AN: Wrap-up and epilogue will probably appear sometime today or tomorrow.

WOOHOO! 101 FOLLOWERS! I AM WAY TOO EXCITED ABOUT THIS! Happy anniversary, those of you who have been following since the beginning. And me, of course. MUCH LOVE TO ALL.

Now if I could just get 100 reviews! ;)

VERY LAST CHANCE to vote in the poll! Theoretically I'll be embarking on the next portion by Tuesday next, so I need to decide whether to start a new story for it or not!

Hope you enjoy!

Harry swallowed.

"Is he…?"

"Dead? Well, Quirrell is. I think. Voldemort got out, same as last time. There was a bit of an explosion, you'll remember."

"No…no, I don't remember," said Harry slowly. "I remember Voldemort telling Quirrell to kill me…and then I heard some sort of curse…and the next thing I remember was hearing Ron's voice. Just the curse and then…I thought it was abracadabra, but I'm pretty sure that's not a real…well, Hermione said about Muggle legends and all, but…"

"That was me," said Coach shortly. "Killing curse. No defence against it. Boom. Dead."

"That…that was the one I survived, wasn't it?" said Harry. "The one that killed my parents, when they were trying to protect…protect me…the one everyone's all impressed about…because there's no defence."

"Right. But you've got one. Leave it to me to forget that tiny but crucial fact in the moment of crisis and go and do something stupid."

"I've got one? But, hang on…I mean, just because I survived it once doesn't mean I would survive it again, does it? I mean, maybe I just got lucky. And he could have always used something else, right?"

Coach shook his head. "Nope. Voldemort can't hurt you, Harry."

"What? Why not?"

"Because your bloody idiot of a father jumped in front of a killing curse for you, that's why," said Coach.

There was no mistaking the bitterness in Potter's voice. It was, Harry thought, the sort of thing Draco would say about him, Harry, if he ever got himself killed. The sort of thing you could only say about someone if you had cared about them.

His heart felt like lead and his stomach like ice.

"So it's true?" Harry said softly. "What Quirrell said about my parents? That they died protecting me, that if not for me they never, they never would've…" His throat was refusing to work properly. He swallowed, but there was a hard lump there and he found himself blinking back tears. Stop it, stop it, don't cry in front of bloody Potter!

"Professor Quirrell said that?" Dumbledore asked. "Well…I'm afraid he was right, Harry, but…"

"Why would Voldemort want to kill me in the first place?" Harry asked, swallowing successfully at last.

Dumbledore shook his head. Through his blurred vision, Harry thought Dumbledore's eyes looked a little too bright behind his glasses.

"I cannot tell you, Harry," said Dumbledore. "Not today. Not now. You will know, one day. When you are older…I know you hate to hear this…when you are ready, you will know."

"So wh-why…" Oh, great, stammering. Pull yourself together, Snape. "Why does my father…why does that mean that Voldemort can't hurt me?"

"Did anyone ever tell you that love is a really powerful magic?" Coach asked. He sounded sorry, ashamed of himself, the way he had on that first day when he'd given Harry a crap broom and Harry had called him out on it. "Apparently when someone loves you enough to die for you it gives you this protective…crust…thing."

Harry looked at Dumbledore enquiringly and Dumbledore nodded. "Inelegant as Professor Potter may be, that is more or less the case," said Dumbledore. "Such love as your mother and father had for you leaves a mark. Not a scar, no visible sign; to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin."

Harry opened his mouth, closed it, and paused to try to marshal his thoughts. Dumbledore waited politely. Coach began pacing the office, casting dark looks at Quirrell, whose empty face looked up at the ceiling.

"And because I forgot that little detail," Coach said to himself, "I killed the pathetic little bastard." Harry wondered for a moment whether Coach were angry or sad. When he straightened his back and turned back around to look at Harry and Dumbledore a moment later, he just looked resolute.

"Dumbledore wants me to tell you straight what's going to happen now," he said. "The Killing Curse is probably the most serious spell a person can cast. Using against a human being will result in automatic life imprisonment in Azkaban."

"In where?"

"Azkaban is the wizard prison, on an island, no one's ever escaped. It's guarded by these things called Dementors, they…"

"…suck away all your happiness," said Harry. "The boggart guarding the Stone turned into one for Malfoy."

"Ah, right. Ah? Oh. Well…so that's what's going to happen to me. Prison, depression, eventual death of misery or starvation from not being able to eat prison food." He grinned wanly. "Just in case you were wondering."

"But, but you only did it to protect me!" said Harry.

"And I could've used any of hundred of spells to do that, Harry. But I went right for the felony, didn't I? Guess I deserved what I got. Nothing anyone can do, Harry, don't worry your pretty little head about it."

"But it was Voldemort! I'd think they'd be tripping over themselves to give you a medal or something."

"Sure. If it was Voldemort. Did you take a good look at this chap here? Nothing remotely Voldemorty about him." Coach gave a flick of his wand and the body revolved slowly, revealing the back of a perfectly normal head. "When he left the poor bugger he took his face with him."

"But I could say…I mean, I saw him, he was Voldemort, and it's not as if I ever liked you or anything, they couldn't show, er, bias, or whatever…"

"Snape, you'd be a bloody awful witness. You don't know that that's what happened, you just have my word. You blacked out. I mean, for all you knew Voldemort was the one who cast the curse and it just rebounded, the way it did before."

The room went silent.

Harry gave Coach a long look. He still wasn't sure whether he liked this man, this tall, arrogant, tousle-haired, beglassessed ex-Gryffindor who blamed him for things he couldn't have helped. But he had just saved his life. And what was more, he had cared for his father.

"I'm pretty sure," said Harry, "that that is what happened."

"What? No. I just told you, preventative…"

"I think you're trying to make yourself out to be a hero, Professor," said Harry. "You like doing that. You like telling tall tales about how heroic you are."

"I…what? You heard…"

"Well, I saw Quirrell and I saw Voldemort and I heard a curse and I blacked out, and when I came to Voldemort was dead and here you were posturing about it."

"Why on earth would I…?"

Harry stood up. "I think maybe you want to go to prison, you want to have done something with your life, you're that sort. But it was me that defeated him, not you. Quirrell's dead from his own Killing Curse and it's my fault. There wasn't anyone else in that corridor and I've no idea how to cast a Killing Curse, I don't even know the incantation. There wasn't anything else that could have happened. I mean, obviously a Hogwarts professor would, would know better than to just kill someone instead of immobilising them or whatever. Especially a Hogwarts professor that Dumbledore trusts. One…" Harry glanced at Dumbledore briefly "…one who was with Dumbledore at the time of death."

"Are you insane?" said Potter. "There is no way we're going to…"

"Mr Snape," said Dumbledore, raising his eyebrows, "you are suggesting we conceal the truth about this affair in order to protect Professor Potter? You must understand how serious this is?"

"Well, sir, isn't Professor Potter innocent until proven guilty? And how can anyone possibly prove him guilty? How can you even know?" He was talking very fast now, the words tumbling over each other as his ideas spilled out. "He didn't have a motive, and if he did it was to kill Voldemort, which works also…and there were no witnesses, all I heard was a voice, it didn't even sound like Professor Potter, I never would have been able to identify it…maybe, maybe that really is what happened, maybe we're not concealing any truth at all…"

"I WILL NOT LET SOME SCRAWNY GREEN-EYED SPROG CALL ME A LIAR!"

Harry was too used to Potter yelling at him to be much surprised by this. He looked up at Coach, his eyes wide and innocent.

"I didn't call you a liar, sir," he said. "I'm sure you really believe that your version is what happened."

"You little…"

"Would you be kind enough to step outside for a moment, Mr Snape?" Dumbledore said in his politest tones. Harry normally would have protested, but with Coach Potter puffing and blowing like a steam engine about to explode, it did seem the wisest course. Plus he didn't fancy finding out what other names Potter could come up with for him besides scrawny green-eyed sprog.

It felt he waited for more like an hour than for a "moment", though. He wandered about in the little corridor. He rode the spiral staircase all the way down thirteen times and all the way up fourteen times, once after climbing down around the railings to see if he could make it without the stairs moving. He looked for loose stones in the walls and floor. He practiced sending off different coloured sparks with his wand, and then tried the Aguamenti spell, but all he got was a sort of evil-smelling mist.

Then, without warning, the door to Dumbledore's office slammed open and Potter emerged, very red in the face, his glasses askew and his hair actually frightening in its disarray. Harry was sure the man had never looked at Lord Voldemort the way he was looking at Harry now.

"Wants to talk to you again," he said, gesturing over his shoulder.

"Coach, what are you…?"

"You win, Snape," said Potter. "No Dementors for me."

"What did Dumbledore…?"

"Just go in, will you?"

"Where are you going?" Harry asked as Potter swept down the staircase, his robes flapping behind him.

He heard the door at the bottom of the staircase slam into place.

"Do come in, Mr Snape," said Dumbledore calmly from inside his office.

Harry sat opposite Dumbledore and looked at the floor.

"Is it true that he and my father were friends?" he asked suddenly.

"Did Professor Quirrell tell you that as well?"

Harry nodded.

"Professor Potter and your father had a strong if somewhat adversarial friendship, not unlike yourself and Mr Malfoy. But then they had a quarrel…and Severus did something Professor Potter could not forgive."

"What?"

"He saved his life."

"What?"

"When you wish to be angry at someone, it is quite trying if they do something to help you," said Dumbledore. "Perhaps why Professor Potter was so extremely upset just now. You are very like your father, Harry."

"But how…I mean, he saved…?"

"I cannot discuss this with you now, Harry. Someday, perhaps. But for now…" He looked at Harry over the tops of his sparkling golden glasses. "Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me where, exactly, you decided to hide the most powerful magical artefact known to man?

Harry told him.

And Dumbledore began to laugh.

Harry wasn't surprised to find Ron and Hermione in the Common Room, half asleep but still determined to know what had happened. He was a little surprised to find Draco with them.

"Efficiency," said Draco. "This way you only have to tell us 'all you can' once."

So Harry told them—about how Voldemort had tried to kill him again, and that's why he blacked out; about how he had protection from Voldemort, because his parents had died to save his life; about how Potter and Severus had been friends…

Even concealing half of the truth, there was quite a lot to tell, and the three of them listened attentively until the end.

"And Dumbledore says he's going to talk to Nicolas Flamel about destroying It," he finished.

"But where is It?" Ron wanted to know. Harry just grinned.

"I hope you still have a few doses of the Potion to get back to Slytherin, Malfoy," he said.