Harry Potter And The Fall Of Childhood

Chapter 23

Bones

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at

least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."

-- Rene Descartes

***

The pain woke him. Harry spent a dizzy, confused moment scrambling frantically for the pieces of a nightmare, for Voldemort's face or the echoes of his victim's screams. Then it slowly dawned on him that the pain wasn't centered in his scar, but at the back of his head, clenching him like a great steel trap from the base of his neck all the way to the top of his head, merciless teeth stabbing forward over his temples and squeezing in concert with his pounding heart.

He made a low, inarticulate noise and struggled for breath against the agony, forcing himself to inhale then exhale only a little faster than normal.

"Harry? Can you hear me?"

Hermione, he thought, but wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of much at all right then, except that someone was very slowly driving an axe through the back of his head.

Cool hands were suddenly on his face, and there was a soft tickle over his cheek that Harry finally identified as the brush of someone's hair.

"Can you hear me?" Hermione repeated, for he knew it was Hermione now. Harry tried to reply, but the best he could do was another moan, this one slightly louder. "Should I go get Madam Pomfrey?" Hermione was asking. "Or Professor Dumbledore? Oh, but I shouldn't leave you alone..." she trailed off, sounding as wretched as Harry had ever heard her.

"S'okay," he muttered as slowly, ever so slowly, the clenching pain began to subside. "'M okay." He tried to open his eyes, but everything was a dizzying blur. His eyes, he thought suddenly. His eyes and his glasses...she had given him glasses...who?

"Here." The glasses in question slid onto his nose, and Harry blinked, focusing. Hermione's face hung suspended over him, the cobwebbed ceiling of the storage room a backdrop. Her hair was wild and unkempt, her eyes enormous in her pale face. All her detachment, all her painful reserve and odd, stilted manner with him was gone now as she gazed down at him. Harry could see a few tear tracks tracing the lines of her cheeks, and she had worried her lip until a tiny spot of blood stood starkly against her pallor. "How do you feel?" she asked, her hand lingering on Harry's cheek after she settled his glasses.

"Better," he said, finding it easier and easier to speak. "Headache."

"I don't think you hit your head," Hermione said soothingly, her hand sliding off his face and into his hair. She gently massaged his scalp, and Harry relaxed further, sighing.

"Not that kind of headache." He paused, gathering the fragments of recollection, putting all the pieces together to add up to something he already knew. "It was the charm," he said finally, almost to himself. "I had memories..."

"But how?" Hermione asked. "You couldn't have known you had them, but the charm worked anyway."

"I don't know," Harry said distractedly. He was more focused on what he had remembered, rather than how.

Hermione seemed to follow his train of thought. "What did you remember?" she asked, gently cradling the back of his head in the palms of her hands. It was only then that Harry realized his position--stretched out on the dirty storage room floor, Hermione's cloak spread over him and his head in her lap. He smiled reassuringly up at her, as best he could, though he didn't think there was much at all reassuring about it.

"A lot of things," he murmured. "Dumbledore and the sword...Patronus...the Pensieve...a man in his office...Dumbledore kept doing it..."

"Dumbledore?" Hermione said, startled. "Dumbledore erased--Harry, that can't be right."

Harry was silent. He took a final deep breath and sat up, gently brushing aside Hermione's helping hands. Getting to his feet wasn't quite as easy, but he accomplished it after a few tries, and even managed to stay upright.

"Here," he said, handing Hermione's cloak back to her. "You should go back to the dorm now, get at least a few hours of sleep."

"But what about you?" she asked, cupping his elbow to steady him. "Are you still in pain? Harry, this charm is nothing to play around with. You should go to Madam Pomfrey or Dumble--" She cut herself off, unsure.

"Oh, I'm going," Harry said. The grimness in his own voice surprised him. The pain was nearly gone now, and with its easing he was able to actually think about what had just occurred. And as the waves of pain ebbed away, a confused, betrayed anger surged to take its place. "Just go back to the dorm," he said again. "I won't be back for quite a while--I have to go fishing with Snape."

"Fishing with--Harry, maybe you should sit down."

"I'm fine," Harry said, jerking away from her. "I'm not delusional or anything."

Hermione bit her lip. "What did I buy you for Christmas this year?" she asked.

"A carved Hippogriff," Harry said promptly. "To hold quills."

Hermione nodded, unable to find fault with his answer. "What did you remember?" she asked again.

Harry looked away. "Later," he said quietly. "Just go back to the dorm, okay?"

Hermione considered, then reluctantly nodded. But before she left she stepped close and gently touched Harry's arm. "You scared me," she said softly. "You really, really scared me. You just...fell...and I barely caught you, and if you had been out for another minute I would have just screamed for somebody to find us, because I couldn't leave you like that, Harry." She hesitated, then continued, her face reflecting the truth of her words. "You can go to Dumbledore and go fishing with Snape--though I don't understand that last part at all--but when you come back, you're going to sit down with me, and you're going to sit down with Ron, and you're going to tell us what's going on. Because, Harry, you don't get to scare me like that and then just shut down."

Harry looked down at her, startled and oddly moved. "Okay," he said, laying his hand over hers for just a moment and squeezing. "When I get back, I promise."

"Good," Hermione said, nodding decisively. "Good luck with Professor Dumbledore."

"Yeah," Harry said. "I've got to go."

They exited the storage room together and spent a few nearly silent moments arguing over who should take the Invisibility Cloak. Hermione prevailed by sheer dint of glaring, and Harry reluctantly draped the garment over himself. Hermione stood still a moment after he disappeared, and Harry couldn't help studying her with an attention he wouldn't have allowed himself, had he been visible. She looked haggard, which wasn't surprising considering their long night. Harry's own body would have been weighed down with equal exhaustion, he suspected, were he not still consumed by his shock, surprise, and anger. Hermione seemed to be considering something, her lip clamped worriedly between her teeth and her eyes half shut in concentration. Then she seemed to come to a decision, and she smiled the first smile Harry had seen from her in quite a while. It wasn't a purely happy or contented smile, more resigned in fact, but a great weight seemed to have lifted from her shoulders. She stood a moment longer, the conflict wiped away from her features, then turned and crept away around the corner.

Harry headed in the opposite direction. He could worry about Hermione later--both about her odd behavior towards him recently, and her apparent struggle just then. But Harry couldn't concentrate on her right at that moment. He could barely remember to walk quietly and check around corners as he made his way across the castle and up towards the Headmaster's office. It was barely dawn, he saw as he entered a corridor with east facing windows. The sun was not up yet, but a chilly, grayish glow in the eastern sky illuminated the grounds and stones of the corridor. It was bitterly cold, as if the stones of the castle had sucked winter into themselves and only let it out at night when the sun was away.

Harry hurried on, and as he walked he felt as if each step were taken inside himself as well as out. There was not much he had to do to prepare for this conversation, he knew, for it was happening naturally inside him. His confusion, his disbelief, his conviction that surely, this could not be true, were dying out, as if crushed a bit more under each footstep. His headache was almost entirely gone, but Harry focused his thoughts on the last trailing touches of pain, using them and the reminder of the agony that had come before to fuel the bonfire of his growing outrage. It was not pure anger, he knew, but that was not what he needed now. It was a righteous anger, built on the knowledge that he had been done grievously wrong, and spearheaded by the determination to find out why. Each step crystallized that determination, made it a certainty, not an intention, and when he arrived at the stone gargoyle, Harry was almost ready.

"Sugar quill," he said crisply. The gargoyle leapt aside, and Harry started up the stairs, removing the cloak as he went. As he ascended, he thought of the Headmaster's apologies, of the sadness and resignation in his eyes. And then the last piece was in place inside him, and when Harry knocked briskly at the office door, he was ready to face Albus Dumbledore and come out the other side a much wiser person.

"Come in," the Headmaster called cheerfully.

Harry did, and it only took him slightly aback to see that the Headmaster was not alone. Professors McGonagall, Sprout, Flitwick, and Snape were seated in a grouping of chairs in front of the desk, not a one appearing content.

"You're early, Potter," Snape said brusquely. "Kindly remove yourself--"

"I'm not looking for you," Harry said.

Professor Dumbledore, who looked as if he were about to say something, suddenly stopped. His teacup paused halfway between desk and mouth, and he set it slowly down without taking a sip. He studied Harry for a long, thoughtful moment, his gaze piercing and compassionate.

"Ah," he said finally. "I see. Severus, Minerva, Filius, Flora, would you please excuse Mr. Potter and myself for a few moments. I believe we have something rather important to discuss."

The professors exchanged slightly disgruntled looks, and Snape in particular seemed highly offended. "We weren't finished--" he began.

"It can wait," Dumbledore said, gently but firmly. "And I assure you, Severus, Harry will be quite ready for your little errand on time."

Snape looked as if he would rather Harry wasn't, but he and the other professors rose and exited, casting Harry a range of glances from the irritated to the concerned.

"Well," Dumbledore said as the door shut. "Why don't you sit down?"

"I'd rather stand, thanks," Harry said.

"If you're more comfortable, of course," the Headmaster returned. He sat back in his own chair, his gaze never wavering from Harry. "So," he said after a pause. "You have had an encounter with a Commoneo Charm, I imagine."

"Yes," Harry said, somehow unsurprised. "You probably reckoned it would happen soon." He paused, then continued through tight lips. "I'm surprised you didn't do another one when you had me up here alone after we talked to Hermione."

"I thought of it," Dumbledore said.

Harry blinked at the frank admission, but cast his surprise aside. "Why didn't you, then? Probably would have kept me from ever finding out, or at least not for a very long time. And you could have fixed it so Hermione would never know, too."

"Yes," Dumbledore agreed. "I could have. But it was not necessary. As you quite astutely pointed out, I suspected we would be having this conversation shortly, and I did not wish to postpone it any further." He sighed, and his gaze wavered for the first time. "No, that is not entirely true. I would have liked to wait just a little longer, perhaps a few more months. It would be so much easier to conduct this meeting with the full powers of truth at my disposal. But, alas, I felt that it was either now, or too late, and I also did not wish to involve another student in the matter as Miss Granger would have to be."

"So, it's only me?" Harry said. That did not surprise him either. He'd never thought the Headmaster went around charming his students at will. "Well, and Snape of course." He snorted. "Wonderful company I'm keeping."

"It is," Dumbledore said, and normally Harry would have been shamed by the rebuke he could see in the man's eyes. But not that morning, and not when the Headmaster's previous words were just catching up to him.

"What do you mean, the full power of truth?" he demanded. "Do you mean to tell me you're not going to--you can't just do that and--I at least deserve--"

"Yes," Dumbledore said simply. "Yes, I do. And yes, you do deserve."

"Why?" Harry asked. It came out a lot more desperate than he had intended, a lot more like a plea than a demand. He suddenly felt like taking that seat he had refused. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Fawkes stirring restlessly on his perch.

"It was necessary," Dumbledore said. "I hope you know that it was not a decision I came to easily, nor was it something I did lightly." He clasped his hands together and examined them for a moment. "It was a great contradiction of everything I hold dear," he continued softly. "The encouragement of two of my greatest and dearest wishes all in one act...but such an act."

"So it bothered you," Harry said, pulling the remains of his bravado around him again. "I'm glad to hear it. That doesn't tell me what I want to know, though."

"I cannot," Dumbledore said.

"Can't, or won't?" Harry asked, his anger rising again. "Tell me, Professor, have you ever given me the unvarnished truth once in five years? What's so bloody all important that I can't know about it? How often has not knowing almost gotten me killed?"

"I will not," the Headmaster replied.

"Why?" Harry said again, this time his voice edged with the sharp bite of frustration.

"To keep you safe," Dumbledore said. "Always, Harry, to keep you safe. To give you the time you need to grow and learn, to be a child. To let you choose your own path while you still can. To prepare you. To keep you out of this silent war we're in as long as possible."

"Well, you didn't do a very good job of it," Harry said bitterly. "I've been in this war one way or another since my first year. And yet you kept right on charming me, right until last year. And that man--a friend of yours, I imagine. Did it get too difficult? Did you need someone else to do it for you?"

"Beg pardon?" Dumbledore said, frowning. "What man?"

"In your office," Harry said, waving a vague hand. "With the body bind and the...he seemed to know you."

Dumbledore stared a moment, appearing truly alarmed. "There was a man in my office?" he asked. "A man you did not know? And he put a memory charm on you?"

"Yes," Harry said, taken aback. "You didn't know?"

"No," the Headmaster said. "This is very disturbing. Nobody should be able to enter my office without permission, certainly not without my knowledge. Describe what happened for me please, Harry."

Harry did, relating the short, strange interlude to a rapt audience.

"And this man planted a pre-charm suggestion, an encouragement for you to return to your dorm." Dumbledore stared off into space for a moment, his fingers smoothing restlessly around the rim of his now cool teacup.

"I remember walking back, now," Harry said. "It was strange. I went back and then forgot I'd ever been."

"Powerful magic," Dumbledore murmured. "And he was in my office without tripping any of the numerous alarms and alerts. Someone who is either strong enough to suppress them all, or who has been here frequently enough not to be read as dangerous. But even then he would have to deal with the spells that alert me to surprise guests. Someone you did not recognize...red-brown hair..." he trailed off, still thinking.

Harry stood, shifting a little awkwardly from foot to foot. It had never occurred to him that the strange man could have been unknown to Dumbledore, not that he had had much time to really consider it. The idea was unsettling, and it suddenly occurred to Harry that he had never mentioned the mysterious woman, the first memory. He opened his mouth to do so, but his throat seemed to close in on itself, and the words literally melted away between his brain and lips. Harry paused, alarmed.

"This is worrisome," Dumbledore said, glancing up again. "The thought of anyone, friend or foe, moving undetected through this school is more than worrying."

Harry nodded, his tongue finally coming unstuck to ask his question. "What do you reckon he was trying to do with me?"

"Mind magic of some sort," Dumbledore explained. "Which, in and of itself, is troubling. The mind is not something to be trifled with." He paused, seeming only then to realize what he had said.

"Why did you do it?" Harry asked into the ensuing silence.

"I have found," Dumbledore began slowly, "that as I grow older, I want less and less from the world and more and more from myself. My wishes, over the past fourteen years, have melted away to leave only two things that I hold most close and dear." He met Harry's eyes squarely. "I wish to destroy Voldemort permanently, irrevocably. And I wish to see you safe, Harry, to see you happy."

"Well," Harry said a little falteringly, "those two...they really don't mix, do they?"

"You wouldn't think so," Dumbledore said sadly. "But in this one case, for just a little while, they did, and my heart could be easy, knowing that by keeping you safe, I could perhaps accomplish the other."

"I don't understand," Harry said. "I'm going to be the one. It's me, it has to be. I have to...I'll try...to kill him." He stared at the Headmaster, suddenly a little dizzy. He had never been so sure of anything in his entire life as he was of that truth. It was something he'd known, he realized, for several years, one of the dark, scary things he never thought about. He'd never said it out loud before.

"Yes," Dumbledore said. "This time, it is you. I fought Grindelwald, I destroyed him. I led the first war against Voldemort, and he met his first downfall at your hand. Now, this time, it is your battle, Harry."

"Yet you want to keep me safe," Harry said. "You know you can't."

"But I could try," Dumbledore said. "I could try and give you the time you needed."

"That's the second time you've said that," Harry noted. "What do you mean?"

Dumbledore hesitated for a long, agonizing moment. Harry found himself carving little crescents into his palms with his nails as he waited. Finally, the Headmaster made his decision. "The Avada Kedavra curse is something of a mystery," he said. "Practically the entirety of our knowledge of it consists of its obvious effects. We can speculate on its origins based on its incantation, certainly, we can trace its evolution through magical history, but almost nothing is known of what it does, how the magic functions, why the curse works." He smiled wryly, lifting a long finger to point at Harry's scar. "You can imagine, then, that we are at an utter loss when it comes to possible after effects of the curse for a survivor."

"After effects?" Harry said, his voice rising to a squeak. "Like what?"

Dumbledore pursed his lips and glanced away. "I'm afraid I cannot...I will not tell you, Harry. It, and it alone, is the reason I would have wished to delay this conversation a few months. To give you, and myself, a little more time to overcome some quite difficult obstacles." He lifted a hand as he saw Harry's expression. "I am not withholding this information because I think you are not ready to know," he said. "I am not withholding it because I do not want you to know. I am withholding it because telling you would negate all the work and plans of fourteen years. It would make what I have done to you useless, and it would endanger you, it would endanger us all, enormously."

"A few months," Harry said. "What's going to happen?"

"Mmm, a great number of things, I imagine," Dumbledore said.

Harry sighed, defeated. He had gotten pretty much everything he was going to get, he suspected. It was frustrating, and it was infuriating. He felt almost like he was being strung along, given just enough information to keep him happy until the next crisis. He wanted it all right then, the good, the bad, the scary. He just wanted to know, to hold the fullness of truth inside himself, and do with it as he would.

"The next years will not be easy ones," Dumbledore said gently. "But if, by what I have done, I have made them an iota easier for you, it will be worth it for me." He cradled his teacup and watched Harry shifting uneasily. "And if it helps it at all, and even if it does not, for I wish to say it, I apologize. For the charms, for this, for things to come which neither of us can anticipate."

"How can you have both?" Harry asked suddenly. "How can you...I'm going to fight him. And, yes, killing him will make me safer afterward, but that's only if I don't--" he cut himself off, suddenly a little nauseous.

"I do not know," the Headmaster said. "Some days, Harry, I simply do not know how I can favor one wish over the other, can balance one life with thousands, perhaps millions." He raised tired, ancient eyes to meet Harry's. "Which would you rather I choose?" he asked.

"I--" Harry breathed in, taking three rapid steps forward and sinking into a chair. He studied his hands with unseeing eyes, his mind full of thoughts of his mother, his friends, Voldemort, how much he liked being alive. When he finally dragged his eyes upward, he had to squint, for in the brief time he had not been looking, the very top edge of the sun had appeared over the eastern horizon, and the nearly head-on flare was dazzling.

"It is a terrible thing to be good and right," Dumbledore said quietly. "It is a terrible thing because we never are. Because these choices do not always allow for people, for souls and lives, the greatest, the smallest things in the world. Please, Harry, let me carry this for you just a little longer. It will come to you all too soon as it is. Let me keep it until you must have it."

"Yes," Harry whispered, deeply humbled. "I'll wait."

There was little to say after that, and anyway the conversation had eaten up more time than Harry had realized. He rose, finally feeling the deep weariness of a long and sleepless night dragging at his bones. It would be a longer, and equally sleepless day, he knew.

"Thank you, Professor," he said, struck only by the oddity of the politeness when it had passed his lips.

Dumbledore shook his head, almost as if not to hear the words, and Harry sighed.

"You're doing a good job," he said a bit awkwardly. "I mean with me and everything. I may not understand all of it, but you...you're doing great."

Dumbledore looked up at him again, and for the second time Harry felt the dynamic between them shift, the balance of power tilting wildly and frighteningly. "Am I?" Dumbledore asked softly.

"Is it possible to make it all perfectly right?" Harry returned. "Is it possible to do anything more than what you've done in a world with Tom Riddle in it? In a world with me in it?"

Dumbledore smiled gently. "You are wise," he said. "That soothes me and pains me."

Harry shifted uneasily. "I should go," he said. "Professor Snape is waiting."

"Please try not to damage each other too badly," Dumbledore said, a sparkle of humor returning to his eyes.

"Yes, Professor," Harry said. He paused a moment longer, reluctant to leave the office. "I'll talk to you again in a few months, then," he said, finally.

"Yes," Dumbledore agreed. "We will talk."

***

It was a very Snapely place, Harry decided only two seconds after landing on the muddy, slippery shore of a nameless underground lake. The water was perfectly still and fathomlessly dark a few meters below, and even the rare slants of natural light that had wormed their way through cracks in the rocky, root-crossed ceiling reflected dully on the surface. There was no nonmagical way to enter or exit the dank, earthy cave, or at least none Harry could see by the combined illumination of their two wands. There was very little dry land, and the small strip the portkey had deposited them on seemed in constant danger of sliding right down into the water. Harry could press his back against the damp, vine-encrusted wall with just a few steps. The whole place was steeped in the deep stillness of dark, undiscovered places.

Harry released his end of the Portkey, a shrivelfig, and stepped away from Snape. The professor gave him a look, the exact look from only a minute ago when they had stood in Snape's office and the man had offered him the Portkey. Harry didn't know what had shown on his face then, but Snape's gaze wasn't hostile or dismissive, merely considering. He said nothing about Harry's obvious reluctance to touch the shrivelfig.

"So, how does this work?" Harry asked, wincing as his voice resounded oddly in the still, hollow space. "I've never been fishing before."

"We need a boat," Snape said, and promptly conjured one. Harry clambered in a bit warily, hoping Snape knew what he was doing and had judged the strength of the spell correctly. That would just be the capper on this day--the magic petering out and the boat dissolving from beneath them in the middle of the lake.

Snape pushed them off into the water with a carefully applied banishing charm. Harry was again struck by the utter stillness of the water as the boat glided through it. The depths were dark and seemingly endless, and few ripples lapped against the sides of the small craft. Snape, too, was eerily silent and still, perched like an ebony figurehead in the narrow prow.

"Where is this place?" Harry asked, this time careful to keep his voice down.

"Underground," Snape said.

"Yeah, thanks, I got that," Harry said. "I meant where in the world? Are we still in Scotland?"

"Yes," Snape said, almost reluctantly. "Though not by much."

Harry frowned, sensing something in the professor's tone. Beneath the expected irritation and sourness there was true unease.

"What is it?" Harry asked, before he could stop himself.

The Snape shadow head turned, though Harry could not see his face. There was a long silence, and Harry was just deciding that he had either imagined whatever it was, or Snape was just going to ignore him, when the man spoke.

"This place is entirely unknown to Muggles. It is warded quite strongly. There are very old wards, and the Ministry put up new ones a decade ago as well."

"Why?" Harry asked, intrigued.

"Somebody, sometime, seeded the lake with a quite astonishing range of creatures," Snape explained. "The Pariter fish among them. The next nearest source for them is far to the south."

"Are these dark creatures?" Harry asked.

"Some," Snape said. "Some are just useful for various things. And don't make the assumption, like so many fools before you, that a creature has intrinsic value on the human spectrum of good and evil simply because of the uses humans put it to."

Harry pondered this, still bothered by a niggling thought. By the time they reached the center of the lake--or that was what Harry guessed, for their forward motion ceased--he had come up with a reasonable idea.

The light from Snape's wand which had been casting a narrow cone of illumination across the water before them swiveled, then winked out. "Give me your wand, Potter," Snape ordered.

Harry did, and his light, too, went out, plunging them into almost total darkness. Only the few persistent sunbeams lightened the nearly impenetrable gloom, just enough to make out Snape's silhouette as he bent over the wands.

"We'll keep the lights out," Snape said. "They could scare away some of the fish." He muttered a spell, then again. Harry accepted his wand back, blinking in surprise as he felt the trailing strand of thin twine extruded from the end. His fingers tracked down a long series of coils and he let out a small gasp as he touched something live, cold, and wriggling.

"They're already baited," Snape said dryly.

"Thanks," Harry said. "So...what? I just throw it over?"

"Try to toss it as far as possible," Snape said, suiting action to words with a quick movement and a distant plop. Harry followed suit, and was struck suddenly by the surreal nature of his situation--clutching his wand cum fishing pole in a conjured boat in an underground lake with Severus Snape.

"This was a Death Eater place," he said, returning to their previous topic.

Harry wasn't sure, but he thought he saw Snape start. "I suppose you could say that," the man said. "Death Eaters were known to come here to harvest certain ingredients they couldn't find anywhere else, not even on the black market."

"Mmm," Harry said, twisting his wand between his fingers. Silence overtook them, something that Harry wasn't too sure about. So far that morning he had been in constant motion, first going to see Dumbledore, then hurrying down to the dungeons to meet Snape, carried along by the man's utter indifference for social graces and obvious desire to have the whole ordeal over with. He had only balked a moment at the prospect of a Portkey, though, if he had been thinking, Harry was sure he would have realized ahead of time that that was the only viable method of transportation. As the boat rocked imperceptibly beneath him, seemingly caused more by his and Snape's breathing than by any disturbance in the water, Harry felt as if he had been riding a roller coaster that had come to a sudden and unexpected stop. Both his mind and body rebelled at the stillness, clamoring for movement, action, distraction. There wasn't even much of anything to look at, just Snape's vague outline and the few ineffectual sunbeams. The exhaustion of a mind and body well overtaxed began to drag at Harry's shoulders, but he knew he would not doze off. There was too much swirling around in his head, a stewing mass of mystery and half-truth, of things known to be unknown, and the whispers of the things he had not even glimpsed yet.

Harry found himself lulled into a strange state of relaxed tension. The slants of sunlight slowly shifted their angle as the morning progressed, and Harry watched with a disconnected interest while his body slumped tiredly and his mind churned fruitlessly away at everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. He was just coming to the conclusion that this was one of those times, sort of like after the tournament, when thinking was actually a bad thing, when something finally happened.

There was a faint ruffling of the water several meters behind the boat, and Snape stirred.

"What?" Harry asked, jolted back to full alertness.

"I seem to have something," Snape said. He shifted about in the dimness, doing something with his wand, and Harry leaned over, craning to see. There was a series of splashes then, growing progressively louder as Snape reeled in his catch. By the time the Professor flipped it expertly into the boat, Harry knew that it was most definitely alive, and most displeased.

Snape turned from his outward facing position and crouched over the center of the small boat. Something was flopping around between them, and Harry caught a few quick glimpses of a long, slender, whitish body.

"Excellent," Snape said after a moment.

"That's it?" Harry asked, a bit eagerly.

"Yes," Snape said. He conjured something, and there was a muffled splash. Harry guessed the Pariter fish was now safely ensconced in a container of water. He'd paid enough attention in Potions to at least know that the fresher the ingredients from live creatures were, the more potent the brew.

"So...we're done?" Harry asked, not sure whether he was happy or not. He wanted the dratted potion reversed, of course, but he had just been settling into the dreamlike unreality of this trip. The darkness suited his mood, and he didn't know how he would face the noise and bustle and people of a Hogwarts Sunday.

"Don't be daft," Snape said, straightening up. "I'll need more than just one Pariter, if only for redundancy's sake. Believe me, Potter, I have no urge to sacrifice another Sunday morning in your company because this fish turned out to be defective in some way."

"All right," Harry said.

Snape paused in the act of lifting his wand to recast his line. Harry saw his head swivel, and could practically feel those piercing black eyes sliding over him. "You have been remarkably silent this morning," Snape said after a moment. "Silence and docility from you disturbs me, Potter."

"I try," Harry said. He was aiming for casually insolent, but the attempt fell far short. The boat swayed as Snape moved, first casting his line, and then turning back to stare at Harry again. It occurred to Harry suddenly that Snape's eyes, dungeon accustomed as they were, could probably see much more in this dimness than his own could.

"You interrupted a rather important staff meeting this morning," Snape said. "If I didn't know better, Potter, and sometimes I'm not sure I do, I would think you planned your adventures for the most awkward moment possible."

"Yes," said Harry. "Because if I'm going to get mangled or maimed or killed, I might as well make everybody else's day awful, too."

"Precisely," Snape said. Harry blinked to hear a touch of humor in the man's voice, and he realized that the whole topic was a very Snape sort of idea. "You never told me," Snape continued after a moment, "just what happened with the Commoneo Charm."

Harry was silent, gazing into the blankness of the water. He thought of Hermione, of himself, of Snape. A strange group if ever there was one, similar only in their experiences with a spell whose vicious powers of devastation Harry was just beginning to fully understand. For Snape had been charmed, Harry had little doubt. There was no other explanation for why he had not allowed Harry to practice Commoneo on him, and besides which it made sense in the bigger picture of Snape's role in things. Snape had been charmed, by Dumbledore, Harry was sure, and he knew it.

He was a strange source of advice and direction, but it wouldn't be the first time.

"Is it safe here?" Harry asked.

"Are you developing a sudden and inexplicable care for your person?" Snape asked. "And yes, aside from earthquake or other natural disaster, we should be perfectly secure here."

Harry nodded, assured. He doubted Snape said things like that very often. "Safe to talk, though?"

Snape paused, then reeled in his line. For a moment Harry thought he had caught something else, but there was nothing wriggling at the end of the line. The professor restored his wand to its normal state, then lifted it above his head and made a series of complicated movements as he muttered a quiet spell.

"Speak, Potter," he said, lowering his wand. "Our privacy is assured. And may I say I am pleasantly surprised at your foresight in asking."

"I'm learning to be more cautious," Harry said dryly. He sat back a little in his end of the boat, grimacing as he tried to straighten out his legs. It was typical of Snape not to be able to conjure something even remotely comfortable.

"You wished to speak to me?" Snape said after the silence had stretched out. "My spell will not last the millennium, Potter."

"Professor Dumbledore put memory charms on me," Harry said.

Snape was silent.

"Several of them. Over a long period of time."

Still, nothing from Snape.

"And I figured, well, I was a little upset and all, and I was hoping since you sort of have experience in these matters that you could..." Harry trailed off, uncertain about just what he was looking for.

"Advise you?" Snape filled in, speaking at last.

"Yes," Harry said. "Weird as that is."

"Advise you on how to feel about someone stealing some of your memories? Effectively robbing you of a part of your history, a part of yourself?"

"Okay, you're not being much help at the moment," Harry said, scowling into the dark.

"I don't know what you expect of me, Potter," Snape returned, with obvious weariness, "but if you want a bitter condemnation of the Headmaster's actions, you're looking in the wrong place."

"No," Harry said. "I wasn't looking for that."

"Nor," Snape continued, "will I exonerate him of any culpability, particularly in your case. This is a new discovery of yours, I imagine. So he did these charms without your knowledge or consent."

"Yes."

"He could go to Azkaban for that, you know," Snape said.

"Oh," Harry said. "I hadn't thought of that."

"Then again," Snape added dryly, "you can be put in Azkaban without trial or fuss for having a completely innocent conversation with the wrong person, so let us not use that as our standard of correctness."

"Then what should we use?" Harry burst out. "I mean, the Headmaster said...he did it for me. And for the war. But it was wrong. Really, really wrong. And you, God knows what you've done. You're a spy, I know that, and I don't even want to imagine--"

"No, you don't," Snape said softly.

Harry subsided, dropping his eyes from the Snape shadow.

"As to your question," the professor continued, "the belief that there is some absolute measuring stick of right and wrong is woefully typical of your youth, Potter. Though, given your history, one might have expected more from you. Do you really believe Albus Dumbledore is the embodiment of all that is good in the world, and Lord Voldemort all that is evil? Do you really think the people who ally themselves with them are devils or angels simply by that alliance? Do you really believe the sheer complexity, the inexplicably mysterious tangle of motivations and emotions and history that is a human being can ever be categorized as such?"

"Yesterday...probably," Harry said. "Today, I'm not so sure."

"We can't be," Snape said, "neither I nor you, the great and noble Boy Who Lived, be reduced in such a manner. For it is a reduction to assign an absolute such as that. It dismisses the vast majority of the things that make us human, such as we are."

"That's great," Harry said after a pause. "But...well..."

Snape laughed, a short, sharp sound. "Well, well, Potter. You continue to surprise me today. It seems you have also acquired the ability to tell when somebody is trying not to answer one of those infernal questions of yours."

"Yeah," Harry said. "I did notice that."

Snape chuckled again. "Then I'll give you a little lesson in the ways of the world, Potter," he said. "When someone does that it's for one of two reasons. Either they don't know, and they don't want you to know that, or they do know and they don't want you to know what they know."

"Which is it here?" Harry asked, wading through that.

"A little of both," said Snape. "Perhaps a bit more the first than the second, when all is said and done."

"He did it to you," Harry said slowly. "Because there are things you can't know, but you probably need to know you knew just in case. And yet you still don't know how to...what to...how I should..."

"No," Snape said. "I don't."

Harry circled his wand lazily, playing it between his fingers. Snape sighed and stirred restlessly.

"Albus Dumbledore is not an icon of all that is pure and good," he said. "He has done, and he will do, things that are not only illegal, but morally and ethically difficult, in the name of goodness. But he is, Potter, and this is a painful lesson to learn I am told, though it was never such a shock to me, he is, after all, only a man."

"He said he wanted to keep me safe," Harry said. "He said choosing between keeping me safe and killing Voldemort...the two are pretty much mutually exclusive, you know?"

"So it would appear," Snape agreed. "And this, Potter, is why I am relegated to the relatively easy task of simply spying on the Death Eaters, not leading the cause against them. There is no good that has not, at one time or another, sullied itself in evil. We are humans, and we are complicated, and we will not be measured, and we will not be classified. We may choose sides, and we may fight, and we may die, but we are never creatures of pure good."

"Then what is there?" Harry asked, dismayed. "If we can't be good, then what can we be?"

"I never said we can't be good," Snape said. "And I never said we can't do good. Professor Dumbledore has, with no doubt whatsoever, made the world a better, a safer, a happier place for thousands of wizards. For Muggles too, if truth be told."

"But what is there?" Harry asked, feeling a conviction he had believed in so deeply and devotedly slipping away through his fingers. "What is there to know about what we are doing? How can we keep...I don't know, fighting, I guess?"

"Because," Snape said, "the converse is true, as well. There is no pure evil in this world, and there is no evil that has not, at one point or another, dabbled in good."

"But Voldemort isn't human anymore," Harry said. "He's something else."

"Yes," Snape agreed. "He is no longer human. The rules, such as they are, do not apply to him anymore." Though Harry could not see him, he was sure Snape smiled in the dark. "He has not always been thus, however."

"I saw him, you know," Harry said softly. "As a human. Sort of. In the diary. He was just a little older than I am now, and he had already killed."

"You both made your decisions early," Snape said. "You had to."

"What good did he ever do?" Harry asked.

"I'm not sure," Snape said. "But there's something, I have no doubt. It will be important, I imagine."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, sure of it as well.

They sat in silence for a long time. The stillness of the cave, the faint rustling of their movements, the formerly ominous calm of the water were more soothing now. Harry found himself lulled, swayed, and pressed down beneath the now tender clutches of his exhaustion. He lapsed into a half doze, his wand clutched loosely in his hands, not thinking of good and evil, of the choices he and Tom Riddle had made, of the unspoken corollary to Snape's ideas--that Harry himself was human as well, just like Dumbledore and Snape were, and the way Tom Riddle had once been.

Time passed quietly, unobtrusively, and in the other end of the boat Snape was silent and still.

When the tug came, Harry nearly lost his wand to the surprise of it. He snatched at the slender stick of wood, for once regretting its smooth polish as it whispered easily through his grasping fingers. But he caught it, just barely, and there was a series of splashes as he reclaimed control.

"You have something?" Snape asked, turning.

"I...I reckon so," Harry said. "It doesn't feel like I imagined, but..." he tugged experimentally at the wand and was surprised by the amount of drag he could feel. He had always thought a fish would be a lot lighter, would nibble, not grab and catch and drag.

"Let me," Snape said, leaning over and snatching Harry's wand away, pressing his own in its place. Harry held the wand, surprised by a familiar tingle. It was like and unlike holding his own wand: possessing the same sort of potential in his hands, the ability to make magic happen between them, but it did not have the spicy flavor of his own wand. Harry had almost forgotten using Snape's wand in that lesson with the Headmaster, but the wand, apparently, had not.

Harry's musings were interrupted by a muttered curse from Snape, followed by a series of successively louder splashes.

"What?" Harry asked, craning his neck and straining his eyes to no avail.

"Whatever you've managed to hook, it certainly isn't a Pariter," Snape said, doing something or other with his hands and Harry's wand as he spoke. "It's much too large and heavy."

"Couldn't I have hooked something else that lives in here?" Harry asked, a bit apprehensively.

"It would be very odd," Snape said. "The bait I procured is very attractive to Pariteri, but almost repellent to most other aquatic species. It's charmed to ensure easy and relatively quick harvesting of a specific creature."

"So what did I get?" Harry asked, still squinting uselessly into the dark.

"Probably a branch or some such," Snape said. "It's not alive, I don't think. Here, give me my wand, we'll need a light."

"Lumos," Harry said, without thinking. In his hand, Snape's wand burst into dazzling light, and Harry could see Snape flinching and covering his eyes even as he did the same. Harry was expecting a caustic comment from Snape, perhaps a remark about his eternal habit of overdoing things, but the man was oddly silent. When he finally uncovered his eyes and squinted against the diminishing brightness, Harry found himself the object of intense, thoughtful scrutiny.

"Er," he said intelligently. "I, er, that is..." Snape continued to stare. Harry never found out what Snape would have said about his student using his wand so easily.

They both saw it at about the same time, and it struck them both speechless for several seconds. It didn't take Harry long to realize what it was, even with his eyes still dazzled by the light, and his thoughts scattered.

The head came up first, and Harry almost laughed at the ridiculous, cartoonish idea of hooking a skeleton in the mouth like a fish. But the hook was actually in the eye socket, curving up and disappearing into the whitish shelf of forehead through the dark, empty hole. The rest of the skeleton bobbed up behind, standing out starkly white against the dark water, arms and legs trailing tendrils of green and purple and blue plant life like strange jewelry. It was a complete skeleton, Harry saw, as it listed in the water, turning slowly and beginning to sink beneath the surface again under Snape's slack pressure.

Snape seemed to realize this, for he began moving again, reeling in the line with quick, sharp flicks of the wrist.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked, only noticing afterwards that his voice was an alarmed squeak.

"Reeling it in," Snape said, not looking at him.

"But--but--it's a--what is it doing in there?" he lowered his voice a little. "Who do you suppose--"

"How would I know?" Snape snapped. It occurred to Harry suddenly that the professor was as shocked and alarmed as he was. Snape just had different ways of showing it.

"What are you going to do with it?" he asked, making an effort to regulate his voice.

"There are ways to magically identify remains," Snape said almost abstractedly. Harry couldn't help flinching back a little as the skeleton bobbed up beside the boat like a bizarre guide buoy. "Would you rather I simply leave it here?" Snape added after a moment.

"Well, no," Harry said, finally regaining his sense of equilibrium. "I reckon we can't do that." He gazed down at the thing, shuddering a little as an unseen rack of finger bones scraped lightly against the side of the boat. "It looks so strange," he murmured.

"Not much like a human being," Snape commented.

"No," Harry said thoughtfully. He was imagining his own bones like that, cheekbones jutting garishly over a gaping empty hole that was the mouth, the jaw an intricate and oddly foreign construction, the tiny, almost insignificant column of little knobs running from the arch of skull down to the curve of sharp, fleshless hips. They all looked like that on the inside, he figured. Strange, alien things, all angles and odd proportions and blank, staring places.

"We, er, we still need to get another Pariter," Harry said after a silence. Snape, too, had been gazing down at the unexpected catch.

"Yes," the professor said, lifting his head. "Yes." He leaned out, examining the skeleton, then murmured a quiet, "Mobiliossis." The skeleton rose out of the water, trailing lines of algae and streaming water like an ancient battleship raised from the deep.

"How old d'you reckon it is?" Harry asked, oddly fascinated.

"It's almost entirely stripped," Snape said. "Which isn't surprising for a water environment. But several years at least. It's not very old, though. I'd place a rough estimate at between five and fifteen years. There are ways of narrowing that down." He paused, leaning closer. "Female, too, if I don't miss my guess," he added, gesturing first at the hips, then the shoulders.

Under Snape's direction the skeleton performed a sort of midair acrobatic dance, folding arms and legs in on themselves with a groaning and creaking and cracking, until Snape lowered a compacted pile of bones into the boat between them. It smelled intensely of the water and the fungus that still clung to it, and this close Harry could see the little chisel marks along the edges of the jaw and cheek and ocular bones that he knew had to be the legacy of years of fish stripping and stripping and stripping away.

Harry shuddered and turned away. "We should get going," he said.

"Extinguish the light then," Snape said. Harry glanced down, then up again, surprised that Snape seemed to have forgotten that Harry had used the professor's wand so easily. But if Snape wasn't going to make an issue of it, Harry wasn't either. He quenched the light, then conjured a new fishing line, baited it, and cast.

The rest of the time in the boat was strange and silent. The skeleton hunched between them, glimmering whitely even in the subdued light. It dripped steadily, and the soft plops, uneven and unpredictable, ratcheted up Harry's nerves minute by minute. He didn't even bother imagining what Snape was thinking. The man was still and inscrutable on the other side of their gruesome passenger, and he said nothing even when the second Pariter snapped at his bait and was reeled in.

They glided back to the shore as smoothly as they had embarked, and it wasn't until he stood up and stepped onto dry land that Harry realized how cramped and sore he was. He stood a moment, stretching his arms and legs and wondering just how long they had been down here.

Snape unfolded himself from the boat and stepped ashore as well, levitating the container of fish and the skeleton with him. The boat melted away as soon as his feet were solidly planted.

"Wait," Harry said, as the man reached into his robes, presumably for the portkey. "I have a question, first."

Snape sighed. "The spell still holds," he said.

"How can you be a spy?" Harry asked. "Dumbledore said in the Pens--at Karkaroff's trial that you were a spy. There were hundreds of people there. How can you go back now?"

Snape eyed him for a long moment. "I suppose you might as well know," he said after a silence, "though it would be obvious to a quicker intellect. I can be a spy, Potter, because I am a spy. In many ways."

Harry blinked, frowned, then started as the implications sunk home. "You--he--oh." He snapped his mouth shut under Snape's glare. "Thanks," he said after a moment. "I've been wondering that all day."

"I won't ask how you know about that trial," Snape said, with a sardonic eyebrow tilt. "It is, no doubt, a harrowing tale of adventure and daring."

"Turns out a lot more harrowing than I originally thought," Harry said, thinking of Filia.

"Shall we go?" Snape said, withdrawing the shrivelfig.

***

Harry stood for a long moment, gazing up into the slowly darkening sky. It had been a shock to him, and to Snape too, he suspected, to arrive back at the castle and discover that dinner was already in progress. Time on the underground lake was a strange thing, quiet and tricky. The two had parted only minutes before, Snape with the skeleton and fish to his lab, Harry intending to change his clothes and get some dinner. He hadn't, after all, eaten once that day, and though he wasn't hungry at all, he figured he should at least put in an appearance.

But he had made it only to the entrance hall before realizing that he really wasn't up for company of any kind. Snape had been alright--he and Harry seemed to have three settings: snarling, silence, and serious conversation. Any of the three suited Harry that day, but the chatter and noise and color of a Hogwarts dinner would have been too much of a shock, he suspected.

So he had slipped up to the dorm, changed clothes, and picked up his Firebolt before making his way outside to the pitch. He needed to fly this evening, to breathe the clean Scottish air, to go faster than was really necessary, even smart, to watch the world spin beneath him as he looped and rolled, and know that this, this at least he could do and be sure of.

Harry swung onto the Firebolt and let the earth drop out from beneath him. He flew high and fast, squinting against the dazzle of the just setting sun, then turning his back on it and watching the spectacle of Hogwarts limed in red and orange light. He flew high enough for the pitch and the stands to blur into a single patch on the ground, a ground and a world that seemed so distant for just a little while. He was not tired, he was not confused, he was not afraid. He was none of the things he had been for the past forty-eight hours. He simply flew.

It wasn't until the sun had set entirely and darkness was truly beginning to fall that Harry began to slowly, reluctantly descend. It was only then that he realized that he did not have the sky entirely to himself. Someone was hovering below him, Hogwarts robes flapping in the slight breeze, a pale oval of face turned up towards him. Harry leaned down, squinting. He'd done a lot of squinting at shadows that day.

It wasn't until he'd circled much closer that he recognized Ginny.

"Hullo," she called as soon as he was in hearing distance.

"Hi," Harry greeted, dropping down to parallel her lazy circling. "What are you doing out here?"

"Same thing as you, I imagine," she said. "Avoiding people."

"Anybody in particular?" Harry asked.

She shrugged. "Sort of, sort of not. You?"

"The same."

They flew quietly for a few moments, slowly letting the ground come closer, bit by bit.

"You haven't been around all day," Ginny said finally.

"I had some things to take care of."

Ginny gave him a sharp look, and it suddenly occurred to Harry that clandestine errands from him usually didn't bode well. Especially towards the end of the year. He was just opening his mouth to try and reassure her, as dry and false as the words sounded in his head, when she pre-empted him.

"Well, it's been a busy day," she said. "You've missed some...interesting things."

"Oh?"

Ginny hesitated, glancing from him back to the castle. "Hermione...well. I really don't understand her most of the time, but today really was something, even for her."

"What happened?" Harry asked, alarmed. He had sudden visions of Hermione, somehow effected by the memory charms or Commoneo itself, acting strange and forgetful, or going downright crazy.

"Maybe you should just come back and see for yourself," Ginny said.

Harry frowned over at her, but she wasn't looking at him as she tilted her broom more sharply down and went in for a landing. Harry followed suit, and they slung their brooms over their shoulders as they headed back for the castle. The grounds were deserted and silent around them, save for the splashing of the giant squid and Fang's faint barking from somewhere in the Forbidden Forest.

Ginny was walking very close to him, Harry realized suddenly as her shoulder brushed his. She kept glancing over at him, too, smiling with an air of resigned satisfaction that Harry had never seen on her, or anybody else for that matter.

They made it up to Gryffindor with no trouble, though Ginny had to remind Harry of the password in his abstraction. The common room was its usual Sunday self, much more subdued than Friday or Saturday evenings as everyone got down to the homework they had been putting off all weekend. Harry's eyes tracked automatically around the room, over Fred and George hunched resentfully over their books, Colin and Dennis arguing over a pincushion, and to the table he, Ron, and Hermione had made their own.

He stopped, stared. Beside him, he was pretty sure Ginny was holding her breath, though he wasn't paying all that much attention.

Ron saw him right away, and looked torn between waving him over and wishing him away. He was flushed, a bit wild eyed, and appeared equal parts astounded, delighted, and terrified. His chair was pulled around the table up close to Hermione's, and his larger hand completely enveloped hers where it lay between their parchments and books.

Harry stood for a moment longer, just long enough for Hermione to glance up. She started a little, looked as if she would have liked to yank her hand away from Ron, but restrained herself. She would not meet his eyes. Her hair looked funny, Harry noticed, twisted up on top of her head in a fancy knot, and he could almost swear she was wearing make-up.

Making Ron's decision for him, Harry turned away. He muttered something or other to Ginny, a good night, he hoped, and hurried for the boys' staircase and the dorm.

He undressed without bothering to turn on the lights, and he didn't want to acknowledge how much his hands were shaking. His bed sheets were cool, almost cold against his suddenly hot skin as he slipped into bed. He pressed his face into the pillow, holding his breath until the darkness behind his eyes exploded in colored lights and he was forced to suck in a gasping, cotton flavored breath. His chest and throat felt tight and achy, and Harry drew his knees to his chest, hugging them tightly. He reached for his wand, which he had automatically slipped beneath his pillow, clutching it in an instinctual need for the solace of magic.

It was only then that he realized that it was not his own wand. The pulse of contact magic was familiar, but not primal, not reverberant and echoey like it normally was. Harry drew the wand out and squinted at it, though he already knew whose it was.

Snape was a spy, Harry thought a little dizzily. And he could be a spy because Voldemort knew he was a spy, because Voldemort had ordered him to spy on Hogwarts. Dumbledore's declaration at Karkaroff's trial had been no accident, knowing Dumbledore, but a clever way of fooling Voldemort into believing that Dumbledore trusted Snape, would share knowledge with Snape. Dumbledore did trust Snape, and he probably had shared some things with him, but it wasn't quite what Voldemort thought, Harry was sure.

Snape was a spy. A double agent, really, to put it in action thriller terms. He had done things, he had seen things, that Harry didn't even want to imagine. Yet Harry felt a little like him right then in the dark, curled in a tight, protective ball, knowing too much, knowing what he had yet to learn, knowing the decisions he would have to make. This day had completed a process begun nearly a year before in a graveyard outside of Little Hangleton, stripping away the layers of illusion and hope and conviction from Harry's childish beliefs, leaving only the bones for him, the hard, frightening things that lie beneath everything. There would be no pure victory in the war to come, Harry knew. People would die, and people would do unspeakably cruel and awful things. Harry flinched from thinking of his own role, and of the sheer scope of his own unawareness.

Harry drifted to sleep slowly, finally surrendering to the rest that had been beckoning all day. He dreamed of Ron and Hermione together, of the things he had forgotten and remembered, of Albus Dumbledore and the decisions he had made, of Snape and the things he knew and did not know. And Harry dreamed of bones, of his own body stripped of flesh, laid out below him stark and white like the skeleton from the depths of the lake. For Harry, that night, the bones were all there were.