The next morning, Harry was distant all through breakfast. Lost in thought, he tapped his fork against his plate until Ginny leaned over and grabbed his wrist. He blinked at her in surprise. She just tilted her head questioningly.

"You okay?" she mouthed while Ron and Hermione bickered over Hermione's strict enforcement of an exhaustive O.W.L. study schedule.

Harry nodded reassuringly. He jerked his head toward Ron and Hermione and rolled his eyes. Ginny smiled, her eyes sparkling with humor. One of her friends addressed her and Ginny turned back to the conversation, leaving Harry to sink back into his thoughts.

It was the first day in a long time that he felt good. The pain potion was milking the sting from the cuts remaining cuts on his back and there was no other pain. He had energy; he had an appetite.

It was the how that had him disturbed.

The previous evening had been a blur from the moment Snape had tugged out the first piece of glass, but now the memory shined clear as crystal. He had told Snape about the Dursleys...all about the Dursleys. He wanted to groan in regret every time he thought about it. What had possessed him to just hand over such information to someone who made a career out of taunting him? He was mortified.

And yet, Snape had helped him. Of course, Dumbledore would have been furious if Snape had refused Harry's pleas for help so it was probably an issue of job security more than anything else.

Except...that excuse just didn't feel right.

Harry risked a quick glance at his Potions professor. Hagrid was cheerfully attempting to engage him in conversation, apparently oblivious to Snape blatantly ignoring him. The Potion's master scowled and took a drink from his goblet, scooting away from Hagrid as best he could.

Snape had reacted much differently than expected. Harry had been prepared for mockery and cruel words, talk about how Harry deserved what he'd got, how his parents would have been disgusted to see what a coward their son had become, and especially taunts about what a pitiful savior the world was trusting to save them.

But there had been none of that! Snape had almost seemed concerned in his gruff, awkward manner. He had seemed angry with the Dursleys, not with him.

It didn't make a whole lot of sense; that was for sure.

Now he was paranoid that Snape would find a way around the privacy spells. The professor had insisted Dumbledore know...like Dumbedore would do anything.

It had admittedly surprised Harry that Snape thought Dumbledore, the man who knew everything, didn't know about this. Harry hadn't felt like explaining that while Dumbledore put on the grandfatherly fa溝de, his actions communicated that he thought of Harry as a tool above anything else. For what purpose, Harry was so far uncertain, but he wasn't stupid. Dumbledore had pointed the way to Flamel's famous stone, had given veiled hints and left weapons to fight the basilisk, had let he and Hermione go back in time for a dangerous mission and had pushed him to compete in a deadly tournament where he was frighteningly unprepared. Dumbledore was training him for something bigger. Why the man who defeated Grindelwald needed a teenager to fight Voldemort was beyond Harry, but it was clear that Dumbledore had decided the Dark Lord's defeat was to be Harry's job.

The headmaster had been so proud of each of his triumphs against impossible villains; what would he think if he knew Harry shuddered at the thought of a mere Muggle?

Snape can't tell anyone, Harry assured himself once again, but then realized he must look like a nutter nodding reassuringly to himself.

"See! Look what you've done to Harry! He's agreeing with his toast!" Ron gestured at him sadly while speaking pointedly at Hermione.

"If Harry's gone loony, that's nothing to do with me!" Hermione snorted indignantly.

Harry blushed and jumped into the fray as the mediator. He'd have to ponder the bizarre events of the previous evening later.

-

A few weeks later, Harry and Ron were found trudging up the tower stairs to the Divination classroom. Harry hated the class more than ever. Trelawney's predictions of his death had finally begun to get to him.

He therefore spent most of the class trying to mentally block out her dramatic wailing. Today's lecture was about palm reading and Harry was hugely relieved when Trelawney finally let them break off into pairs to practice. Harry admitted to Ron that he'd spaced out during the lesson. Ron just blinked at him blankly, then looked to the clock in confusion and asked how long he'd been asleep.

Still, Ron went first. He propped his book open for reference.

"Alright, er...this is your life line, I think," he said, squinting at the example in the text. "It curves so that means your life is, er..." He scratched his head and shrugged. "...wavy? Well, anyways, I can't tell which of these two lines are which so you're either going to be popular and attract more enemies than friends, or you'll have no friends but people will love you? Well, it'll be interesting to see you pull that one off, mate." Ron cocked his head to the side and turned Harry's hand at different angles as if waiting for the lines to suddenly make sense.

"Well, either way, at least my life will be wavy," teased Harry.

Unfortunately, Professor Trelawney overheard and swooped in, much to the boys' dismay.

"Let me demonstrate how palm-reading is done properly," she announced to the room at large. "I'll use Mr. Potter as an example. Now there's no need to be dramatic, Harry; please scoot your chair back over here."

Harry reluctantly conceded to her instructions. Professor Trelawney sat facing Harry and grabbed his hand. She stared intently at his palm for what seemed like hours. Just when people began whispering suspicions that she might have fallen asleep, she started tutting and sadly shaking her head.

"Oh you dear, dear boy, you have the shortest life line I've ever seen! I fear you will not survive the year. The jaggedness implies a long, painful death!"

Parvati and Lavender gasped, casting woeful looks to their tragically heroic housemate.

Harry's blood began to boil.

"Wasn't I already supposed to die like four times already?" Harry demanded in annoyance. "Do you want me to die? Are you hoping I will so at least one of your predictions will come true?"

Professor Trelawney gaped at him and the rest of the class stared in shock. Even Harry was a little taken aback by what had come out of his mouth. Ron cleared his throat and scratched his eyebrow in discomfort.

Their professor straightened her glasses with a huff. "The gift of the inner eye is a delicate medium. I don't expect someone without any talent in Divination to understand its complexities."

"Well, it seems to me that you don't understand its complexities or we'd have seen at least some sort of foresight at one point in this class!" Harry retorted stormily.

Ron peered at him in concern, obviously confused by Harry's sudden outburst.

Trelawney stood and brushed down her skirt indignantly. "In denial, clearly. You may take the rest of the class to reflect upon your fate. Go on now, shoo!"

Harry felt so unexpectedly furious with his professor that he jumped on the opportunity to leave without question. Ron caught his eye questioningly, probably ready to make a stand with Harry if Harry asked him to, but Harry just shook his head. He stormed from the classroom, reminding himself proudly of Hermione in their third year.

He made it to his dorm and threw down his books in frustration. He knew he shouldn't have reacted to Trelawney like that. It would raise a lot of eyebrows.

Harry paced around the room, trying to walk off his anger and sort through his thoughts. Strangely, though, his energy seemed to whoosh out of him and he felt himself start to feel dizzy. Looking to the mirror in confusion, he was startled to find how white his face had gone. He touched it gingerly, eyes wide, but as he began to feel dangerously faint, he climbed onto his bed and lied down, hoping the blood would make its way back to his head.

It took him a moment before comprehension struck him with the force of a punch: this was a sign of the cancer. He didn't know if it was from the illness itself or from the confused response of his magic to the sickness, but he just knew that was what it was.

He had been trying to ignore everything since he'd gotten back, afraid the magnitude of his decision would overwhelm him, but now he realized that it must have been why he'd flipped out in Divination. Because even though he had made a point out of not thinking of his dark fate, when Trelawney had mentioned his drawn out, painful death, a part of him had recognized it as true.

I'm going to die, he thought in shock. It hadn't truly hit him until that moment. By this time next year, he wouldn't be alive. He wouldn't be able to immaturely stomp out of Divination...he wouldn't even be there. Ron would be sitting next to an empty seat.

Harry pulled his blanket over him and gripped it tightly as he tried not to panic.

Suddenly he burst into a coughing fit and covered his mouth out of habit. His eyes widened in horror to find a spray of blood on his hand. He scrambled out of bed and to the bathroom, still coughing wetly. He leaned over a sink until his coughs subsided, then shakily washed his hands and rinsed out his mouth.

He didn't know if Mr. Stenson had gone through the same thing or if while the cancer mutated his cells and his magic, something about the illness was changing as well. He had known from the beginning that because a Muggle illness could behave unpredictably in wizards it was forced into, he couldn't know if it would follow a similar course as with Mr. Stenson. Harry really had no idea what to expect, but one thing was alarmingly clear: he was dying. He was fifteen years old and he was dying.

He walked back to his bed in a daze and curled up once more beneath the covers, staring blankly into space.

-

Thankfully, nobody really questioned Harry's tantrum in Divination. Apparently, after watching Trelawney tell Harry he would die time after time, his classmates figured it had been a long time coming. Ron said everyone agreed that Harry was under enough stress with Voldemort after him without a spaced-out teacher constantly predicting his demise.

Ron happily ranted at every opportunity about why Trelawney should be fired and, as a general rule, kept away from impressionable children. After all, look what she'd done to Parvati and Lavender: the two girls seemed to actually believe in the crap being spewed in the incense-filled room! Ron comforted Harry by pointing out that if Parvati and Lavender actually thought Harry would die, they'd probably snog him out of pity.

Harry wasn't sure how comforting this sentiment actually was.

After lunch, it was back to class, and to make his bad day even worse, that class was Potions.

Ever since Snape had healed Harry's injuries, Harry dreaded each return to the dungeon. Throughout lecture, he'd squirm in his seat, sure that at any moment Snape would reveal to the entire class that Harry was a pathetic child who couldn't stand up to his uncle, or at least make veiled remarks about how the hero-worship was a laughable mistake.

It hadn't happened yet. In fact, Snape seemed to be avoiding him. Harry was beginning to relax, thinking it just might stay that way. After all, throughout his life adults had done their best to ignore the problems of his home life. When he had been younger he hadn't understood why until he realized how uncomfortable the subject made people. Neighbors didn't make eye contact, his teachers responded to every claim that his relatives hated him by saying it wasn't true without letting him explain why, even his school nurse had decided to accept his lame stories about falling down a lot and not liking to eat that much instead of investigating further. Harry had thus learned that it was a subject of shame that nobody wanted to get involved in.

Maybe Snape was so disappointed in Harry that it was even beyond mockery.

Harry was jolted from his thoughts as Snape burst into the room, robes billowing behind him and a scowl slashed on his face. To Harry's relief, the professor launched abruptly into his lecture, which included an abundance of insults peppered throughout any actual instruction.

Ron had always proposed playing a stealthy drinking game in class where everyone took one sip each time they were insulted as a part of a sweeping insult against all students, two sips for a barb for ones tailored for Gryffindors, three when the extra effort was put in to personalize it. They had yet to do this because a) there was no way they would ever get away with it and b) because nobody wanted Harry and Neville to die of alcohol poisoning in the first ten minutes of lecture.

That and, after his horrible summer, Harry had frankly developed a loathing of alcohol. The few times his roommates got their hands on it, he declined and spent the night hoping the alcohol wouldn't bring out anything ugly in his friends. The fact that it had thus far been only stupidity and giggles hadn't made him any fonder of the stuff and he was therefore developing an unfortunate reputation as a prude.

As they worked on their potions, Harry's eyebrows furrowed as he looked from the instructions to his ingredients and back. Something wasn't right. The method of preparation didn't seem complete; the ingredients would react poorly with each other if the instructions were followed as was.

Without fully understanding how he was recalling details from old reading and past lectures, he went with his instincts. When he saw Neville fumbling with his ingredients, Harry leaned over and whispered urgently for him to stop and re-crush his asp tongue into a fine powder. Neville obeyed, albeit reluctantly. After all, Potions wasn't exactly Harry's best subject, but Neville was nice enough not to ignore Harry's attempts at being helpful. Harry gave Ron the hint too, who passed it on, assuming the tip had come from Hermione.

When the Slytherin's potions began to explode or turn sickly green instead of the vibrant purple of the Gryffindor's potions were turning, Neville shot Harry a look of thankful surprise.

Snape, of course, became immediately suspicious that half his students were actually able to correctly complete the lesson.

Luckily, he unknowingly targeted the right person.

"Mr. Potter, explain to the class how your potion came out correctly without assistance from Miss Granger," he commanded smugly.

Harry cleared his throat, ignoring Hermione's confused and sympathetic glance. It was obvious she couldn't fathom how Harry had stumbled upon the right way to do it and was positive he wouldn't be able to recount his steps.

"I just followed the instructions but made sure to take the correct steps in preparing the ingredients, which you, uh, neglected to mention on the board. I fully crushed the asp tongue so it could dissolve before the asphodel was added. Otherwise it wouldn't bind with the thiamin and would lose its acidity, which would ruin the potion," Harry explained confidently.

Snape was apparently stumped. "How do you know that?" he demanded distrustfully.

Because I'm sick. The thought suddenly occurred to him and it abruptly made sense. This was supposed to happen; he just hadn't thought it would happen so soon.

Harry chewed his bottom lip, thinking quickly for a usable explanation. He felt Neville squirm beside him, getting nervous that Snape might ask him the same question.

"Well, Neville put together a Potions study session and with the, uh, extra review, I guess I'm understanding it more," Harry invented slowly.

Neville's eyes darted to him before he bowed his head to avoid giving away the lie. The other Gryffindors were more game to play along and nodded in agreement to the story.

Snape ran his skeptical eyes across the line of them. Harry didn't think the potion's master was completely convinced, but the man had no proof they were lying.

"Very well. Two points to Gryffindor." He stalked off to record this, looking appalled at himself.

The rest of the room stood frozen, jaws slack. This was the first time any of them had witnessed Snape giving points to Gryffindor.

Snape looked up from his point counter and glared. "Get back to work or I'll take fifty points from everyone!"

Everyone snapped back into pouring their potions into corked vials and bringing them to the storage shelf. The clock finally signaled their release and everyone rushed for the door.

"Mr. Potter, stay after class," Snape barked, not looking up from his grade book. Harry froze. He prayed this was about class today and not about what had happened with his injuries.

He warily made his way to the front where he waited until the classroom was clear and Snape finally acknowledged his presence.

"How are your injuries healing?" Snape asked, hands folded on his desk and a solemn expression on his face.

"Fine," Harry said cautiously. "They don't hurt anymore."

"Any sign of infection?"

Harry shook his head. "No sir. The potions are really helping. Thank you."

"I see you've developed a cough."

Harry had vaguely noticed coughing throughout class, but it was nothing as dramatic as earlier. "Yeah, I think I'm coming down with a cold or something."

Snape frowned and walked around his desk. He waved his wand over Harry's chest thoughtfully. He shook his head in disbelief. "Merlin, Potter, you're well on your way to a severe respiratory infection."

Harry stared at him blankly.
"Do you seek treatment any time you're feeling ill?" Snape demanded.

"I guess I felt a little under the weather yesterday, but I didn't start feeling sick until today," he said cautiously, unsure how much he should reveal.

Snape swooped off to the potions cupboard. "It's unusual for a chest cold to get out of control so swiftly. It seems you are not fighting off infection properly," he said while searching through bottles. That made sense. Harry recalled something about immune systems and frequent infections from when he first read up on Leukemia. This wasn't quite what he'd expected, but that just showed how little he knew. "It must be a result of damage done to your body after letting your last infection go on so long. Let this be a lesson in the necessities of early medical attention, Potter."

Harry nodded despite knowing this was a misinformed assumption and Snape stalked back with more vials. "One sip twice a day for two weeks, preferably on an empty stomach, but if it upsets your stomach, take it after food. First sip: right now."

Harry obediently followed instructions, crinkling his nose. It tasted like powdered alcohol.

It occurred to him as he re-corked the vial, how he had done it without a moment's question. Last year, he would have been sure Snape was trying to poison him. It was disconcerting that he'd begun to trust Snape because trusting led to relying on the person being there and Snape definitely was not someone who would even want Harry relying on him.

"Have you reconsidered telling the headmaster?"

Harry stifled a cough. "About being sick?" As soon as the question left his mouth and Snape looked at him like he was an idiot, Harry understood what he had meant. Harry looked away. "Oh. No."

Snape heaved a sigh. "I gather you aren't planning to."

Harry didn't say anything to that.

Snape rubbed the bridge of his big nose. Harry didn't really understand why this was stressing Snape out. Why did he care who Harry told? It wasn't his problem to worry about.

"Look," Harry ventured, "I'm not going to tell Dumbledore ever, but if he somehow finds out, I won't tell him you know. And if he finds that out, I promise I'll make it clear you were under the confidentiality clause. You won't get in trouble."

"I am not concerned with getting in trouble, Potter, I am concerned that your stubbornness is keeping you trapped in a disgusting situation," Snape spat. "What will you do come summer? You cannot go back there."

Harry fiddled with his sleeve miserably. "I can handle it. I know I haven't done a good job with it so far, but I could be ready this time around."

"And if he pushes you through a table again?" Snape challenged fiercely. "You nearly died, Potter. You're lucky you ended up somewhere you could get magical medical attention."

Harry bravely met Snape's eye. "Thank you for that. Really. And thank you for not bringing it up. I mean, I know you can't just blurt it all out or anything, but thank you for not...you know...alluding to it."

Snape stared at him grimly. "Potter, I know you don't think highly of me, but I would never use a child's traumatic memories of being abused against him in any way. That would be a depraved abuse of trust."

Harry blinked at him. "I'm not a child."

Snape leaned forward, his palms going flat against the desktop. "Potter, you must inform someone who can help you. McGonagall or Dumbledore. Madam Pomfrey would perhaps be easiest since she is not an alarmist and has no greater motive than protecting her students."

"I can't," Harry said quietly.

"Why not?" Snape asked in exasperation. "There is no rational reason to keep this to yourself!"

Harry grabbed his bag and stood. He shrugged his shoulders sorrowfully. "I just couldn't let them down like that."

With that, he turned and left without looking back.

Snape rubbed his forehead with one hand once the door closed behind the student he had loathed for the past four and a half years.

He didn't know how he had gotten dragged into this impossible situation and had no idea what to do with this terrible secret.