This chapter has teeth. Sorry about that.
Chapter Seven: Lessons In CourageHarry slipped rapidly down the second floor hallway to the office that Dumbledore had given Sirius. He had abandoned lunch early, which had made Sylarana protest and Draco, stuck in a conversation with Blaise, scowl at him, but Connor and Ron hadn't been at lunch, either. Harry now had an extra urgency to his need to speak with Sirius. If they were in trouble…
He heard Ron's voice coming from the half-open office door, and relaxed. They were well, then. It seemed that he hadn't been the only one who had decided to seek out his godfather.
"—slimy Slytherin!" said Ron's voice emphatically, just as Harry reached the office door.
Harry froze. Then he leaned gently against the wall and cocked his head so that he could see in around the door itself, heart pounding hard.
Sirius's office was the usual mess it had been since he moved in, crowded with photographs of himself and Harry, himself and Connor, the entire Potter family, Remus, the Potters' wedding, and some of his innumerable girlfriends. His own broom and motorbike stood in the far corner, accompanied by a school broom that Harry thought Sirius was checking over for jinxes. Gryffindor banners, or pieces of cloth Transfigured to look like them, hung jauntily from every available hook. Sirius's desk in the middle was buried under an accumulated load of paper, covered by a prominent Quidditch schedule with each Gryffindor match marked in red and gold ink.
And there were three chairs, now pulled into a triangle. Sirius sat in one of them, face like a thundercloud. Connor perched on the edge of another, almost vibrating with what Harry recognized as a mixture of anxiety and anger. Ron paced up and down in front of them, his back to the door so that Harry couldn't see his face.
Perhaps now isn't the best time, Harry thought.
You're eavesdropping, said Sylarana quite mildly.
I know, Harry snapped back. Shut up.
She just chuckled at him, which was an unexpected reaction. Harry went back to listening.
"He's not going to get away with this," said Sirius, voice like a growl. "The Ministry has no reason to sack your father, Ron, and surely not over something as mild as an altercation with Lucius Malfoy in a bookshop."
Ron spun around again, and Harry could see that his face had turned almost entirely red, obscuring his freckles. "But what if they do?" he whispered. "Dad's always told me that Lucius Malfoy had tons of friends in the Ministry, and now—"
"Not nearly as many since he was a Death Eater," said Sirius, and snorted. "Oh, yes, he has influence—every pureblooded wizard with money has a hold over that bastard Fudge—but that doesn't mean so much when anyone can look at his left arm and see the Dark Mark." He paused for a long moment, then, and a sly smile began to grow on his face.
"What is it, Sirius?" Connor had an echo of the same smile in his voice. He knew what it meant, almost as well as Harry did. Ron just looked from one to the other with a bewildered expression on his face.
Sirius coughed a bit. "Well, Malfoy's gone out of his slimy way to make this look all proper and legal, right?" he asked.
Ron nodded. "Advocates and everything! But—" He flinched and hunched his shoulders. "Well, my family can't respond as well because…" His voice trailed off into a mumble.
Kindly, Harry thought, Sirius didn't refer to Ron's poverty. "I know," he said. "So what you need is another pureblooded wizard with money to fight for you."
Ron just blinked, but Connor leaped up and threw his arms around Sirius. "Sirius," he whispered. "You would? You really would?"
Sirius messed up Connor's hair, affection in that gesture that made Harry smile a little, despite the way that the news of Lucius Malfoy going after Arthur Weasley had wound up his nerves. "Of course, brat," he said. "I still have my contacts in the Ministry, and I have a Black fortune lying around and not being used very often. Did you think I was going to spend it all on gifts for irresponsible godsons?"
Connor grinned at him. Ron caught on. "Oh, sir, no one would expect you to—"
Sirius held up a hand. "I know. I want to. It's not going to cost me anything I can't afford, Ron." His eyes narrowed, and he grinned in that way that always made Harry expect to see a tongue loll out of his mouth. "And I'll enjoy putting paid to that bastard Malfoy. I don't trust him any more than I trust Snivellus. Once a Slytherin, always a Slytherin. Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater."
Connor paled and fell silent for a moment. Then he said, in a low, troubled voice, "Sirius, do you think that's true of Harry?"
Harry swallowed.
They are ten motions of my body away from me, said Sylarana thoughtfully. I could bite both of them before the ward would descend and cage me. Just say the word.
Harry pushed his angry refusal at her, and waited to hear what Sirius would say. The longer his godfather waited, the more tense he got. Sirius stared into space for long moments, then sighed and swiped a hand through his hair.
"I don't know, Connor, honestly," he said, shaking his head. "He's my godson, and a great kid. I always thought he studied a little too much. But I would never have said he was evil."
"But?" Connor asked, pressing forward. Ron was listening intently, too, Harry noticed. Ron had been at least a slight problem in his interactions with Connor since he and Connor became friends. He accepted Harry right now, but he would be glad to turn on him if Sirius said so.
"But he's a Parselmouth," said Sirius. "And he's made up with the Slytherins again even after he openly proclaimed his devotion to you, which I don't understand."
That was them, not me! Harry thought.
"I see," mumbled Connor, looking stricken.
"I'll never abandon him, of course," said Sirius, reaching out and giving Connor a rough shake and then a hug. "I've got the bet with Snape to win, haven't I? But I don't like that he waited so long before telling us he was a Parselmouth. It makes me uneasy around him." He blew out a sigh. "I'm still fighting for Harry, Connor, but it's going to be more of a battle than I thought."
Harry closed his eyes. He fought the temptation to walk away. He knew, now, that Sirius wouldn't take the news of what had happened in Defense Against the Dark Arts well. Harry would have to explain about the diary, and Tom, and what in the world he had thought he was doing, keeping it all concealed. It would be so much simpler to scurry off.
So do it, Sylarana urged him. I can help you fight Tom when he appears again.
Harry shook his head slowly. He had meant to be Gryffindor, he was meant to be Gryffindor, and if that was so, then that meant facing his fears. He'd done it once in the Great Hall, but that didn't mean that he got to stop doing it.
He knocked on the door.
There was a brief, startled silence, and then Sirius called, "Come in."
Harry poked his head around the door, and was greeted with a variety of expressions: surprise, relief, worry, antagonism. Harry swallowed. "Sirius, can I talk to you in private?" he asked, darting a glance at Connor.
Sirius narrowed his eyes. "Why, Harry?"
Harry let out a little breath. "Something happened to me today. Something Dark. Something Slytherin, I think."
Sirius sat back in his chair, considering him. Then he shook his head. "I think that it's time for the first of the lessons in Gryffindor qualities I promised you, Harry," he said gently, but with a tone of steel in the back of his voice. "I'm sure that you can talk about this in front of Connor and Ron. We can trust them not to spread it any further, can't we?" His eyes lingered pointedly on Ron, who, Harry remembered, had had a tendency to blurt out some of his friends' secrets last year.
A bit of the red returning to his face, Ron nodded. Connor was already nodding, his hazel eyes going wide with fear as they fixed on Harry.
"Tell me now," Sirius said gently.
Harry told them the story of the diary, the nightmares of the two dark figures, the dreams of Tom Riddle, and ended with what had happened in Defense Against the Dark Arts earlier. He forced all the emotion out of his voice, and kept his tone equally bloodless. His eyes fixed on a point on the wall above Sirius's head, so that he didn't have to watch all the changes of his godfather's expressions.
Finally, when he was finished, Sirius whispered, "Oh, Harry."
Harry turned slowly to face him. He couldn't tell what emotion predominated in his godfather's eyes—there were too many—and he didn't dare look at Ron or Connor. He nodded. "I think that I'm being possessed," he whispered. "But I can't figure out how. I haven't studied the diary in weeks."
"But you kept it?" Sirius pounced on that.
"I didn't know what else to do with it," said Harry, shaking his head. "It didn't seem that dangerous—"
"I think it is." Sirius stood up and came forward, kneeling down in front of him. Harry actually relaxed a bit again when he saw the look in his eyes. This was the way that Lily sometimes looked when she explained some facet of the adult world he didn't know about yet to him. "Anything that can cause dreams and possession like this is dangerous. Go and get the diary, Harry. I need to see it. There are a few spells I know about that you don't which I can perform on the diary to test for any hint of Dark magic."
Harry nodded and turned towards the Slytherin dungeons. He could hear talk break out again behind him, but this time he didn't stay to listen to it. He had had no right to listen to the first conversation.
He lengthened his strides, rubbing at his scar, which had begun to burn faintly again. Then he heard a startled hiss from Sylarana.
Harry opened his eyes slowly, carefully. It felt as though they'd been gummed together by sleep for a long time. His head hurt. He glanced around and didn't understand what he saw. He was lying in a bed in the hospital wing, with Madam Pomfrey standing not far away and talking to Sirius in a low, urgent voice.
"Sirius?" he said. His voice croaked. Harry shuddered. He sounded as though he'd spent hours screaming.
Sirius burst past the matron, ignoring her shocked cry, and knelt beside Harry's bed. He clasped Harry's right hand in his and reached up to brush back his fringe. He sucked in his breath.
Harry winced. Apparently his scar gave some sign of the intense pain he was feeling.
"It's changed color," Sirius whispered.
"What has?" Madam Pomfrey bustled up behind him, her hands on her hips. "If you are suggesting that the pain Mr. Potter sustained came from a bump on the head, then I am afraid I must—"
"No, his scar," Sirius whispered. "It's red. Why is it?"
"I'm sure I don't know," Madam Pomfrey said. "Now if you will clear out of the way so that I can run a few scans, Sirius…"
Sirius backed off, though he didn't stop holding Harry's hand. His worried gaze warmed something inside of Harry that he hadn't been aware was frozen. He closed his eyes and moved his left arm carefully, to feel the weight of Sylarana. He was surprised she hadn't commented yet.
She wasn't there.
He opened his eyes and started to ask, but Madam Pomfrey began chanting her spells then, and he felt obliged to lie still and be quiet. He didn't recognize any of the spells, but tried his best to shut the syllables away in his head so that he could remember them. Medical magic would come in useful if he ever had to heal Connor's wounds.
The matron sighed and stepped away from his bed at last, lowering her wand. "Nothing is physically wrong with him," she said. "There is no bump on the back of his head, no concussion, no broken bones."
"I don't understand," Harry said, and winced at the sound of his voice. "What happened?"
"What is the last thing you remember, Mr. Potter?" Madam Pomfrey asked, her voice softening a bit as she stared into his face.
Harry shook his head. "Not much. That I was on my way back to the dungeons to fetch a book Sirius wanted to look at, and then—then Sylarana hissed—" He stared at his empty left arm again. "Where is she?"
"Right here, my dear boy."
Harry turned his head and breathed a sigh of relief. Dumbledore had come into the room, holding a glass cage in his hands. Sylarana wriggled inside it, hissing furiously. Dumbledore placed the cage gently on the bed and opened it.
"Headmaster, that is not wise—" Madam Pomfrey began, her voice shrill.
Sylarana shot away from the cage as though it were charmed to sting her and slithered up Harry's chest, coiling around his neck. She was demanding, "Where did you go? I couldn't find you. I couldn't feel you. Where did you go?"
"I don't know," Harry said, and saw from the minute flinches of the adults that he'd spoken Parseltongue. He sighed and turned back towards them, making sure to keep Sylarana out of his range of vision. "I don't know what happened," he said. "But we'd both like to know. Tell us, please?"
"It's disturbing, the way he refers to that snake," Sirius muttered.
Dumbledore ignored him and nodded slowly, his eyes less clear than they had been the last time Harry had seen him. "The ward in my office went off when your Locusta got a certain distance from you, my dear boy—or perhaps I should say, when you got a certain distance from her. When I went to fetch her, my way led me past a certain broom closet on the second floor. You were lying outside it, unconscious." He paused, staring intently at Harry. "You truly remember nothing of what happened?"
Harry shook his head, dazed. "But Sylarana should be able to tell us—"
"I can't," she insisted. "You put me down and told me to leave you alone. And the memories aren't in your head. They're gone."
"What's there instead?" Harry asked, turning towards her and not caring if he did hiss.
"Nothing. A hole." Sylarana tightened the hold of her tail around his neck a bit. "It was disturbing."
"But no sign of Tom Riddle?"
"Nothing," said Sylarana. "I can't feel him anymore." She paused a long moment, then added reluctantly, "Perhaps he grew frightened at the dog's suggestion that we examine his first home and fled."
Harry let out a slow breath. So that was one danger averted, then—the main one, that Tom Riddle would possess him again and let fly a dangerous spell of some sort at Connor or another student. He let the tension in his stomach relax, and looked up to meet Dumbledore's questioning gaze.
"I had a presence in my head, sir," he said steadily. "Possessing me. A young man with dark hair, who said that he'd come from a certain book I acquired from—" He faltered. Could he betray Draco's father like that?
"From?" Dumbledore prodded gently, his eyes like daggers.
Harry shook his head. "I picked it up in Flourish and Blotts," he said. "I didn't know there was anything wrong with it at first, but then Tom started talking to me—"
"Tom." Dumbledore's eyes widened the slightest bit. "Tom Riddle?"
Harry blinked. "Yes, sir. How did you know? Did Sirius mention it?" He flicked a glance at his godfather, but Sirius, though he still clutched Harry's hand, was watching Dumbledore with as much bewilderment Harry himself had showed.
Dumbledore sighed. "I am afraid that I have good, though unhappy, reason to think of that name first when I hear of any Tom," he said. "And no, your godfather did not mention it to me." He paused for a long, long moment, and then said, "Tom Riddle was Lord Voldemort's name when he was a student at Hogwarts, Harry."
Harry clenched his hands so that his fingernails dug into his palms. His skin crawled as if it had dirt on it.
Voldemort. He'd had Voldemort in his head. Voldemort could have gotten out and hurt Connor.
He could have made Harry hurt Connor.
Harry was shaking. He leaned to the side, and Madam Pomfrey gave a sharp exclamation and waved her wand once, moving a basin over to the side of the bed for him just as he threw up.
Sylarana, meanwhile, was hissing like a dragon disturbed on her nest. "The degraded one who forced the snake to obey his commands? The one you fought last year? He could have controlled me. He was trying. I am glad he is gone." And then her tail tightened enough to force Harry to pay a bit of attention, if only because she was choking off his air. "You are not dirty."
Harry rubbed a hand over his mouth and gave a weak nod to Madam Pomfrey in thanks, wishing he could agree with Sylarana. He did feel dirty, still, and horrified in a way that had nothing to do with the mere presence of possession. It had been Voldemort. The primary threat in Connor's life, the one he was supposed to protect Connor from.
And he would have made Harry into a traitor.
Guilt and self-loathing were unfurling in the middle of his chest, and would eat him alive if they could. Harry took a deep breath and put them, carefully, into the secret box of his thoughts, the one where he pressed all his complaints and the occasional unfairness or jealousy he thought he experienced around Connor. The box had been holding things like that since he was five years old. It was bottomless. Harry thought it could hold a bit more.
"No one was hurt?" he whispered. "What about Margaret, the girl I hit with the hex earlier?"
"She's awake now," said Madam Pomfrey firmly, "and back in Ravenclaw Tower. Quite honestly, Mr. Potter, it was only a simple variation on an old spell. Beyond the skill of our Defense Against the Dark Arts professor to reverse, of course—" her voice went acid on those words "—but not impossible for someone trained in medical magic."
Harry nodded, his resolve to learn medical magic only growing stronger.
"Do give Professor Lockhart a chance, Poppy," Dumbledore chided the matron gently. Madam Pomfrey only snorted. Dumbledore turned and met Harry's eyes, his own expression thoughtful.
"Mr. Potter," he said, "I know that what I am about to ask of you is unusual, but I feel that I have no choice."
Harry nodded, his heartbeat spiking. Sylarana just uttered a hiss that was either wordless, all anger, or some obscene curse word that Harry didn't know the translation for.
"I am afraid that I must ask you not to tell your brother, nor anyone else, about your possession by Tom Riddle," Dumbledore said quietly. "Or, at least, not that Tom Riddle is Lord Voldemort," he added, perhaps seeing a shadow in Harry's eyes. "Young Connor already knows about the possession itself, I take it?"
Harry nodded. "And so does Ron Weasley. They've both promised to keep it quiet, Headmaster," he said. "They promised."
"I did not think they would break their words, Harry," Dumbledore said gently. "But it is extremely important that no one else find out. I am afraid that it would mean your expulsion from the school. There are parents, as you know, frightened by the mere mention of His name. To find that a student had come into possession of an artifact to which a shred of his soul, or a memory of him, clung… they would demand your expulsion, and I am afraid many of the teachers would join them."
Harry swallowed. "Why aren't you pushing to expel me, sir? For that matter, why didn't you do it after I revealed that—that I can speak with serpents?"
Dumbledore reached out and gently patted his head. Harry shivered. There was a weight to the older wizard's hand, a feeling of immense strength and power and sorrow, and he was the only person besides their mother Harry had ever met who didn't muss his hair further.
"Because there is no law that says a Parselmouth cannot attend Hogwarts," said Dumbledore. "That would be rather hypocritical of us, when one of our Founders was a Parselmouth himself. And I have known many of Voldemort's victims." For a moment, his eyes flicked sideways to the door, and then came back to the bed. "I know that you are one of them, rather than a perpetrator of his evil."
Harry nodded and closed his eyes.
"Headmaster," said a cold voice from the door.
Harry's eyes flew open again, and he turned to see Snape standing there. The Potions Professor's eyes were fixed on him, of course.
Sylarana started to unwind from his throat.
"No," Harry told her firmly. "Don't bite him."
"You don't control me," Sylarana snapped at him.
"Then I'll force you to leave," said Harry. "If nothing I can do keeps you from biting anyone, then I don't want you around."
Sylarana hesitated, as though weighing her options, but in the end gave up and coiled herself around him like a living necklace again, giving complaints that Harry didn't bother to listen to.
"You have searched, I presume, Severus?" Dumbledore asked conversationally.
"I have." Snape strode towards the bed with his robes swirling around him, his gaze still never wavering from Harry. "There is no sign of the book within the boy's bedroom."
Harry closed his eyes. He was so used to feeling terrified now, he noticed dully, that he barely noticed when a new level of fear piled atop the rest.
"I feared it would be so," Dumbledore said with a sigh. "I assume that Harry was possessed one more time and forced to hide the diary, and then his memories were taken, so that he could tell no one where he had hidden it." He looked at Harry and gave him an encouraging smile. "But at least, my dear boy, you are no longer possessed. Where the book goes, the—presence—must go. He has no foothold within your mind anymore."
Harry nodded, though he was hardly comforted. What he had done was enough. He had no idea how he would live it down, or make it up to Connor.
"Who possessed you, Potter?" Snape sneered.
Harry tensed. Would Dumbledore force him to tell Snape, since the man was another of Voldemort's victims?
But Dumbledore said only, "Harry has agreed to tell only a select number of people, Severus. We, in turn, have agreed not to spread it any further." His gaze went to Madam Pomfrey and Sirius. Sirius nodded at once, of course, while Madam Pomfrey paled at whatever she saw in the Headmaster's face and lowered her gaze.
"The boy is in my House," said Snape. "He is in my care. I have a right to know." Harry didn't need to look up to know that Snape would be watching him again.
"Really?" Sirius said, with that bark-like laugh. "In your care? When you didn't even know that he was a Parselmouth, or that he was being possessed?"
"And did you know those things before he came to school, Black?" Snape's voice had gone soft and eager. "Did you know that your godson possesses Salazar's talent? Or that—"
"Severus. Sirius."
The Headmaster's voice appeared to flash-freeze both men. Harry saw Sirius bow his head, a flush suffusing his cheeks, and Snape stiffen. Dumbledore looked from one to the other of them and sighed.
"When grown men cannot put aside their grudges, how shall we persuade our students to do so?" he murmured.
Neither of the men said anything. Dumbledore sighed again and looked back at Harry, his eyes gone quiet.
"I am so sorry this happened to you, my boy," he said. "Nothing like this should have been able to hurt you at Hogwarts. Please consider yourself under my personal protection. You may come to me at any time with any concern that you have."
Harry nodded. He planned to take the Headmaster up on it if something else dangerous happened that might concern Connor. He would have to tighten his vigilance, step up the amount of attention he paid to his brother. What if Tom Riddle had planned something else, or was lurking in the shadows? What if someone else found the diary?
Harry did not like to think of what might happen then.
"Headmaster," Snape said abruptly, in a voice still cold, but less provocative than he had used before. "If I might make a suggestion that should root out any lingering traces of possession in the boy's mind?"
"Of course, Severus," said Dumbledore, sounding surprised and pleased.
"I extend an offer to train our accident-prone Mr. Potter in Occlumency," said Snape. "Legilimency, as well. At the very least, it will heal the hurts this possession has left behind. At the best, I may be able to make sure that the boy learns how to guard his mind against further intrusions."
Harry pushed himself back against the pillows, as far as he could without irritating Sylarana or making Sirius let go of his hand. A Legilimens! Snape was a Legilimens!
And Harry had trusted him without thought, and even looked him directly in the eyes too many times to count, his memories burning and flashing near the surface of his mind. Merlin only knew how much information he'd let slip directly from his mind into Snape's, information that could damn Connor.
There was no way that he was letting the Head of Slytherin House look into his thoughts again, now that he knew.
"No," he said firmly.
Snape turned and gazed into Harry's eyes. Harry immediately looked away, and Sylarana supported him with a stern hiss.
"And why not?" Snape had lowered his voice. "Are you afraid of what I might find, Mr. Potter?"
"Yes," said Harry bluntly. "I am. You hate our father, sir. You have already proven that." He looked back in time to see something flash in Snape's eyes, and found himself smiling, oddly, bitterly. "I think you're only doing this because you want to find memories of a time when James Potter did something embarrassing and taunt me with them."
"One might almost think you don't trust me, Mr. Potter," said Snape. Harry did not know what to make of his voice, which was free of inflection.
"I don't," said Harry. "You know why." He met Snape's eyes head-on and let the memory of taking Veritaserum shimmer on the surface of his thoughts.
Snape jerked back as if he had been stung, his eyes widening for a moment. Then they narrowed.
"Nonetheless," he said.
"Professor Snape would be an excellent choice, Harry," Dumbledore said, a tone of regret in his voice. "He knows—certain essential things about the presence that possessed you already. And he is your Head of House. He is also an expert Occlumens and will, I am certain, agree to an oath not to reveal what he finds in your mind to anyone else, unless compelled to legally." He turned and met Snape's eyes.
"I will," said Snape, with no hesitation.
"I won't allow it!"
Harry yelped as Sirius jumped to his feet, tugging viciously on his arm. He pulled his hand free, shaking it. Sylarana hissed, but once again said nothing in the hiss. Harry didn't know what to make of her.
"Harry is my godson," Sirius snarled, leaning forward. "He's also a twelve-year-old boy who's just been possessed, and needs rest and good food and the company of his friends. You are not going to go poking around in his head, you slimy, greasy-haired, yellow-toothed, sniveling, Death Eater!"
Snape did not smile. He merely watched Sirius with cold disdain, then turned to Dumbledore. "Headmaster?"
"We must do what is best for Harry," said Dumbledore. "And I do think that Severus will be able to help him, Sirius. I will make him agree to the oath in front of you, if it will—"
Sirius stomped out of the hospital wing. Harry listened to each step he took out, and closed his eyes, knowing what would happen now.
Dumbledore explained the situation to Snape, softly, and took his oath. Harry didn't look up the entire time. He was already sinking deep into himself, reaching for the courage Sirius had wanted him to show today, and which he would need to defend his twin.
Every movement he made to be Gryffindor only seemed to tug him back towards being Slytherin. He had to try something else.
It was a shame that he was no longer sure what he should try.
"Sleep," said Sylarana forcefully.
Harry sighed. She was right. No one would blame him for going to sleep, and it might help relax him and give him ideas when he woke in the morning.
He turned over, made himself comfortable, and let his mind drift into darkness.
Snape waited until he was back in his office to let his stoic face slip. Then he drew his wand, conjured a dueling target, and flung hexes at it, one after another, charring it and melting its limbs, scarring and chopping it, and finally making it explode. It was a reflex he'd trained himself into long ago, since throwing things was hardly advisable in a room full of valuable potions and potions ingredients.
Finally, the initial edge of his mood taken off, he Vanished the target and the marks he'd made on his walls, and sank into his chair, closing his eyes.
Two memories burned clear as day in his mind: the night he'd force-fed Harry Veritaserum, and the words that Dumbledore had spoken as he warned Snape what he would probably see in Harry's mind.
"Tom Riddle is here, Severus. And his diary is now missing."
Snape knew what it meant. He'd barely let the thought enter his mind, though, before he shut it away.
Now, he could shut it away no longer.
The Second War has already begun.
And Harry Potter was at the center of it, as Snape had suspected he would be. As recently as a week ago, a day ago, the announcement would have made him smile. It was only more proof that Harry Potter, and not his brother, was the Boy-Who-Lived.
Not now. Not when Voldemort had gained such a direct link into Harry's mind, and Harry had shown, clearly, that he did not trust his own Head of House to protect him against and help him with such a challenge, and had not for months.
I was blind.
Snape knew he had made mistakes in the past, even great ones, even horrific ones—sometimes it seemed as though his life had been one long mistake—but, at the moment, the only one that rivaled losing Harry's trust and making the bet with Black was the night he had chosen to join the Death Eaters. And that would come rolling back on him, repercussions in all their myriad forms, if the Dark Lord returned. Nothing he had done in the past twelve years to make up for it would matter anymore.
I will not allow that to happen. Against this, it does not matter that Harry is James Potter's son or Sirius Black's godson. It matters that he stands at the center of this.
And if I do not help Harry, then the other Houses may blame Slytherin for His return indeed.
Snape stood up, letting out a harsh breath, and composed himself. He would have to teach a class of mingled third-year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws soon, and he had to be ready. It would not do to let the students see their cool, calm, controlled Potions Professor with rage and agony in his eyes.
The Second War has begun, he thought, addressing the boy in the hospital wing who could not hear him. We are both soldiers in it. You stand not alone.
The trouble, of course, will be making you see it.