A/N - With thanks to Queen, some long unheard Linkin Park and good coffee coursing through my veins, I was finally able to find a beginning to this story. I hope you like it. You may find this prologue confusing. Persevere! Or, just skip to the next chapter :P

Prologue – Flames

He felt exhaustion draining from behind his eyes, as though a light, stretched, was being sucked away from them.

It was a constant pull, this effect so akin to an extended Dementor's presence. Yet he felt no less elated – it seemed that, within him, there were no happy memories left.

His bloodied fist was still clenched tight on his half-broken wand. He let the used wooden implement drop into his pocket, then held his wand-arm with his other hand, recognising the internal dull thud as aching pain.

He stumbled over something on the dusty ground.

A body.

Harry looked down. Dress in Death Eater robes, a mask thrown several metres away… The face was turned away from him, but Harry recognised the dark figure.

Severus Snape.

Harry stepped back in slight shock, but the thought of the man possibly retaining life pervaded his barriers of exhaustion.

He kicked Snape's dirtied head in frustration, knocking it further into the dirt.

He prodded it with his toes again. No movement.

Harry's eyes flew open, and he stretched his arm back in pain, knowing he would have no magic left to use, neither to heal or kill what was left of this man, if he still did have breath.

Harry stepped closer again. Kick. Never a reaction.

"Fucking wake up!" He screamed.

He could have been saying it to himself.

This long day, night, whatever, had seemed a dream. For so long…

Suddenly his right arm spasmed, and Harry's back arched in acute pain of its own accord. He swore and fell to his knees on the ground, groaning as the delayed sense of pain infiltrated his being.

His moanings soon became sobs and he fell on his side, cringing and almost writhing in gasps of something infinitely worse than any Cruciatus curse.

The cries wracked through his body, and he unintentionally curled in the direction of Snape's limp form. He covered his head and face with his hands, streams of salty tears draining out of his eyes, remembering the endured ordeal and the now of the pain.

Harry's head banged against Snape's shoulder and his nearly-dried blood gathered dust from the ground as his body slowly stilled, his eyes remaining open, unfocused, as his system shut down to cope with the pain and extreme fatigue. He would not wake for many hours.

Severus Snape coughed as his body was jolted by the warmth of another person against his back.

He half-rolled to allow his eyes to flicker slightly open, casting an indistinguishable gaze onto the form of Harry.

"Potter." Snape's voice was a croaking, roughened sound. He coughed again.

He failed to keep his eyes open, and was unable to see or hear the figure in tattered robes that clutched a wand, coming forward to seize them both.

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