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Chapter Fifty-Three—Failing
"You're taking me with you."
Severus stifles a sigh as he picks up the satchel of prepared potions, concentrated on healing ones, that he already planned to take with him. After he begged Harry for a place in the ritual he will use to save Mr. Nott, he can hardly resist this plea.
"I am afraid that you will endanger yourself in your desire to destroy the Horcrux," he says instead, turning around to face Harry, and the fire burning behind his eyes. It is hard to control his shudder. "If you come with me, you must promise to obey, and stay behind me in case of danger."
Harry pauses.
"Harry."
Harry studies him for long enough that Severus thinks he won't make the promise, and then he nods reluctantly and says, "All right." His voice rings with steel, and Severus trusts him, even if he thinks that Harry only made the promise because he believes it would hurt Severus otherwise.
Severus nods back and leads Harry towards the gates of the school. Harry walks fast enough that Severus is sometimes the one who has to lengthen his stride to catch up with him. He eyes the boy sideways, wondering if perhaps his obsession with healing his friend might have been replaced with an obsession about destroying Horcruxes.
It is not the kind of thing Severus would ordinarily encourage, but since he does not know if the ritual will work, but he does think they can destroy the locket Horcrux Parkinson knew of? Perhaps he should.
"You will be glad to rid the world of Voldemort."
Harry starts and turns to look at him. They are passing under a torch that makes his face lined with shadow. "Yes. Of course."
"Do you care more about destroying the Horcruxes than anything else?"
Harry draws back a little as if thinks Severus is accusing him of a crime. "No, of course not! I still care more about healing Theo than anything else."
Severus holds back his sigh, but he shakes his head and whispers, "You know that you may have to adapt to a reality where you were not able to cure Mr. Nott? There is no shame in that. You have done more than anyone could have expected of you."
Harry keeps walking beside him, but Severus has the feeling that part of him has gone elsewhere, vanished into the night. When Harry turns to look at Severus, though, enough of him is there to make Severus flinch.
"I know exactly what I did, and exactly what I have to do," Harry says, in a voice as empty as a moonless night.
After that, Severus doesn't attempt to talk anymore until after the Apparition.
Harry stares around the stretch of desolate seashore, disoriented by how familiar it feels. He's more than certain that he's never been here before in his life. He would have fucking remembered.
But all the same, he knows. He knows that when he turns around and looks at a cliff, there will be an entrance to a cave there, concealed by magic.
Then the answer that makes the most sense comes to him, and Harry grimaces and barely refrains from rubbing his scar.
The Horcrux. It has memories from Voldemort, and they awaken when Harry sees something familiar like the hiding place of another one.
Of course, the bloody thing can't actually feed me those memories or anything useful, Harry thinks savagely as he follows Severus down and along the cliff.
He's fighting so bitterly against his own feeling of being tainted and useless—and the guilt, always the guilt, since Voldemort wouldn't have targeted Theo at all if not for Harry—that he misses Severus floating them across a stretch of water and past a few more looming stone walls. But he notices when Severus taps his wand against a stone and changes it into a rabbit, then grabs the rabbit and slits its throat.
"What are you doing?" he demands, leaning forwards a little. He needs to know what's happening when someone or something sheds blood for him, even if it's a Transfigured animal. He has to keep track of every accounting.
"Parkinson's memories were clear that the gate to this Horcrux requires blood," Severus answers, wrinkling his nose a little as he tilts the rabbit and its blood falls on what appears to be blank stone to Harry. "I have no intention of allowing you to shed it, and I would not want to shed it myself. Voldemort's magic might be triggered by the blood of someone with the Dark Mark."
Harry jerks his head down in response, and watches as the wall shudders and opens to reveal a gaping black hole. Harry clenches his fists and takes a single step forwards.
"Let me go first!"
It's been a long time since Harry's heard Severus sound that harsh. He starts and steps back, and after a single look, Severus sweeps ahead of him and holds his wand out. It seems to Harry that the light from his Lumos struggles against the darkness, instead of blasting the shadows aside the way it should.
Severus hisses and reaches out an arm to hold it like a bar across Harry's chest, preventing him from walking forwards. "Necromancy."
Harry pauses. He wonders if Voldemort has bound ghosts here to defend the Horcrux.
But when his eyes clear, he's puzzled. All he can see is dark water, a lake, lapping a stony shore. Severus's Lumos dies out above the surface, but that's been the case since they got into the cave. Harry resists the temptation to duck around and under Severus's arm. In a moment, though, it's not going to be resistible.
"Necromancy?" he asks, when Severus stands there and says nothing.
"Watch," Severus murmurs, and flicks his wand.
A stone rises from the shore and plummets into the water. A second later, the surface breaks from far more than that single plop. Harry starts back, clenching his fists again, as he stares at the slimy hand clad in a rotting sleeve, waving back and forth.
"Zombies?" he chokes.
"Inferi." Severus's eyes are hard as the stone he flung. "Souls bound to corpses, which I believe is similar to the Muggle concept."
"How—how are we going to get across the lake?"
"We are not." Severus tilts his head slowly back and forth. "I am beginning to think that the Dark Lord concealed some of his memories from Parkinson. The cave and the way to open it were clear. This, however—I do not remember this."
"Could it have been something Voldemort set up since he got his body back?"
"I do not believe that this many people could have disappeared or been killed without raising an outcry. No, this defense is ancient, and he did not share this much information with the man he was possessing."
Harry takes a long, slow breath. It's true that he cares more about healing Theo than about defeating Voldemort right now—he has to—but he was still pinning his hopes on defeating at least one Horcrux today.
"Do you think—"
"Yes."
"The Potter Gift involves understanding death. Talking to it, basically. Do you think that I could do that with the Inferi?"
"No."
Harry narrows his eyes. "You don't know. You're just guessing."
Severus turns away from the lake with a snap of his robes, and Harry steps back, unsure. At the moment, Severus looks more like the dreaded Professor Snape from Harry's first two years than he has in—
It's just a few years. But it feels like a lifetime.
"You cannot use the Potter Gift to influence the Inferi because I will not let you try," Severus says flatly. "We are going back to Hogwarts now."
"We came all this way for nothing?"
"We came all this way to try and find a Horcrux. We need better preparation for crossing the lake and holding back the Inferi, and we also need to think about whether the memories that Parkinson had are accurate."
Harry closes his eyes and tries to even out his breathing. He really wanted to destroy a Horcrux. He wanted to take a tangible step towards destroying Voldemort.
He hoped, once, that the ritual to save Theo might be that. But he knows now that he can't sacrifice Voldemort. The demands of the ritual are what they are.
And he doesn't know how to destroy the Horcrux in himself, yet. Until he does, he will have to keep working.
"All right," he says, hating how small his voice sounds.
"Thank you."
Startled, Harry pops his eyes open. Severus is crouching down in front of Harry, and his eyes are brilliant and soft and unhappy.
"I have watched you growing away from your friends, growing around your obsession with finding a way to heal Theo," Severus whispers. "And I have been afraid that I would lose you. That you would endanger your life or your soul because, as far as you are concerned, the way that Voldemort hurt Theo is your fault. It is not."
Harry says nothing. In a rational universe, of course, he knows he's not to blame. But the universe he's been living in since Theo was hurt is so emotional and dense with fear and hatred and self-loathing that it's hard to remember that.
"Harry?"
"Yes?"
"Come back to me."
Severus's hands are resting on his elbows, and a moment later, Severus begins breathing slowly and deeply. It's one of the lessons that he used to try and teach Harry Occlumency.
Harry never did manage to master Occlumency—not a surprise when the connection to Voldemort is in his soul—but he falls instinctively into the breathing pattern.
The breathing seems to sweep through him like a cleansing wind, and Harry finally blinks and reaches up to touch his own forehead. It feels as though a cloud that was hovering above his scar is gone.
"Do you feel better?"
"Yeah. How did you…"
"Some of your behavior might be caused by the Horcrux," Severus says, standing and staring down at Harry with bright, inscrutable eyes. "But some of it is surely because you are driving yourself harder than I have ever seen you do. Harry. Remember that what happened to Mr. Nott is unfortunate, but it is not your fault."
"If I had been faster—if I had—"
"Do you wish to give Voldemort his victory? Because he earns a victory for every moment that you blame yourself?"
Harry takes another deep breath, repeating the first part of the pattern that Severus showed him, and then shakes his head. "No, sir."
"And that alone is a sign of how far you have traveled away from those who care about you," Severus says, a little snappishly. "What have I told you about calling me by my first name?"
Harry blinks, then nods. It's been years since he thought of Severus as "Professor Snape," that's for sure. "Do you—think that the others feel the same?" he mumbles, as Severus puts his hand on Harry's shoulder and steers him firmly towards the entrance from the cave. Stepping out and feeling the sea breeze on his face is like a cleansing slap.
"That we were losing you? I know Sirius does. And the wolf. I suspect the reason that your other friends do not yet feel that way is that you still spend time with them, training them, but Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger have come to me with their fears."
"Ron and Hermione?"
"You sound surprised. Did you think you had already lost their friendship?"
"No, but—"
Severus stops walking, which forces Harry to stop, and turns around to stare at him so intensely that Harry thinks he feels steam escaping from his ears like he's taking a Pepper-Up Potion. "Cutting yourself off like this, hiding the truth," Severus says softly. "What have I done to lose your trust?"
Harry just shakes his head, because all the words that would be right are the words that he doesn't know how to say. "I wasn't going to say anything about that, sir," he says. "I was going to say that they're being bloody hypocrites. Hermione is dedicated to her Horcrux research, and Ron is researching binding circles for me, because he wanted to defeat Voldemort so intensely after Mr. Weasley died. They're dedicated to this, too!"
Severus's hand tightened on Harry's shoulder for a long moment. Then he said, in an oddly muffled voice, "There is being dedicated to your subject, and vanishing so completely into it that you seem to live only for it."
"That's not—I wasn't—"
"Perhaps not. But that is the effect you have been having on other people. You do realize, Harry, that if—if the worst happens, and you fail to heal Theodore Nott, you will still have other people who care about you?"
Harry can't say anything. The world seems to reel around him, and he can hear the ocean beating far below.
He can—
He can't—
Of course he knows that people will still care about him even if he fails to heal Theo. Blaise and Ron and Hermione and even Draco would close ranks around him. He would be supported. There would be all sorts of people to tell him it's not his fault.
What he doesn't know is whether he will care about himself anymore.
If he can fail the person who treats him most like a lord, the person who followed him and learned the Animagus transformation to help protect Harry and defied his own father for Harry, what good is he? What good can he do anyone else? Sooner or later, he will fail them the way he failed Theo. Sooner or later.
He would trust his friends to comfort him, of course he would. He just doesn't know if he would be able to trust himself around them.
"Harry."
Severus's hands are firm and warm on Harry's shoulders. Harry gazes back at him and wrestles his intense fear under control. He will just have to make this work. It won't if Harry starts doubting himself so severely that he fails to perform the ritual at all.
And everyone who thinks that they know what he's doing…
They're wrong. But Harry can't tell them that, because there's a chance that the wrong person will find out, and then someone will prevent him from going to the ritual circle, out of fear or misguided love. And he must go to that ritual circle. He must maintain the lies and misdirection, for now.
He spends a moment listening to the ocean and pulling as much calm as he can into himself, which is his version of the Occlumency that he can't master. Then he looks up and nods. "I'm all right, Severus."
"I do not think you are."
Of course I bloody won't be if you keep saying things like that! Harry manages not to scream. He takes another deep breath and shakes his head with a thin smile. "I know that I might not be able to save Theo. But of course I have to try as hard as I can."
For a long moment, Severus stares at him as if he's searching for the lie. But it's the truth, and anyway, Harry does trust Severus not to try and use Legilimency on him.
"All right," Severus says, a desolate echo in his voice, and turns to walk back to the Apparition point.
Harry follows, wishing he could ask for those hands on his shoulders back. But he can't just refuse parts of Severus's concern and keep other parts. That's not the way it works.
When he finds it, Ron is so tired that he almost misses it.
Harry did tell him that Voldemort isn't possessing a body at the moment, but on the other hand, he might find someone else to possess before Harry can start the ritual to heal Theo. He managed it with one person who wasn't even a Marked Death Eater. He could do it again. So Ron is still looking for a circle that can bind both a spirit and a possessed person.
And there it is.
Or there the clue to creating it is. Ron takes a slow, deep breath, and forces himself to focus in on the words instead of leaping up and running around the library yelling. Madam Pince would kick him out if he did that anyway, and wouldn't let him take the book with him.
A circle that is meant to bind ordinary animals will not work on Animagi, and one meant to bind magical creatures will not work on mundane animals. But in the sixteenth century, Adria the Mad claimed to have created a binding circle that would hold any of the three, based on using the blood of an Animagus in mid-transformation…
Ron swallows. It's not a guarantee. It's a chance, if anything. He knows that it isn't a guarantee.
But on the other hand, it sounds a lot more plausible than some of the other possibilities that he's found so far. And he knows two Animagi who would do anything to keep Harry safe and defeat Voldemort.
Maybe Theo would even feel better if he could participate in the ritual to rescue himself.
Ron gets out quill and parchment, and starts copying down the notes for all he's worth, ignoring the way his hand cramps after a while. This is important. This is maybe the most important thing he's ever done in his life.
I'll hurt him, Dad. I'll hurt him for you.