Thank you so much for all the reviews! I'm glad that chapter didn't affect people as harshly as I had thought it might. Responses to reviews will be on my LJ.

Here we go into almost the last chapter; after this one, there's one more proper chapter and an interlude, and then Year 2 concludes.

Chapter Thirty: The Heart of the Storm

Snape frowned. He could feel an odd pulling sensation in his mind, the urge to step out of the Headmaster's office and—do something. He couldn't make out what he wanted to do, whether brew a potion or go to the hospital wing to check on Draco, but he knew that he wanted to leave.

Yet how could he, when there was Connor Potter in front of him, still listening to Dumbledore as the Headmaster told him what a wonderful story his tale was, and how it would inspire the other students when they heard it at the Leaving Feast?

Snape grimaced. He could translate Dumbledore's words. Gryffindor House has just won the House Cup. Again.

He glanced away from the insufferable brat, but found his eyes returning. For some reason, hate him or love him, Connor Potter was the center of this room.

That made Snape suspicious. It reminded him of the effects of a spell. He would remember the name of the spell in a moment, he was sure. It was on the tip of his tongue, and he could not grasp it. He closed his eyes and rubbed his head with one hand.

"Severus?"

Snape glanced up. Dumbledore had noticed his distraction and was smiling at him kindly.

"If you would like to check on young Mr. Malfoy," he said gently, "I am sure that he would be happy to see you, as his Head of House."

Snape nodded stiffly. He couldn't quite remember why he'd come to the Headmaster's office in the first place, he thought as he left. Of course there was the Petrified student—some Hufflepuff—and a message about Potter going into the Chamber of Secrets to defeat Riddle, but he hadn't known then that Draco had gone along. And why should he have? He was hardly friends with Potter—

He stepped out of the office, and out of Potter's immediate vicinity, and the realization hit him like a blow.

Harry.

Snape began to run.

He had aimed for Hogwarts's front doors, guessing that Harry would not have gone to the hospital wing or back to the Slytherin common room. But perhaps, he thought, as he sagged against the doors and stared at the sight in front of him, he had instinctively felt the call of the magic Harry was projecting.

It was night. The stars and the moon were blazing somewhere. That somewhere was not over Hogwarts.

Instead, a long tail of darkness, black enough to make Snape's eyes hurt, rose from near the Forbidden Forest and made lazy circles in the air, growing in speed and power as Snape watched. It formed a solid wall of whirling black wind, and it brought winter. He could feel the cold from here. It stung his throat and the inside of his nostrils already, and he thought that snow probably covered the lawn inside the storm itself—assuming that there was still lawn there. The winds bore along branches and slats of wood that might have come from the shed used to store Quidditch gear, and once Snape thought he saw a whole tree. And the storm was expanding, slowly but with determination. He had no doubt but that it would be tearing at Hogwarts's wards soon.

Worse than the physical power, though, was the magical. He could feel it spilling over the shields that Lucius had trained him to raise, leaking into every unoccupied corner of his body and mind and demanding his attention. It was like the Dark Lord's power, and Snape in fact sensed a touch of familiarity that made him wonder if it was Tom Riddle and not Harry at the heart of this storm after all. But no; if it were, then the power would have that familiar cruel edge Snape had felt night after night when he still served among the Death Eaters. This was wild power, with an undercurrent of honest rage. It was so busy exulting in its freedom that it hadn't attacked anyone else yet. Snape supposed he could be thankful to Merlin for small favors.

Harry was in there.

Harry was in need of his help.

Snape closed his eyes, breathing lightly, and began carefully to release the locks he kept on his own memories and his own power. In a sense, he had had boxes of his own in his head, but fluid and safe, given that he let the memories out every once in a while and kept them constantly in motion. And he had seen no reason to tell Harry of the tactic, lest he think himself justified in keeping his own box.

These were pools of quicksilver, and from them Snape pulled his memories of being a Death Eater, of the year that he had served willingly under Voldemort and the year he had been a spy, of walking among death and torture and never flinching from either. It was not courage in the way that Gryffindors would understand it, being dark and hard and bitter, but he needed it now. And he could not afford to lock away any experiences he had with Dark magic at the moment.

He opened his eyes and felt his own magic answering his call, rising in ridged patterns like steel bars around him. He nodded once and took a step away from the safety of the school and her wards.

The winds grabbed him, snarling, and flung him into the air. Snape had barely enough presence of mind to call on his own wandless magic and cushion his landing with a charm. He built a shield over himself a moment later, as the wind screamed and shrieked and swept by above him.

He eyed the whirling black wall for a long moment. He thought it would be easier if he could just get past the outer edge, but he did not know how to shield himself from the physical force of the wind in the meanwhile.

So loud was the screaming of the storm, and so heavy the pressure of the magic, that Snape did not hear the hooves crunching across the grass of the lawn until they were close. He started and turned. A centaur stood there, turned pale by the crazed flashes of silver lightning beginning to play in the storm.

Snape stared at the centaur. The centaur stared back, then turned and inclined his head towards the storm.

"This is the first stroke of Mars's hand, and the most dangerous," the centaur said, in that low-pitched grave tone that all of them used. "From this we might receive another Dark Lord, another champion of war. I will take you through the storm to him, that this might not happen."

Snape shook his head slowly—not in denial, but in disbelief. "Why?" he asked, even as he worked his way to the edge of his shield and the centaur knelt down, waiting for him to scramble onto his back.

"Because he is ours, too," said the centaur, utter seriousness on his face. His eyes were piercing, bright. "Vates."

Snape paused for a moment. He knew the word. It meant a poet, but also a prophet, a seer—

A visionary.

Snape shook his head again and scrambled onto the centaur's back. The moment his shield left him, he felt the wind try to blow him backwards. He clung with all his strength, bowing his head, and the centaur bore him forward into the storm.

It grew darker and darker as they approached the heart. Snape knew it didn't all come from the cloud cover that Harry's power had given the sky. This was Dark magic. He had not been wrong. It might be content to throw trees around and turn the air cold for now, but sooner or later it would unfold itself and strike, and if anyone but Dumbledore could stop it, Snape would be surprised. It was stronger than he had known Harry to be, stronger than he had sensed it was when Harry fought Riddle, and the rage hovering under the surface could rise at any moment.

All the more reason for me to enter it and help him.

Snape shook his head again as the centaur, straining, his legs rising and falling as though through water, finally took him as close as he could go. He was not sure how he was supposed to help Harry. He knew Dark magic, and he knew the arts of the mind—he was sure that Harry's webs must have shredded somehow, for this to happen—but he had never seen anything like this storm.

"You will help him."

Snape started again and turned to the centaur. "I will try," he corrected the irritating creature. "That does not mean that I will succeed."

"The stars do not say that you will succeed, either," the centaur agreed. "They say that you will try, and do a better job than many others could, and that we will have a new Dark Lord or the beginnings of our vates after this evening." He turned before Snape could question him, using the sheer bulk of his body to shield him from the newest blast of air. "Now, enter the storm."

Snape turned and held his wand out before him. He could use wandless magic when he needed to, but it taxed him, and he thought he would need all his strength to deal with whatever he found inside. "Diffindo!"

The black magic fell apart, cut into two neat halves, and Snape strode forward. He felt the gap close immediately behind him, and he let out a deep breath. He was cut off from the outside world now.

No, that was not quite true. He was cut off from the outside world, but he was with the small, motionless figure who lay crumpled at the center of this storm. Snape moved forward, slowly, not able to take his eyes off the sight.

Harry did not appear to be breathing, though Snape knew he must be or the magic would not have been able to continue growing. He lay as though someone had dropped him, his head lolling to the side and his shoulders lifted towards the sky. A thin, cold black flame appeared to cover him, from head to feet, and stretched higher into the sky, thickening until it gave birth to the storm.

As Snape had thought, it was calm here, the grass still untouched, though the air was freezing cold. It was not wind but his own awe and fear which made him approach the boy slowly. Then he sat down beside him, let out a deep breath, and caught Harry's chin, tilting the boy's face towards him.

His eyes were empty, wide and glassy and without a trace of tears. Snape knew, had known, that Harry's expression would tell him nothing.

There was only one way that he might learn more, and, perhaps, stop the storm from attacking the school—and, if the centaurs and their stars were right, prevent the rise of a new Dark Lord.

He pointed his wand at Harry, ignoring how his hand shook. He intoned the word, ignoring how his voice trembled. "Legilimens."

Pain swallowed him.

Snape tumbled and turned, his own consciousness awash in a sea of agony. He could feel memories and thoughts flashing past him, too swift to be seen, too scattered to be counted, and then he landed with a crash on what felt like a solid floor. He fought his way to his feet, terror making itself known in the wild beat of his heart. He had never felt such bodily sensations when in someone else's mind. That Harry had created a world like this was an indication of wondrous power.

And also loss of control. Snape lifted his head, remembering the spiraling webs he had seen before—lately twined around the marble block of Harry's devotion to his twin and filled with breaches full of fog that marked the Occlumency shields.

It was gone. It was all gone. The mind above Snape was cold and dark, howling and hardly human, with strands of coherent thought shifting back and forth like a spiderweb torn apart by a careless hand. He saw memories spinning like butterflies with nothing to hold them, dying in the endless wash of magic. He saw the shards of the golden web that he had noticed once, far down in Harry's consciousness, crouched like a giant insect on one side of his mind, attempting to repair itself and failing badly, because it had nothing on the opposite side to cling to.

It was worse than Snape had imagined, but he knew the cause at once. His snake is dead, and in dying, she tore out every web she was wrapped around.

Snape took a deep breath and moved a step forward.

"Who are you?"

Snape froze for a long moment. That voice had been Harry's, at least nominally, but it sounded like the Dark Lord. He turned, and felt the floor shift under him, real and solid in the way that ice was. He quelled his fear about going so far into someone else's mind. He'd had no choice about it.

A small figure stood before him, its head cocked to one side. Snape could not see it very well. It seemed to be made of shadow and ice, except for the brilliant green eyes that shone when it turned its head, and the jagged lightning bolt scar that blazed just as green above the eyes, shining like Avada Kedavra. It moved towards him. Snape felt the cold come with it. The floor beneath his feet firmed and looked more than ever like ice. The air around him howled in utter mockery. Snape firmed his grasp on his wand—in this mental world, he had it if he thought he did—and waited.

"No, wait," said the figure, as though in answer to a question Snape hadn't asked. "I know you. You're his Potions Master. The one who told him that he shouldn't keep a box in his head, or have that snake wrapped around so many levels of his mind." The figure laughed without humor. "Looks like you were right."

"Who are you?" Snape kept his voice calm and level. He had done something like this once before, when he had entered Alice Longbottom's mind on Dumbledore's request and attempted to repair the shattered fragments of her sanity. It had not worked, but he had met a young witch who had giggled at him and told him that she was Alice's childhood, one intact part of her locked behind solid walls. Snape racked his brain for the questions he had asked then. "What is your name?"

The figure smiled at him, a nightmare grin of icy teeth, and the scar and the eyes both flared wildly. "I don't have one. I don't need one. You could call me Harry, but I'm not all of him. Just his magic, free at last." It turned and gestured at the broken, glowing golden web. "That kept me imprisoned. So much of me. You should feel how strong I am, how deep."

"I could," Snape murmured. "The storm is your doing, isn't it?"

The figure ducked its head modestly. "It is. And when Harry manages to look out of the center of himself, then I'll expand it, and we'll tear down the walls of Hogwarts together."

"Would Harry want to tear down the walls of Hogwarts?"

The figure shrugged. "I don't really care. I've been tied down most of his life. I should get to do what I want to do."

Snape allowed himself to sneer. This was not as hopeless as Alice Longbottom's case, after all, where the bars of pain that Bellatrix had imposed had remained motionless through all of Snape's attempts to remove them. "You do realize," he asked, coating his tones with false solicitude, "that the longer you are free, the less force of personality you will have?"

The figure faltered, blinking at him. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said." Snape restrained his temptation to insult this—this construct of magic, or whatever name would be appropriate for it. "Most wizards' magic does not have a personality of its own, because it is free and integrated with them. You only have one because you were tied down and compressed for so long, and the power created you rather than do nothing. But you are free now. The further you spread, the more things you do, the less strength you'll put towards maintaining your own identity. Sooner or later, you'll fade, and the magic will belong to Harry, as it should."

The figure champed its teeth. Snape didn't move. He was thinking of arrogant wizards he had confronted during his Death Eater days, Dark wizards who had thought that the Dark Lord would never dare touch them. He had taken much pleasure in showing them the error of their ways. He would do the same thing now. He had always enjoyed being right.

"You're lying," the figure breathed. "You must be."

"I am not," said Snape, making his voice bored. "You said yourself that you cannot tear down the walls of Hogwarts, not yet. You need Harry's will and consent behind you to do that. You haven't got it. The longer you spend waiting for it, the more compliant you'll become."

The figure turned and screamed up towards the golden web. The shards of it stirred and tried to unfold themselves again, then collapsed crookedly back against the wall they clung to.

"I want it back, then," said the figure, green eyes crazed. "If the only way I can survive is to be confined, I want it back."

Snape made a sound that was neither agreement nor disagreement, and looked carefully back up through Harry's mind. There was a point at the center of it that exuded the harshest cold, the blackest terror and pain. He knew that was where he had to go. He was not looking forward to it.

"Good luck."

Snape stared briefly at the construct of Harry's magic. It bared its teeth, and he realized it was laughing at him.

"Wait until you meet the silent self," it whispered, and then turned towards the golden web again, trying to call it down.

Snape turned, crouched, and then launched himself upwards, heading straight for that center of blackness. He felt the walls part to embrace him this time, without his having to cut through them as he had through the storm.

In a moment, he hovered in a second dark well, one that shut out every sight of the tattered mess that Harry's mind had become. He could see nothing but blackness, hear nothing but silence, feel nothing but cold.

It became quite obvious, however, that he was not alone in that darkness.

Snape felt something else move to encircle him, rubbing against his body like a snake made of ice. He lifted his imagined wand in front of him and breathed, "Lumos." His voice sounded far breathier than he would have liked, given everything.

The thing revealed itself. It was a snake, at least in form, and it shone silver. It turned and met his eyes with green ones.

Snape saw.

He saw the memories that Harry had put in the box, endless arrays of them, envy shuttered and shuffled aside, talent denied, connections destroyed, everything but duty forsaken. Cruelty justified and supported was there, and neglect excused with any one of a thousand breathy sentences. Snape could hear a chorus of voices crying out in his head, most of which sounded like Lily Potter, all beginning with "But if you only knew everything, then you would understand…"

Snape did not know how old Harry had been when these memories began, but he looked young in at least some of them, perhaps no older than three or four. He felt his breath catch, and then his heart start beating again, as though it had stopped when the snake began to show him the memories.

He had been a Death Eater. He had been a Dark wizard, and still was, in the sense that he knew the Dark Arts. He had sometimes thought that his sense of right and wrong had long ago drained away from him. He had made his choices, but for selfish reasons as much as anything else. His courage was nothing that a Gryffindor would recognize.

He learned in that moment that he still had a sense of right and wrong. What these memories indicated was wrongness, and he felt emotions swelling in him in answer. Because it might have been too difficult or compromising to separate them all out, he translated the emotions into rage. That would work better.

He reached out and put one hand on the snake's head. His fingers tingled and then lost all feeling. Snape ignored them. He met the snake's green eyes and spoke the words carefully.

"Take me to Harry."

The green eyes studied him.

"I want to help him," said Snape.

The snake—the silent self, the magic had called it—would have known if he had lied. It turned and flowed away from him instead, leading him through barriers that parted like smoke around him. They would have held like steel, Snape knew, if he had wanted to harm Harry.

Or, more likely, he would have simply died. The silent self was practical. It would slaughter its enemies, which were Harry's enemies and those who had hurt him, Snape thought, and never experience a moment of regret.

He hoped fervently that there was a way Harry could harness and master that practicality.

The last barrier parted, and then they were in front of a small, shattered, broken heap. The silent self floated away. Snape knelt in front of the tattered bunch of emotions and memories, and wondered where he should begin.

He took a deep breath. There had to be a foundation to any mind, a guiding pattern that exemplified the shape it took. And much as he hated it, he knew what the foundation had to be, too. There was only one that Harry would respond to, particularly in this state, with his own survival instinct and his power separated from the center of him.

"Harry," he whispered. "Harry, do you remember your brother?"

The heap in front of him stirred. Then Harry's voice spoke from around him, infinitely weary and infinitely tattered. "Do I have to?"

Snape closed his eyes. He could admit that what he was feeling was pity, at least to himself. "Yes. Unless you know of something else that will anchor you and bring you back to yourself?"

He could feel the negation before Harry spoke it. "No. I—how did you get in here? Why did they let you through?"

"I wanted to help," said Snape carefully. "Harry, it will not be the same as it was before, even if you use your devotion to your brother as the anchoring pattern. For one thing, the web tying down most of your magic is gone. You'll need to master it, and to use it at least some of the time." He extended one arm and let his own magic blaze around him. "When the effort of not using my own Dark magic is too much, I go into the Forbidden Forest or conjure a target and spend it harmlessly there. I can show you how to do the same thing."

"I don't want to," Harry whispered. "I swallowed part of Tom Riddle's power, in the Chamber. I don't want that much magic."

"But you have it," said Snape, making sure that his voice sounded gentle. To his surprise, it really didn't take that much effort. "And you should use it, Harry. Otherwise, it will make an impact on the world, and not one that you desire. It has its own personality at the moment, and its own desire for freedom. If you try to deny it, the same thing will happen again. And perhaps this time you will kill someone else, instead of trying to escape doing so."

Harry let out a little sob. "But the—I—my parents are afraid of me, Professor." He laughed bitterly, and Snape felt the silent self stir nearby, filled with memories. "That was why they tried to tie my magic down in the first place. They didn't want me to become another Dark Lord. How am I supposed to avoid that?"

"You are closer now to becoming another Dark Lord than you have ever been," said Snape.

He knew he was taking a horrible risk, and he felt the silent self surge towards him, ready to hurt him if Harry was hurt. But Harry merely froze, and then whispered, "Why? I don't understand."

"Because this magic is being ignored," said Snape. "Just as your envy and resentment of your brother built over all the years that your accomplishments were ignored, the magic built, and what you have done to exercise and train it is not enough. And now you are stronger than ever. This must be used, Harry, not pushed away or cast aside. I very much doubt that you could ever cage it again."

Harry was silent for a long time. Snape tamed his impatience, his fear that the magic was doing irreversible things to Hogwarts and its grounds and perhaps the students inside, and waited. Some things could not be rushed.

"It's not true that I don't want it," Harry whispered at last. "It's true that I want it too much."

The air around them surged, and turned noticeably warmer. Snape dared to breathe a bit more easily. "That is the truth," he said softly. "But consider this, Harry. You have always wanted to defend your brother, is that not true? And others?"

Harry glanced up at him and nodded slowly.

"Master this," said Snape, with a sweep of his arm that was meant to indicate the storm and the shattered bits of Harry's personality and the silent self and everything else, "and you can do wonderful things as easily as hurtful, Harry. You can protect. Defend. Guard. Heal." He saw the boy's head lift then, as if hearing a trumpet call, and pressed on. "There is no law that says every powerful wizard must fall to the Dark."

"I thought there was," Harry muttered.

Snape quelled the surge of protective fury. That will wait. "I will help you," he said. "Draco will help you. Anyone whom you choose to take into your confidence will help you."

Harry looked at him keenly for a moment. Then he said, "You saw the golden web, Professor?"

Snape nodded.

"That was meant to tie my magic down," said Harry, an edge of bitterness slipping into his voice. "Amid other things that I don't even know yet. And I know who created it." He let his breath out. "Dumbledore." He stared hard at Snape. "That means that, if you stand with me and train me, then you're acting against Dumbledore. And I know you're loyal to him."

Snape felt the world around him wrench into utter clarity.

He had suspected this for some time. All he had been able to learn about the web was that it was most likely powerful Light magic, and compelled Harry to act in defense of his brother—somehow. But that had been enough. If it were not a Dark spell, then Voldemort could not have set it, and the Potters were not that strong. It was Dumbledore's work.

Dumbledore, who had protected him and believed him when he fled the Death Eaters. Dumbledore, who had supported him in the Order of the Phoenix when the others would have cast him out. Dumbledore, who had saved him from Azkaban.

Dumbledore, who had protested that Sirius Black was merely playing a prank when he nearly sent Snape to die on Remus Lupin's fangs. Dumbledore, who had made no secret in the last years of how much he favored Gryffindor House. Dumbledore, who had set the golden web on Harry's magic. Dumbledore who, it seemed, had Obliviated Remus Lupin.

Snape had accepted Harry's ridiculous story about Lockhart Obliviating the werewolf because he had wanted to. If he could pretend just a little longer, then he could avoid confronting the fact that his mentor was someone who would meddle with a child's mind and magic. He could pretend that his loyalty to Dumbledore was uncomplicated, that the man was a paragon of Light.

He had chosen ultimate loyalties twice in his life, twice sworn to follow a powerful wizard and meant it. Must he do it a third time?

He opened his eyes and looked down at Harry.

Yes, he must. And he must do it again and again if he had to. Only Gryffindors thought the world was so simple as to require one choice and one choice alone. And Snape was no Gryffindor.

I will choose every day if I have to.

He stretched out his hand to Harry. "I will help you," he said. "If you promise me that you will strive to master your magic and your memories."

Harry blinked, then gave him an astonishingly sweet smile. "Thank you, Professor," he said, and moved forward to clasp Snape's hand.

Snape felt the moment when Harry reached out and claimed control of his mind. A voice that thrummed in his head and his very bones said, That is enough.

The pain and the magic both screamed back at him. He could not think to rebuild himself into a whole person, not yet. The damage had been too extensive. How was he to deal with his memories? How was he to deal with his power? He had denied both most of his life. How could he heal himself wholly in the wake of that?

Harry's answer was as silent as the cold snake with the green eyes, and as simple as his destructive rage. He was not trying to heal himself wholly, not yet. He was trying to heal himself just enough to restrain his power and learn to master it, Snape thought, watching in a daze. He had never known the boy could do something like this.

He had never, of course, been present in the reconstruction of someone else's mind, let alone Harry Potter's.

Harry touched the golden web first, unfolding the shattered pieces of it, testing its strength. It held up under his probing hands, and Snape heard Harry sigh. Dumbledore's magic was still stronger than Harry's desire to be rid of it. It had to go somewhere, had to attach to something.

Harry found the perfect place for it, winding it around the steadiest part of himself, his trained devotion to his brother. The golden web glued itself to the rock and held there. Snape nodded. He was not surprised that Harry had chosen a foundation of duty. The time when he could wake from that, if ever, was far in the future.

Above the web, Harry gathered up the memories that had tossed like dying butterflies in his mind, drew them in, and breathed them out. Snape blinked as flashes of color lit the darkness like green and silver and blue lightning, save that when the flashes faded, they left behind bridges as well as afterimages, fragile patterns that stretched across the deepening gulfs. Harry's thoughts were unlikely to be linear for a time, Snape knew, but this method would work to let him think, at least.

Between the scattered, acknowledged memories went the memories from Harry's box, silver webs that filled the color with ice. Snape shuddered at the sight of them, but Harry simply placed them, one by one, and moved on. At least he knew it would do no good to ignore them any longer, Snape thought, though he did not know how long it would take Harry to deal with them.

Then he turned and beckoned to his magic.

It slunk towards him. Snape could feel that it had already lost a great deal of its sentience, its individual personality, and it snarled at Harry instead of speaking. It appeared to have diminished in the shadow-figure it could cast, as well, and now looked to consist of a pair of green eyes and a green lightning bolt.

Harry held out his hand, and pulled.

Snape watched as the magic flooded into Harry, and then outward, through him and around, acknowledged and embraced, no longer denied. Harry embedded it as jewels in the walls of his mind, green crystals and golden and black. Snape blinked. It was perhaps the most beautiful thing he had seen.

Faintly, he heard a protest. But I was free—

And Harry's voice, impatient. I was free. You are not just me. You are mine.

The magic's voice fell silent.

Harry took a deep breath, and then turned towards something behind Snape. Snape turned, as well, and saw the silver snake floating there, its green eyes fixed on Harry. Harry closed his own eyes briefly.

Snape opened his mouth to ask a question, then shut it. Harry had dealt with the memories from the box that birthed the silent self in the first place, or had created a way of eventually dealing with them. He had not yet confronted the rage that lay behind them, the urge to destroy.

Harry stood there for a long time. The silent self waited. Snape curled his fingers into his fists. He could not imagine what was racing through Harry's mind, or why he was hesitating.

A new Dark Lord, or a new vates—whatever the last is. I must be mad, to stand here and let him do this on his own.

But, mad or not, there was no other option, so Snape waited.

Harry clenched his hands into fists. "I want to destroy," he said. "Several people, really. But it will take a while."

The silent self abruptly rushed towards him and slammed into him. Harry closed his eyes and gasped. Snape could not look away as he watched black lightning skim up and down Harry's face and body. It tightened, solidified, and then wrapped him in a dark cocoon. From behind it, Harry's voice emerged, weary.

"This is the last time I'll be able to speak to you so clearly for a while, Professor," he said. "My mind's going to look like a mess from outside."

Snape was unable to contain his snort at the understatement.

He could feel Harry smiling. "I—I used Fugitivus Animus Amplector on my parents and Sirius. I should have some time before they're even able to focus on me and think about me properly. But I don't trust myself. I can hold the rage, but I can't damp it or get rid of it. Promise me that you'll get me away from them for at least part of the summer? I don't trust myself not to kill them."

Snape nodded. "Though you mistake the source of my concern," he couldn't help adding. "I am much more concerned about what they might do to you."

"Thank you, Professor," said Harry quietly. "Farewell."

Snape found himself abruptly kneeling on the grass of Hogwarts's lawn. He lifted his head and coughed, staring around.

The walls of the storm had collapsed. The lawn was scattered with branches and odd drifts of snow that looked at least a foot thick, but it was otherwise unharmed. The greatest change, Snape thought, was in the air. Still cold, it bore the heavy aftertaste of Dark magic that had come and gone.

He took a deep breath and looked down at the boy in front of him, just as Harry stirred and opened his eyes.

There was still pain in them, and he turned his face away in the next moment, so that Snape couldn't see the expression in them. But he was hovering in his rebuilt mind, holding on to a fragile kind of sanity. No matter how long the road, he seemed willing to walk it. He'd made his choice.

And so had Snape.

Gently, he reached out and scooped Harry into his arms, then stood, holding him, and began to make his slow way back to the school. There were so many things to be done, so many people to confront and rage at, and so many decisions to be made in the attempt to heal Harry—not least, where Harry should go over the summer.

Somewhat to his surprise and confusion, Snape found that he was quite looking forward to making them.