Seven Drops and Asphodel Blooms

Summary: When Harry blows up his aunt during the summer, Dumbledore is much quicker to react. Snape finds him far before the Minister does, but his plan of dropping him off with a lecture and half a dozen additional summer assignments doesn't work out.

In which Harry spends the summer at Spinner's End.

Chapter 32

Harry was still sore when he finally got to leave the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey had done what she could, but the ache was still present—a mild but heavy sort of pain that wasn't quite like muscle soreness. It felt deeper, almost as if he was hurting down to his bones. Snape had told him that those were side effects of extended exposure to the Cruciatus curse and gave him potions that were supposed to help, but in stark contrast to his other wounds this one didn't seem to have an easy fix. Harry could hardly tell the difference before and after taking them.

Ron needed to stay in the hospital wing for longer than he did. He was awake more often, though still kind of out of it, so they hadn't really been able to hold a conversation. People kept telling him to give it time, but Harry was anxious to return to as much normalcy as he could.

But any potential shred of normalcy was soon shattered.

"Why can't we stay?" Harry burst out, feeling like a brat even as he said it. "I thought there were wards around the house."

"Would you prefer we gamble our lives on the slim possibility that a ward exists that the Dark Lord is unable to break?" Snape presented the question calmly, but he might as well have hurled it into Harry's face.

"Then who's to say they haven't already broken in?"

"The Dark Lord is not currently aware of the house," Snape told him quietly. "However it will not take him long to locate, once he sets his mind to it."

What Snape said made perfect sense, but Harry didn't want to move. It didn't sound like it would just be for the summer: once Voldemort and his followers tracked down the house, it wouldn't be safe to return at all.

He'd never felt this way about Privet Drive—he'd only ever wasted an occasional thought on his old home. Spinner's End was different. He would genuinely miss it.

In the end there wasn't anything he could do about it. Harry had no choice but to follow Snape through the fireplace leading to Spinner's End and collect the things he'd left behind at the end of last summer, thinking he'd be able to return for them.

Unease churned in his stomach as soon as he stepped foot in his bedroom. He realized that it had been days since the graveyard. Snape had said that Voldemort wouldn't be looking for the house right away, but why would he wait? Wouldn't he want to find them before they had the chance to move? Once or twice Harry could have sworn he heard footsteps outside, but whenever he peered out the window there was nobody in sight.

By the time he was finished, Harry had to sit on his bed to catch his breath and wait for the room to stop spinning. After another glimpse out the window, Harry went downstairs.

Snape was just carrying the enchanted mirror, shrunken down so it could be held in one hand, out of the downstairs bathroom. It didn't seem to like this one bit, as Snape's reflection sported strikingly purple hair.

Snape glowered at it. "It would be exceedingly simple to leave you behind." His reflection's hair turned a few shades brighter.

Something in Harry's chest twinged at every piece of familiarity that was packed up and tucked away, but he didn't complain. What right did he have, when the house had been Snape's home for so much longer than it had been Harry's? He grabbed the night sky flowers without hesitation but paused in front of the sofa. The forest clearing in the painting looked as though a storm had ravaged through it.

"Can we bring it along?" He couldn't bear the thought of leaving it behind.

Snape huffed, but he shrunk down the painting and put it with the rest. His eyes followed the movement of Harry's hand.

"Why did you not inform Madam Pomfrey?"

Harry eyed the burn stretching out over several fingers. He couldn't remember getting it, but he assumed the griffin feather he'd used in the graveyard had seared it into his skin. Levicorpus wasn't a spell he'd cast wandlessly before. Harry suspected it had slipped past Madam Pomfrey in the wake of all his other, more obvious injuries. Compared to the scars he'd gained on his shoulders and arms, it looked trivial.

"I didn't notice at first," Harry admitted. "It's fine though. It doesn't hurt."

Snape's eyes lingered on the burn. He raised one of his own hands wordlessly. Harry wasn't immediately sure why, until he spotted about half a dozen faded scars quite similar to his own. He wondered whether they were from potion experiments or spell creation or both.

Harry grinned. "You think mine will look like that in a few more years?"

"I have not given up hope of even moderately improving your sense of self-preservation before it comes to that."

No Death Eaters stormed the house in the time it took them to check all the rooms one last time, and when they took the Floo to Grimmauld Place afterwards, Harry was almost relieved to have gotten it over with.

Sirius was expecting them. As soon as Harry stepped out of the fireplace, he was wrapped into a tight hug.

"I know this isn't ideal," Sirius said into his ear, tightening his grip, "but you're welcome here any time." He pulled away from Harry just enough to look at Snape. "You both are."

No snide comment followed the proposal, and while Snape looked even more tight-lipped than usually, he gave a curt nod of acknowledgement.

After a few hours Harry went ahead to the castle while Snape returned to Spinner's End to destroy its fireplace. Harry wasn't sure how to feel about that, though a part of him was glad that he didn't have to come along and watch.

He was going to head back to Gryffindor tower when an odd splash of color in Snape's office caught his eye. The painting of the forest clearing now occupied the wall above the fireplace, while the night sky flowers glowed happily on Snape's desk.

Sunshine spilled through the painted leaves cheerfully in stark contrast to the dungeon's dull lighting, and the night sky flowers' constellations shone brighter than ever. Snape must have dropped them off while Harry and Sirius had been talking, though it looked as if somebody had left them as a prank.

Harry lingered for a bit longer before he turned and left the dungeons for real.

Neville told him that Ron had been picked up by his parents while Harry had been gone. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley wished him all the best, apologized that they'd missed the chance to tell him in person, and wanted him to know that they were looking forward to seeing him. Nobody had told Harry anything about summer plans, but he supposed that meant they were expecting to meet up with him.

He thanked Neville for passing on the message and went to track down Hermione. She might not have spent days near catatonic like Ron, but thanks to Madam Pomfrey's strict rules, Harry still hadn't seen much of her. By the time he found her sitting by the lake, his legs felt wobbly and his vision was spinning. He ignored the dizziness and pretended not to notice her frantically wiping at her face.

"Did you talk to Ron?" Harry asked when it seemed like she'd caught herself. "Before..."

"No." Hermione stared at the ground between her feet. "I think Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were really anxious to take him home. He was still so out of it..."

They fell into an uneasy silence.

"The train's leaving in a few days," Hermione said.

"Yeah."

"You're not going to be on it, are you?"

Harry hesitated. "Probably not."

With Ron already home and Harry likely taking the shortcut through Snape's office, that would mean that Hermione would be all on her own.

"Look, Hermione—"

"You'll write, won't you?" She was looking right at him now. Harry was alarmed to see her eyes swimming with tears. "I'll hear from you, right? Because I can't—If I'll have to wait two months to hear from either of you I won't—"

"Of course," Harry interrupted quickly. "Obviously I'll write. Every day, if you want to."

Hermione laughed wetly. "I don't think Professor Snape would like that."

"It's not up to him anymore. It's Sirius' place that's gonna be overrun with owls."

Hermione sniffled, but her lips curved in a weak smile.

Harry turned back to the lake. A patch of the surface crinkled in the distance as though the Giant Squid was up to something.

"How are you? Really?" Hermione asked quietly.

Harry's missing wand felt almost like a physical ache, but he'd stopped checking his pockets for it every few minutes. The Cruciatus soreness was getting a bit weaker each day. He'd get used to the new scars eventually, though the one on his hand still distracted him whenever it caught his eye.

"I'll be fine," he said, meaning it.

Hermione tipped to the side to rest her head on his shoulder, and Harry leaned into the contact. He wished Ron was there with them.

He tried to think of the next year as something to look forward to, but even though Ron would have recovered, Harry would have gotten over his experience in the graveyard, and they'd get to start over during the new school year, he didn't manage to make himself believe that it would be any better. Not with a resurrected Voldemort out there, scheming his return.

The rest of the week passed oddly. Nobody tried to make Harry participate in any of their remaining classes, so instead he hid away in Snape's office while the others sat in class. Sometimes he brewed wordlessly alongside Snape, finding comfort in their familiar routine.

Once or twice he used the fireplace in Snape's office to slip through to Grimmauld Place and curl up amidst the paintings that—treated with permanent Silencing charms—were still there despite Sirius' and Remus' best efforts. He would have given anything to sit down and sunbathe in the greenhouse at Spinner's End. He snuck into the Hogwarts greenhouses to imitate the feeling, but it just wasn't the same.

Durmstrang and Beauxbatons prepared to head home on the same rainy afternoon. The Triwizard Tournament had no winner. The third task had been cut short with Snape and Harry's rather dramatic arrival, and the champions had been pulled out of the maze before one of them had been able to find the trophy. They'd been offered a fourth, smaller task to make up for it, but every last of them had declined. The prize money, so Harry had heard, had been split between the three of them.

Hermione stood closely at Harry's side. She'd clung to him since Ron had been taken home by his parents—doubly so since Harry wasn't joining her for any of their end-of-term classes. Harry hated the thought that at the end of the week they'd be going their separate ways for the summer.

Movement from the corner of Harry's eyes had him look up. Cedric was making his way over to them through the crowd of students.

"Do you mind if I stand with you?"

Harry's shoulders twitched. "Go ahead."

They watched Hagrid harness the gigantic whiskey-loving horses to the front of Beauxbatons' carriage. Harry pretended not to notice Cedric throwing glances at him.

"Are you alright?" Cedric finally asked, then immediately cringed. "Sorry. That's... I couldn't think of a not-stupid way to ask."

None of the students really knew what had happened in the graveyard—he hadn't even told Hermione all the details—but that just meant that the rumor mill had gone wild as it always did. As if things weren't bad enough after their appearance during the third task, all remaining Potions lessons of the year had been canceled, adding even more fuel to the rumors.

Harry couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't be a lie, so he stayed silent.

"There they come," Cedric muttered.

Students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang spilled out onto the grounds from the entrance hall—Beauxbatons led by their headmistress, Durmstrang on their own. Nobody had seen Karkaroff since his apparent flight on the day of Voldemort's return.

Harry spotted Fleur first. She was straggling behind her classmates, craning her neck while one of them tried to tug her along. Her eyes met Harry's. She shook off her friend's grip and steered towards them with confident strides.

"I do not know what happened," she said, pulling Harry into a hug, "but all will be good."

Harry threw a startled glance at Hermione over Fleur's shoulder, but Fleur didn't hold on for long. She hugged Hermione next (who was considerably more prepared for it than Harry) and, lastly, Cedric.

"It has been a good year," she said. "Most of it, that is."

She wasn't wrong. Before everything had rapidly gone downhill starting with Crouch's death, Harry'd had one of the best school years he could remember. He hadn't had to worry about being accused of being Slytherin's heir, or about a convicted mass murderer coming after him. He'd had his nightmares, sure, but even those had begun feeling like annoying but ultimately harmless background noise.

Viktor caused a minor commotion by breaking away from his schoolmates and following Fleur's lead. He didn't go in for a hug like she had, but he gave them an earnest nod and said, "I will write. If you want to."

"I as well," Fleur chimed in.

Cedric beamed at them. "We'd love that."

"Of course," Hermione said, and Harry nodded along. "We'd love to hear from you."

It helped to remind himself that good things had come out of the school year long before Voldemort had done his best to ruin it.

Roslind Bardsley was running late closing down the library when Mr. Rochester appeared. He stepped out from behind a row of books as though he'd materialized from thin air. Roslind had long stopped being surprised about the odd things about him.

"It's late," she said, squinting to make sure she was putting the box of supplies from her Friday's youth club into the right cabinet. Neither her eyes nor her memory were all that reliable these days. She straightened up as far as her back would let her, making her carrot earrings dangle back and forth. "School year finally over, is it?"

Mr. Rochester stepped out from between the bookshelves without answering. It ought to have scared her, being an old woman alone with a strange man whose name she'd had to come up with herself, but she'd worked hard to get him to show his face in the library again after his first reluctant visits. He'd caused Roslind her fair share of anxiety.

It hadn't occurred to her that first time she'd met him, nor the second or third, but she'd never heard of a teacher taking custody of one of their students before. She'd collected hints and snippets about the boy with every conversation she'd coerced out of the man, a vague sense of unease churning in her stomach whenever she went home. Roslind hadn't liked Mr. Rochester's secretive nature. She hadn't liked that he talked about his private school without ever mentioning its name or where it was built. She hadn't liked that whenever she'd thought of pressing her luck and digging further, he'd seemed to know and left before she had the chance.

He'd been cautious to never tell her anything that would help her identify either him, the kid or their school, and she hadn't liked that, either.

A weight had been lifted off of her shoulders the first time she'd met the kid. She'd learned his name (though not Mr. Rochester's). She'd learned that he was just on the shy side of being polite. She'd learned that he could be a sarcastic little brat when he felt comfortable enough. She'd adored him instantly.

Roslind loved her job. She loved people. She loved kids. It had been quietly killing her to know just enough about this one to worry.

"How 'bout you come back with the kid when we're actually open?" she said, cleaning up her desk as her last deed of the day.

Still, he wouldn't say a word.

Roslind gripped her desk tightly, old unease rearing its head. "He's alright, isn't he?"

Mr. Rochester (how she wished she had a real name to use) stepped into the light. Deep shadows were painted underneath his eyes, the contrast made even more jarring by the sickly-ashen tint of his already pale skin.

"Recovering," he said in a voice that her hearing aids struggled to pick up.

The dryness in her throat ached terribly. "From what?"

Mr. Rochester didn't answer. He set something small on her desk, though she didn't care enough to check what it was. She had the disconcerting notion that if she looked away from him, the man wouldn't be there once she looked back.

"Is he in danger?"

"I've wanted to thank you."

"Are you in danger?"

Mr. Rochester turned.

Alarm surged up in Roslind's chest. "Wait. Wait, please."

He waited.

Swallowing rapidly against the dryness, Roslind dropped into her chair and rummaged through her bag, reluctantly taking her eyes off of the man. She found what she was looking for and was glad to see him still waiting.

"Take it." She slid her well-loved copy of Jane Eyre across the desk. The cover was so worn-down that it was a struggle to decipher the title, and she'd scribbled notes in the margins of almost every page. "It's my own copy."

He took the book after a moment of hesitation. He didn't thank her, but he held the book carefully in the way one does when trying not to damage a fragile book cover.

"Just tell me," she said quietly, "is he going to be alright?"

"I will make sure of it."

"And will you be?"

"Thank you," Mr. Rochester said, and although he struck Roslind as the kind of person who lied well if he put his mind to it, he made no attempt to answer her question.

Roslind closed her eyes, uncertain whether to feel helpless or complicit. When she opened them, Mr. Rochester was gone. Though she'd expected him to be, a part of her felt like she'd dreamed the whole thing up.

But her book was gone, and the small box he'd left on her desk was still there. She opened it. Inside laid a shimmering brooch the color of melted lavender.

A/N:

Harry: it's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you

xxx

Come on, Snape. If you'd tried, you could have made it sound a little less like you were actively dying.

xxx

Huge thanks to my wonderful betas To Mockingbird, Igornerd, flyingcat, fishbake, Gasmeros and ethirielalways!

~Gwen

PS: Just letting everybody know that I stopped posting new stories on this site. I've been mainly using Archive of Our Own for a while now (same username), so if you'd like to keep up to date you'll have to move there. I will finish posting this one since it's already underway-but I do sometimes take longer posting updates here than on ao3 (mostly because the process is SO much simpler there, and I sometimes just don't have the energy to jump through the hoops FFN is making me...). Basically rest assured that you'll get your ending one way or another, but it might take a little longer here than on ao3!