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Harry rested on his knees and placed his hand on Snape's clammy forehead. He had still not moved, though his heart was beating faster and faster in his chest. Doubt suddenly flooded though Harry as he stroked Snape's forehead. What if it didn't work? What if he'd labelled the bottles wrong? What if Snape didn't wake up?

"Wake up Snape. Please wake up," Harry said at barely a whisper. "Please, please, please, wake up Snape. I'm sorry, Snape." Harry got louder and started patting Snape on the head gently. He began to cry noiselessly as he looked at Snape's motionless figure. "I'm s - sorry, s- s- 'orry." Harry sniffed and spluttered out a cough. "I'm sorry for getting angry and shouting and fighting you and looking in letters and not respecting you and standing on chairs and getting hurt. I'm s- s- sorry." Harry closed his eyes and cried harder. He stopped patting Snape's head, rested his hand on his shoulder and cried.

Snape's eyelids flickered. Gradually feeling came back to his body and he wished that it would go away again. Slowly, he flexed his fingers and toes. There was the tang of rusty pennies in his mouth, the after taste of the potion, which he swallowed down hard. He lay immobile for a moment letting his senses adjust. His ears twitched as if they were independent from the rest of his head letting his ears pop and for him to hear the snivelling and spluttering to his right. His head jerked slightly and he squeezed his eyes tighter before gradually opening them and turning to look at the boy. Harry hadn't noticed, he was still crying rubbing his hand across his face and sniffing at his runny nose.

Slowly Snape pushed himself up on his elbow and dragged himself into a sitting position. Still Harry was crying. Snape looked at him and his runny nose. Frowning and praying no one was looking Snape reached out his pale hand and rubbed Harry's back in small circles. Harry began to shake and without warning threw himself into Snape's chest, sobs wracking his body, his nasal fluids flowing onto Snape's front. Snape looked down but kept rubbing Harry's back until gradually his sobs receded. He slowed down his rubbing and gently prised Harry off of his torso. Snape looked into his face and retrieved another tissue from his pocket and wiped Harry's face. He was beginning to have more tissues than a Kleenex box.

"I think you mean, I'm sorry sir," he said it very gently and allowed a smile to break across his face. It twitched; the muscles didn't get used very often.

Snape pushed himself to his feet and swayed slightly, silver flecks of light floated in front of his eyes. He steadied himself and said, "Come along Harry." Snape reached down and gently took the lad by the hand, leading him down the stairs. Obediently Harry was led to the kitchen table where he sat down.

"You and I are both going to eat some chocolate," he said it in the same authoritarian tone as normal but Harry definitely felt a little Dumbledore in Snape, there was certainly some caring there. Snape stretched up to a cupboard and removed a bar a chocolate. His whole body felt curiously light. What has Harry given me?

Harry received half of the bar of chocolate and it looked far newer that the one he had eaten a few days previously. It was shiny, not powdery, and broke apart crisply when he snapped it. Harry chewed the bar while Snape broke his into little cubes putting them individually into his mouth. The kitchen sink seemed to be swimming in and out of focus; the taps were not the same length anymore. He hiccupped.

"Harry, what did you give me?" he seemed to sway in his seat, looking at Harry.

Harry bit down on his chocolate hard, his eyes widened involuntarily. "A healing potion, sir. It was a very strong one – Mortal Peril."

"I see…" he turned back to his chocolate blocks again and hiccupped once more. He had stopped smiling and looked cross to Harry's mind. "You thought very quickly Harry… though you did rather over-compensate with that I think. ," said Snape, looking at him. "Oh and Harry, well done."

Harry looked at the table top and examined the knots in the woodwork very carefully. He realised that he had been doing this a lot lately, but it helped him think. Was he in trouble? The tally chart of the past couple of hours events would say yes, yes he was. However, Snape had not started lecturing him (yet) and he was enjoying the warming glow of the chocolate coursing through his body. He stifled a yawn. He felt so tired, his throat and head ached from the crying and shouting and he just wanted to curl up in his bed. He threw a cursory glance at Snape and then returned his attentions to the table.

"You are trouble, you know that don't you," Snape's mind felt funny. His world was fuzzy at the edges.

"Yes, sir."

Snape sighed and pointed an accusatory finger at Harry. "Harry…. You know what you did was wrong." Harry nodded in agreement looking very hard at Snape's face. "Well… then I suggest we put the events of today behind us. Don't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Just like your father…"

"What do you mean sir?

Harry never found out what Snape meant as his professor promptly fell forward onto the table and lay there sprawled snoring deeply.

The crescent moon illuminated the extensive lawns of the mansion's grounds. The neatly manicured topiary painstakingly formed into ornate dragons and snakes keeping their verdant eyes trained over the estates. A cracking noise broke the silent night as the dragon stretched upwards to the sky and opened its wings to their largest extent. The snake yawned lazily before snapping its jaw closed hiding its hard thorn teeth. Nothing had stirred before them that night as it had not done for weeks. There was still nothing for them to report to their master and although it prolonged their enchantment it prevented a lot of hassle for them: still nothing to report. No one had come up the marble chip path or clambered over the rose covered walks, the perfume of the night jasmine had not wafted up to their bewitched nostrils and the surface of the fountain, whose water continued to pour forth from the mouth of the ornamental mermaid, had been disturbed by anything other than the ripples caused by the charmed flow. Still their master had not lifted his spell upon them. The dragon snorted out a cloud of leaves, thorns and petals letting the mock flames drift to the ground harmlessly while the snake's twiggy tongue flicked in and out of its mouth. They maintained their unasked for watch.

Behind them the main building, built from grey stone, cast an imposing shadow. The stone masonry had been carved intricately to outline the doorways with a set of white painted French windows leading out to a high raised balcony. It was in the same condition as it had been when it was built three hundred years earlier and would have put the Snape residence to shame were they to be compared, in fact as they had been compared by the proud owners of the grander building. The owners knew Snape was a mudblood and after all, you can only do so much with a filthy mudblood.

At the window stood a tall haughty blond surveying the landscape; her bony hand clasped a crystal tumbler containing a golden sugary liquid. She sloshed it round in a cyclone forcing the fluid up the sides of the glass. She stared almost sightlessly outward. Past her, the room was bedecked with dark mahogany furniture. A tall bookcase stood on the rear walls packed stylishly with weighty uniform hardbacks, unlike Snape's case it was not overfull. A glass cabinet held an array of silver artefacts, no doubt Borgin and Burkes's finest works. The door into the room was open.

The hallway it led onto flowed stylistically into a large entrance hall with a plaster and gilt ceiling. There was an oversized, ostentatious staircase which swept upwards to a mezzanine floor which offered a viewing platform onto the space below. Of course it equally allowed the viewees on the floor to see the viewer above, allowing the spectator to dominate and impress his guests at official parties held there.

Off of this level there was a corridor down which there were a series of rooms, each with an impressive polished wood door. There was a faint smell of wax. Each room had a purpose; the second on the left was a bathroom containing a green marble bath suite with a set of taps carved in jade and embossed with jewels; the first on the right a spare room with black silk sheets for receiving visitors; the fourth on the right a living room, which was largely unlived in by the family; and the fifth on the left contained a boy lying on a bed.

The boy was blond and lay face down on his pillow letting his hair obscure his face. He was sobbing and the pillow partially masked the sound. Boys shouldn't cry; men shouldn't cry, a voice in his head repeated again and again. His body quaked as he wrapped his arms around his pillow and squeezed it tightly for some comfort. He was too old for stuffed toys, so his father had gotten rid of them one day. He just cried harder and harder.

The final room on the corridor also had its door shut, but it was not merely closed too, it was hermetically sealed with enough spells that it would have taken some of the finest that the department of mysteries had to offer in order to get it open. Inside there were the normal objects to be found in an office, in a wizarding office anyway. A large Sneakoscope rested on its side on top of a walnut desk, on the wall hung a large mirror, a foe glass, in which innumerable shadows swilled coming in and out of focus as they went closer and further from the glass. There was the expected array of quill and parchment and in the corner of the room there was an ornamental birdcage for an absent owl. A thick rug was thrown across the centre of the room; it was run through with cloth-of-gold. Possibly the most important feature of the room however was the marble fireplace, whose grate stood with nothing in it but a tall silver urn engraved with an large M. The urn was filled with a fine grey powder. Without warning there was a flash of light which filled the room with flickering flames.

Out from the now fire filled grate stepped a tall blood man with a pointed face and steel eyes. He looked comfortable in the room, as he should being the owner of the house: Lucius Malfoy. The flames did not stop burning at his entrance as he was followed in by two more men. The first had a grey mane of hair, waxy almost yellow skin like a lemon, and a crooked nose. The second was younger, portly and red face. Neither of them looked happy to be there.

"Well?" said Malfoy turning to look at the men. "What news of Potter?"

Both were silent.

"Graves. Speak."

"We have no news," said Graves, the man with the grey hair. His clothes were thick travelling robes made of deep green tweed. He looked sullen. "There is no news to be had, Malfoy. We have checked everything. If we had news from inside Hogwarts…"

Malfoy snapped his wand upwards. "Crucio," said Malfoy, pointing his wand at Graves's heart. The man dropped and twitched on the floor. Malfoy pulled his wand away. The portly man maintained his silence though looked away uncomfortably.

Malfoy put his heel onto Graves's throat. "I want every owl, every chimney, every ministry department monitored. We will find out where Potter is, regardless of any contacts we do or do not have inside Hogwarts." He squeezed his foot harder on Graves's jugular. "The Dark Lord is not to be disappointed. DO you understand?" Graves grunted from the floor and Malfoy slowly lifted his heel.

"So," said Graves getting himself off of the floor and straightening the neck of his robes and massaging where Malfoy had put his foot, "when shall we three meet again?"

"When you have a result. And let heaven help you if you don't have one soon."