I'm back! Thank you to everyone who wished me well for my surgery, it went well and I should make a full recovery. I'm feeling pretty damn good too! Now I get spend the next few weeks doing nothing much but take it easy, and write this story! Speaking of which, thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter! Was lovely to read them when I got home. So, here's the next chapter (and it's the longest one yet at over 4000 words).

I actually had most of this written before I left for hospital, but I ended up rewriting the entire thing... I'm still not entirely happy with it, but I hope it's enjoyable nonetheless.

O

Chapter Six: Questions

…..oOo...

Harry could see him – really see him – Severus Snape standing in the hall outside the Hospital Wing in all his former glory- albeit slightly see-through.

He didn't understand! Why was it that he could not see Snape for all that time and then all of a sudden could? They'd been talking, then Ron had shown up, Harry had felt the coolness in his fingers where they had brushed against Snape as he turned, then Ron had started carting him off and- Oh! The cold! He'd touched the invisible Snape and made him visible- wait, that couldn't be right; Harry didn't have any sort of ability that could do that kind of thing, but that was all that had happened- or it was all that Harry could think of that had happened anyway...

… and it just did not make sense.

"We're going to go about fixing the castle soon." said Ron, whose grip was digging into Harry shoulder as he led him down the moving staircase, "We started yesterday afternoon, after McGonagall left for the Ministry, that's why the Great Hall looks as good as it does. I think mum wants us to start on the second floor today..."

Harry was barely listening as Ron rambled on, his mind too preoccupied with thoughts of Snape's appearance and the reasons for it, as well as the man's reason for returning as a ghost at all. Why would he do such a thing? Harry knew some of the reasons for the ghosts of Hogwarts return; their regrets, or wants, or the fabled 'unfinished business', but he could not connect any of those to Snape in his mind. Who would Snape want revenge on? No one that Harry could imagine. No one that was still living, anyway. Regrets? Snape probably had tons, but were they strong enough to make him come back? Were they regrets he could atone for? That he hadn't already atoned for? As for unfinished business... Harry didn't know the man well enough to know if he had any.

The realisation of that suddenly made him feel... oddly inadequate. And the fact that, so-far, only Harry could hear or see Snape, made him aware that he was completely out of his depth. He didn't really know anything about ghosts, not really, and he didn't know what he could do, or who to ask, or who to ask that would believe Harry and not put his rambling about an invisible spirit down to a good thump on the head... or getting hit with the Killing Curse yet again.

If that's not the truth of all this anyway, Harry thought, bitterly. Because, wouldn't it be just perfect if he managed to live until seventeen years of age, kill a Basilisk, break into the Ministry of Magic, hunt down six horcruxes, be a bloody horcrux, and snub Voldemort (twice), only to be put out to pasture by his own psychosis.

The Boy Who Lived Twice To Be Snuffed-out By Himself.

Brilliant.

By the time Ron had led Harry to the entry hall, Harry had noted Snape's clear-ish black boots descending through the ceiling above his head – a sight that Harry was sure he would never forget – followed shortly by the rest of Snape himself, who followed the pair into the Great Hall with a disdainful look about his pale face.

Several heads in the hall swivelled up to look as Harry and Ron walked by, but no one saw their tag-along trailing behind them.

If he was not mad, Harry thought, then he must be a lot more special than even he had given himself credit for, because even with his lack of knowledge about ghosts, he was sure there hadn't been any that could only be seen by one person. But maybe that was because no one was quite mad enough to tell their friends that they could see something no one else could...

It made Harry's head spin.

"Oh, Harry dear." said Molly, as he and Ron approached the table where Harry had been sitting not-quite-an-hour previously and had only left to retrieve a dead-man's body, which already felt like it had happened days before. Breakfast was over, it seemed, as the tables were clear of all, platters, mugs and cutlery.

Molly embraced him for a moment with a pleasant smile on her lips, though a hint of concern showed in the crease between her brows, "Are you alright?" she said softly.

Harry actually didn't know what to say. As far as Mrs Weasley was concerned Harry had just gone to find a body, but even thought that was true, Harry had also spoken to that body, then gone-on to have a conversation with its spirit.

"I'm fine." he said, awkwardly, and with what he hoped was an edge of stiffness that also conveyed an unspoken 'I don't want to talk about it.'

The crease in Mrs. Weasley's brow deepened further, but she did not press him for more. He could see a hesitant question lingering in her expression, however.

"I put him with the others." Harry offered, a vague, stab-in-the-dark answer to question he guessed she wanted to ask.

She smiled ruefully, with a nod, and released him, then manoeuvred him into the seat he had vacated earlier.

Arthur summoned Winky once more to order a round of butterbeer.

"Given the circumstances, I think some of us need it." he said, simply, when his wife glowered at him and mentioned the time of day.

She didn't say another word on the subject after that.

Harry contented himself with sipping at his butterbeer – which really was needed, and it helped Harry relax almost instantly, even if it was only a little bit – while listening to Mrs. Weasley list off their targets for the day as things the castle needed repairs upon first and watched Snape air-walk slowly around the hall, above the heads of its occupants.

The man never strayed far away, and Harry almost had the feeling that Snape was orbiting around him, disappearing momentarily to dip through the floor between two of the tables and out of sight, only to return a moment later by floating through the wall. Until he reappeared the once more, this time behind Harry's back without his knowledge, and barked "Potter!".

Harry, to his credit, managed to stop himself from flinching away at the sound of Snape's voice, and he turned his head just enough to see the man leaning over his shoulder from behind.

"Do stop looking so utterly flabbergasted, Potter; people will think you've seen a ghost..."

Harry snickered and bit his tongue.

"Harry?" said Ginny from beside him, "What's funny?"

He shook his head quickly, "N-nothing..."

"You were laughing at nothing?"

"No... I- er-" he took a swig of his butterbeer, stalling, and it sparked an idea, "Butterbeer! Yeah, at eight in the morning. Odd, isn't it? Ha ha..."

The moment the words spilt from his lips he knew he was an idiot.

Ginny's eyebrows shot upwards.

"Wonderful excuse, Potter. Even a Longbottom wouldn't fall for such a pathetic lie." Snape sneered.

"Butterbeer... right..." said Ginny, faintly, giving him a considering look, and turned back to her own drink.

Snape made a disparaging sound, "Well done, Potter. If you want people to think you're loosing your mind, you're certainly well on your way to a padded cell."

Harry clenched his jaw and sighed, then Snape leaned in close once more, that familiar chill biting into the flesh of his shoulder where the man's ghostly form intersected it.

"I'm going to attempt something in a moment," said Snape, with an odd twist to the corners of his mouth that Harry couldn't place, "I will announce my presence to the hall at-large. You may be the only person that can see me, but you may not be the only one that can hear me."

With that, Snape drifted up to the faculty table and stood at the dais, where Dumbledore had always stood to make his speech at the at the beginning and end of the school year.

Harry shuddered as the chill seeped away once more.

…..oOo...

Severus was wrong; he couldn't wait.

Quite frankly, because he couldn't stand being invisible.

Once he entered the Great Hall – which he noted was much more empty than he was used to seeing it, less than one hundred people all-in-all, and surmised they had already left or been shipped-off – and Potter had been pushed along to sit (amongst what must have been the entire Weasley family) at one of the house tables, Severus went about testing the boundaries of his new-found link.

He found that he could move about fairly freely, despite it, but he seemed to reach the unrelenting end of his tether at around twelve meters away from the boy, and could do little but walk-on-the-spot at the tether's endpoint, or turn enough to move around the inner circle – inner-sphere, technically – of the circumference of his seemingly 'approved' moving space.

It was a bubble – or possibly a very small universe – with Potter at its centre. The irritation that welled up inside him with that thought brought on a sudden need to do something that would release him from his tie. Why should he wait until Potter was alone again? He would do him no harm by testing his theory about his touch right there and then... So, during his last circuit of his invisible boundary, he came up behind Potter with the will to simply poke the boy in the arm – then thought better of it when he noticed the boy's pensive confusion as he swilled his drink around in its glass.

Best not to give him a fright.

So he snapped his name at him instead.

"Do stop looking so utterly flabbergasted, Potter; people will think you've seen a ghost..."

And Potter actually laughed.

The little idiot.

Severus couldn't help putting in his sickle's-worth of sarcasm as Potter attempted pathetically to explain himself to the young Miss Weasley, who quite obviously didn't buy a bar of it.

When Potter had sighed and stuck his nose back into his drink, Severus leant close enough to brush his arm against the boy's shoulder and allowed the incredible warmth to spread through him once more as he warned the boy of his intention.

How could Potter's touch make him feel so... alive? He could have smiled with the feeling of the warmth coursing through him; it was almost euphoric.

And he felt something like regret, or possibly withdrawal symptoms, when the warmth left him as he hovered up to the faculty table and placed himself on the dais at the head of the hall.

Severus couldn't help thinking about what a curious effect it had on him.

Then, in a moment he would later justify to himself as a momentary loss of mental health and judgement caused by the strange dysphoria from the loss of the warmth, Severus loudly announced, straight-faced, to the occupants of the hall, that he, Severus Snape, had returned from the dead and would be taking his rightful place as the first ghostly headmaster of Hogwarts, and that any complaints could be forwarded to the portrait of Albus Dumbledore, thank you very much.

Of course, no one heard him, or saw him standing there.

Severus had already expected that that would be the case – and was thankful that it was, considering what he had said – but still... Severus' short contact with Potter had done nothing more to his being than it had before but addle his mind. His theory had been wrong.

Even still, Potter, amidst his chattering, but subdued company, and despite Severus' prior warning, guffawed loudly, staring up at Severus like the man had suddenly grown a set of horns. He quickly attempted to cover it by turning the laugh into a coughing fit, but it did him no good, and merely earnthim a sound pounding across the shoulders from the youngest Weasley boy, who waggled his eyebrows at Granger and jerked his head in Potter's direction in a 'See, I told you so!' way that was obviously an attempt to clue-in Granger to his belief about Potter's current mental capacity. Miss Weasley seemingly agreed with her brother, based on the narrowed-eyed study she made of Potter.

None of it went unnoticed by Potter himself...

Frustrated, Severus quickly ran out of things to do but ponder events once more, and found himself a spot to settle-in for a while, finding that if he focused enough on something physically present, like the rafters supporting the enchanted ceiling, he could touch it as if he were physically there as well. Although, it was 'touch' in the vaguest sense of the word, as all he felt when he perched himself on one of the load-bearing beams was a similar coolness to what he felt when he passed through the Hospital Wing door, and the floor as Potter dragged him along.

At least from that vantage point he would stop distracting Potter from his properly visible and audible acquaintances, lest he send his only link to the living world to the loony-bin by association.

Severus wondered if it was possible for ghosts to go insane, because he felt sure that, if Potter were to be his only contact in this existence, he would rapidly loose his mind.

Solitude, he decided then, while having little to do but ponder the meaning of life, so to speak, was not as pleasant as Severus had once found it.

Before his death, more often than not, he wished for little more than to disappear at the end of the day; to do anything that kept his mind occupied enough to avoid letting his demons run rampant in his skull, and be alone whilst he did it.

Severus had never been a particularly social person in life; preferring to brew or read a book in isolation than prance about about in public for any reason that was not a requirement. As it was, if it were not for Dumbledore's brook-no-nonsense order, handed-down upon him at the signing of the paperwork for his tenure, that Severus must attend all Hogwarts meals and events, few would have ever seen him outside of the dungeons, and even fewer outside of class, unless they were stupid enough to catch him on his usual patrol after curfew, and many a student had deeply regretted meeting Severus in a dark corridor during the night... as had several teachers, for that matter.

It was not that he disliked people, persé... he just did not feel the need to actively seek out and surround himself with them. Neither was he particularly fond of the usual, universally accepted social conducts, where skirting around sensitive issues for the sake of peoples feelings was the norm, and withholding certain truths for the same reason was even more-so.

Mind-you, if it were Severus' feelings being stamped upon by another's purposely dealt insensitivity... that was a completely different story.

Yes, he was well aware of his own double-standards.

However, now that Severus could not be seen or be heard by anyone other than Potter – the matter of which had become even more undeniable after his little outburst when not one person screeched or pointed at him – he found himself feeling almost... outcast. More-so than he had felt during his last year of life; at least during that time people had hated him, which was still an acknowledgement of his existence. He had never had the opportunity to experience it before, but there was nothing more disturbing, even to a generally antisocial person such as Severus, than to walk into a room full of people and go completely unnoticed, especially considering he was used to reducing entire classrooms of children into blithering wrecks with his mere presence...and that was before he let loose with his veritable arsenal of scathing remarks.

Severus' voice, visage, and mind; his three most powerful features. He was denied two of them and the last was rendered almost ineffective in their wake – to all but Potter.

Perhaps fate had called in a friend, and now karma was having a laugh as well; payback for all those years of tormenting others with words and theatrics came to him in the form of the denial of his best attributes.

It was ironic, really.

Below him, Molly Weasley was apparently rounding up her litter for some purpose or another, which in turn roused the few people other people in the hall who remained at Hogwarts into movement; milling about to leave.

Severus spotted Potter just before the boy looked up at him as he rose to file out of the hall with the rest of its occupants, a question marked by a slightly raised eyebrow; Are you coming?

As if he had a choice in the matter.

He would figure it all out eventually... but first he needed some input from the only person he could rely on, other than himself.

…..oOo...

Harry thought he was doing quite well in going unnoticed as he surreptitiously watched Snape float around the hall above their heads, right up until Snape had startled him into laughter, and then again with his little speech, which had sent Harry in to hysterics – because he had never heard anything of the sort come from Snape's mouth before – and all he could think of to cover his slip was to cough instead.

That had done nothing to reassure Ron or Ginny of his mental health, who had heard him laugh despite his attempt at hiding it, and Ron started shooting meaningful looks at Hermione as he smacked Harry across the back with more force than strictly necessary. Hermione had the good sense to simply look annoyed, though Harry imagined she probably agreed with Ron anyway, and shared her boyfriend's concern.

If he was honest, Harry agreed too, as Snape's uncharacteristic outburst had done nothing to dispel his earlier thoughts about the man being a figment of his imagination...

But he hoped he was wrong.

"–patch-up the second floor today." Mrs. Weasley was saying when Harry tuned back into the conversation going on around him, after watching Snape perch in the rafters, appearing very much like the bat many students had referred to him as over the years.

"Second floor?" Harry repeated, looking over to Molly, curiously. Ron's words to him earlier about repairing Hogwarts resurfacing in his mind.

"Yes, dear, the castle won't fix itself now, will it?" Molly replied, but not unkindly, then gestured to the hall around them, "We fixed all of this yesterday. It's good to keep busy..."

Harry understood there was an unsaid 'and not think about other things' missing from the end of that sentence. Not think about Fred.

"McGonagall suggested we work our way up through the levels of Hogwarts. "said Neville, on Hermione's right, "Do repairs as we go... unless we find of a better way to go about it." he shrugged, "McGonagall should be back later with reinforcements from the Ministry anyway... after she's made that statement to the Ministry. Dunno who she'd be able con into coming though; Who'd want to come here when they've got their own stuff to do now that it's all over?"

"Because people care about Hogwarts, of course!" Hermione snapped, "She won't have to 'con' anybody."

"Maybe..." said Neville and shrugged again, "I just don't think there'll be many coming. If any."

Hermione was about to reply, but was silenced herself as Molly stood and clapped her hands with a huff of "Alright, then!"

It was a good thing too, because Hermione had that stubborn set to her jaw that suggested she was going to tell Neville a detailed list of every reason why she thought he was wrong.

"Well, come-on you lot, talking about it isn't going to get anything done!" said Mrs Weasley, and looked around at them all expectantly until they slowly, reluctantly, started moving to follow her. Their movement seemed to prod almost everyone else in the hall into heading out as well, and they began filing out of the hall en-mass.

Harry was one of the last to rise, and did so as he looked up to the rafters for Snape who, it appeared, was already looking for Harry anyway.

Real or imaginary, adequate or not, he was quite happy to see the man scowling at him as he floated down from his perch above.

"Come on, Harry!" Ron called, and Harry turned to see his friend watching him, waiting for him with that concerned frown plastered to his face.

"Best get a move on, Potter." said Snape, smirking when Harry flinched.

"Wasn't expecting you to come down that fast..." Harry muttered, trying to move his lips as little as possible while he moved to follow Ron. "You really have to stop sneaking up on me."

"Do I? Perhaps so..." Snape fell into step with him on his left as Harry walked out of the hall, as did Ron on his other side when he caught up to the redhead, "But first, you and I need to have a little... discussion."

Harry wanted to ask why, and how, but with Ron walking beside him, shooting glances from the corner of his eye every few seconds, he could do little more than blink a few times and hope that Snape understood.

"Make an excuse." said Snape, jerking his head in Ron's direction, "I've seen already seen one utterly brilliant example of your ability with those today. Let's see if you can't best it. Hm?"

After a moment, when Harry kept on walking, he added "Now, Potter." in a tone that sounded very much like an order.

Harry frowned.

Snape sighed, "I am not attempting to tell you what or what not to do, Potter, but I had hoped you would want to get to the bottom of this... predicament as quickly as possible. The fact that it appears you are the centre of the universe, even now, does not amuse me in any way, shape or form,and I am sure you will tire of my presence because of it soon enough."

Universe? Harry thought in confusion. What on earth was Snape on about?

He turned to Ron, "Er, hey, I'll catch up with you. Second floor right?"

Ron cocked an eyebrow, "Yeah... where're you going?"

"The loo, if you have to know."

Ron snorted, "Uh, right... want some company?"

Harry made a face at him, and Ron turned pink at the tips of his ears.

"Ugh, forget I said that, alright?"

Harry nodded, "Absolutely. It's already locked away with all my other traumatic memories."

Snape snorted.

"Er, you do that." said Ron, ears darkening further, "Well... see you in a bit, then..." and he hurried away.

The moment Harry was sure he was out of sight and earshot of anyone nearby, he looked to Snape.

"Happy now?"

"Quite. An excellent demonstration of the use of your mind once more, Potter, but I fear that if Mister Weasley had not stuck his foot in it so absolutely you would have not been able to be rid of him with that pathetic excuse for an... excuse."

Harry sighed, ignoring him, "Where do you want to have this 'discussion' then?"

Harry was sure he saw the man smile just slightly, "I have no qualms in leaving that entirely up to you, Potter. I will suggest that you choose a place that will be private however, since we do not want any eavesdroppers listening to you talking to yourself."

Harry set off towards the ground floor class-rooms.

"You don't have to tell me that."

…..oOo...

O