FIVE.

When Harry sent lightning to strike the field, time stopped.

It did not stop in the way catastrophe often halted time: a perceived slowing triggered by an adrenaline-flooded brain. It truly, genuinely stopped. The flash that should have passed and made way for thunder did not fade but revealed everything horribly in harsh light and harsher shadow. The dark clouds above flickered a silvery blue, and when they rolled into the field Severus felt such an influx of hope and happiness that he forgot fear, forgot the Dementors, forgot the earth splintering beneath the stands.

In this moment out of time, everything was possible.

And then time began again.

The stands fell.

Severus gripped onto his seat, wood wet and slippery from the rain, holding himself up with an elbow as his other hand searched for his wand. Someone from the row below had grabbed onto his ankle, pulling on the joint so heavily Severus had to bite the inside of his cheek until he felt blood to relive the need to shake them off. Screams erupted around him as hundreds of students held on for dear life.

Severus couldn't turn enough to see the field behind him. He cast blind: cushioning spell after cushioning spell, so desperate that he actually muttered the words under his breath in the foolish hope it would make the charms more potent.

Their stand teetered. With a grunt, they fell another ten feet.

'We need to levitate the stand to the ground,' a woman's voice reached him. He turned his head and saw Amelia Bones hanging from a seat two rows above him. 'We cast together on three, only if you have a hand to spare!'

A murmur of assent. Severus felt his heart beat in time with her count. When the fractured floor of the stand rose off an inch above the towering base, wood splintered and fell to the ground with what sounded like a human's scream. Severus watched Amelia Bones and copied the motion of her wand as best he could so as not to pull in opposite directions. But what he truly wanted was to let them fall. It was taking entirely too long. Twenty feet was a fine distance from which to be falling to the ground—they needed to be casting cushioning charms for everyone else—and Harry—

The moment the stand's floor sagged to the ground, Severus leapt onto grass, ankle screaming in pain. He saw that only a handful of stands had collapsed, the rest emptying now as students flooded down the stairs to find their friends. Quidditch players from both teams were zooming there and back, catching and lowering to the ground those trapped on half-suspended tribunes.

'Severus!'

Albus stood alone in front of a collapsing tower of wood, surrounded by screams.

Severus made to cast with him, but Albus waved him off. 'I will take care of this,' he said. 'Find Harry.'

He didn't need to be told twice. He scanned the skies, still hopeful, but in the rain it was impossible to tell the players apart.

A flash or red and a bat. 'Weasley!' he yelled with everything he had in his lungs. 'Where's Potter?'

The Weasley twin lowered his broom, leaning over to shout back, 'He fell from his broom, but George caught him! He put him somewhere there, middle of the field—far from the debris!'

Severus sprinted forward. He stumbled when he was hit in the face with what seemed to be a piece of dark cloth, blown in by the wind. He yanked it off, and only after he'd thrown it to the ground did he recognise the colour and the scent. Despair wafted off the empty robes of the Dementor. It was as though the skeletal body inside had disappeared into thin air.

He saw the boy from a distance. He was struggling to sit up, eyes darting about to take in the chaos. Severus took the rest of the way in five strides and fell to his knees in front of him, hands shaking as he felt at his shoulders and back for wounds and fractures.

The boy was saying something, but it was impossible to make out through the noise and his shaking. Severus drew closer, ear nearly against Harry's mouth to try and catch the words.

'I'm sorry,' he was mumbling. 'I'm sorry!'

'Don't be ridiculous,' Severus said harshly. The boy hadn't winced away at any prodding, but that might have been adrenaline covering for the pain.

'I cast the Patronus with the storm—I know you told me not to, but I couldn't find my wand and—I didn't mean to cast it, it just happened and—'

'Alright,' Severus said, not knowing what else to say to reassure him and too focused on his own fear to try. 'Alright. You're fine.'

'Where—where are Ron and Her—Her—'

Severus looked up to confirm. 'Their stand didn't fall,' he said. 'They're fine.'

A man and woman appeared at their side. Bones and Lamotte, Severus realised. On their toes arrived McGonagall, her robes torn across the shoulder.

'We need to get him to the hospital wing,' Minerva ordered. 'Severus, will you—'

'No,' Amelia Bones said. 'Mr Lamotte, could you help the boy up—can you walk, Harry? We'll get a healer from St. Mungo's in by Floo. We need to get him somewhere private, away from all of this.'

More people were now gathering around them. Severus tried to protest, but his words were lost in the next stroke of thunder, and the boy was pulled from his grasp and dragged away into the swarm of bodies, his wide eyes the last thing that Severus saw of him—he pushed his way through but tripped over an abandoned broomstick—

'He'll be fine,' Minerva halted him. 'I need your help checking the students for injuries.'

It took a little over an hour to get everyone to the hospital wing or their dormitories. Many were wet and terrified, but few seriously injured. All but two students walked on their own, and those who didn't were carried on stretchers while still conscious and complaining.

'It could have been much worse,' Albus said to Severus and Minerva as they headed back toward the castle. 'Although I don't believe the Ministry will be very happy when I tell them at least six of their Dementors appear to have been evaporated.'

'It's their own damn fault!' Minerva exploded. 'All of this—traumatised students—and all because they thought it was a fine idea to allow these monsters they clearly don't have any measure of control over anywhere near children!'

'I fully intend to have a word about it with the Minister,' Albus promised. His tone touched on an old fear in Severus, and he had to stop himself taking a step to the side.

'You had better have a word about it! The man should resign for what he has allowed to happen—' Minerva seemed to catch herself, forcing a long exhale. 'I need to see to the students. If I think about this for a single moment longer, I am going to kill something.'

'I worry all this might be even worse news for Harry than it will be for the Minister,' Albus told Severus quietly as they watched her stride away.

He was not wrong.

'—in the dormitory and now this,' Charlene Cress enumerated, stubby fingers splayed out to add a visual to her listing. 'I guarantee that the school board will be inundated with letters from furious parents and as early as tonight they will come to me demanding answers. He is a danger to the rest of the children.'

The whole of the committee: Albus, Amelia Bones, Quentin Lamotte and Representative for Magical Children's Welfare Charlene Cress had gathered in Albus's office. They had magically dried themselves and fixed their damaged robes, but Charlene Cress's hair was still half-wet and plastered to her neck, and Lamotte's fur scarf, dried strangely into what resembled the spiral of Mobius, refused to resume its original shape no matter how many spells he cast at it.

'No one was injured during the incident at the dormitory,' Albus pointed out. 'And one could easily argue that nothing dangerous would have ever occurred during the match had the Ministry's dementors not entered the school grounds when I had explicitly forbidden it.'

'And one could easily argue that if the boy were anyone else, he wouldn't have reacted with an explosion of natural magic,' Cress snapped back. 'This isn't a game of who's at fault.'

'The thirteen-year-old boy, certainly,' Severus muttered under his breath.

Cress shot him a dark look. 'What is he even doing here?' she demanded.

'Severus is here at my request,' Albus explained smoothly. 'He has a good relationship with Harry and I am interested in his perspective on this matter.'

To say he had a good relationship with the boy was something of an over-exaggeration, especially recently. Severus hoped the doubt did not show on his face.

'We could send Harry to my friend in Finland for a few weeks until everything here calms down,' Albus suggested. 'She has taught him some methods of exerting control over natural magic before. Perhaps there is more she could do.'

'Leeni Huhtala is a passive practitioner,' Amelia Bones disagreed. 'She might be able to teach him how to recognise and learn from the traces that natural magic leaves behind, but according to your own report, Headmaster, she is no expert on spellcasting. You must see that the boy has outgrown this sort of aid.'

'What do you propose, then?'

Bones looked to Lamotte. He missed at first the glance, consumed as he was by the sorry state of his accessory, which Severus suspected to have been sewn from the hide of a half-extinct species. 'Oh,' he said, realising. 'Yes. Madame Bones and myself have been discussing a potential solution. I have done some initial reconnaissance and I do think it can be easily arranged.'

'Well, what is it?' Cress prompted impatiently.

'We send him to Durmstrang,' said Amelia Bones. 'The school has a long history of exploring magics that fall outside the norm. With their reputation for nurturing excellence, both students and parents are more forgiving of the sort of—accidents—that Mr Potter is prone to.'

'Magics that fall outside the norm, certainly—dark magics!'

'Like many of your generation, you are sadly prejudiced,' said Lamotte, who Severus was fairly sure had entered Hogwarts no more than two years after Charlene Cress. 'Durmstrang encourages an academic interest in magic in every form, yes, but gone are the days of Gellert Grindelwald's influence. Their library and instructors will prove invaluable to developing young Harry's unique talent.'

'Grindelwald's days might be gone,' Severus interrupted, 'but as far as I know, the school maintains its strict provisions around blood purity. The boy is a half-blood. Even if they allow him past the threshold, how do we know he won't be shanked the moment he speaks out of turn in front of a pureblood classmate?'

Lamotte laughed. 'I've always loved your sense of humour, Severus.' He clapped Severus on the back, though it was so gentle he might have been an elderly noblewoman petting her lapdog. 'They have relaxed their rules a little to keep up with the changing times. Harry might be a half-blood, but he is still the Potter heir. I am sure any new friends he makes will have nothing but respect for him.'

'Perhaps most importantly, the school is remote and untraceable,' Bones prevented Severus answering. 'We will have no need for Dementors or aurors to protect the boy. Even if Sirius Black thought to look for him there, Headmaster Karkaroff has confirmed that he has never visited the school and so would have no way of accessing it, or even determining its location.'

'That is true,' said Albus. 'I suppose we should take a vote, then.'

'All in favour,' Lamotte announced, wand already lifted. Amelia Bones and Albus lifted theirs in turn.

'Fine,' Cress sighed. 'It is not as if I have any other ideas.'

There was a knock on the door. Albus opened it with a nod of his head and inside stumbled a young healer with the St. Mungo's crest sewn onto her robe.

'Mr Potter is well,' she said. 'He was hypothermic and in shock, that is all.'

'Let's see him, then,' Amelia Bones resolved. 'I am sure he is concerned enough about what happens next.'

They filed out of the office. Severus halted Albus with a palm on his shoulder before he thought better of touching him. He removed the hand quickly, pretending he'd done nothing of the sort.

'Are you out of your mind?' he hissed. 'You wish to send the boy away from all his allies into that cesspit of pureblood prejudice and archaic nonsense? Into Igor Karkaroff's school, of all places?'

'What choice do we have, Severus?' Albus looked at him wearily. 'It is true that Durmstrang can offer Harry protection from Sirius Black and true that it might help him explore his talents. Neither Amelia Bones nor Charlene Cress will allow him to remain here, and this unfortunate accident is the excuse that Amelia and Quentin need to place him in exactly the environment they believe he needs to grow and succeed.'

'Merlin knows I don't care about it, but if your plan is to have the boy stand against the Dark Lord's reign, you might consider doing a better job shielding him from pureblood rhetoric.'

'I trust Harry has a mind of his own and will not be so easily duped,' Albus smiled. 'Have a little faith in him, Severus.'

'He is thirteen. That mind of his own you speak of is forced to operate on a half-baked brain. And you forget that I know well the harm that alienation and poor influence can do to a child.'

Albus caught his eye. Severus thought he saw there a flicker of guilt. 'We will think of something,' he promised him. 'We will not leave him there alone.'

They found Harry sat on a desk in the Ancient Runes classroom, a mug of hot chocolate steaming at his side and the rest of the committee positioned strategically around him. Judging from his haunted expression, he'd had the situation explained to him in detail.

'It is an honour to be invited to attend such a prestigious school,' Lamotte grovelled. 'And Headmaster Karkaroff has extended a personal invitation to you, Harry.'

Harry looked past him at Severus. He was fighting hard not to cry, placed as he was under the scrutiny of every adult around him, and he looked suddenly so horribly small that Severus couldn't bear to watch it.

'I don't want to go there,' Harry spoke weakly, loud enough for everyone to hear though his eyes were fixed on Severus alone. 'Please don't make me go there, please—'

The tears came. Oddly and horribly, Severus felt his shame as though it were his own. He approached quickly to try and shield him from view.

'Please don't make me go,' Harry stuttered, hands coming to clutch at the sleeves of Severus's robes, knuckles whitening from the strain of holding on. 'Please, please—'

Severus saw clearly then how the boy would be torn from him. The childish pleas were only further embarrassment and would accomplish nothing. Severus had no power to stop them taking the boy wherever they wished.

'Professor Snape,' said Amelia Bones at his ear. 'Could I speak with you outside?'

How dare she ask that? How dare she presume to want his attention now, of all times—

'You're upsetting him,' she murmured. 'I insist.'

Severus needed her on his side. He went. He did his best to ignore the muffled sounds of crying that Harry was trying to swallow behind his back.

With the door closed, he rounded on her.

'What was the need for that?' he asked furiously. 'The boy is obviously in distress—'

'And you being there will only make it worse,' she said calmly. 'I am very aware of your efforts and they have clearly proven that you care about Mr Potter, so I will speak with you plainly. You are only going to cause him more pain if you continue to support these fantasies. No matter how much the boy might like you and no matter my private opinion of you, the committee will never allow him as much as an extended visit to a Death Eater's house, and they will certainly never consider someone of your status and pedigree an acceptable placement for him. It will save both of you a lot of pain if you cut him off now, before he convinces himself any more that you could ever be a parent to him. Do you understand, Mr Snape?'

Severus felt sure he had been struck by a curse no one had yet named.

'Yes,' he managed eventually, his voice sounding unlike his own. 'Thank you for speaking plainly.'

She looked as though she was going to say something else, perhaps that she was sorry. She must have seen in his eyes that he could not take it, because in the end she only nodded and went back into the classroom, leaving Severus to work through his pain in the dignity of solitude.


Truth hurts, I guess.

On Saturday, Harry goes to Durmstrang. Spoiler alert: it's cold.

Thank you for reading!