22. Time is Ticking.

The Doctor, unable to keep his already precarious balance when Harry pushed him, landed heavily on the ground with a loud 'oompf' sound and found himself twisted in a chair that had been behind him. Vaguely, he was aware of Hermione and Mrs Weasley running after Harry, who had stormed angrily out of the room, and Ron hovering awkwardly in the doorway, clearly unsure if his assistance was needed or not.

Hermione and Mrs Weasley soon made their way back into the kitchen, ending Ron's internal debate.

"Better let him cool off a bit," Mrs Weasley was saying. "The poor boy – receiving news like that…"

She reached down to help free the Doctor from the chair, and the Doctor nodded his thanks.

"How long has Dumbledore known?" Ron asked.

The Doctor plonked himself in the recently righted chair. "Oh, I think he's had his suspicions for a while but has only concretely known for… let me see… it's after Christmas now… about half a year? Maybe more. I don't know, this universe is all… confusing."

Mrs Weasley shot him a look.

"Sorry."

"So why didn't he tell him, then?" Ron asked, ignoring his mother's warning looks. "Something that important, you'd think he might mention it…"

"Come on, Ron," the Doctor chided. "Do you really think he could? Can you imagine going up to a teenage boy you've watched growing up, spent so much time protecting, formed a bond with, and say to him 'by the way there's a dark wizard kicking about in your head, so to kill him we have to kill you'?"

Hermione fell into a chair, very pale. "Kill Harry?"

Oops.

"You said there was a way to fix it!" Ron shouted at Mrs Weasley. "You can't do that, you can't just turn around and kill him after saying everything will be fine!"

"It will be!" Mrs Weasley replied. "The Doctor-"

"What does he know?" Ron asked. "He's just got here! We don't even know who he is!"

The Doctor raised a finger. "Actually, Harry doesn't have to die."

"What?" Hermione asked.

"I know a way to save him."

"So why," Ron shouted, "did you say he had to die?"

"Er… Yes, probably should have explained that. But just to clear this up – Harry is very much not in need of dying. As long as River is on time. She's gone to get the Soul Separator," he explained.

There was an awkward silence.

"That's a weird science-y thing that can separate souls," the Doctor explained.

"There's no such thing," Hermione scoffed.

"Not yet, but there will be," the Doctor countered. "Long story, bit complicated," he added, flapping his hand.

"So…" Ron asked, struggling to wrap his head around the concept. "What happens? You just plonk something on his head and everything's fine?"

"Yes – bit oversimplified but essentially correct. And I do approve of your use of the word 'plonk'," the Doctor replied.

"Are there others?" Hermione suddenly asked. "Horcruxes, I mean," she clarified.

"Ah, yes, I was hoping you wouldn't ask that, but the answer… would be yes. There are others. Quite a few…"

Well done, Doctor, way to reassure them.

"How many is a few?" Hermione asked suspiciously.

"Er…" The Doctor did a quick mental count. "7. Give or take a bit."

Mrs Weasley paled. "To make 7 of those… things…"

"Yes," the Doctor agreed. "Quite a bad thing to do. Well… a very bad thing to do, since it involves killing someone first so you can actually rip part of your soul off and put it in something."

"I think I'm going to be sick," Ron muttered, looking a bit green.

"If it's part of his soul," Hermione asked, "will he know if we take it out of Harry? He has a link to Harry's mind, after all, and he could control it, so if he suddenly realises it's gone-"

"He'll know we're going after the others," The Doctor finished. "Yes, he might realise, if he's not distracted. Luckily, Professors Dumbledore and Snape have already gone out Horcrux hunting and should hopefully be finished by the time we do Harry, so he doesn't have time to stop them."

"Dumbledore's gone with Snape?" Ron asked, as he and Hermione shared an alarmed look.

"I know what you're thinking," the Doctor said quickly, "and you're wrong. Snape's not a Death Eater."

"How do you know?" Ron challenged. "He's fooled everyone – even Dumbledore trusts him, and now he's gone with him-"

"Dumbledore is right," the Doctor interrupted, "for several reasons. 1) He's Dumbledore. You have to admit he's right about a truly inhuman number of things. And he's a Legilimens, so he can see into Snape's mind and, though Snape knows Occlumency, he's no match for Dumbledore. 2) He knows things you don't know and can't tell you without breaking Snape's cover. Think about it – he knows you'd tell Harry, and that Harry, through no fault of his own, would end up giving the information to You-Know-Who through that mental link."

Ron opened his mouth to protest, but the Doctor held up a finger and ploughed rapidly on before he could continue. Hermione looked more willing to hear out the explanation.

"3) Dumbledore has common sense on his side. Snape probably claims to You-Know-Who that, though he's working at Hogwarts, there are too many restrictions for him to take the opportunity to kill Dumbledore or Harry. If Snape really was a spy for You-Know-Who and determined, he could definitely kill them both. Which leads me to my next point. 4) How many times have you suspected Snape of something and found out he was actually protecting you? Quirrel," he said, listing them off on his fingers, "ended up being the one jinxing Harry's broom and playing host to someone else's face. And that's just example number 1."

"Right," Ron muttered sulkily, clearly not believing the Doctor but fed up of his monologue, "whatever. I think we get the picture."

Hermione mulled this over for a moment. "Actually, Ron, I've been wondering about this for a while."

Ron stared at her in shock. "What? Hermione! It's Snape."

"Yes," Hermione said. "Exactly. We hated him even before everything started to happen. And what the Doctor is saying makes sense."

"But-"

"It makes sense." Hermione insisted. "He's a Potions Master – he could have poisoned either of them at any time and it would never have been traced back to him personally. He didn't have to follow us down to the Shrieking Shack-"

"Are you mad?" Ron protested. "He was going to kill Sirius and tried to get Professor Lupin kicked out of Hogwarts!"

"Yes, but look at it from his point of view: he didn't know that Sirius was innocent, and he thought Professor Lupin was dangerous."

Ron shook his head. "You've lost it, 'Mione. Just wait until I tell Harry – he'll say the same thing I am-"

"I just think that the Doctor has a point, and that Dumbledore trusts Snape for a reason."

"You don't even know who the Doctor is!" Ron pointed out, growing steadily redder in the face.

"I'm the time-travelling Time Lord who should be a television character that just got liberated from one of You-Know-Who's prisons, where I was kept for half a year because the crazy megalomaniac thought he could replicate my ability to regenerate which, as a side note, I can do whenever I'm about to die, so it was pretty important that he didn't find out how. Oh, and I happen to know a lot about your world, too, because in my world, you're a book and film series and I'm a huge fan."

He smiled at the awkward silence.

"Let me know which part of that confuses you the most, and I'll explain. Or, if you prefer, you could pretend to understand what I'm saying and we could move swiftly on so that we can save the universe. That's what normally happens."

Everyone looked awkwardly at everyone else.

oOo

Snape guided Dumbledore's hands to the cup and forced him to drink the last drop of the potion, doing his best to ignore the older wizard's ever fainter protests and weakening grip. If he looked Dumbledore in the eye, he would see that he was openly weeping for perhaps the first time in decades.

But Snape had learned the hard way that he could never look anyone in this state in the eye. Not if he wanted to survive his line of work. So he avoided the man's gaze and forced himself to continue, despite the voice niggling away in the back of his mind.

Why is it not you doing this?

That was one thing he had never understood about Dumbledore. The man could be disconcertingly Slytherin, at times making Snape wonder how in Merlin's name he had ever managed to become one of the greatest Gryffindors who had ever lived. And then moments like these came along – moments where Dumbledore was self-destructively conscious of other people and their needs. The urge to sacrifice himself so completely for others was almost disturbing.

Snape held Dumbledore back as he struggled weakly to get to the water. "No, Headmaster," he said in as commanding voice as he could muster, though he could feel his control slipping with every sip the older man took. "There will be curses on the water."

Making sure that Dumbledore had understood this and was not about to move, Snape walked over to the basin and, grabbing a handkerchief that had definitely seen better days out of his pocket, used it to pick up the Horcrux. Carefully, he examined it, tentatively lowering his mental boundaries slightly.

Almost immediately he could feel the Horcrux trying to influence him. I can give you so much. Much more than you ever dreamed of. He quickly snapped his mental barriers back into place. He had to keep a level head.

"Stay there, Headmaster," he warned, positioning Dumbledore near the basin and as far away from the water as possible. He placed the Horcrux on the ground and swiftly set fire to it.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dumbledore crawling to the water, his hand reaching in, his fingers touching it and, as soon as they did, another hand reaching up, grabbing his wrist.

Cursing, Snape ran over to Dumbledore and struggled to pull him out of the creature's grip. Remembering that Inferi – which they likely were, given the Dark Lord's style and the context – were insanely strong, he briefly panicked and tried firing a few spells into the water. Though that didn't work, the hands that were raising around the one gripping Dumbledore were soon forced back by a fire that had not been there before.

Realising that he had lost control of the powerful spell when he had seen Dumbledore being attacked by the Inferi, fear gave Snape a new burst of strength – if they didn't get out now, they never would – and he managed to yank the older man free.

They crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs, safe from the Inferi but not from the fire.

"I told you not to go near the water!" Snape shouted over the crackle of flames.

Dumbledore mumbled something incoherent and barely audible about being too thirsty. Gritting his teeth, Snape slung Dumbledore's arm over his shoulder and made his way swiftly to the boat. He thanked a God that he had never believed in that it was still there and intact, and quickly bundled Dumbledore in it, stepping in after him.

He tried not to look at the older man, who lay listless and mute in the boat, as they raced the fire to the shore.