Chapter 4

The next morning, at 10:35AM, Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Hermione got up from the Gryffindor table in the otherwise empty dining hall. The handful of staff in the castle had all eaten and left some hours before, but the four were slow in leaving. They were nervous. Hagrid had indeed joined them for dinner the night before, after Harry had gratefully installed Hedwig back in the stoop and conjured her a dish of water. Hagrid had kindly accepted the invitation to join them at the somber gathering planned for the next day, and Harry had had to put on a cheerful façade so that Hagrid wouldn't be tempted to cry. Lupin had also sent back a message confirming – in a coded message like Harry's – that he would be at dinner and subsequently arrived just in time for pudding. Harry pulled him aside and gave him the news. Lupin had also somberly accepted, and Harry allowed a comforting arm around his shoulder without flinching badly. He told Harry he'd meet him in front of the headmaster's gargoyle the following morning.

The three silently made their way out of the hall.

"Are you sure you ate enough, Harry?" Hermione asked, as they walked. He nodded. In fact, he added silently, I'll be lucky if I make it through this day without being sick.

He had hardly slept at all the night before, afraid of nightmares, and had hardly touched his breakfast because he had no appetite. He kept trying to stop anticipating the coming conversation, but he couldn't keep the thoughts at bay.

"It'll be alright, Harry," Ginny said consolingly from beside him. "Who knows? Maybe it will even help the nightmares."

"Or make them worse," he added darkly. She wrapped an arm around him. At least I've stopped flinching around her, now, he thought to himself, and she seemed to share the thought as she looked into his eyes with a smile and squeezed him a little tighter.

They continued down the corridor and up the staircases to the seventh floor. As they turned the corner, they found Lupin and Hagrid standing before the motionless gargoyle, chatting quietly. They stopped when they saw the four approaching.

"Harry," Remus greeted with a smile. He was pale and looking a bit more worn than the last time Harry had seen him, causing Harry to wonder when the next full moon might be. He felt a twinge of guilt for not keeping better track.

"Shall we?" Lupin asked with false enthusiasm. Harry nodded, steeling himself.

"Butterscotch brownies," Hagrid grunted at the gargoyle, who immediately got off his pedestal and stepped aside. They boarded the ascending staircase, Harry in the lead and Hagrid at the rear.

Harry stopped before the carved oak door. He knew the headmaster was waiting for them, but Harry couldn't help the hesitation. Every instinct in him was screaming that he should run the other direction.

"It's going to be okay," Ginny whispered into his ear. He looked at her, drew in a breath, and knocked on the door.

It swung open of its own accord.

"Good morning, good morning. Please come in," Headmaster Dumbledore greeted, his eyes sparkling. Harry made it about 5 paces into the circular room and then stopped dead again. Dumbledore was standing before his desk, his hands clasped before his stomach, a small smile playing on his lips. Standing beside him on his right was Professor McGonagall, who looked more appropriately melancholy. But Harry's gaze slid past them both to the emerald green, high-backed leather chair on Dumbledore's other side, in which sat a very thin, very pale Professor Snape.

Harry's jaw dropped open a little beneath the familiar dark gaze. He felt the blood rush from his face.

"Severus," Lupin said from behind Harry, sounding equally as surprised, but less mindlessly terrified. "Forgive me, I didn't know you were awake."

Snape didn't answer or acknowledge Lupin in any way beside to slide his penetrating eyes from Harry to Lupin and then back again.

"Please do be seated, everyone," Dumbledore invited, waving chairs into existence all around himself, of every shape and color. "Harry, as you can see, we have made a little change in plans," he said as the boy stiffly tried to select the chair as far from Snape as possible. He felt unaccountably nervous to be in his presence, now, though he couldn't yet pin his finger on precisely why.

"Professor," Hagrid greeted, as he sat down beside Snape in their semi-circle before Dumbledore's desk. To Hagrid, Snape nodded once, but remained silent. Dumbledore sat on Snape's other side, looking like a doting grandfather at a picnic, while Harry gratefully allowed his friends to pin him in on either side, like a defensive line. McGonagall was the last standing. She held a scroll of parchment and an elegant green quill between her fingertips.

"Thank you all for coming," she said. Harry nodded at her, gripping the arms of his chair.

"Now, you each know why you are here." Her eyes swept around the room. "We have been asked to do this by the Ministry so that they can, hopefully, act on the injustices and horrors that have been committed to both Mr. Potter and Professor Snape. As such," she continued, sternly eyeing the youngest members of the group huddled around Harry, "I expect the very best behavior out of every one of you. The meeting will be recorded on this Ministry appointed self-writing quill. I must stress, only Mr. Potter and Professor Snape's words can be recorded at this time, so I expect complete silence from everyone else." Here she paused to turn to Harry and her eyes softened. "Harry," she said, unusually using his first name, "please let us know if you would like to take a break at any point and we will gladly do so."

Harry forced himself to nod.

"Now, as the Headmaster has recently pointed out, this meeting is not exactly how he may have described it to you," she said, turning to look at Snape who was looking studiously at the opposite wall. "We had not anticipated Professor Snape being able to contribute to this meeting until yesterday morning, when his health conditions finally improved." Harry stole a glance at Dumbledore and remembered, with a jolt, that he had not seen the headmaster at dinner. He must have been tending to Snape.

"However, Harry," McGonagall regathered his attention, "he is, unfortunately, still recuperating and cannot lead up this discussion. Therefore, after you have told us what occurred on your end, we will simply allow him to fill in any gaps of information as needed." She straightened and regarded Harry with some blatant sympathy. "I would also like to take this time to remind you, Harry, that this is an official document which will be visible to the public, so I would urge you to give us only the facts of what occurred, exactly as the occurred, with as little opinionated statements or responses as you can manage. I realize what we are asking of you is rather a lot, Mr. Potter, but with any luck, it will end in the incarceration of, at the very least, the Malfoys, for their hand in your abduction and treatment." She paused.

"Are you ready?" He forced another nod.

Professor McGonagall looked at the headmaster, who had finally lost his smile and his twinkle. He also nodded and the deputy headmistress drew her wand.

"Sequitio vocem" she said clearly, and swished her wand to the left, then quickly right, before pointing it at the quill and parchment in her other hand. A pink hazy light surrounded the quill for a moment before it leapt on its point on the parchment. McGonagall let go, and the parchment remained aloft. Like Rita's Quick Quotes Quill, Harry thought with disgust.

Dumbledore stood up and formally dictated, "I, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, as Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and current primary guardian for Mr. Harry Potter, now open the floor to the selfsame Harry Potter to dictate an account of the events concerning his abduction on July the 7th until July the 11th,, in the year 1996, according to Merlin's calendar. Additionally, the voice of one Severus Snape, a professor in the employ of Hogwarts School and also a special witness to these events, shall also here be heeded and transcribed for the official purposes of the Ministry and under the direction of Rufus Scrimgeor, Minister of Magic at this time. Deputy Headmistress Professor Minerva McGonagall also sits as official witness to this transcription."

Dumbledore broke off and turned his gaze on Harry. He gestured with a sweep of his hand for Harry to proceed. The breath caught in Harry's throat and he felt himself unable to even formulate a word. He could feel Snape's gaze boring a hole into the side of his head, and he could also sense the overwhelming sympathy from his friends.

Ginny gripped his hand and caught his eyes. Just the facts, her gaze reminded him. Distance yourself from the events. Harry took a deep breath in and closed his eyes, speaking as he remembered.

First was the fire. He could still smell it, chemical and sour, filling his nose and lungs as he swung open the kitchen door. Then the rumble of the floor in his room as it collapsed. The desperate scramble to his aunt and uncle's room, where the floor was still mostly stable.

"I'd made a mistake, going back to my room," he admitted, through a wince. "The stairs back down became impassable, so the only way out was through my aunt and uncle's bedroom window," he said, scrubbing at his hair, eyes still closed.

"But, it was 10 feet off the ground. I heard an explosion behind me and, when I looked back, the bedroom walls were crumbling. I climbed out onto the ledge just as another, bigger explosion shook the house and I fell."

He opened his eyes, briefly, and looked down at his left hand, which was balled into a tight fist.

"My arm broke when I landed on it. I got up, though, because the house had caught fire properly now. Black smoke was pouring out the window. I tried to jump over the neighbor's hedge to get out of the way. Then I felt someone grab me, someone invisible or disillusioned. They knocked me out." Harry paused, thinking, trying to remember past the haze of pain to the person who'd grabbed him. But there was nothing, just the memory of someone grabbing his broken arm and yanking on him.

His eyes snapped open.

"It was a woman," he said, staring at the floor. "Either that or a man with long fingernails. I could feel where they dug into the skin of my left arm, the broken one, just before I blacked out."

Harry reminded himself to breathe and tried to slow his heart rate. That was the easy part, he reminded himself. This next part is going to be a lot harder. He shrunk down further in the chair. Tell it like it happened, no more, no less.

"I woke up locked in a sort of dungeon," he heard himself say. "I was alone, but not for long. Voldemort," Snape and Ron flinched in Harry's peripheral vision, "was there, along with some of his Death Eaters. Maybe 6 or 7. They…" he paused, looking for the right words, "took turns," having fun with me, he thought to himself, "torturing me," he said, aloud. Ginny was still gripping his hand and she gripped it tighter. "The only spell I recognized was the Cruciatus curse. Someone, Bellatrix Lestrange, I think, said one that sounded like 'Ulko Animo'." A sound made Harry pause and look up. The blood had drained from Lupin's face, Snape's and the Headmaster's. All three looked murderous. Harry looked away. "It hurt. A lot."

That had gone on for three days, between bouts of unconsciousness. I'm guessing," he added. "There were no windows or anything, and I kept passing out, so I'm not actually sure how much time had passed."

He wrapped his arms protectively around himself in the chair, pulling away from Ginny as he realized he had come to the most important point of the story, for him, anyway.

"Then, one day, they opened the cell and someone with long, blonde hair pulled me up the stairs into a room. Voldemort was there; I don't know how many Death Eaters. Voldemort started taunting me with…well, threatening what he was going to do with my friends after he killed me. Then," Harry paused again, closing his eyes, "they brought in Professor Snape. I recognized him, and Voldemort identified him as well. He was…in very bad shape." That cursed shriek started ringing in Harry's ears again. He pulled off his glasses to rubbed at his face and was surprised to find tears when he pulled his hands away. He stayed like that, with his head bowed, staring at his hands.

"Voldemort pointed his wand at Snape to kill him," he said just above a whisper. "Voldemort told me he was going to kill him, and then he was going to kill me. I was panicked. I did the only thing – the only thing I could think to do…"

The dreadful silence in the room was palpable. Nobody was breathing. Harry looked up. Snape's black eyes were glittering with barely contained fury.

"I jumped in the way."

Someone beside him gasped and someone else choked on a sob. Harry broke Snape's gaze and back down at his hands.

"The next thing I knew," He continued, in a shaky voice, "I was waking up in the hospital wing. That's all I know."

Silence descended again, heavy and dark. Ginny reached out to touch Harry's arm but, this time, he flinched so badly he had to physically bite his tongue from cursing and his chair squeaked hard on the stone floor.

"Severus Snape will now proceed," Dumbledore dictated. His voice was more gravel than sound. He looked at Snape, his piercing blue eyes intense. Snape, who had this whole time been leaning heavily into his chair, instead of sitting with his usual impeccable posture, now pulled himself upright through what was likely sheer force of will. Harry noted his face was deathly white, his eyes were still glittering like demonic onyx crystals, and his fingers were gripping his arm rests like they had personally offended his mother. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded like he'd recently swallowed shattered glass.

"Since the Dark Lord's return, two years past," he began slowly, "I have been working as part of an underground task force bent on overthrowing he and his band of Death Eaters. As part of my work in this group, I took on the role of double agent and infiltrated the Death Eater ranks." Snape was having trouble maintaining his stable posture in the chair, Harry realized, but he refused to give in and relax.

"When word reached me that the boy, Potter, went missing this summer, acting in my role as double agent," Snape spat the words out like poison, "I returned to Death Eater headquarters, intent on trying to ascertain his whereabouts. I went bearing 2 portkeys which the head of our group provided me, both in the form of rings."

Harry frowned. He did not know this part of the story and did not remember seeing a ring on Snape's hand.

"I located Potter on the second day of his absence. He was locked in a cage in the basement of Malfoy Manor. He'd been tortured, from what I could see. However," he continued, an undertone of exhaustion sneaking into the man's voice, "it was at this point that my intentions were discovered, one portkey wrested from me and I, too, found myself at the mercy of the Dark Lord. Which is to say, I was shown none."

Here, Snape, who had been gazing distantly through the wall ahead of him, now turned his glare back on Harry. But this time Harry didn't back down. I did nothing wrong, he told himself. Snape continued in a snarl.

"On July the 11th, I was taken before the Dark Lord. I'd been incapacitated. Potter," he spat the name," was already there. The Dark Lord taunted him, threatened him, then turned to me, intending to kill me." The man's eyes narrowed even further.

"He would have succeeded," he ground out, "if Potter had not chosen that moment to fling himself into the path of the oncoming Killing Curse."

Harry trembled as Snape released his eyes. Snape finally sunk back into the chair, looking wiped out. But he continued.

"I still had the other portkey. The blast knocked Potter and Voldemort down. The Death Eaters were in disarray. I had enough presence of mind to use the distraction to gather Potter, who was completely limp, and activate the portkey. We landed in the predesignated location. I, however, cannot account for what occurred afterwards," he finished gruffly. "As soon as I released the portkey, I fell unconscious."

More silence. Somewhere just outside, a raven was screeching.

"Thank you, Severus, Harry," Dumbledore intoned, standing. He reached over and plucked the parchment out of the air, and the pen fell to the floor, the spell terminated. He looked down at the parchment in his hands for a long moment, and then set it on the desk. When he turned around, his expression was more pained than Harry had ever seen it. It occurred to Harry only then that the headmaster's sympathy wasn't only for him, but that he truly felt for Snape too.

"Harry," Hermione said, drawing his attention. What have I done to my friends? he wondered to himself. Why did I make them come? Every face was pale and shaky; Ron and Hagrid both looked like they were going to be sick, Hermione and Ginny were openly weeping, and Lupin looked like he'd been recently stabbed.

"I'm alright, guys," he tried. "It's really okay now. Look at me, I'm fine." Nobody seemed convinced.

He turned then, feeling malicious eyes on himself, yet again. Snape was glaring at him. But the cogs were turning in Harry's head and he realized something did not make sense.

"Thank you, sir," he said, returning Snape's foul gaze with what he hoped was an earnest one. "For saving my life."

The man's eyes narrowed.

"But, sir," Harry continued, "I don't understand…why did you stay? After you got captured, I mean. Why didn't you portkey out? You knew they were going to kill you…"

Silence. That death gaze. Then his low and quiet response.

"Believe me, Potter," Snape breathed, "had I known the ridiculous stunt you were going to pull, I would, indeed, have left you there to rot."

Harry bristled.

"I was just trying to save your life," he countered.

"No, Potter," Snape hissed and then, miraculously, climbed to his feet to tower over Harry. "What you were trying to do is dishonor every witch and wizard who has ever stood up on your behalf. What you did was spit on the graves of all those who have died trying to keep you alive, from your precious godfather to your parents. What you were doing was the act of a coward and your parents would be ashamed of you for throwing your life away."

Harry leapt to his feet and felt, rather than saw or heard, everyone in the room do so as well.

"Mr. Potter – " Professor McGonagall tried to head him off, but Harry was seeing black.

"How DARE you! My parents would be proud of me for trying to save your sorry life!" He paused. And, just inches away from the man's snarling face, he said, in a softer voice that was, nevertheless, far more penetrating, "my Mum told me I was brave." The wild look drained from Snape's eyes. He pulled back and Harry did the same, but he did not break his eyes away from Snape's.

"My mum says 'thank you,'" he continued, his tone level but icy. "'Thank Severus for us, Harry,' she said, 'for saving your life so many times over the years.'"

Snape sank heavily back into the chair and Dumbledore put a hand on his shoulder.

But Harry wasn't finished.

"I died that day, Professor," Harry continued. For the first time since he awoke, he allowed himself to fully recall the moment his parents had been within arm's reach.

"Then, I saw them. I forget how young they were when they died – just a few years older than me."

Harry turned to regard Lupin, who looked undone.

"We talked for a bit. Mum hugged me," Harry told Lupin, through a soft smile, "…then Sirius came." Lupin's eyes widened briefly as Harry spoke, and then he hid his face in his hands.

Harry turned away. Dumbledore's eyes were sparkling, but not with joy.

"He's special, in that place, Sirius is. He can do things most people can't because he didn't die the normal way. And..." Here, Harry hesitated. This was the part that would change everything. Then he caught sight of Snape again, who was staring at him as though he'd never seen him before, and Harry realized he had to say it. Snape had to know.

"Sirius told me he didn't know why, but I had been granted a choice. I could either go forward with my parents, be dead, whatever that means, or I could go back to my body, back to my life." He locked eyes with the potions master, Death Eater, spy. "I chose to come back. Back to that crumpled, broken, painful body. Back to my tortured mind. Back to my life being run by a prophecy and a mad snake. I did because of all those people who had made sacrifices for me and for the war, who I couldn't just give up on. Hermione, Dumbledore, the Weasleys, Lupin, Sirius…you." A tear dropped down his cheek, and another in rapid succession. But he didn't break Snape's gaze.

"So, don't you DARE sit there and tell me I was a coward who gave up because I bloody well Did. My. Best."

He stepped back and the desire for flight overcame him. Without looking at anyone else in the face, he turned, side-stepped around Lupin, and bolted for the door. Nobody tried to stop him. He dropped down the winding staircase and disappeared.