Hermione standing close to him, side by side, and he felt a rush of contentment and affection, filling him with a happiness that ached. "And I promise—"

"Don't make him promise stupid things, like getting himself killed," Hermione said crossly. "I wish it were just as easy making him promise to stay safe." She looked at him in a querying fashion.

"Hermione—"

"I knew it," she said and grinned, as though she had successfully played a joke on him. But Harry saw the worry behind the smile.

"What if I promise not to take any unnecessary risks?"

"Unnecessary is a very subjective word," Draco observed.

"I have good judgment," Harry said in a mock-offended tone.

"Right," Hermione snorted, "Good judgment, right." She looked as though she were going to launch into a long rant about Harry's far-from-perfect judgment, but Harry forestalled her.

"Anyway," he said loudly, "I'll be going to go see Professor Dumbledore and talk to him about this." He gave a questioning look to Draco, but Draco just nodded. "Maybe you could stay in the Room of Requirement tonight, and turn it into an unbreachable fortress, or something."

Draco looked puzzled. "The Room of what?"

"I'll explain," Hermione said briskly. "You know what it is anyway. And—Harry?"

Harry stopped, one hand on the doorknob. He turned. There was something in her voice that filled his heart with hope. "Yeah?"

Hermione shook her head, as though dismissing a ridiculous notion. "Never mind," she said, "I'm trying not to nag you, so…" She smiled. "I'll see you later."

Harry did his best to return the smile casually, and left.

qpqpqp

"Ah, Harry! I had wished you'd come, but I hadn't dared to hope," said Dumbledore in a tone so genuinely cheerful that Harry immediately felt a stab of guilt. "Some tea and biscuits? These are Professor McGonagall's favorites, you know."

"No, thank you, sir," Harry said. He couldn't help glancing at the spot where Pettigrew's head had lain on Dumbledore's desk; once more, a clutter of objects obscured the area, but he thought he could still see the stain.

"Then, may I ask, what brings you to come visit me?"

"Sir," said Harry, picking his words carefully, "the operation is tonight, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," Dumbledore replied with his same easy tone, though it was a shade graver

"Draco Malfoy received a threat from his father. It said that unless Draco returned to his previous ways, he would have to pay for his trespasses at the next full moon." He paused. "Tonight."

"So you are asking for sanctuary on Draco Malfoy's behalf?"

"Yes," said Harry. "I thought about letting him use the Room of Requirement and turning it into an undetectable fortress…"

"An excellent idea," said Dumbledore, nodding his head. "I would strongly encourage Mr. Malfoy to do just that, and begin well before dusk, as well." He paused. "But it is troubling… This letter from Malfoy senior strongly implies that Voldemort's forces are planning an attack tonight, just as they must be guarding their master while he completes his ritual."

Harry shrugged uneasily. He hadn't thought of that. "Perhaps one of them is a ruse?" he suggested.

"Certainly a possibility, yes," Dumbledore mused. "The ritual tonight cannot be a ruse—we have gathered too much evidence for it. Perhaps Voldemort is planning a two-pronged attack tonight, but in that case, he would have to be confident that he would succeed on both fronts. Voldemort does not like taking unnecessary risks or damages."

For a moment, Dumbledore seemed lost in thought. "What must I do?" Harry asked.

"You must stay in your dormitory and pretend to be asleep," Dumbledore said sternly. "This castle has layers upon layers of ancient spells of defense. They will not fall, even if Voldemort himself comes knocking on our door. Perhaps Lucius Malfoy's threat to his son was an empty one, one aimed more at Draco's heart and mind than his actual body."

Harry nodded. "We wanted Dobby to go to Malfoy manor and spy, but…" He held the headmaster's gaze. "Professor Cinna took Dobby."

"Took?" Dumbledore said, frowning. "What do you mean by took?"

"The house-elves don't know where Dobby is, but they saw him being taken away by Professor Cinna," Harry said. Dumbledore's frown remained and he sat back, seemingly deep in thought. "Professor, who is Caius Cinna?"

"Who is Caius Cinna? What a question to ask!" Dumbledore exclaimed. "You cannot expect that I know him through and through; in fact, even to me he is very—enigmatic, shall we say. What little I do know of him, there is not much that is for me to tell you."

"But will you tell me?" Harry insisted. He remembered that they had had a conversation like this before, and Dumbledore had told him nothing. But this time… this time, perhaps…

Dumbledore began after a pause. "I first met Caius Cinna in Defense Against the Dark Arts. It was my first class of my first year at Hogwarts, yet this Caius Cinna could already manage a Patronus charm."

"Really?" Harry gaped. A first-year managing a Patronus charm? It was beyond incredible, certainly unbelievable.

"Yes," Dumbledore said gravely. "Caius Cinna was an extraordinarily gifted wizard. But he was a Slytherin, and he saw me, a Gryffindor, as his greatest threat. So things between the two of us were never quite as smooth as, say, the relationship between you and your friend Mr. Weasley—in your previous years, of course."

It was probably more like the relationship between Ron and me in the past few weeks, thought Harry.

"One day in our fifth year, it reached Caius Cinna's ears that I was unbeatable in gobstones. This, after Slytherin lost to Gryffindor in a rather crucial Quidditch game (Caius was a Seeker, and I was a Keeper, and though Caius got the Snitch practically every time, Gryffindor still managed to score higher), prompted him to challenge me to a gobstone duel."

"A—gobstone duel?"

"Yes. And I accepted. Caius Cinna insisted that we forfeit items as the terms of our duel, and I put up my three beloved boxes of Dallyday Delights. We played, and I won (no one has yet managed to beat me in gobstones, except for Eileen Prince, a very intelligent girl), and then I discovered that he had forfeited his soul."

"His soul? He put up his soul in a gobstone duel?"

"Yes, he did," Dumbledore said sadly. "So by the time he had entered his sixth year, he had changed so that he was hardly recognizable. He became withdrawn, bitter, still brilliant, still fiercely arrogant—but now he treated me like his master."

"But—wait, so you have his soul in your possession? Like, locked in a box somewhere in your desk?"

"Ah, therein lies the mystery," said Dumbledore. "If I truly am in possession of his soul, then I have no idea how I possess it. Souls can, indeed, be ripped from the body and harbored in another object, though it requires magic of the most deadly sort, but none of that ever happened. It is my theory that he—Caius Cinna—believed that he had forfeited his soul, and everything that occurred afterwards was a result of that belief."

"But wouldn't he have discovered that you didn't actually… own his soul?"

"With someone who believed in the limits of his own powers, yes, but Caius Cinna was different. Perhaps he believed that he had the power to pluck his soul from his body and give it to me. Soul magic, after all, is the deepest and most difficult magic to master."

"So he's—deluded," said Harry.

"You could say that," Dumbledore mused. "Deluded." He sighed. "No matter what I told him afterwards, Caius refused to believe that he still possessed his own soul. And so, in my opinion, he believes it still, even to this very day."

Harry nodded. "So…" he said carefully, when Dumbledore looked about finished, "what did he do during the first war against Voldemort?"

"He disappeared soon after he graduated from Hogwarts, and I did not hear of him or from him for a long time," Dumbledore went on, though he sounded just as careful in picking his words as Harry had. "I thought, perhaps, that he had somehow willed himself to die. But he showed himself many years later when Grindelwald had reached the peak of his power."

"Grindelwald?" said Harry. "Who's—oh, I remember now. It said on the Chocolate Frog card that you defeated the dark wizard Grindelwald."

"Yes," said Dumbledore, nodding. "So I was not too surprised when Voldemort reached the peak of his powers and Caius Cinna appeared, offering me his services."

"Oh," Harry said, thinking. "Why would he appear only when there were really powerful Dark Lords about?"

"I cannot say," Dumbledore said, shrugging. "Perhaps he appears to aid me." Unlikely, thought Harry. "Or perhaps he appears to await my death."

That's more likely, Harry thought with a flash of alarm. But— "Then why doesn't he join Voldemort?" Harry asked. "Why doesn't he ever try directly to harm you? He'd get—er, well, wouldn't he believe that he'd get his soul back?"

"Once again, I cannot say, Harry," said Dumbledore. "I cannot tell what kind of mad world he has constructed for himself, what rules he himself plays in his attempt to satisfy his own arrogance, his image of his self. I can only say that every time Caius has had an opportunity to harm me, he has bypassed it, and every time he has had an opportunity to aid me, he has taken it. Therefore, I trust him, despite the unexplainable facets of his character and the cruelty of his nature."

The cruelty of his nature…

"Does that answer your question, Harry?" Dumbledore asked.

"Almost," Harry said. "Professor"—he nearly broke his gaze with the headmaster, and suddenly his mouth felt dry—"what did he do to my father?"

"That, I'm afraid is not mine to tell," Dumbledore said in a solemn but apologetic tone. "It is true, however, that your father was greatly injured—greatly wronged—under Caius Cinna's treatment. For that I have only the deepest regret."

Harry nodded. He had guessed that, expected that, and almost known that; and now it was confirmed. And regret… He knew regret, and knew that Dumbledore's had to be as deep as his.

"There is something that I would like to show you, Harry," said Dumbledore as he opened a drawer at the bottom of his desk. He reached inside with both hands and took out an object Harry knew all too well: a Pensieve.

"What will I see?" Harry asked, glancing up at Dumbledore's eyes.

"A memory of your father."

Harry leaned forward slightly. "May I?" he asked, keeping his gaze fixed on the headmaster.

"Yes," said Dumbledore, and Harry's vision swirled with hues of grey and white as the world vanished and Harry thought that he was falling, tumbling past fragments of memories until he landed in the same office he had left. Dumbledore was sitting at his desk, reading a piece of parchment with a frown. There was no sign of Snape.

Then there was a sharp rapping on the door. "Come in," Dumbledore called, putting away the parchment and pushing the half-moon spectacles further up his long, crooked nose.

Harry backed away involuntarily as the door swung open and Snape appeared, one hand clutching the doorway, the other hand clenched in a fist at his side. When was this? Harry wondered with concern, for he could not remember having seen so stricken a look on anyone's face before. Was this right after that terrible thing Cinna had done so many years ago? Yet his father looked, if anything, older than ever, with more wrinkles and shadows than before.

"Severus!" Dumbledore exclaimed, standing up and walking swiftly to the other man. "Come, sit down, what is the matter?"

"Nothing," Snape said harshly, stalking to the chair and slumping into it. He hunched his shoulders and stared into emptiness like a broken man.

Dumbledore sat back down at his desk and waved his wand. A steaming kettle appeared, along with a cup and a platter of biscuits. Dumbledore tilted his wand, and the kettle poured into the cup by itself. "Have some tea, Severus," the headmaster said in a soothing voice. "Go on, have some."

Snape extended a hand from where he had crossed his arms protectively over his chest, and Harry saw that the pale fine-fingered hand was trembling.

"Is it Harry?" Dumbledore asked in a quiet voice.

Me? thought Harry, watching his father turn his head away, the greasy hair falling curtain-like over half his face. "It's nothing," Snape said again in that harsh, unfamiliar voice. His fingers moved restlessly as they clutched the cup of tea.

"Have some biscuits, Severus," Dumbledore said. "They're Minerva's favorites."

Snape made no response for a long while before giving the headmaster a withering glare.

"Is it Harry?" Dumbledore asked again.

This time, Snape snarled in response, "What else could it be? Of course it's that—" He stopped, his jaw working as he clenched his teeth. "Of course it's him," Snape ended, and Harry let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

"Well, did he accept your offer to live in the dungeons?" Dumbledore asked.

"No," Snape replied with an almost vindictive sneer.

Harry felt a chill run through his body: he knew, now, when this had occurred, and what was to come next. Why had Dumbledore chosen to show him this? Why this, of all things? He looked with dread upon the puzzled expression on Dumbledore's face, as the headmaster leaned forward and questioned, "Why? What did he say?"

Snape took a deep, shuddering breath. "He did not go into raptures of joy as you had predicted, Albus. Instead, he said that my mere presence—pained him."

Dumbledore leaned back, his face blank with shock. "But he can't have meant that, Severus!"

Snape chuckled humorlessly. "Not meant that? Why, he screamed it aloud, for everyone to hear, as though I had put him under the Cruciatus."

Dumbledore frowned, a look of intense concentration on his face. "No," he said, shaking his head. "There had to have been more to it than that. What else did he say, Severus? He must've said more."

To Harry's surprise and horror, Snape's face suddenly contorted, and he covered it with a shaking hand.

"Severus!" Dumbledore said, the shock in his voice mirroring that in Harry's heart. But immediately afterwards, the headmaster reach out his lined and wrinkled hands and clasped them over the other man's. "Now, now," Dumbledore murmured soothingly, "everything will be all right, it will all work out in the end, it will all be fine…"

"He said that whenever he is near me, he hears me saying no, that I am ashamed of him, that I hate him, that he's not worth shit in my eyes," said Snape in a voice that was no more than a tremulous hiss, but still it was as merciless as a sinner's penance. "He said that it hurt—that I—hurt him, that he could hear me saying those—things, every time I was near."

A look of stricken realization washed over Dumbledore's face. Then, the look crumpled, and all that was left was sorrow as immense and ageless as the sea. Dumbledore shook his head. "Then you must tell him the truth, Severus, what you truly feel. You must tell him that you don't hate him, that you're proud of him, that he's worth the world in your eyes."

"Didn't you hear what he said?" Snape hissed, glaring up with a look of unsettling hatred. "Didn't you hear? He— I hurt him, Albus, I hurt him! Whenever he's around me, whenever I'm near him!" His hands clutched the edges of the desk. "Don't make me go back to him, Albus, don't make me go back," Snape whispered. "I don't deserve him. And he doesn't deserve me."

The world swirled. Colors blurred, lines vanished, and after the sensation of falling, Harry found himself leaning over the Pensieve, an aching feeling in his throat, like that of suppressed tears.

"He's wrong," Harry croaked, looking up at the headmaster. He wondered how much time had past; it felt like an eternity, a lifetime. "He's wrong. I— He—"

"Sometimes, we show hate to the ones we love because we love them so," Dumbledore said gently, and Harry saw again that immense and boundless sorrow, "because we are too scared of how much we love them, of how strong this wild and beautiful thing love is, how it has suddenly become our entire world."

Harry shook his head. His heartbeat was still too fast, his breathing still unsettled. "It's too late, though," he said helplessly, "too late, now, too late for us…"

"No, it isn't," Dumbledore said in a firm voice. "It is not too late. It's never too late."

Not too late… Harry closed his eyes and couldn't suppress the shiver that touched his very core, like the shaking of a budding sapling at the eve of spring. "Professor," Harry said after a long pause. "Will my father be—here, tonight, during the operation?"

"Yes," Dumbledore said gravely. "It is too dangerous yet for him to leave the Hogwarts grounds."

Harry nodded. "I am glad," he said, taking a deep breath and letting it out as a shuddering sigh. "I am glad. He will be safe."