Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!
This chapter got longer than I intended it to be, because characters would not stop talking.
Chapter Seventy: Rapprochement
Draco hated the barrier on the entrance to the second floor loo more than he had ever hated anything in his life. It was a smooth, shimmering opaque curtain of gray light, which didn't yield for all the spells Draco had cast at it; it simply ate them, much as Harry would. A fist pounded on it made it feel as hard as stone. Draco cradled his bruised hand and glared some more. McGonagall and Lupin and the others who'd been standing here with him had gone upstairs to discuss ways of breaking it, but Draco refused to think that there wasn't some easy method to get through.
Perhaps he could create a spell in his head to dissipate the barrier? He narrowed his eyes and reached for the will that he'd used when Dumbledore threatened Harry. He kept losing it to fear of what Voldemort might do to Harry, but surely he could think, Go! And the barrier would have to go, wouldn't it?
The barrier vanished so suddenly that Draco was left stunned, and blinking, and wondering if his spell really had worked. Then he realized that Harry was standing on the other side, with a white-gold wave of light behind him, supporting Snape.
And Harry was naked.
Draco hastily whipped off his own robes—he was wearing a shirt and trousers under them, so that was all right—and slid them around Harry's shoulders. He barely seemed to notice. He was breathing so slowly that he sounded mesmerized, or asleep. Draco stepped in front of him, though, and those green eyes tracked him. They looked so exhausted that he winced.
"Harry," he whispered. "Harry, what happened?"
Harry whispered back, as if he were intent that no one hear them, "Voldemort is blind. And most of his magic is gone. I—I've got it." He grimaced. "It feels like I swallowed half a river, and the river was more shit than water."
Draco didn't know how to react to any of that, so he said, "I think we should get Professor Snape to Madam Pomfrey."
"Yes," said Harry. "Yes, of course." He gave a faint frown, and then turned towards the stairs to the hospital wing. Draco walked beside him, now and then glancing back at Snape. The gleam of bone came through the torn mess of his right leg. Draco looked away again. It wasn't that he had a squirmy stomach, he told himself, just that—well, he couldn't perform healing magic as well as Harry, and right now he'd rather make sure that Harry stayed upright on the way to someone who could help.
And he wanted to think about Harry.
He was absurdly glad, now, that McGonagall and Lupin and the rest hadn't been with him when Harry came through the barrier, even though at the time he had hated them for giving up too easily. He wouldn't have wanted to share the sight of Harry without his robes with anyone.
Perhaps his guilty enjoyment of the sight meant he was a bad person. Draco preferred to think of it as a gift from some kind fate that had noticed his patience and his worth and given him that brief glimpse as a reward.
Of course, to a certain extent that would increase his impatience—now that he knew what Harry looked like naked, he was more interested than ever in sharing a bed—but fates were like that, he thought complacently, fond of contradictions.
He had thought he would spend the first minutes after Harry came through the barrier yelling at him for going alone and using that ridiculous Vanishing spell again, but the look in Harry's eyes and the sight of Snape mutilated argued against the wisdom of that. And the sight of Harry naked did help to make up for a lot.
Draco was aware that his thoughts were not the most virtuous in the world. He didn't care. As he helped Harry up a step when he stumbled, and admired the Many snake gleaming like a torque around his throat just above the deep green robes, he didn't care at all.
Harry entered the hospital wing feeling as if he floated beneath a scrim of dirt. Everywhere he looked, objects were gray for a moment, and then color bled into them. For that first moment, Harry thought he wouldn't want to live in the world his sight portrayed.
He knew it came from the filthy magic he'd swallowed, and as soon as he managed to shed that and tuck it into an object somewhere, then he'd be free of this feeling. But he couldn't help it right now, and so he watched Madam Pomfrey utter a sharp gasp and float Snape at once into a bed from behind that thick glaze of dirt. It scummed over his emotions, too, and stretched them out, and some of them never seemed to arrive at all.
That left him, oddly, more open to intellectual truths. He looked at Snape's still face, and his red-glowing arms, and the mass of looped flesh and tendon and skin that Madam Pomfrey, with tears in her eyes, was beginning to wind back into its proper place, and knew he had caused it, at least in part.
Oh, Voldemort would still have come hunting. If Yaxley told the truth and Rosier had been the one to tell them about the wards, then he could have hurt Snape even without Harry's dreams. But that open link had allowed Voldemort to send him the false vision of the Dursleys in trouble. If Harry had kept the Occlumency barriers up, he would have remained in the school, and sensed Voldemort the moment he came out of the Chamber of Secrets—or even before that. Since he could enter the Chamber, and knew its location, Harry wasn't entirely sure that Slytherin's spells were proof against him.
The guilt hovered a long way behind the realizations, thanks to the magic. Harry blinked. He saw Madam Pomfrey turn to him with tears on her face, and ask him to fetch a Blood-Replenishing Potion from the cabinet on the wall. Harry walked over to it mechanically, only then feeling the swish of cloth around his ankles. He looked down in confusion. Oh. He was wearing robes. He had wondered if Draco tucking them around his shoulders was a vision, or a concoction of his mind. He didn't remember the walk to the hospital wing, come to that.
He glanced over his shoulder, though, and saw Draco leaning on one of the beds, staring at him anxiously. Harry relaxed a little. He wasn't alone here, especially if Madam Pomfrey had to say that Snape would never walk again.
Yes, the guilt hovered a long way behind the realizations. He handed the Blood-Replenishing Potion to Madam Pomfrey and watched her force it down Snape's throat. Snape swallowed with some difficulty. Harry listened intently, trying to hear if his breathing had eased, and then pulled himself up short. He wouldn't be able to hear that yet, if anytime soon.
He had caused this, in part. But more important than the blame and the guilt was the acceptance of that fact, in all its sharp-edged dimensions. Harry let out a long breath, and asked, "Madam Pomfrey?"
"What is it, Harry?" The matron never looked away from Snape, tracing white lines in the air with her wand. The pieces of his leg followed the lines, dancing like snakes charmed to a flute.
"Can you save his leg?"
"I think so." Madam Pomfrey extended a hand towards him, still not releasing her concentration on his injury. "But it would help if I had more magic. Can you pass power to me the way that you once drank the old Headmaster's?"
Harry blinked a bit, then said, "Yes," and reached out, clasping her hand. He closed his eyes, thinking of the way he had passed magic to Elfrida Bulstrode, so that she could continue to be a witch after pouring all of her magic into her daughter.
The trickle of clean power crept past the taint and into Madam Pomfrey's fingers. Harry felt her jump, heard her gasp. He wondered if it came from the suddenness of the gift, or the growth of her magic. She would never have experienced that after a certain point in her childhood that she was probably too young to remember, he thought with giddy affection. He closed his eyes and poured a little more, carefully straining out the impurities that might come from Dumbledore's or Voldemort's magic.
"That's enough, Harry, I think," said Madam Pomfrey, her voice unsteady.
Harry opened his eyes, and had to blink against the sheer shine of the white lines that sped above Snape's body now. He listened, and could hear them singing as they put Snape's leg back together. He stepped back. Madam Pomfrey could attend to Snape's leg. Harry was going to watch his face, and absorb this particular sharp edge of what had happened.
Snape might walk again, but if so, it would take a long time for him to heal. Or he might walk with a limp, or his right leg might be next to useless. And Voldemort had had him for a relatively short time.
Harry touched his right arm, and frowned. The fever-colored magic still danced beneath the surface, and he wasn't sure that Madam Pomfrey, in her rush to attend to Snape's leg, had even noticed it. For that matter, he wasn't sure that anyone but him could see it.
"Madam Pomfrey?" he whispered.
"What is it, Harry?" The matron's voice was hard, but she spoke in the way that someone did who was utterly concentrated on a task and easily passing through it. She could spare a bit of focus for the outside world.
"Will it disturb you if I drain out the venom from his arms?" Harry thought it must be venom. He remembered the red-black snakes coiled on Voldemort's arms with a shudder of revulsion. Then he blinked. It seemed his emotions had caught up with him at last.
"Of course not," said Madam Pomfrey, her voice abstracted. "It would be a help."
Harry nodded, and then turned to Draco. "Draco, will you fetch me an empty vial?"
Draco ran and got it without questions. Harry didn't know if that came from his understanding that questions would hold things up right now, or his anxiety to be of use. Harry positioned the vial just under his own left arm, then reached out and began to eat the fever-colored magic from Snape's arms.
It burned as it passed into him, and it also tasted foul. This was like drinking boiled shit. Harry grimaced in resignation, and concentrated the venom into his own arm as fast as he could, then forced it to the surface of his skin. He had to close his eyes as a bloody blister erupted above the vial, burst, then began to drain into it.
"Harry?"
Harry opened his eyes and met Draco's concerned ones. He smiled. "I'll be all right in time, Draco," he said quietly, though he could feel the venom ravaging the flesh inside his arms and knew he would probably have to stay in the hospital wing himself when this was done. "But Snape's had this time in him for longer, and Merlin knows what it'll do if it stays there."
He dropped his head and took several harsh breaths as the magic continued to pour through him. Draco took control of the vial, moving it along Harry's arms to receive the fluids from the several blisters that appeared. Harry studied his face, and saw disgust there, but determination to remain until things were done.
He looked around the hospital wing, searching for another empty vial to Accio to himself, and caught a brief glimpse of the Headmistress standing in the doors. She had one hand to her mouth, and Harry didn't know if it was to conceal an expression of horror or hold back her dinner. She met Harry's eyes, and he nodded, once. McGonagall nodded back, then withdrew. She would tell the others that he had returned safely, Harry knew, and that Snape was still alive—neither he nor Madam Pomfrey would be working that intensely if Snape were dead—and that they couldn't be disturbed right now.
"You're dripping on the floor, Harry."
Draco's voice recalled him to himself. Harry shook his head and used a non-verbal spell to swing open the doors of Madam Pomfrey's Potions cabinet. That way, he could see the empty vials, and call another one.
So it went, until Harry had filled four and a half vials with the mixture of blood and venom and tainted magic, and no matter how he looked, he could see no trace of the feverish glow left in Snape's arms. He sat down in a chair that someone—Madam Pomfrey? Draco?—had brought to him, beside the bed, and stared at Snape. His face was still slack with unconsciousness. Harry didn't know if any of the lines of pain had eased. He hoped they had.
He turned his gaze to Snape's right leg. Madam Pomfrey had done an extremely careful job of reassembly, aided by the magic he'd given her, but she'd warned Harry that she wouldn't know all the consequences until tomorrow afternoon. The leg still seethed with the "heat" of the spells she'd used. When that cooled away, then she could see how much permanent damage had ensued, and whether Snape would have a long recovery, a short recovery, or none at all.
Harry nodded. So he couldn't quite absorb all the dimensions of what he had done or not done, yet. He wouldn't know that until tomorrow afternoon.
Was there anything else that he could do right now?
Yes, one thing.
Harry closed his eyes and began, carefully, to rebuild the Occlumency barrier between his mind and Voldemort's. If he probed, he could sense great pain on the other side of the link, waiting to swallow him. He smirked, which stretched his face oddly, and then blinked. He hadn't known he would enjoy his enemy's pain this much.
But he did. Voldemort was blind, and drained of a good part of his magic, and mingled with the rage and pain came a great deal of fear, like sluggish, chill water. Voldemort had not really feared him before, Harry thought, crouching on the edge of their connection like a werewolf in high grass. Now he did, and as he struggled to heal, he would know that his enemy might come down on him at any moment, and take advantage of his weakness. It was what Voldemort would do, and Voldemort judged all other minds by his own.
Harry withdrew behind the high grass, and thickened the barrier again. He didn't think swooping off after Voldemort would be a help right now, particularly when he had no idea of the Dark Lord's physical location without opening the scar connection wide. He would prefer to set a trap that took advantage of his surroundings, the way Voldemort had tried to take advantage of the Chamber as home ground for Slytherin's heir. And he knew when he wanted to set the trap. If cosmic events and world-shaking storms were going to happen anyway, one might as well use them.
"Harry?"
Harry opened his eyes, and blinked, and saw Draco standing beside him, with a vial of sweet-smelling potion in his hand. Harry lifted his eyebrows. He knew only one potion that smelled that sweet. It would put him into a healing sleep. Presumably, Madam Pomfrey had decided it would heal the damage the venom had done within his arms as well as relax him, but there was no saying how long that would take. And Harry wanted to remain awake until he was sure he understood everything he had done.
"Harry," said Draco, pushing the vial at him.
Harry bit his lip thoughtfully. Perhaps Madam Pomfrey was right. He might miss some of the considerations he needed to make in this state. Certainly, seeing the world from behind a scrim of dirt wasn't normal, and nor was the almost emotionless determination with which he made decisions right now. Perhaps he would do better when he had rested.
He accepted the vial and swallowed it quickly. Then he stood and made his way over to another bed, not far from Snape's.
He actually didn't know if he made it there before he fell asleep. If he didn't, though, he trusted Draco to catch him before he hit the floor.
Snape opened his eyes slowly. He remembered everything, of course he did, but the fact that this was not the Chamber of Secrets still overwhelmed him for a moment. He had given in to despair so thoroughly before Harry arrived that his mind could have made up the delusion of a rescue for him.
But no. He was in the Hogwarts hospital wing, and if a twinge from his right leg warned him not to move it and his arms ached as though someone had beaten them with a Flagellum curse, at least he was alive, and the Dark Lord did not stand beside him.
A light snore attracted his attention. Snape turned his head and saw Harry curled up in the next bed over, sleeping. Draco was in the bed beyond that, but he didn't look hurt, though Snape scrutinized him closely for a moment before turning to stare at Harry.
Harry had come in with one of the Many snakes in his mouth—presumably the same one coiled around his neck now and watching Snape with glittering eyes—and proceeded to save Snape's life.
It had been risky, of course it had, but they had all been at enormous risk from the moment Voldemort had stepped inside Hogwarts's wards. And, Snape had to admit, it had been a calculated risk. He had heard Voldemort elaborating on Harry's refusal to scream; every minute of that torture blazed in his mind like letters of fire. He had thought it strange, since he knew Lily had trained Harry to scream during pain, overriding it and giving his enemies what they wanted while maintaining more of a chance to save his own sanity and break free later. So he had looked over, and seen Harry open his mouth to scream at last, and instead of overwhelmed pride, a snake's venom had erupted.
And the Dark Lord was blind.
Snape laid his head back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling, and thought about the implications of that.
No one that he knew of had dealt the Dark Lord such a blow during the First War. Dumbledore had stopped him from taking over wizarding villages several times, and sometimes he took a punishing loss in the form of Aurors or Order of the Phoenix members ambushing his Death Eaters, but he had more magic, and he had more Death Eaters, and he had inventive, cruel magical geniuses like Adalrico Bulstrode. He had always risen, always grown mightier—slowly, true, but steadily. His fall had been only temporary, and when he returned on the night that Harry was taken to the graveyard for the first time, Snape had assumed the Dark Lord would move forward again, gaining ground until a final battle.
Reversals such as this were not supposed to happen, not to the mightiest Dark Lord in ten generations.
Snape looked at Harry again. Harry breathed normally, as if he had never done anything remarkable. Of course, the illusion of innocence was disrupted, if one knew how to look, by the snake around his neck and the way his left sleeve lost substance abruptly around the wrist.
Harry had saved his life.
Snape closed his eyes and shook his head. He was still angry with himself for letting the Dark Lord take him so easily, but other than that, he felt none of the emotions he would have expected to feel. The idea that he ought to be angry at Harry for taking such a risk was there, of course, but it met the memory of the Chamber and stopped dead.
Something had happened there, a crossroads that afforded him a choice of paths forward. He could take the one he had walked before, accusing Harry of risking his life needlessly. He knew that Harry would accept the blame from him because of the injuries he'd sustained. He might never cease silently resenting Snape's attitude, but he would not oppose it when he had only to glance at the remains of Snape's right leg and feel guilt.
But that wasn't enough, because Snape did not feel that way anymore. It would be the easier road, because of the changes that the others implied—a path laid over a broad and flat course that Snape had walked many times in the past, rather than the treks over mountains and dales that the others promised. But ease was not enough. Choosing a path because it was easy seemed almost insulting, after what both he and Harry had endured.
He could admit that he'd been wrong, about everything, and see the dawning of forgiveness in Harry's eyes. But that wasn't enough, either. If Harry ever found out that Snape had spoken of his guilt merely to earn that forgiveness, he would be disappointed—perhaps blame himself. Or he would blame Snape, and so far as Snape was concerned, there had been more than enough of that.
So that left another path. Snape scowled at nothing; other than himself and the two sleeping boys, there was no one in the hospital wing. Snape wished there had been, so he could snap at their well-meaning concern instead of being alone with his thoughts.
This path would involve changing himself. He didn't want to. He knew what he was—former Death Eater, repentant spy, horrible teacher, someone who cast blame and aspersions on others. The potion he had brewed that had let him look at his soul when he was seventeen had shown him all the ugliness of what he was. And Snape had accepted that ugliness. Why shouldn't he? When someone else clashed with him, he had the satisfaction of knowing that, yes, he was not a good man, that he was a bastard, and that it was a comfortable niche to be in. If he knew himself, he never needed to delve deeper.
And then this.
"If the Dark Lord has never suffered such a reversal before," Snape whispered to Harry, who went on healing and sleeping and didn't hear him, "then neither have I."
So much of what he'd believed about the world had turned out to be true. Given Dumbledore's methods, there was little difference between Dark and Light. James Potter had been even more of a coward and a bully than Snape had credited him with, and he had lived to see his rival fallen and humiliated. Black had been a fool. Lupin was, perhaps, not so bad, but he'd certainly never made an overture to friendship, either. Regulus had returned, and proved just as much of a hero, just as much of a shining guide star, as Snape had suspected he was when Regulus's example inspired him to turn against Voldemort. He's readjusted his mind a bit around Harry, but Harry's recklessness had seemed to prove that Snape was right to play the role of clutching guardian.
And now he would have to change. He'd have to treat Harry more as a comrade-in-arms than a child. At the same time, he'd been right about the danger of Harry opening the Occlumency link, and he would have to emphasize that. And that didn't begin to cover the fact that he had no idea how to apologize, not really, and his humiliation at being such an easy capture, and the fact that he'd loved Harry enough to take his own life.
All of this was very confusing, and Snape did not like confusing things.
But his three most powerful emotions—rage and pride and love, say it—would not allow him to walk any different path. It would have to be this one.
Snape scowled at the ceiling and lay down again, to contemplate wrenching his life and self out of line, how impossible it would be to do that, and how impossible it would be to do anything else, and how in the world he was to keep the balance between what he needed and what Harry did.
Harry patiently held out his right arm as Madam Pomfrey finished running her wand down his left one. She checked the right one, then glanced up with a nod and a look of pleasure. "The venom did nothing more than chew some of the flesh inside your arms, Harry," she murmured. "There will be some pain, but you bled it out fast enough that the damage should heal quickly."
"And Professor Snape?" Harry asked, casting a glance at the far bed. Snape was asleep, still, though it was almost noon on the day after the rescue. His chest rose and fell with such deep, even breaths that Harry envied him. He'd slept the same way under the potion, but he really couldn't remember it. At least the scum of dirt was gone from his vision. The tainted magic had flowed back from the surface and settled into the depths of his own power. That worried Harry a bit—he needed to drain it into an object that couldn't be broken or shredded easily, and he needed to do it before it mingled so completely with his own magic that he couldn't tell the difference any more—but at least he could think and feel normally again.
"His leg still needs to cool, Harry," said the matron, and stepped away from his bed. "I believe his arms should recover, though they'll be weak and have tremors for a few months. Now, I'll have a house elf bring you lunch—"
"No need."
Harry turned towards the door, and blinked in surprise. There couldn't have been many students who had seen the Headmistress carrying a tray of tea, bowls of soup, and what looked like scones. Madam Pomfrey herself blinked as though she suspected she were seeing things, then shook her head.
"If you wish, Headmistress," she said dubiously.
"I do," said McGonagall firmly, and put the tray down on Harry's bed.
Harry studied the tray, and was grateful that McGonagall had thought to bring two cups of tea and two bowls of soup. Draco had gone to the loo, but he would return in a moment, and he would want to eat. McGonagall sat down in the chair Draco had been using so far, and waited both until Harry had had a sip from his cup and Draco had emerged, sitting down in another chair.
"I wished to discuss the wards with you, Harry," said McGonagall.
Harry nodded and sipped at his soup. "The wards were draining into the Chamber of Secrets, Headmistress," he said. "Slytherin worked some magic into the stone that kept the other Founders from discovering it, I think. But I'm not sure if they can enter it even now. You know where the entrance is, and I left the sink open behind me—at least, I should have—"
"You did," said McGonagall. "I've found it advisable to put up a barrier on the loo, however. It seems that many of my students, the first-year Gryffindors in particular, think an adventure in the Chamber of Secrets would be fun." She pinched her lips tight and shook her head.
Harry blinked, wondering how in the world they could want to be somewhere Voldemort had walked, and then remembered that they'd had no direct experience of the Dark Lord. "And so I know that you can enter," he finished. "But I don't know if the Founders can go with you."
"I was thinking more of your entering the Chamber, Harry, and doing what you can to stabilize the wards," said McGonagall. "What would happen if you sealed the stone, do you think? Closed every entrance for a ward?"
Harry paused in lifting a spoonful of soup to his mouth, at least until Draco glared at him and his right arm began to shake from the effort of holding it up. Harry swallowed the food and said carefully, "I don't know if that would work, Headmistress. I didn't sense the magic of the wards themselves when I went to the Chamber. It's more as if that's the central weak point, and the magic flows down towards it and passes through and around it."
"If we destroyed the Chamber?"
Harry winced. He hadn't recognized the spells woven into the stone, even after a few weeks of studying the Dark Arts books Regulus had gifted him with. "I don't think that would work either, Headmistress. Knowing Slytherin, he used spells that would bring down the school itself if his Chamber was hurt."
McGonagall nodded. "Then what would you recommend?"
"The construction of new wards altogether," said Harry, and smiled despite himself as she winced. "I know, it'll take time, and it can't be a time when any students are in the school and need you for other duties. But I believe it has to be done. The wards that were connected to Dumbledore will be tattered and go on draining. You'll have to create an entirely new set of them that are tied to you and won't fall into the Chamber because you don't want them to. Easter holidays, perhaps?"
"And until then?" McGonagall asked.
"I'll talk to Scrimgeour, and ask him about having Aurors to guard the school, the way we did last year. And I can create a ward protecting the outside of the school," said Harry, "and the more vulnerable areas, like the common rooms. I think sealing the entrance to the Chamber, and any of the other tunnels the Founders know about, should be done, as well." He started to push the tray on his knees away. "I should do that now, in fact, before—"
"Relax, Harry," said McGonagall firmly. "It's daytime, and the wards are stable for now."
"And you haven't finished your lunch," Draco added, sitting back and sipping at his own soup as if he wanted to provide a good example.
Harry scowled at him. Draco raised his eyebrows, in a gesture that made Harry feel ultimately childish. Harry sighed and turned back to his soup.
"I have been in contact with the Minister once already today," said McGonagall, "as he wanted to know the details of what had happened in the Chamber. I told him that I didn't know yet." She fastened her eyes on Harry and waited.
Harry let out a sharp breath, and began to tell the story as emotionlessly as he could. It helped that he'd related his plan to McGonagall and Draco before he entered the Chamber, and they knew why he'd used the Slytherin tie embedded with Dumbledore's magic—to make Voldemort think both that he'd come armed and that he didn't have any other weapons—and the Many snake. When he spoke about the spell slamming into his elbow, Draco snatched up his arm. Harry winced, but allowed it.
"You didn't tell me about that yesterday," Draco said.
"Because it left a bruise," said Harry. "And bruises are just a little irrelevant compared to what else went on down there."
"Harry, they—"
"They are, Draco." Harry was surprised by how vehement his voice was. It was a voice for making speeches with, not replying to his boyfriend's concern with, but he'd started and he couldn't stop now. "I realized quite a lot of things down in the Chamber, including how I need to fight this war. Without mercy to Voldemort, yes, but it's not going to be as simple as dueling him. I cast the Killing Curse, and it accomplished nothing at all. And I only managed with the Many snake because he hadn't thought I was cunning. Now, he knows I am, and he'll be more cautious next time. I'll have to fight him in a different way.
"I plan to lure him to Hogwarts on Midsummer Day—"
"What?" Draco said that, rising from his chair and staring at Harry. McGonagall remained seated, but the look of shock on her face could not be greater if Harry had slapped her. "Why?"
"Because a storm is going to happen then," said Harry quietly, "the twin of the storm that the wild Dark woke. A storm of Light. A prophecy that Professor Lestrange recited to me says so. And it's going to fall here. I plan to draw on the strength of that storm. I have allies who can use it, even if I can't." He glanced at McGonagall, who nodded slowly, her eyes alight with wonder. "Choose the time, choose the place, and lure him in."
"He'd never just launch an attack on Hogwarts on Midsummer Day," said Draco skeptically. "Why?"
"Because he's obsessed with symbols." Harry shrugged. "There are other rituals he could have conducted to resurrect himself, but he chose to come back on Midsummer Day, and go through the bother of tricking the Light into giving him the power to bind me. And it was a limited power, at that, ending at the moment of true sunset—but that mattered to him, that symbolism of Dark overcoming the Light. He chose to stage this latest confrontation with me in the Chamber of Secrets, partly so he could choose the battleground, I'm sure, but also because that's the home ground of Slytherin's heir. He tortured me; he didn't use the Chamber's spells against me. I believe it was the symbolism that was important to him. He'd even opened the doors for me when I arrived, to insure that I'd have to enter the monster's lair with my eyes open. A good thing, too, since I was wondering how I was going to hiss the command without opening my mouth and letting him sense my snake." Harry touched the Many snake's smooth scales.
"He was interested in the prophecy, too," Harry added. "But he never knew the full thing. What if I created one? What if I hinted, pretended, that part of that prophecy says he'll face me at Hogwarts, on Midsummer's Day of this year, and that he'll stand or fall when he does so?"
"All of this depends on his dancing to your tune, you realize," said Draco, doubtfully.
"I believe it can be done," McGonagall said; her eyes were still alight. "Albus—that is to say, Dumbledore tricked him several times that way during the First War. He never seemed to connect our use of his weakness for symbols to our attacks. He merely believed that of course we would choose to face him on the first day of spring, or on Halloween, because those were important days."
"He even attacked Connor and me on Halloween," Harry told Draco, "months after we were born, and sent the Lestranges after Neville's parents on the same evening. Why? Because it's the night of the dead come back, one of only two nights that necromancers can speak. It's symbolic." He spat the word, but he felt a grim satisfaction. It would take work, but they had nearly four months until Midsummer. He would make Voldemort dance to his tune yet.
Some of the icy disbelief in Draco's eyes melted, and he nodded. "I think you can do this, after all," he murmured, smiling at Harry.
"So nice to have your faith in me," Harry said.
Draco sniffed. "I make fewer mistakes than you do, Harry. I think it only right that I should have more faith in myself, first. You get gifted with it when you prove you can do something right." But his hand found Harry's and gripped it. Harry grinned at him, feeling fierce determination rise up in himself.
If I know my enemy, and he doesn't know me, then I can take him.
Snape stared at the ceiling of the hospital wing, while he kept his breaths moving in the mimicry of deep, peaceful sleep, and damned himself for a fool, again.
He had assumed that he would have to do the majority of the changing in his relationship with Harry. What had happened to him in the Chamber had carved so deep and profound a change into him already that he had forgotten much the same thing might have happened to Harry himself. The fact that he had come in with a plan and managed to win had, Snape supposed, signaled to him that he was wrong about Harry's tendency to go dashing into dangerous situations without a thought in his head, but he had assumed that it would not last. He had certainly never expected to drift lazily back to consciousness and hear Harry calmly listing the reasons why he had some chance of luring the Dark Lord to him.
And that was a contradiction in terms. If Harry could create a plan when he had only a few hours to do so and someone he loved was in danger, why couldn't he create a plan when he had months and the chance to think more rationally? And if Harry was incapable of creating plans at all, then he would have come into the Chamber as a sacrifice only, the way both Voldemort and Snape had at first assumed he had.
So Harry had changed, or could—his methods, at least. Snape supposed he would have to look at the last few months in light of this new information, again, and see what he had missed and what was new and what methods Harry had formed in response to his anger.
He must have huffed once too deeply, because abruptly McGonagall was bending over him, saying softly, "Severus?"
Snape nodded at her. It was too late to pretend he really had been asleep, and certainly he couldn't ask the Headmistress not to reveal that fact to Harry.
McGonagall did something he hadn't expected, though. She stepped back, her face stern, and called, "Mr. Malfoy, come with me, please. I would like you with me when I speak to the Minister. You can give him another perspective on the events of yesterday."
"But I—"
McGonagall had turned away from Snape, so he couldn't see which expression she wore, but whatever it was, it made Draco swallow audibly. A moment later, he walked past Snape's bed, pausing to give him an expression that was a mixture of a smile and helpless relief.
"I'm glad that you're alive, sir," he said.
Snape only nodded, since he thought he would need all his words for the coming—conversation? confrontation?—with Harry. Draco turned away a moment later and hurried after McGonagall, who firmly shut the doors of the hospital wing behind her, and might have spoken a locking spell, too. Barring the entrance of Pomfrey, Snape supposed, he and Harry had a chance for uninterrupted conversation.
He started to turn over, slowly, but Harry had already kicked his own blankets off, with an impatience that showed how little he thought he needed them, and pulled up one of the chairs grouped around his bed next to Snape's.
Snape stared at his ward in silence for a moment. Harry's face was lined, but Snape thought that not all of that came from last night; he'd been stressed before it, after all, with his attempts to gather his allies for the spring equinox meeting and knock down misconceptions about it, and the very polite argument he'd been having with Scrimgeour over werewolves' rights. The real change was in the eyes. Snape had not seen Harry look at him in months the way he was looking right now, as if he were the crisis Harry needed to conquer, the person he needed to heal or protect.
But guilt was not the only emotion there; Snape would have felt ready to strike out if it had been, because he had survived, and he must have a good chance of keeping the leg, or Harry would have told him at once. Instead, Harry spoke concern in the way he reached out and grasped Snape's hand with his own, and resignation in the twist of his mouth, and determination in that he never looked away, even when he began to speak words that he must have thought condemned him.
"You were right about the visions. It was a false one that lured me out of the school, because I thought my Muggle aunt and cousin were in danger." He took a deep breath, and gestured towards his scar without releasing Snape's hand. "I should have known it, from the way this burned. That's always been a sign of Voldemort's presence. He got me out of the school just so that he could go after you. I'm sorry."
Snape forced his voice to work. "What happened as a result of this was dangerous," he agreed. "The Dark Lord is an incredibly accomplished Legilimens. It may still be possible for you to use the link as a weapon against him, but it would need to be very carefully controlled and regulated."
Harry blinked at him warily. Snape realized he must have braced himself for another scolding, the way he had received after Rosier had taken him to Durmstrang.
Perhaps it is best that I tell him now. He shall never face that again.
"Harry. Listen to me."
Harry nodded. He shifted in the chair, but it was only to get more comfortable; his eyes and his hand remained steady.
"You are not a child in the sense that I thought you were," Snape said. Merlin, this was hard. He wanted to be both honest and qualified, so that Harry could see what this truly was: an offer of reconciliation, not a surrender. He would not, he could not, become only what Harry needed him to be. Even if he'd had the ability, Harry would have hated that, to think he was forcing someone else into a different mold. "You can plan, and I accept now that you made a calculated sacrifice when you went to Durmstrang. You did the same thing last night." He tried a smile, and if it came out as a half-sneer, even that minor effort made Harry sit up as straight as if he'd been stung, so it was worth it. "I should know the signs of it. I took the same kind of gamble when I served as a spy among the Death Eaters. Sometimes a risk, a sacrifice, is the only way we can win anything at all. When we fight the Dark Lord, that is even more true than it is at other times."
Harry responded, his voice soft and full of such mingled emotions that Snape couldn't tell what they were yet, only that he was glad for their existence. "I—you were right in some things, sir. Not all. I have changed enough. I know that I need plans to fight Voldemort, let alone to gently tell wizards and witches what idiots they're being about magical creatures, and Muggleborns, and Squibs, and Muggles, and everyone else they might treat like scum on the soles of their boots." He squirmed, as if he didn't like what he had to say next. "But I didn't discuss my plans with you. So I suppose from the outside they might have looked fragmented, as if I didn't know what I was doing."
"They often did look that way," Snape had to admit. "With the meeting that you held last weekend, I believe that you lost control because you did not realize that Gloriana Griffinsnest hates werewolves, for example."
"She hates werewolves?"
Snape nodded, hiding his amusement. Harry's face had twisted in dismay that indicated he hadn't learned that since the meeting, either.
"No wonder Claudia Griffinsnest finds it so hard to tell her family that Fenrir Greyback bit her," Harry muttered, and then looked up at Snape, making a visible attempt to shake the perils of his allies away. "That's the kind of thing that you can help me with then, sir," he said quietly. "And if I tell you what my plans are, they'll make sense to you, and ease your worry about me."
"I would not blame you if you didn't trust me, after my efforts to dig myself out of your good opinion in the last month," said Snape.
Harry cocked his head. "It's more complicated than that," he began.
"Is not everything, with you?" Snape would have restrained the comment if he could, but when Harry grinned at him, he realized that the humor had probably reassured Harry more than a dozen words might have that he was coming back to normal.
"Yes," Harry cheerfully agreed. "So this should be, too." He bit his lip, and his smile faded. "I trust you, but only to do certain things. When I can predict you, sir, then I'm confident. I thought I could trust you to react to my every possible risky plan with anger, so I didn't tell you about them. That included the dreams and the meeting and the vision about the Dursleys. And when you got angry at me after the meeting, I only had that reinforced." He gritted his teeth and drove forward through the next words. "It contrasted with the way that you helped heal me after Midwinter, but I think I convinced myself that that was a mistake, that you didn't care, or that you could only do that because I'd been hurt so badly. If I escaped unscathed, the way I did from Durmstrang, then you'd yell at me."
Snape nodded slowly, and restrained several of those things he wanted to say before he spoke. No one else was here, he reminded himself. That meant that he could speak words that would make him look weak in front of an audience, even if that audience had consisted only of Draco.
"Some of that is true and some of it is not true, Harry," he said carefully. "I conceded you had no choice but to face the wild Dark; it was you or no one. And much the same thing was true of the battle at the beach. I grew angry when I believed you had made a sacrifice, when you leaped in front of your brother to take a curse or when you, as I believed, put yourself in mortal danger from Rosier to save others."
"But he never tried to kill me," Harry said.
Snape shook his head. "He is wild, Harry. Wild in the sense that the Dark is, or a dragon is. He cares for nothing but his own purposes, his own entertainment. Perhaps you were safe with him because he chose to honor the life debt, but at any moment he could have turned and struck at you, if he decided that was the more amusing thing. You know now that the collar he used to compel your cooperation was false. Think of everything he does as false, as changing all the time. If it had been anyone else but Rosier you went with, then I would not have been so angry."
"And again, I didn't know that," said Harry, his tone noticeably cooler now. "Because you hadn't told me about the collars, and you've never warned me in detail about Rosier before."
"About the collars, I did not," said Snape, and restrained both his impulse to lash out and his impulse to apologize for everything. This was the discussion that they had needed to have since January. He would not pretend he was sorry when he was not, and he would not show anger that would drive Harry away. "For that, I am sorry. But about Rosier, I have. I have told you again and again that he is dangerous, Harry, that we could not trust the hints that he pretended to give about the Dark Lord's plan last year."
"One of those hints was true," Harry argued. "I should have been wary of the sun."
"But he did not tell you what it meant, and he helped Voldemort restrain and torture you," Snape said, keeping his voice to the calm, neutral tone he had sometimes used, to good effect, when arguing with Bellatrix Lestrange, in the days before she was mad. "I think you still have an amount of trust in him, Harry. You took the gamble of going with him because you believed there was a good chance that you would come back from Durmstrang alive. But there was not. There was no chance at all, no way of calculating the possibilities. Where Rosier is involved, there never is. He sends all predications into chaos."
Harry lowered his eyes. "Yaxley said that he was the one who had told them about the wards on the school weakening," he murmured. "And I never anticipated that he would do that, that he could."
Snape let out a harsh breath. He wasn't entirely sure if he'd been conscious to hear that, or had heard it and simply forgotten. At least it meant there was some chance of persuading Harry never to trust Rosier again, to never depend on him. This was information from an independent source, not Snape. "That is Evan," he agreed. "He was Voldemort's loyal servant, for a certain value of loyal, because Dumbledore would never have trusted him, and in those days there was no other side to which he could apply himself. And now that there is, he will do what he can to explode both your own plans and the Dark Lord's."
"There's one thing I don't understand," said Harry. "Why would he disguise himself as Dolohov and go to Azkaban, if he wasn't loyal to Voldemort?"
Snape curled his lip, but he did believe he had the answer to that. "Because he was interested in Dementors," he said, with a shrug. "He said more than once that he would like to be under the thrall of one, and experience how it affected his mind. That is the only response I can give you."
Harry shivered. "He is mad."
Snape nodded, confident he understood now. "He is," he said quietly, thinking of the days he had spent fighting beside Evan. The man had charmed other Death Eaters into trusting him, thinking of him as some tricky but ultimately honest rogue, and he had engineered their deaths each time. Snape had never given any sign that he noticed, lest he be Evan's next target. "And more dangerous than ever now, since Azkaban and his ability to play two sides against each other. Never trust anything he tells you, Harry. Kill him the next time you see him."
"I already said I would."
Snape looked steadily at his ward. "And I know now that I cannot protect you," he said. "No more than you can protect me. Blame yourself for not being here last night, if you wish, but it will have no more foundation than my own blame, and my own rage, that I could not protect you from going to Durmstrang, or from Digle's knife."
Harry's hand clenched around his for a moment, then relaxed; Snape could feel a tremor of weakness racing up his right arm. "It has a foundation in the dreams," he said. "I'm to blame for that part. But, about other things—you're right. You're right." He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. "People are going to die in this war, and I won't always be around to protect them. For all I know, Draco might fall from taking a curse in the back on the field of battle, or you might, or Connor.
"And you know what the problem is?" Harry smiled, though his eyes glistened with tears when he opened them.. "I realized last night that I care more about you than I ever did about my parents. I care more about Draco than I do about—almost everyone else. I like to think that I'm only devoted to principle, that if I had to choose between saving Draco and saving Hermione I would at least hesitate, but I know now that I won't. It's not a real choice. I would save Draco." He cocked his head at Snape. "And that's a hell of a thing to reconcile with 'people are going to die in this war.'"
Snape closed his eyes. "Will you allow me to help you reconcile it?" he asked. "It cannot compare, not entirely, because I am a different sort of man than you are, but I did fight Order of the Phoenix members during some battles, and then take what information I could to Dumbledore at night." Memories burned and flashed behind his eyes—memories of days when Bellatrix had been sane, and Albus had been noble, and Lucius had been a relentless killer and torturer. And now Bellatrix and Albus were dead by the magic of the boy sitting with his hand clasped firmly in Snape's own, and Lucius was as gentle as he would ever be, for the sake of the same person. How different we all are, or were. "It will help."
"Yes, thank you," said Harry, his voice coming more strongly. "In fact, any offer of help that you make me is gratefully appreciated, sir. How angry I got at you does show how much I love you, but it's time for me to start doing other things than just getting angry."
Snape opened his eyes. Harry was staring at him, and the tears had vanished from his eyes, and his voice was calm and sad and steady.
"There's going to be so much death, sir," he said. "I wouldn't be Pansy for anything in the world, right now. She stares at everyone, and I wonder how many of us are going to die in the war, and how, but of course I can't ask her.
"I want to make more of them die than there are of us dying. I want to know how to become reconciled to death, even Connor's or Draco's death, or yours, if that's what I need to do. I want to know when killing someone is moral and when it isn't. I think leaving Indigena Yaxley alive was the right thing to do, but maybe leaving Rosier alive was a mistake." He took a deep breath, and shifted forward until Snape could feel the ending of his left wrist. "I want to know how to make war without losing my soul to it.
"All of that's a grim study to ask you to help me with. So I really do need to do other things than get angry with you." He was looking directly into Snape's eyes now. "So that I can make sure you understand how much I love you, and how grateful I am that you're alive, and I can share something of life with you outside that training."
Snape put out his free arm, shifting so that the pillows behind him took his weight, and embraced Harry, drawing him nearer. Harry at once grabbed him, as if he'd been waiting for that signal, and hugged him right back.
This is not the end, Snape thought. Of course it is not. We have not spoken of his anger at my turning his parents over to the Ministry, among other things.
But it was a beginning. And he would not have to make all the changes himself, and he would not have to walk alone on the difficult road he had spied leading beyond the Chamber of Secrets.
Nothing was settled, and nothing was easy. Snape was beginning to think that if either of those things happened around Harry, he would have to be dead.
They would continue moving, and choosing from day to day, and likely arguing until they had hammered out all the sources of Harry's anger and distrust, and Snape's anger and overprotectiveness, and then they would find new sources of anger and distrust and overprotectiveness.
But they had made a good start on the motion here, and on the choices, and there was no law that said they must race to the end of the track.