Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Honest.
Magic Never Dies
Chapter 12
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He broke the surface of consciousness slowly, acutely aware of the pain snaking through his forehead. The mere thought of opening his eyes made them water; he lay perfectly still, taking in his surroundings with his other senses. It soon became apparent to him that he had not been out too long; he could hear voices all around him, members of the Order, still arguing. He was laying down, his head pillowed on something soft, but the acrid, burnt-gunpowder smell was stronger than ever.
Snatches of the heated conversation around the table drifted across the room.
"How could you keep this from us? How, and still call yourself loyal?" Professor McGonagall accused.
This? As far as Harry was concerned, knowledge of Voldemort's horcruxes was the least of it. Harry was still waiting for Snape's side of killing Dumbledore that night. Dumbledore might have said he was being truly loyal, but it was awfully hard to fuel an Avada with loyalty. Read impossible, if Harry's violent loathing of Bellatrix wasn't enough to manage more than the most cursory Cruciatus.
"If Albus had thought you needed to know at the time he would have told you himself. Now it is apparently up to the… boy. Assuming you would all be led by a seventeen year old." Snape.
"Harry wants Lupin to lead. He doesn't want to lead anybody; he just wants to get on with what he has to do without people killing him with their bloody good intentions. Or their rotten ones." Ron, furious. Talking back to Snape! Harry's heart swelled with gratitude.
Molly Weasley's horrified "Ronald Bilius Weasley!" followed predictably close on its heels.
Bits of what had happened before he had lost consciousness began flooding back; wrestling with the wand, the unendurable, searing pain when it had touched his scar, Snape telling him to stop fighting, it was too late to be fastidious. Greasy bastard, what the hell would he know. Hermione's voice, reassuring him, and…
He struggled a bit then, trying to marshal the strength required to sit up. He had to tell her what he'd realized. A hand moved quickly to his shoulder, resisting, and he heard Hermione whisper, "Don't move, if you can help it. Don't let him know you're awake."
He realized the something soft was Hermione; someone had conjured a couch or cot of some sort into the kitchen. They were off to the side, away from the action at the table.
He nodded once, slightly, to show her he understood. She fumbled a bit and something cool and wet pressed against his scar. She leant down, under cover of checking its application, and whispered, "He's told them he won't say anything about the horcruxes until he's talked to you. He said that's what Dumbledore would have wanted. He's been very cagey so far about where he's been and what he's been up to."
The reaction around the table now was to Ron's news, hardly the way Harry had hoped to broach the topic, but at least it was out there.
"Can he do that? Ask someone else to lead?" Tonks.
"Why not? It makes sense, certainly." McGonagall.
"The whole point of the Order wasn't to argue about hierarchy, it was to defeat Voldemort. What does it matter who leads, as long as Fawkes has chosen Harry and Harry chooses?" Bill Weasley.
"What do you say, Remus?" Harry knew that voice just by the concern in it; it was Ron's Dad.
"I'd say we should wait to see what Harry says when he wakes up. No offense Ron, I'm sure you know exactly what he meant to do, I'd just like to hear what he has to say about it. But I suppose if he asks me, the answer would be `yes'. I personally think Harry's put himself on the line often enough for all of us to have earned our trust and our loyalty despite his age."
"Agreed," came Kingsley Shacklebolt's deep rumble.
"Dumbledore put his faith in Harry. That alone should be enough," McGonagall added.
"Admirable sentiments. Of course that's all they are, sentimental. I wonder if you'll feel the same when he costs you everything." Snape again. Didn't he realize it was only their faith in Dumbledore, and Dumbledore's persistent faith in Snape himself, that kept them all from hexing him as he sat there until there was nothing left to hex?
"Tell us, Severus, where exactly have you been since that last night at Hogwarts? You told us Dumbledore knew what you were doing, begged you to do what you did since it meant keeping your precious cover. Luckily for you the story his portrait told Minerva was essentially the same. But tell us, what did Albus' life buy you except your own? What do you have to show us for his death?" Remus Lupin asked, and the silence following his words resounded behind Harry's closed eyes.
"I do not need to justify myself to you," Snape said coldly.
"You do if you want to continue your double life," Lupin said, and Harry had never heard his voice sound quite like it did then; there was more than a little wolf in that growl. "If Harry does call on me to lead, you'll swear yourself to him the way you did to Albus or you'll be out on your ear. And what good will you be to the Dark Lord then?"
It was torture to lie there with his eyes closed; only the pain still stabbing behind his eyelids kept Harry from attempting to take a peek at Snape.
"Funny," whispered Hermione, "how Snape goes sort of whiter when anyone with actual blood in their veins might go red."
She always did know what he was thinking.
"I told you that Dumbledore knew of Draco's assignment from the Dark Lord and of the oath I swore his mother," Snape began stiffly. "When Bellatrix coerced me into the position of swearing that oath, I believed my usefulness to the Order was coming to a natural end. She was so relentless in her questioning of my loyalties… I knew that she was jealous of what she perceived to be my closeness to the Dark Lord, but then he also delights in playing his confidants one against the other. It could be either of those factors or both, that drove her to it; deception on that level can never be maintained indefinitely."
`But he sounds pretty proud he made it that long,' thought Harry. `Actually proud that he's a better liar than the rest of us could ever hope to be'.
"When Narcissa came to the third part of her oath," Snape continued, "that if it should prove necessary I would carry out the order the Dark Lord had commanded Draco to perform, my only path was clear to me." His voice changed slightly and Harry sensed Snape had turned toward him; it was suddenly a little clearer and stronger. "I would kill myself to escape the oath, and the hellishness I had been forced to endure these past sixteen years as neither fish nor fowl while Potter tripped and fumbled his way to the status of `Chosen One.' Alas," he said, with what at least sounded like real regret, "Albus had … other ideas."
"You've told us," Mad Eye Moody rumbled. "And you convinced Albus. But I, for one, still have some questions. There's more to this story than meets the eye."
And coming from Mad Eye that was saying something.
"Then ask your precious Potter. He was there."
Hermione's fingers splayed and slid further down his shoulder, a warning.
"He's told us all he knows. For all you've never liked the boy, Severus, you must…."
"DO NOT presume to tell me what I must or must not do when it comes to that snot-nosed little whelp," Snape hissed, and Harry could hear, almost see them all recoil. "Surely all I have done exempts me from that. I was coerced into hastening the death of a truly great wizard - and for all I did not appreciate his … style, shall we say - Albus Dumbledore was a truly great wizard. It would be hard to imagine a more significant loss to the Order, to the Wizarding world itself, and all for…. that."
Harry's eyes flew open too late, although he was no less prepared for the spell that flared at him than the rest, their eyes open and sitting frozen around the table. Mad Eye managed to fire something off; Snape deflected it easily, repelling it toward Tonks in a clear warning that with this many wizards and witches at close range he wasn't going down alone. Thankfully, being Tonks, she jerked back and her chair tipped over, conveniently dropping her right out of the line of fire.
Snape had chosen the same lashing spell he had unleashed the last time they met near Hagrid's hut, meant to hurt and shame rather than kill, and the words that followed it were not unlike the last time, either.
"You were fooling no one with your pathetic charade over there." He spit Harry's way. "I knew that you were listening to every word. And you will continue to be caught out until you manage to CLOSE OFF THAT FEEBLE MIND."
Harry lurched up, clutching at his shoulder where the spell had connected. He looked around frantically; his wand had been set aside somewhere during the wrestle with the horcruxed one. Hermione saw him eying hers and swatted his hand away; it was already trained on Snape.
"Don't just point them," he implored the room at large. "For Merlin's sake will no one stun this bas…" Hermione's free hand came up to cover his mouth.
"That's enough," Lupin said sharply to Snape, helping Tonks upright. "Draw that wand again and…"
"And you'll what? I dare you." Snape snarled back, standing. "I have nothing to lose. My own life means little to me now, but I am the only one remaining who can, and might - only might, mind you - be able to teach this pitiful savior of yours what it will take to save you."
"I'd die first," Harry spat, shaking unsteadily.
"Unmourned, I must assure you, if you really are the "Chosen One" and forsake your chance to sacrifice yourself to spite little old me. Except, perhaps, by your newfound mistress there. Took you long enough to figure that out." Snape spat back.
Harry was so angry he thought his heart might well explode. He had never known anger like this in all his life, never thought to. His outburst over Aunt Marge paled to transparency in comparison. He locked eyes with Snape and felt every taunt, every unfairness, every cruelty laid upon him since he came to Hogwarts, eleven and knowing nothing, leak from his brain and flow through his veins. He was beyond words; all that would come out was the feral parseltongue hiss of a threatened snake.
Whatever he said was pretty damn good though, because it lifted Snape from his feet and blew him clear across the room to crash into the stone hearth of the fireplace before he could even think to raise a defense. Unfortunately it also broke an awful lot of the china and glassware, strew cast iron pots about as if they were weightless and sent the remaining Order members scattering, ducking under the table for cover.
The next two words still came out as hiss, but at least Harry understood what he meant this time and could repeat them. "Get OUT."
It was his house now, after all.
Snape climbed painfully to his feet and brushed off his robes. "It is about time you figured out you could do that as well. If only you could control it, make use of it the way he can... But you can't, can you, Potter. It controls you because you are too weak and undisciplined to figure it out. He could begin to use it before he ever came to Hogwarts and you… you'll never figure it out on your own. So… MAKE ME."
His attention was focused entirely on Harry; the two squared off. Snape had his wand and a look on his face that could only be described as scornful, but his eyes were already well along the journey to outright hate. Harry was weaving on his feet, wandless and bleeding from Snape's first strike, waves of magic shuddering off him like heat.
Ron, who had ducked behind two chairs, raised his wand completely unnoticed by either and stupefied Snape. He crumpled again, like a falling bat, to the hearth.
"Ronald Weasley!" Molly quavered again from under the table. "WHAT have you done now?"
"He had it coming, Mum. He hurt Harry and he was going to do it again!"
"Nice one, little brother," Charlie told him, rising from behind his chair.
"Way to go Ron," Bill agreed.
Harry's breath was coming fast and heavy; he could not slow it and felt himself growing light-headed. He sat back down on the cot and put his head between his knees; felt Hermione gently rubbing his back. He could hear the rest of the Order crawling out from their various shelters.
"I'm sorry. Tell them I'm sorry," he managed to choke out. He heard Professor McGonagall step over Snape's prone form to the fireplace and call for Madam Pomfrey. "Tell them, please." He heard Hermione sigh.
"Harry's sorry," she told the room at large. There were murmurs of dissent and the sound of many Reparo charms being performed. Harry saw Ron's trainers and Lupin's worn boots enter his limited field of vision.
"You okay, mate?" Ron asked, his voice unusually soft. "Sorry it took so long. One of us should have fried the filthy sneak as soon as he showed his face."
"Ron," Lupin's voice was sharp. "Not that I don't share your concern for Harry, but something important was going on there. Much as he appears to still…dislike you, Harry, it also seems Snape might also be willing to both spy for you and teach you what he knows about his Dark Lord firsthand.. If he will swear the same oath to you he did to Albus to rejoin the Order, it's an offer you'd have to be foolish to the point of insanity to refuse."
The hyperventilation changed to a dry choking laugh, but seemed equally impossible to control or stop.
"The same oath? You must be kidding me." he wheezed. "Sweet Merlin let it be anything but that."
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There was a general movement to adjourn the meeting after that. No one present (other than Snape, who was still unconscious and therefore didn't count) was unwilling to accept Harry as Fawkes' chosen leader, and none objected to Harry's placing the reins in Remus Lupin's hands. There was, therefore, no need to obliviate anyone, and they all went home grateful to be in one piece and without unwanted appendages or lacking any of the basic ones. Remus was charged with calling a new meeting as soon as certain details were worked out.
Like what, exactly, to do about Harry and Snape.
Madam Pomfrey had come, glanced rather disdainfully at Snape for a moment and was now looking Harry over in the drawing room, the door firmly shut.
Fleur had surprisingly stepped in and made tea and coffee for those who remained, and they gathered round the table again.
"Fred and George will never forgive you for missing this," Charlie told Ron. "Much as they'll enjoy playing with Malfoy, this is the real thing."
"They volunteered," Ron said. "Expect they thought it was going to be boring second-the-motion sort of stuff."
"Exactly what," Hermione asked Ron in a voice of steel, "possessed the two of you to go after that wand today of all days? Was tomorrow's plan of sleeping late, reading the Prophet and hanging out with the twins just too important to reschedule?"
"You're just brassed off because you weren't there," Ron told her, still looking faintly satisfied with himself.
The fact that he could appear so when Harry had had to unintentionally play host to another seventh of Voldemort's soul and doing so had opened him wide to Snape's game, whatever that was, naturally superseded the fact that he was, at least partially, right. Hermione had been hoping they could manage to find the other horcruxes and, like the locket, keep them well away from Harry until she'd figured out exactly what the effect might be.
"I'm just brassed off, as you put it, because the two of you continue to treat this like some kind of game, and it's going to get you both killed!"
Bill nudged her beneath the table and nodded toward Mrs. Weasley, who was definitely looking a little over the top. "Erm, ixnay on the illingkay there, you two."
Lupin came and sat again beside Tonks. "Still at it with Harry. Nothing to report I'm afraid. Before we ennervate the good Professor over there, Ron, Hermione, I would like to have some idea of what went on tonight. Today, for that matter. The three of you have obviously been up to something and it seems to me that Snape knows about it. Which leads me to the uncomfortable conclusion that Voldemort might as well."
Hermione and Ron exchanged glances. It was just the Weasleys and Lupin and Tonks and McGonagall left, and McGonagall already knew, but it was really Harry's call to make. He had said that the fewer people who knew, the better when it came to the Horcruxes; if Voldemort could not easily sense them being removed or destroyed they would at least have some element of surprise on their side. Now that Snape appeared to know, all bets on surprise as a factor were off.
"Well today was all Fawke's fault," Ron volunteered. "He came pestering Harry and I early this morning, sort of rounded us up to the kitchen and then apparated us - only it wasn't really like apparition, it was different - somewhere to see Mr. Ollivander."
"You saw Ollivander?" Lupin asked. "Where is he?"
Ron nodded earnestly. "No clue, actually. But do you remember how whenever you went to Ollivander's there was always an old wand sitting in the window? On a cushion thingie?"
Molly smiled, a shadow of itself but a smile none the less. "That's the same wand that was there when I was a little girl and went to get mine, and my Mum told me it was there when she went to get hers, too."
"Well, Mr. Ollivander told us that it was Ravenclaws'. It's belonged to his family all this time. Dumbledore wrote last year and asked him if he had heard about anything belonging to the founders, and Mr. Ollivander told him about it and how he had showed it to Tom Riddle when he came to get his first wand. Dumbledore was the one who warned him that he should take it and go into hiding."
"Why would He Who, oh forget it, why would Voldemort…" Charlie started. Molly let out a small shriek and shook her head in rapid negation. Surprisingly, it was Fleur who went to sit beside her and take her hand.
"We must learn to say zis name. If `arry can say it, we can too. Vo… ldemore… Voldemore. Zair! And nothing `as `appened. Now you."
There was a moment when Hermione was sure Molly was going to do something ridiculously old-fashioned, like throw her apron over her head to hide her face. She knew even Harry was haunted by Mrs. Weasley's boggart, he would never have allowed Fleur to push her if he had been there. The next thing she knew, however, Mrs. Weasley took on a very Ginny-ish look, as though determined not to be outdone by her oldest son's bride.
"Vold. Volde… Oh I can't…I just….oh,… VOLDEMORT!" she suddenly shouted aloud.
The door to the sitting room flew open to reveal Harry, eyes wild, Madam Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall each clinging to an arm, attempting to restrain him.
He took them in, sitting round the table, the stunned Snape now resting on the cot he had risen from earlier.
"Where?" he gasped out, still wandless but determined nonetheless.
Hermione wasn't sure who started the laughter; Tonks was a fair bet, although Mrs. Weasley and Fleur could not have been far behind. It wasn't really funny if you thought about it, but it was like an escape valve releasing some of the pent up emotion of the evening and almost impossible to resist. Harry seemed stunned for a bit as to why they were all laughing at him; Ron, Charlie, Arthur and Bill all tried to explain, but all four were laughing too hard to be understood. His expression segued to something between relieved and bemused. McGonagall and Pomfrey, equally in the dark, were less tolerant.
"Really! " Professor McGonagall snapped. "Have you all quite lost your minds?"
Lupin, who had been merely grinning as he watched, cleared his throat abruptly. "Entirely possible, Minerva, but there's nothing to worry about. Fleur had just convinced Molly to refer to Voldemort by his chosen name, and her last attempt was perhaps a bit… enthusiastic."
"I'm sorry, Harry. What an awful thing to do to you. I wasn't thinking…" Mrs. Wesley said, calming and becoming contrite.
"That's alright, then" said Harry with a slow grin, and Hermione's heart leapt to see him grasp the humor in it. "Congratulations."
"And he would have been toast there, Mate," Ron said. "If you could just have stayed on your feet long enough to do it. Oh and a wand might have helped."
Harry was still staggering unsteadily; Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey held him propped between them. He yawned, hugely.
"I've checked him over quite thoroughly,' Madam Pomfrey explained. "Other than some lingering spellshock and abrasions, and Professor Snapes' laceration, of course, which is healing up nicely, he seems quite himself. I would recommend a good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast in the morning and he'll be none the worse for wear, as usual. Ron, perhaps you and Charlie will help him upstairs."
"Perhaps we could reconvene here, in the morning," Lupin suggested to Hermione as Charlie and Ron, still snickering, disappeared into the hall with Harry between them. "It seems we have quite a lot to discuss."
"Yes," she heard herself say, her mind already upstairs with Harry. "Everyone can come for breakfast if they like. Only what shall we do about Professor Snape?"
"Is Malfoy still with the twins?" Tonks asked interestedly.
"Malfoy? Not Draco? Is that why the twins didn't make it? I was getting concerned," Arthur said.
Yes, Draco. They agreed to babysit him for the meeting." Hermione told him. "He's at the shop."
"Tonks and I will keep an eye on Professor Snape. Perhaps he and I can have a little talk about civility for civility's sake and pushing Harry's buttons when he awakes. Not that it will do any good, mind. If Dumbledore could never convince him I don't know how I can."
"Perhaps Dumbledore," said Minerva McGonagall cryptically, as she stepped into the fire to return to Hogwarts after Madam Pomfrey, "never really tried. You must catch me up after the meeting, Remus. I am reluctant to leave the school again so soon."
"Will do," Lupin told her; and she disappeared in a whirl of green.
"I wonder what she meant by that?" Hermione found herself asking.
"I've no idea, Hermione," Lupin told her with a tired smile, "but believe me, I intend to find out."
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Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and the older boys and Fleur flooed home at last, and Tonks and Lupin followed shortly thereafter, taking Snape with him. Hermione tidied the kitchen with a few cursory wand flicks and climbed the stairs, tiredness like lead in her veins. She donned her pajamas and cleaned her teeth, then slowly made her way down the hall to Harry's room.
He was, unsurprisingly, deeply asleep. The surprising part was Ron, wide awake and deeply engrossed in a book lit only by his wand in a chair nearby.
"I thought someone should stay with him," he said, somewhat sheepishly and perhaps a shade defensive as well, she thought.
"Good idea," she agreed encouragingly. "If I looked surprised it was the book. That's not about Quidditch, is it?"
"No," Ron admitted. "One of Harry's." He held up "Invoking the Voiceless Curse," by Laurent G. Ituss. "It seems to be working for him, he's gotten tons better at non-verbal stuff. After Snape's little outburst tonight, it seemed like a good thing to brush up on."
"Another good thought." She tried to refrain from reflecting how un-Ron-like all this logical deduction seemed. Especially after their little episode today. Or maybe that was the root of it?
"Ron," she asked, "What happened today with the wand? I mean, what really happened." She settled down on the bed beside Harry and leant against the head board; he stirred and shifted closer but did not wake.
Ron sighed and set the book down.
"It was bloody amazing, Hermione. I mean Harry's just always been Harry, right? It's sort of like what Snape said is almost true, not the way he meant it, you know, but there's been an awful lot of luck going on. He's always where he needs to be because his heart's in the right place, but like fourth year when the TriWizard cup turned into a Portkey, he was just lucky he didn't come back like Cedric. It's like there was always something or someone looking out for him.
But today, I don't know, it was fantastic. I know he spent a lot of time with Dumbledore last year, but he always made it sound like they were just traveling around in the pensieve watching Tom Riddle. I didn't think he'd learned all that much else. Hermione, he knows all this stuff about blood magic and reading hidden spell signatures and all kinds of spell structure they never came close to in school and I'm willing to bet they're not covering this year, either. Ollivander'd put a lot of thought into hiding that wand, I mean, you know who he thought he was hiding it from! It was in this old castle somewhere, we apparated there with Fawkes again, so I couldn't tell you where. E had no idea what we were getting into, really. It was sort of like Hogwarts, or maybe the exact opposite of Hogwarts fits better. Unfriendly place, you just felt as if it wanted you out the whole time you were there. If it could have, it would have been like me and those slugs Second year, only we were the slugs. You had to sort of fight just to stay there. It kept trying to apparate you out, and you'd have to try and find your way back, only to a slightly different place than where you'd been so it wouldn't send you away again. I swear, Hermione, at one point it sent us to the top of this gigantic mountain in a snow storm, and another time we were on a island with palm trees and these really pissed-off looking people in grass skirts.
It was unbelievable. And you know what? Harry wasn't totally flying by the seat of his Quidditch pants this time, either. We may not have had a plan going in, put he put one together right quick the first time we got sent to a jungle full of angry Erumpents. They charged us and Harry and I each got one to follow us and crossed paths. They exploded all over us; it was brilliant. He whipped out Dumbledore's Chocolate Frog card a couple of times, but he could only give us facts about what we were seeing, not figure it out for us or tell us what to do. He was loving every moment of it, Dumbledore, I tell you. Got more and more excited and barmy with every new change of scenery. But Harry just kept getting us back to the castle and doing the old "point me" charm until we could tell we were getting close because the castle was getting really mad. We knew we'd found the right room when the Peruvian Vipertooth came at us."
Hermione heard herself let out a small, mewing noise of terror. "Ron, those might be the smallest dragons in the world but they're also one of the most dangerous, they're really poisonous, you know."
"Harry's good with dragons," Ron said, and sensing her discomfort, left it at that. "Anyway, once we were past it, and its mate, and its mother-in-law, I think, there it was. The wand. Lying in the bottom of a pit full of Runespoor."
"Three-headed venomous snakes?" Hermione asked faintly.
"Yeah! Well, only the right head is venomous actually. Harry said they gave him a right headache because there were hundreds of `em, all with three heads, all talking, and he could, you know, understand them all. They all kept giving different advice about how to get to the wand. I'm sure Mr. Ollivander knew whoever was coming after the wand might just be a parselmouth and they were just there to confuse him. Harry was so busy trying to sort through what they were saying that he didn't notice that there was a sort of pattern to the way they were squirming round, and if you just concentrated a bit there was a clear spot that kept opening up where you could just reach in and grab it. It was all just one unending hiss to me, so I grabbed the wand."
"You did?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said, his pride breaking through the single word. "I did. So you may be the one working out how to save him in the end, but I can still, you know, help out and stuff."
He was her Ron again in that moment; it was if the past year at Hogwarts had never happened.
"Yeah, well…. well, I still get to snog him," she said with a grin.
"Shag him, from what I've heard, and welcome to it." Ron grinned back. "That's definitely your job."
She laughed aloud, then hushed herself abruptly, hoping not to wake the `him' in question. "Thanks for looking out for him, Ron. I'm glad you were the one with him."
"Well we're still friends, aren't we, the three of us. That's what friends are for."
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The reconvened meeting of the core group next morning over early breakfast was a predictably strained affair. Molly Weasley insisted on doing the cooking and had brought copious amounts of food. A sour, enervated Snape sat alone at one end of the table drinking coffee taken (surprise!) quite black. Everyone else ranged round the other end, wands at the ready beside their plates. Harry still had a splitting headache and sat, pale-faced, beside Hermione clutching his own coffee cup like an antidote. Only Ron seemed reasonably cheerful
"So, where were we?" Bill asked, in a brisk let's-get-this-over-with voice.
"You mean before he tried to kill me?" snarled Harry.
"Don't be such a baby, Potter. If I'd tried to kill you, I assure you, you'd be quite dead." Snape hissed back, sounding for all the world like Malfoy.
"Ground rule number one, Snape and Harry will no longer address one another directly." Lupin declared. "Severus, if you have anything of a vital nature to impart to Harry you will do so to me, and Harry, you will tell anything you wish to say to Professor Snape to Hermione."
"That's not fair," Harry said. "He'll be way ruder to you than I could possibly be to Hermione. Let it be Ron."
"There is a reason for this arrangement, Harry. The purpose is to get the two of you to stop acting like a pair of juvenile Jarveys and get on with it. So Hermione it is." Lupin informed him. "Now, what I personally need to understand is what exactly happened with that wand last night. Who can give us a nice clear explanation of that?"
"Professor Sneak over there had the nerve to tell me it was too late to be fastidious about letting another seventh of his bosses' sickening soul into my head, that's what happened." Harry growled.
"Twenty points from Gryfiindor!" Snape said smugly. "You are not allowed to speak directly to me."
"Take a hundred and twenty, while you're at it. I'm not in school anymore, I gave it up. And I'd check your employment papers as well, killing the Headmaster is likely grounds for dismissal." Harry shot back. "Aside from which, I wasn't even talking to you. I was answering Lupin."
Who sighed. "This is your last warning, both of you. Don't make me Silencio either of you, please. Perhaps you, Hermione, could explain?"
And so Hermione explained. About the horcruxes and what Dumbledore and Harry had been doing the previous year, and how the wand was evidently another one. She left out the locket just in case, waiting to judge Snape's reaction; there was no need to tell him everything, after all. She was growing more and more certain of her theory that there had been some type of connection between Snape and Lily, something that could account for his ping-ponging reaction to her only child. That Snape was deeply affected by Harry's presence and plight could not be ignored; as much as he claimed to hate Harry, he seemed unable to walk away either.
Molly and Arthur were horrified at the thought of the horcruxes, Lupin and Tonks fascinated. Bill and Charlie seemed madder than ever, while Fleur was tearful and kept alternating between "'Orrible man!" and "poor little `Arry."
Hermione noticed Harry's eyes roll at that, a promising sign that perhaps his headache was starting to let up.
"So you think, then, that Harry has three pieces of Voldemort's soul contained inside him?" Lupin asked quietly, stunned.
Hermione nodded. "And Voldemort himself has only one."
"And yet you don't feel it affecting you, Harry? Not the headache, I mean, but in your reactions to things, or the way you think or feel?"
"Not unless Voldemort hates Snape as much as I do," Harry said darkly, and then remembered. He turned to Hermione. "I realized something last night though. D'you know how I've never had to worry about the Imperius curse, how it never seemed to affect me for some reason?"
She nodded, curious.
"I always heard what sounded like a little voice inside me that told me not to do whatever the curse was trying to make me do. It sort of gave me, well, the power not to do it, somehow. I just realized the voice, it's the same voice that screams when Voldemort is there at Godric's Hollow that night, that says `Not Harry.' It's my Mum. And I think that might have something to do with why it hasn't affected me before; that she might have known what he meant to do. Maybe she couldn't stop him from doing it, but in sacrificing herself she changed it, and that's why the soul fragment is in me instead of whatever he brought to make it out of. Maybe bits of both souls ended up there, Mum's and Voldmort's, and that's why I couldn't feel his as strongly at first."
Hermione could see him working desperately through what might have happened, grasping for questions to fit the answer of his life.
"She did know. What was going to happen that night. I know, because I told her. I warned her that that was what he meant to do." Snape said evenly, no shred of emotion betrayed in his voice. The room grew eerily silent.
"I had no hope of stopping him once Pettigrew opened the way to you, no way to change his mind. I never thought she would do what she did either, allowing herself to die for you. I was hoping to fulfill my life debt to your father by giving them some chance to know what they were up against. He only intended to kill you, after all, he only needed one death to make the final horcrux. She could have had other children."
Molly Weasley gasped, "Severus!" with the horror and disbelief only a mother could have managed.
"You what?" Lupin intoned furiously. "You told Lily Potter Voldemort was going to kill her son to make a horcrux, something that would, if I understand it, essentially ensure his immortality, and you were surprised when she threw herself in front of the killing curse aimed at her child? How could you not know she would?"
"Like so much of the rest of my miserable connection to the family Potter," Snape sneered, "What exactly was my choice? I did my best."
"You killed her is what you did," Lupin told him.
"Another worthy Witch lost," Snape agreed. "For him. And still he potters on, oblivious, waiting for everyone to make much of him for the very fact he lives."
"I DO NOT!" Harry screamed. Literally screamed, the sound clawing at his throat to be free. He could feel the anger overtaking him again, and his breath grew rapid and shallow just as it had before. He fought the dizziness, clutching at the table; he was aching to throttle Snape, could almost feel his pale, cold neck between his fingers. He would kill him, if he could just somehow get over to him, but he could sense himself fading toward unconsciousness again. He felt Hermione take hold of one arm as if she meant to stop him from flying out of his chair. As if he bloody could… Her touch distracted him, though, and he found himself wondering vaguely what he was so angry about. He fought to slow his breathing, the rapid beating of his heart. And knew then that his own body had sensed more then just rage at Snape in his reaction. Was that its protective mechanism against becoming Voldemort? Killing him first? If his Mum would give herself up for him, it made sense she would find it fitting too for Harry to sacrifice himself if he became too much like the invading soul… For the first time since he had found about the horcruxes Harry felt a truly paralyzing wave of fear. Not that he wouldn't find them; but that he would. And they would be more then he could contain and still manage to finish Voldemort as well.
He looked across the table and saw Snape's cold black eyes take in his realization. `He'll tell,' Harry thought dully, his mind reeling. `If I don't agree to what he wants about teaching me stuff he'll just tell Voldemort to get me good and mad and finish me off before I asphyxiate myself. Oh bloody hell, why can't anything in my life be simple?
He took a deep shuddering breath and said, "All right. I'll do it. Whatever it is you think you can teach me, I'll learn."
Snape's eye gleamed with a sudden triumphal fire. "A wise decision. I will send word of a time and a safe place to meet. I will have to get back soon, he will miss me if I am gone to long. Fortunately this was an open-ended errand. You haven't by any chance seen young Master Malfoy around anywhere, have you?"
"Malfoy?" said Ron, who loathed him most but now despised Snape far more. "No. Not since the two of you left together. Lost him, have you?"
"Temporarily," Snape said with a dreadful smile that went nowhere near his eyes. "But it's hardly worth worrying about now. I assume I am quite free to go, now that your fearless leader has spoken?"
Lupin looked at Harry, who inclined his head numbly.
"Quite," Lupin told him. "Except for one small matter. On your knees Severus. Over there, if you will, beside Harry. It's time for you to make yet another oath."
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Many, many thanks for all your kind reviews… sorry I haven't gotten to them all. I did manage to post a day ahead off schedule, though, so hope that makes up a bit. You guys are truly the best readers and reviewers around. ~ Lynney
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