A/N: Another long wait for this chapter, I know. But I'm really terribly busy at the moment, so please have patience with me. I will finish this story in any case, and I hope to have another chapter up within a week!

xXx

Dogs and Dementors

It was a rather harsh shock when Snape's memory-doppelganger passed him before he had even reached the entrance to the Shrieking Shack. He was wearing the invisibility cloak Potter-the-child had left so carelessly at the foot of the willow, but Snape hadn't trained himself on recognizing magical patterns for nothing. Obviously, they had spent more time in the darkness than he had realized.

Much more time.

His scowl deepening, Snape quickened his steps and entered the derelict house on his younger self's heels.

There they were assembled, the nightmares of his youth and his teaching career. Potter, Granger and Weasley, huddled together in a highly undignified way at one end of the room. Lupin and Black, both looking worse for wear, staring transfixedly at the wand pointing at them, and at the triumphant face of a younger Severus Snape.

He crossed the room and settled his back against the boarded up windows, joined a moment later by Potter, who leaned against the wall silently. Snape refused to look at him.

For a moment, he could feel the old satisfaction well up in his chest again, the triumph that he had felt at having finally captured his old nemesis, at having proven that the werewolf, against whose presence he had protested the moment he had set foot into his old school, had proven himself to be the traitor he had always suspected him to be.

Then, he remembered that he had been wrong, not wrong about Black's character, who had gotten his himself killed just two years later, but nevertheless wrong. The hate that had clouded his mind when he had met Black again had blinded his ability to see, to judge, and the result had been more than one near catastrophe, and the escape of Peter Pettigrew, which ultimately had led to the resurrection of the Dark Lord.

"Give me a reason," The Snape from the memory whispered. "Give me a reason to do it and I swear I will."

Snape looked at his own face, or rather the face of his memory, and the ugly loathing that twisted it into a grimace of hate hit him with the force of a slap.

So that was how he had looked to his students, to his colleagues at the Order. He chanced a quick look to his side, but Potter didn't even notice him, his whole being concentrated on his Godfather.

Well, at least he's looking worse than I do, Snape thought, choosing to ignore that Black's ragged, meagre appearance was due to an enforced stay at Azkaban.

Granger piped up then, her voice filled with horror that she dared criticize a professor, but unfortunately, her Gryffindor boldness had been stronger than her reason even back then. Snape ignored her, his eyes instead on the centre of action – the younger Potter and Black.

He was surprised when Black offered to accompany him quietly, as long as the rat went with them – he had completely forgotten this part of the conversation, all his memory fixed on the expression of scorn on the hated face.

Perhaps this visit to Potter's past wasn't that bad after all. It seemed to show Snape a part of his own memories, the part he had chosen to forget. Although I'm not that sure how ready I am to remember all that.

"Up to the castle?" said Snape the younger now silkily. "I don't think we need to go that far. All I have to do is call the Dementors once we get out of the Willow. They'll be very pleased to see you, Black… pleased enough to give you a little kiss, I daresay…"

He had felt so grand when he had threatened Black, when he had finally resumed that part of control over his life that had been shredded to pieces all those years ago, when Black had led him to his doom and Potter had stopped him.

Only now could he see how childish all this had been, how immature.

In the face of all that had happened since that one night, in the face of all those battles where he would have needed Black, or Lupin, or anybody with the ability to fight at his side, he realized what Dumbledore, and Harry Potter even, had meant when they had told him to let go of this hate again and again.

"You're pathetic!" The younger Potter now yelled, as if to emphasize his epiphany. "Just because they made a fool of you at school you won't even listen – "

"Silence! I will not be spoken to like that", The younger Snape thundered, but his older counterpart couldn't help notice that Potter had possessed, even back then, the ability to slap the truth into your face so that you couldn't run away from it. All he had learned in the past eight years was to wrap it nicely with a smile before handing it to you.

But compose wasn't a character trait Potter had already acquired in third year. Again, Snape could see the boiling fury in Potter's memory eyes, the same fury he had confronted Dudley with in the first memory they had shared, and not for the first Snape what would happen if this volcano of emotion erupted.

I think I liked it better when he looked like an idiot, Snape thought, his eyes moving from the younger to the older Potter. It was easier to ignore what he said, back then.

This time around, he saw the Expelliarmus-spell Potter directed at him, and watched himself fly backwards and collapse with a mixture of anger and embarrassment – he did look rather ridiculous with helplessly flailing arms.

Sparing a glance towards Potter, he was treated with yet another of the man's sheepish grins, but he had learned his facial expressions well enough by now to see that his heart wasn't in it. He was just playing a role while his thoughts still centred on Black.

"I guess there's one good thing about this whole mess – at least I'm realizing about how many things I really have to be embarrassed about. I'm very sorry, Professor."

"I am used to it," Snape grumbled, astonished at how easy it was for him to accept the apology of a Potter by now.

He observed the following interplay with heightened interest – he had been out cold when all this had happened after all, and had always wondered what had occurred until he woke up besides the Whomping Willow.

Perhaps it was a good thing that he hadn't heard any of this. The utter inefficiency of Black and Lupin would have driven him up the walls. Why couldn't they simply levitate the rat over and force Pettigrew to reveal his true form, for Merlin's sake? It wasn't that difficult to keep your mind on the business!

Only that he hadn't done so, either, and been rewarded for it with a painful headache.

Snape had half expected the other man to continue their talk, to comment on the ridiculousness of the whole situation or perhaps offer some of his saintly wisdom when they watched Lupin and Black explaining the rat's identity as if they had just invented the wheel.

Only when Potter-the-child stepped into the argument, his eyes blazing with fury at the thought of Black killing Pettigrew, did Potter-the-man finally speak.

"To think that I hated Sirius so much," He whispered. "Just moments before my whole world turned."

"There are far worse emotions to connect with Black, Potter," Snape answered lightly. "And if your affection towards him hadn't been so unreasonably deep, you wouldn't have suffered as you did when he fell through the veil." There. A logical, sensitive comment without even one insult embedded in it. And who said he hadn't overcome his childish hate?

"Sirius was a very ill man, Professor," Potter said calmly.

Screw sensitivity.

"He was hopelessly infantile and arrogant, Potter. Not a good friend to anybody, not a good godfather. Just someone who was unable to grow up and realize that the world consisted of more than black and white."

Potter just smiled a sad little half-smile, but there was a tiredness to it, a bone deep exhaustion Snape had never seen before, which told him better than any word how much the Fading was taking from him.

"Of course he was, Professor, but you must consider Sirius' situation. People like Sirius always grow up too late. The world is nothing but a playground to them, and before Sirius could learn just how wrong he was, he was thrown into Azkaban for 12 years, with the death of his foster-family on his shoulders, and everyone that mattered full of hate towards him. No wonder he never reached anything like maturity. There was only spite in his soul, and terror, and hopelessness. Believe me, I know the feeling."

"One more reason why he should have helped you instead of encouraging your Gryffindor stupidity," Snape hissed, getting ready for the argument he had been itching for since they had entered the tunnel. He was right about this, he knew it. This time, Potter wouldn't find a satisfying answer to every criticism he could offer. This time, he would win.

But Potter just smiled at him, a tired, understanding smile, and turned away to watch the transformation of Peter Pettigrew.

Snape felt disappointed, and had to suppress the sudden urge to argue that Potter wasn't fair. Really, he was degenerating with a worrying speed.

Pull yourself together, He scolded himself as Peter Pettigrew, now human again, tried to argue his way out of the truth. You're not here for reminiscence, you're task is to look for signs of illness.

Black, Lupin and Pettigrew were babbling again, claiming their innocence and the other's guilt in the highest tones. Snape snorted as he turned away from the adults and concentrated on Potter. Sometimes, he really missed being a Death Eater. If there was one good thing about his colleagues, it had been their tendency to decide fast and act even faster. Among Death Eaters, Pettigrew would be out cold by now and the whole group back on their way to the castle. Or rather, Black and Lupin would be dead and Pettigrew with the children on his way to Voldemort. Perhaps not such a good alternative, after all.

But at least they wouldn't have forced the boy to listen to all of this, to get his world turned upside down and back up again in less than a minute. He could see the strain of hearing all this, of meeting his fathers traitorous friends under such circumstances in Potter's eyes, in the way he moved. His spine stiff as when he had been confronted by the Dursleys, his eyes huge and full of emotions that were boiling and whirling and too confused to be named.

His eyes were darting from Black to Lupin to Pettigrew and back again, unwilling to fix on one, unwilling to make a decision that would bring one of them nearer to his heart or abandon the other.

Snape felt anger again stirring in his chest. Here they were, after 12 years of neglect and abuse, fighting over Potter's attention, but again this wasn't about him. For the first time in his life, the boy had had a chance of an adult really caring for him this night, but the chance was already tainted with the need to decide a man's fate. He could only buy his godfather with the condemnation of another man, and Snape saw in Potter's eyes the knowledge of this taint.

It was the Chamber of Secrets all over again, Snape thought, for a moment feeling the deep impulse to step between Potter and the adults that quarrelled over him. No child should have been forced to make this decision. No child should have handled this situation on his own. It hadn't been his task to judge this pitiful man's destiny, and yet they had made him do it.

And although Snape knew that Black, and Lupin, and he himself had been the ones to blame for Pettigrew's escape and all the evil he had committed thereafter, one short look to the face of Potter-the-man confirmed what he had believed before.

Potter had blamed himself for the decision he had made that night. Caught between the choices of allowing Pettigrew's death, the death of the man who had destroyed his parents, and mercy, he had chosen mercy, and had paid dearly for it in the years to come.

"Why was everything always your job, Potter?" Snape whispered, his voice nearly lost in the heated argument that was still going on around them.

"Probably because I simply exuded confidence and leadership," Potter-the-man answered dryly, and Snape didn't need to look at the scrawny, more than nervous boy before him to understand the sarcasm in those words.

But he understood even more. Over the last days, he had learned to listen to Potter, to really listen to him like he did to the boiling of a potion, to concentrate on the soft sound of simmering, the nuances of noise the slow heating produced, and this sense for subtlety found tiredness behind the dry humour, resignation, but also acceptance.

For a moment, he felt a deep longing to meet the Potter in between, not this young boy who hadn't even understood how the world treated him, or this man, who had understood everything, accepted it, and moved on, but the angry, despairing young man he must have been when he had realized what they had done to him, when he had found himself in the trap they had all built for him and understood, for the first time, that those walls were not there for his own safety.

It was a great moment when one understands the contingency of one's own destiny, but with Potter, it must have been a moment fit to break his heart, and soul, and spine. Snape wondered how he had survived it.

But then they were moving again, down the rickety stairs of the Shrieking Shack, with Snape nearly falling over a particularly large rock, because his eyes were riveted on the Potter boy. Hope had been added to his fear and insecurity, and while hope in itself wasn't a bad thing to feel, Snape knew all too well how soon it would crush and leave Potter even more desperate.

Perhaps they had finally reached the memory that had initiated the splitting, and if it was, he couldn't allow himself to lose a second.

He ignored his own younger body drifting weirdly behind them and the still protesting Pettigrew, chained to both Lupin and Ron.

He was close enough to Potter-the-boy to hear Black's offer of guardianship and a home, close enough to see the boy's face light up as if a sun had settled behind his eyes, and to see the light mirrored in Black's face when Potter agreed.

For a moment, one single, excruciating moment hat might have been designed by Schroedinger himself, there was the belief among them that everything would be finally alright. Black would be free, Potter would move in with him and his life would change for the better. There would be someone to care for him, and guard him, and keeping him safe from Dumbledore's and Voldemort's machinations.

Only that there was a flaw in it, Snape thought glumly. They were talking about Black and Potter, after all. Not even one of them on his own had ever managed to get through a day without at least a few catastrophes. The chance of both of them, together, getting things work the way they wanted, was ludicrous.

He could have told them so had he not been floating unconscious behind the small group. But the voice of truth had never been well received with those two, anyway.

"I wish we could speed this memory up a bit," Potter suddenly said as they followed their younger self out of the secret tunnel and into the fresh darkness of a summer night. "This whole foreplay really isn't necessary."

Snape frowned. This was the first time since they had worked together that Potter sounded impatient. He didn't radiate his usual annoying serenity, either. In fact, his whole frame spoke of nervousness, a lingering unease that didn't fit his emotionless, calm face.

"Stressed, Potter," He mocked, but received no reply. Strange. Potter had never been one to let a chance for friendly bickering pass, and Snape had come quite used to it over the last week. He had half a mind to stop the memory and ask what was going on.

But then the moon broke through the clouds and Snape forgot about Potter's strange behaviour, fascinated and horrified alike by the transformation Lupin went through.

He had seen it before, of course, the grotesque re-forming of limbs and skin, the way his shoulders were hunching, his hair was sprouting from face and hands, the way his fingers clawed into paws, but still it fascinated him in a terror inspiring way.

The thought that he had nearly been bitten by this, all those years ago, the distant memory of yellow eyes, claws reaching for him, froze him in his tracks.

He stood motionless as chaos broke loose. Black had transformed and was fighting the wolf, Pettigrew was stunning Weasley, being in turn disarmed by Potter, and hurrying away in his rat form, and still Potter-the-boy just stood there, his eyes darting from wolf to dog, trying to estimate the chances of getting a spell through and realizing immediately that there wasn't a chance.

Lupin fled, and for a fleeting moment, Snape considered taunting him about being afraid of a dog, before he remembered that all participants in this memory, with the exception of him and Potter, had been dead for many years, and that Potter would most likely join them soon.

Now there was a sobering thought.

He could see Black, still in his dog form, stumbling after Lupin, but it was clear that he wouldn't be able to move fast enough to catch the werewolf, as Granger and Potter moved to their fallen peer. Of course they had no idea how to revive him, and if they were sensible, they would simply hurry him and Weasley to the castle and let the teachers do the work. Well, Miss Granger would, for Potter had that look in his eyes again…

Snape didn't need the knowledge of the future to know what would happen. Racing after a werewolf that was followed by his dogfather simply was too Potterish to leave a chance of acting differently.

And Granger, ever the loyal friend even in the most idiotic of situations, tore after him.

They didn't have far to go, although Snape could hear Potter-the-man breathe heavily when they reached the shore of the lake. Snape looked up in time to see the dementors closing in on them, and in pure reflex reached for his wand. But it was useless, he knew it well enough.

He concentrated on Potter again as the boy shouted for Granger to 'think of something happy'. Snape wondered whether Potter was really mad enough to believe that the two of them could defeat more than a hundred dementors and then, listening to the desperate cries of 'Expecto Patronum', realized that, yes, he really was.

There were black, floating shapes everywhere around them now. Granger whimpered in pain and fear, her wand falling from her lifeless hand to the ground as she, too, collapsed to her knees. Black gave a shudder, rolled over and lay motionless on the ground, pale as death.

Only Potter stayed on his feet, still fighting, his wand darting from dementor to dementor, his horse voice still yelling for his Patronus to appear. Snape stepped even closer, close enough to see the sweat on Potter's forehead, the pure panic in his eyes still mixed with a desperate hope that everything would be alright, everything would go well… But he couldn't find a sign of the Fading.

The silvery mist Potter had conjured spread thin, straining to surround not only him but also his friend and godfather, and Potter dropped to his knees in the effort to keep it strong enough. The dementors drew in closer, and Snape shuddered with revulsion when he saw one of them pass right through him, pass through him and stretch out his dead slimy hand from the folds of his cloak. It made a gesture as thought to sweep the Patronus aside.

"No – no," Potter-the-boy gasped. "He's innocent… expecto – expecto patronum…"

But it was no use, and Snape could see from the way his shoulders stooped and his head bowed that the boy knew.

The dementor raised both its rotting hands – and lowered its hood.

Snape looked away from the fearful sight. He had seen more than his share of dementors during the war, and he wasn't keen on watching the shapeless hole of their mouths through which his soul had nearly been sucked more than once. Potter's patronus flickered and died.

And the screaming started again. Potter's breathing came in ragged gasps as the dementor moved nearer, his ghastly mouth lowering down on Potter's in the awful parody of a lover's kiss.

Snape stared. He hadn't known that Potter had come so close to dying that night. Despite his knowledge that this was just a memory, that it had already happened and Potter had survived, he felt panic knotting his insides together. He looked up to search for the help that surely had to come now, that needed to happen quick if Potter was to be rescued, his ears ringing with the screams of Lily Potter.

He looked up and saw a huge silver stag galloping towards him.

For a moment, time seem suspended. Snape stared and stared, watching the mighty beast chase away the hoard of dementors with ease and then standing completely still for a moment, watching over the fallen bodies of Potter, Black and Granger.

Then it galloped back to the other shore, his graceful neck arching in a joyful bow to the beauty of life and nature, galloped back to the small figure of a boy, standing near the water very still and watching his Patronus' swift and elegant movements.

Potter.

A shudder went through Snape as he realized that this boy, this child had possessed the power to conjure a Patronus like that. He wondered for a moment how Potter could be there on the shore when he was lying unconscious besides him at the same time, but then decided that Granger's time turner had probably to do with that.

He looked from Potter to Potter, from the fallen, frail figure to the one standing proud and straight at the lake shore for a moment, before he turned away and vanished into the forest.

And he saw again what he had seen during Potter's second year, when he had confronted Tom Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets. Power. An innocent, unconscious power not to be used lightly or readily. But when it was used, it was wielded with a will and determination behind it to make things matter, to change the course of the world around him.

The realization that he had always underestimated Potter-the-boy, just as he had underestimated the man besides him in the beginning, galled Snape to no end. He was rather surprised that Potter-the man hadn't rubbed it in by now.

"What, Potter, no second-hand wisdom from you this time?" He asked, and when Potter didn't react, turned around to the younger man.

What he saw made him curse in frustration. Instead of leaning casually against the tree in that irritating fashion of his, Potter was sprawled on the ground, twitching and convulsing in pain.

xXx

A/N: I'm said to admit that most of the good action in this chaper came from Ms Rowling herself, but if we have to steal, better to steal from the best...

Review!