"Are you there, Professor Snape?" Harry called as soon as the door was closed behind him. I'd prefer not to startle the former spy and superb duellist while my hands are full. "It's me, Harry Potter. I've brought you some breakfast."

He took a cautious step forward, assessing the Room of Requirement's current form in the way that had become second nature since his Auror training. Thick rugs, not fixed carpets — they'll slip, mind your footing — bookshelves look to be fixed to the walls, no chance to pull them down — two chairs, heavy enough to deal a solid blow with Wingardium …

And in one of the chairs, one wizard, wand out, but not pointing at me.

One very familiar wizard, lank black hair, hooked nose and all, even if no longer dressed in head-to-toe black, but instead a plain white shirt and dark trousers.

Severus Snape sat, leaning back in the chair, feet outstretched toward the fireplace where a small fire flickered. He was the picture of relaxed ease, except Harry could see that the fingers holding the wand casually pointed away from Harry gripped the slender stick so tightly they were white with pressure.

He won't hex me. Every professional instinct told Harry that the wizard in front of him was deadly dangerous, a heartbeat away from violence, and that his best move at this point was to drop the tray, draw his wand, and cast Stupefy and Petrificus Totalus in quick succession.

But he, alone of everyone still alive, had heard the mounting horror and grief in Snape's voice as the reality of Dumbledore's plan sank in. So the boy … the boy must die? I thought … all these years … that we were protecting him for her.

You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?

Severus Snape might be ready to lash out at anyone who intruded on him, but he would not, could not, hurt Lily Potter's son.

"Hello, sir," Harry said calmly. "I've brought you some breakfast."

Snape's lips curled in a sneer. "I suppose I have Granger to thank for this."

"Not at all." Without waiting for an invitation, Harry thought hard about the need for a table, and when one appeared by Snape's chair he set the tray on it. "I got there by myself. With a little help from some friends, and a couple of former Headmasters."

"Meddling fools," Snape said sourly.

"It seems to go with the territory," Harry said cheerfully, and took the chair opposite Snape's. "I didn't know what you preferred, sir, so the house elves went a bit overboard."

Snape looked over the tray, sniffed, and selected a piece of toast. He bit a corner off, crunched and swallowed, and then turned his flat stare on Harry again. "Well, Potter, get it over with."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Get what over with?"

Snape waved the toast dismissively. "You're glad I'm alive. You're sorry you misjudged me. You're grateful for my efforts. Etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum and so on." His tone was one of infinite boredom.

"I am glad you're alive," Harry said calmly, "although that's rather moderated by the news you're under a killing curse. I'm not sorry that I believed exactly what you wanted, in fact needed, me to believe. And while I'm grateful, of course, for what you did, I know you didn't do it for me."

Snape's eyes narrowed. "I suppose you do, don't you. Where are my memories, Potter?"

"In a vial in a warded box, which is in my Gringotts vault."

"Gringotts?" Snape's eyebrows went up. "I'm surprised they still let you bank there."

Harry grinned. "So am I, a bit, but Luna says the bad publicity from turning away the Boy Who Lived was more than they could afford."

"The privilege of celebrity," Snape bit out. "I'd like those memories back, if you could be so kind."

"I'll fetch them for you tomorrow," Harry promised promptly. "No one else has seen them, you know, Professor. Not even the Minister."

Snape muttered something that sounded like small mercies, and tossed his half-eaten toast back down onto the tray. "Well, we've discussed old times. Was there anything else? If not, allow me to bid you goodbye."

Six years of schoolboy instincts wanted to respond to that tone by exiting the room as quickly as possible. Harry forced himself to sit calmly. "Well, there's the curse."

"Come to gawk?" Snape jeered.

"Come to help," Harry said. "I am an Auror, you know. Dark curses are sort of what I do."

"Potter, when Albus Dumbledore was overcome with a curse more powerful than even he could combat, he didn't send for an Auror," Snape said wearily. "He sent for me. Do you really imagine that whatever skills you have managed to acquire in the past few years can prevail against magic I can't defeat?"

"I won't know until I try, will I?" Harry said. "And it's my job to try, so I'm afraid, Professor, I'm going to have to insist you show me your arm."

Snape shot him a look of such concentrated hatred that Harry thought he was going to refuse, and perhaps even try to physically evict him from the room. He met the dark gaze as steadily as he could. You don't scare me any more, Professor Snape. Finally Snape made a faint scoffing noise, and pushed up his left sleeve.

It was as bad as Hermione had described, an oval of dead flesh with an aura of evil that made Harry feel faintly sick. "When did it start?" he asked quietly.

"A little over five weeks ago."

"And you've told Minerva and Poppy Pomfrey?"

"I'm neither a fool nor a martyr, Potter," Snape said contemptuously. "Of course I told them."

And shortly thereafter Minerva McGonagall had owls on the way to Hermione, Ron, to me … He slipped out his wand and lifted it toward the mark.

Snape flinched back. "Kindly don't."

"I need to get a better sense of it," Harry said reasonably. "I thought you'd prefer me not to touch it."

After a moment, Snape extended his arm again, slowly. "There's nothing you can do, Potter. When I say I know more about such things than any witch or wizard alive today, it's not an idle boast."

With his wand tip just above the mark of the curse, Harry could sense the spells Snape had used to contain it. "These are the same spells you used on Professor Dumbledore?"

"Correct."

There was a faint familiarity to them. Perhaps I'm remembering something I sensed, back then. More likely, though, it was because this was Snape's own spell, and so had a family resemblance to the spells Harry had learnt from the Half Blood Prince's book. A certain style … "If you'd be willing to teach them to me, sir, I'd be glad to learn. There are other people they could help." He paused, but Snape said nothing. At least that's not 'no'. "Did anything in particular happen, in the days before you realised you'd been cursed?"

"Nobody owled me any ancient and mysterious objects, if that's what you mean," Snape said coldly.

"That's useful to know, but it actually wasn't what I meant," Harry said. "It's been five years. Why now? Why five weeks ago?"

"I would have thought that was obvious," Snape said, voice dripping with contempt. "Either it has taken my assailant some time to prepare his or her attack, and they were only ready to commence recently, or it was only recently they discovered that I survived. Or a combination of the two."

"Probably," Harry agreed. "But not certainly. And every possibility needs to be checked out. Anything special about the time of year, that you know of?"

"No —" Snape said, and then stopped. Stopped speaking, stopped moving, all but stopped breathing. Harry had the curious feeling that, despite the fact that he was looking directly at him, Snape had somehow withdrawn utterly from the room, leaving nothing but a Severus Snape-shaped black hole, a collapsed star dense enough to draw away the light and warmth from the room.

"Professor?" he asked cautiously.

Snape shuddered, and came back. "No. Nothing."

"That didn't —"

"I said nothing," Snape said viciously. "Are you deaf? Have you caught your friend Granger's inability to comprehend simple spoken words?" He pulled his arm away from Harry's wand and yanked his sleeve down. "You're done here, Potter. Go."

"Not yet —"

"I said go!" Snape flared, suddenly on his feet. "I am done with your questions! I am done with teaching you, watching over you, putting up with your impertinence and your arrogance, just like your father! I am done with you, Potter, once and for all, so take your shiny Auror badge and your saviour complex and get out of my sight!"

Old impulses fired, urging Harry to jump to his feet and fling Snape's comments back in his face. How dare you criticise my father … you think that you could change but he couldn't … do you think I chose to face what I had to face?

But he was not the sixteen-year-old boy who Snape had so successfully taunted, not anymore, and the words lost their power precisely because they were so clearly chosen to hurt.

Harry sat still, and looked Snape steadily in the face. "Feel better to get that off your chest?"

Snape let out a cry of frustration that was almost a growl and swung away as if he could no longer stand the sight of Harry. He scrubbed his hands over his face and then raked his fingers through his hair.

"I will go, sir," Harry said, "in a minute. But two things first. We're letting the Ministry know there's potentially a Death Eater out there they haven't previously known about — an anonymous tip to me, is our story."

"You'll do what you want, you always do," Snape said bitterly.

"And secondly, I thought you might want to go back to where-ever you were staying before Hermione told you I had the Marauder's Map. Your quarters, I presume, since apparently they've been impenetrably warded for the past five years?"

"Wherever I go, I doubt I'll be able to avoid you and your little friends."

"Probably not," Harry agreed. "But you might find this useful." He took the folded Invisibility Cloak from beneath his robes, and when Snape didn't turn around, laid it on the other man's chair. "My father's cloak, although I hope you won't hold that against it. Given your circumstances, I rather feel you have more need of it that I do, at present. You'll be able to go where you like, with that."

Snape cast a cold glance at the cloak. "You'd better be prepared for him to haunt you for giving his precious cloak to me."

"Lending," Harry corrected. "And I think he'd approve, but actually I don't much care." He stood up. "I'll leave you in peace, then, sir, but I'd appreciate it if you'd try to think of anything about July that might have something to do with why the curse struck you then. I'll let you know when there's news from the Ministry."

He turned to go, but stopped when Snape spoke.

"You know, Potter, all those years ago, I was wrong," he said venomously. "You really are nothing like your father."

Harry's fists clenched. He swung around and saw a spark of malicious glee in Snape's eyes. "Now look —" he said.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Snape said coldly. "Did I insult the memory of Saint James?"

Harry stared at him. "It's not going to work, you know. I'm not going to stop helping you, no matter how unpleasant you are to me. And besides, I know my dad wasn't a saint."

Snape raised his eyebrows. "The scales have fallen from your eyes?"

"They fell from my eyes a long time ago. Look, Professor. You don't need to convince me that my dad and his friends treated you awfully." Harry ran his fingers through his hair and said forcefully, "It made me sick, seeing it in the Pensieve. I felt worse about it than even about people taking Luna's things, and I like Luna and didn't even know the people giving her a hard time. I'd like to think if I'd been there, I would have said something, done something. But he did grow up eventually, alright? About a decade too late, if you ask me, but he did learn to be a decent person. I am my father's son, not just my mother's, and there's a lot of him in me, and I hope the good bits, like there's a lot of her in me, and I hope the good bits of her, too." He took a deep breath. "But I know you'll never be able to see that about him, and in your position I might not be able to either. You know Draco Malfoy hired Hermione a few years ago? And is even polite to her?"

"What does Draco Malfoy have to do with anything?" Snape sneered.

"People change, Professor. People can change. I'm not asking you to change your opinion of my dad. But I'll make you a deal, alright? I won't talk to you about the good man he turned into, if you don't keep harping on about what a complete arse he was at school." Harry grinned. "Just like Draco doesn't tell Hermione about how the Slytherins were more vulnerable to Voldemort because the rest of the school ostracised them, and she doesn't tell him that the Death Eaters were vulnerable to Voldemort because pure-blood inbreeding led to intellectual disabilities."

A slight smile touched Snape's thin lips. "Wise. On both their parts."

"So do we have a deal?" Harry asked.

Snape studied him. "Are there any other topics you'd like to declare off limits?"

Harry grinned. "Loads. I'll tell you as they come up."

"As will I."

"Deal," Harry said. "And now I have to go and get ready to teach five ways to deal with Doxies. I'll see you later."

He was almost at the door when Snape spoke again. "When did you turn into a grown-up, Potter?"

"Oh, I don't know, sir," Harry said cheerfully over his shoulder. "Somewhere in between dying, coming back to life, and killing the greatest dark wizard of our time, I expect."

"Five points from Gryffindor for cheek," Snape said sourly.

"I'll take it off the three thousand I earned for saving the wizarding world, shall I?" Harry said, and closed the door before Snape could come up with another retort.

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Notes: The words Harry remembers Snape saying (So the boy … the boy must die? And what follows) are from what Harry saw in the Pensieve and are taken from the book.

In the movie canon, there's no indication that Snape used spells as well as potions to contain the curse to Dumbledore's hand, but in the book incantations are used as well as a potion.