Aside: Dead Ends (Part I of III)
Title: Dead Ends
Author: Mrs. Hyde and das_mervin
Fandom: Harry Potter/Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Word Count: 23,765
Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements and some language
Summary: Harry Potter searches for Snape. A companion fic to “Strange Bedfellows.”
Author’s Notes: Well, we’re sorry to say that you aren’t going to see Harry anymore. He went home when Sands told him to, and so the boys don’t hear from him again. But, with no more information on him, his little scene in Chapter 10 feels a bit like a loose end. So here we take a break from our fic to present to you a scene from the Director’s Cut of “Strange Bedfellows” that shows you how Harry Potter came to Culiacán and why he left.
DEAD ENDS
PART I
Harry Potter strode angrily out of the Mexico City city hall, letting the door slam loudly shut behind him as he emerged into the harsh Mexican sunlight.
He couldn’t be stuck. He just couldn’t. Not after all this time. Not after coming all this way. Not after all he’d done, all he’d found. He was here, Harry knew it. Had he tracked him across over fifteen countries with nothing more than a handful of clues to go on, only to be stymied now?
No. Snape was here. And Harry would find him.
“Sure I saw him,” grunted Aberforth. “Came in last night. Asked for a room. Paid up front and was gone first thing this morning.”
Harry leaned against the worn and dirty planks of the bar, taking a drink of the somewhat dusty butterbeer that he’d ordered out of politeness (it was either that or something stronger, and truth be told, he’d never much cared for Firewhisky-particularly not after the sorry state he’d been in the morning after his stag party-not even now when it would have been nice and warm after coming out of the late-December snows). “Did he have any luggage with him?”
Aberforth shrugged, wiping a glass and setting it back down behind the bar. “Two little satchels. Nothin’ else. But that weren’t unusual-not many what come here stay for too long.”
“And Lethesson wouldn’t be one of those who did,” Harry added dryly, and Aberforth shrugged again, this time in agreement.
Harry had been assigned to his current case a week ago. Someone had been selling black market, mind-altering potions. It was a normal enough occurrence in Knockturn Alley, but whoever this was had been branching out, first moving his business into the more respectable Diagon Alley, and then, more alarmingly, into Hogsmeade, making his wares accessible to the students on their Hogsmeade weekends.
That’s when things had gone from merely a regular-if unwanted-occurrence into something considerably more serious, and the investigation was kicked up a few notches. It hadn’t taken the Department of Magical Law Enforcement much time to identify their culprit as one Hypnos Lethesson, a repeat offender who already had numerous fines and three short stints in Azkaban under his belt, for crimes ranging from assault to theft-but most often for trafficking of illegal substances.
And once they had a lead to follow, they had assigned Harry to the case.
Fenton Mudd had been on it alone before, and he had been the one to finally pin a name on their anonymous criminal. Now that they had someone to track, the head of the department assigned him a novice to help with the work.
Really, it had been a refreshing experience for Harry, joining the Auror force. The rest of the Wizarding world seemed to regard him as an expert on fighting the Dark Arts-the foremost expert, no less-because honestly, he’d already vanquished the Most Hated and Feared Dark Wizard in History. These petty crooks should be no problem for him.
But the long-time members of the DMLE didn’t treat him like that. Oh, there might have been a little awe on their parts in the beginning, back when he first joined, because, well, he was Harry Potter, after all. But it quickly evaporated when it became obvious that while he could duel, he couldn’t spot a cursed object to save his life. That while he was pretty decent at putting clues together, he’d never really had to find his own clues before, having left that to Hermione. That while he was fearless in the face of a frontal assault, he was rubbish at sneaking up on anyone.
In the DMLE, he was just another greenhorn, down at the bottom of the heap, and he was treated accordingly.
And that’s why he was here, patiently tracing Lethesson’s steps, searching his last known whereabouts for some clue as to where he was going next.
Harry had been to the Hog’s Head before on business; it seemed that no matter who was in charge, who was pulling the strings at the Ministry, there was always a steady stream of small-time crooks looking to fence their wares or eavesdrop for blackmail material or find oblivion in the bottom of a potion bottle. And, it seemed, while regimes came and went, those sorts of places remained the same.
As did their owners. Harry wouldn’t exactly call Aberforth uncommunicative, it was just that he always made it a point not to pay too close attention to what went on under the tables in his establishment. He’d probably talk if he knew anything, but he really didn’t.
Harry sighed, giving his butterbeer cork a quick spin on the bar before looking up. “You mind if I have a look at his room?” he asked.
Aberforth shook his shaggy head. “Haven’t been up there to tidy it yet,” he said, wiping his hands on the grimy towel tucked in his belt loop as he came ‘round the bar.
“Good,” said Harry. “Might find something.”
Aberforth snorted as Harry followed him to the rickety flight of stairs behind the bar that led up to the bedrooms. “Doubt it-some’un on the run ain’t likely to leave much trace behind.”
Harry shrugged, smiling slightly, his hands in his pockets against the chill that pervaded the room this far from the fireplace. “Yeah-but you never know.”
The hallway was dark and dank, and there was still the lingering, unlovely aroma of goats that Harry had come to associate with Aberforth Dumbledore. They stopped at the second room to the right; with a jangle of the key ring on his belt, Aberforth opened the door and let them in.
From the looks of things, Lethesson had left in something of a hurry-probably because he was up to no good. Harry had seen the rooms here before; the few bits of dilapidated furniture were placed about the room in the same layout in all of them. But not this one; Lethesson had pushed all the furniture back to the walls, leaving a nice clear space by the hearth, with the exception of the small table, which he had pulled up close to the fire. The tabletop was scoured clean, to the point of revealing fresh wood-the mark of someone magically obliterating any trace of what had been resting on said table, so there was no chance of finding any residue of Billywig stings or hellebore syrup. The hearth was filled with ashes and the room was cold, but the now-dead coals had been banked in a fashion that looked as though they’d been heating a cauldron recently.
“Busy fellow,” Harry remarked wryly to the lanky man leaning against the doorframe. Aberforth just grunted as Harry made a sweep with his wand, his tracking spell keyed to Lethesson as he searched for anything he might have left behind; Mudd had almost managed to corner their suspect before Harry had been put on this case, and the man had made such a hasty escape that he’d dropped a few of the bottles he was carrying-bottles of just the stuff that he was being accused of selling. They were hard evidence of his guilt, as well as one of his belongings to which they could tune a spell to trace him.
Now Harry just had to find him.
“You didn’t hear anything suspicious?” he asked over the sizzlings of his spell.
Aberforth shook his head. “Kept quiet-most do what stays in my place.” He crossed his arms and regarded Harry in silence as Harry’s spell fizzled out-and, as he suspected, Lethesson had been very careful not to leave anything behind, just a stray hair or two on the dented pillow. “Them what do make noise usually don’t stay long.” He closed his mouth, and looked long around the room, his glasses glinting in the weak afternoon sunlight. “‘Specially not in this room,” he added after a moment.
Harry looked at him quizzically, his wand half raised. “This room?”
Aberforth grunted. “Rented out this room to that Trelawney woman some years ago. She made quite a racket, and was out of here and up at the castle the very next day.”
“Oh,” Harry said, and he turned, and for a moment the scene seemed to swim before his eyes: Trelawney, bedecked in beads and shawls, intoning the words of the prophecy that dictated the course of his life to the stunned Albus Dumbledore…and Snape, crouching eagerly by the keyhole before Aberforth found him and pitched him out the door, and then running back to his master with his news…
Harry shook his head, dismissing his flight of fancy. “Well, it doesn’t look like there’s anything here,” he said, “but thanks for letting me have a look anyway.” And he raised his wand again and swept it wide around the room. The still-rumpled bed made itself (Harry knew that Aberforth wasn’t one to change his sheets between guests), and the furniture went dancing back to where he knew it should go. The newly-scoured table skittered over to the window, its two accompanying chairs in hot pursuit, and the bed slid to the other wall, protesting creakily and kicking up clouds of dust and debris as it dragged its trailing, tattered blankets through years of accumulated filth on the floor to the space where it usually rested.
He set it down with a thump. The whole thing sagged with a tired wheeze, sending out a cloud of dust from beneath it; a dirty scrap of paper was blown out from under it as it settled, and it skated lightly out across the floor to come to a rest against Harry’s shoe.
Without thinking, he leaned over to pick it up, sliding his wand away in his pocket as he leaned down. “When was the last time you dusted under there, Aberforth?” he asked dryly as he straightened up, swiping at the thick layer of dust that coated the scrap with his thumb.
“When they pay me to,” he answered easily, and Harry snorted, rubbing absently at the scrap in his hand.
“Well, you were right-looks like there’s nothing here,” he said. “Sorry to have bothered you, and thanks for letting me have a look around. And please,” he added, “do let us know if Lethesson shows up here again? I know that the-er-“no questions asked” policy is part of the charm of this place, but-”
“I don’t want nobody here what sells stuff like that to kids,” Aberforth said gruffly.
Harry grinned. “Nor do we. I appreciate your help, then,” he said, and, glancing down, added, “Well, I suppose I’ll be-”
He blinked.
His mother was laughing up at him from the scrap of paper in his hands.
He just stared for a moment, and then furiously wiped the rest of the dust away. It was old, tattered ‘round the edges and folded across the front, and dirt had been ground into the creases in the paper-but the surface was still tiredly glossy beneath the layers of grime, and Harry soon found himself looking at a laughing, happy photograph of Lily Potter.
No-it was only half a photograph, he realized. Dimly, he heard Aberforth say his name, but he didn’t answer. This picture…it was…the other half was in his photo album, taken from Grimmauld Place when he was seventeen, showing his one-year-old self being chased by his father…but it had already been torn by then, his mother gone-taken-and Harry had seen it happen, when he’d dived into the misty contents of Dumbledore’s pensieve, toward the end, just before he’d…
“Did Snape come here a lot? In that last year?” he asked softly. He looked up just in time to see Aberforth’s inquiringly perplexed expression vanish behind a wall of blankness.
“No,” he answered shortly. “He never came here. Had more important things to attend to, I reckon.”
Harry frowned. “Never?” he asked.
Aberforth shook his head decisively. “Last time I saw him was back before he dispatched Albus-and even then, was for some work for the Order. I don’t think he ever came up here, to stay or nothing-except ‘that one time, before.”
Harry winced reflexively at the casual mention of what had happened atop the astronomy tower in his sixth year, but didn’t dwell on it long, instead looking down at the picture in his hands. “Then how…when could he…surely they didn’t bring him here?”
“Who?”
“The Death Eaters.” He looked up, staring blankly out at the flat grey sky beyond the high, tiny window. “Why would they bring his body here before they got rid of it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, boy,” Aberforth said roughly, the sharp sound of his voice startling Harry from his reverie. “Snape weren’t never here.”
“Then how did this get here?” Harry demanded, thrusting the picture out in front of him.
Aberforth squinted down at it. “What is it?” he asked, looking down his long nose at it; his eyes widened slightly behind his spectacles. “Wait-is that-that your mum?” he asked, his voice surprised.
“Yes! And Snape had it!”
Aberforth blinked, and when he looked up, his face was utterly closed. “I’ve never seen that before-and I don’t know how it got up here,” he said tersely. “But what I do know is that Snape weren’t here.”
“But he was!” Harry yelled, surprised by his own sudden vehemence. “He had to have been!” He yanked out his wand, tapped it twice to the photograph, and then swung it wide and yelled, “Tractus!”
And the bright yellow light crackled from his wand and arced unerringly under the bed, along the wall beneath the cracked mirror, and on the floorboards beside the bed. Triumphant, Harry called, “Accio!” and up from the floor and into his hand sailed a tiny black button and several long, dark hairs, still glittering from his tracking spell. “See!” he said, thrusting them right beneath Aberforth’s nose. “He was here!” He cast his eyes around, almost as if expecting to see the man himself standing there-and he saw a few lingering motes of light sparkling on the ground near his feet.
Harry dropped unceremoniously to his knees; there, lit up in the fading vestiges of his spell, were several dark, irregular spots on the floor beneath him, blotches of a dull, rusty colour that Harry had seen before, staining the warped and splintered floorboards of the Shrieking Shack-all that they had ever found of Snape’s body.
He used his wand to gouge out a splinter of the wood from the biggest stain, leaving a line of pale, fresh wood in its wake-the abused floor looked no worse off for the chunk missing-and then he stood.
To find Aberforth looking at him with a mixture of anger and frustration. “Potter-”
“He was here,” Harry said, his voice firm, and he looked at Aberforth-and for the first time in Harry’s life, the penetrating blue eyes of one of the Dumbledores looked away. Conviction bubbled up inside of him. “And you knew he was here.”
“I did not!” Aberforth growled, now looking angrily back up at him. “I told you, I don’t know how that got there-”
“It couldn’t have been the Death Eaters,” said Harry, cutting across Aberforth’s words as he began to pace, his strides eating easily a quarter of the tiny room in each step. “Voldemort had just ordered them all to the Forest-all except Snape, he called him to the Shrieking Shack to-and then he went right after them after he called me out-we always just assumed that he’d got rid of the body on his way out, but he didn’t need to go back into the room where Snape was to get out-stupid to think that-and anyway, he wouldn’t care enough to do it-so who did?” Harry’s hand found its way into his hair, tugging restlessly. “Did someone sneak his body out afterwards? No, no one else knew he was dead-I don’t even think the other Death Eaters did. Just us and Voldemort-but someone had to have brought him here-unless-”
The sudden realization hit Harry like a punch in the stomach. He stopped mid-stride, his mouth falling open, his insides knotting up like string. “He wasn’t dead,” he breathed.
“Don’t be stupid, Potter!” Aberforth barked. “Of course he was!”
“He was alive.” And then Harry’s stomach, which had been crawling up into his chest, sank like a stone to somewhere around his knees. “He was alive-and I left him lying there!” he said, his voice emerging as little more than a wheeze, his breath deserting him in his horror.
“Potter-you’re dreaming, now-no one but you ever survived when You-Know-Who set out to kill ‘em.”
Aberforth’s words washed over him unheeded; Harry shook his head. “No. He did-he must have-how else could he have got here?” He looked up and brandished his handful of discoveries. “He had to have come here! He-he must have-he had an antidote-a bezoar, or something-”
Aberforth barked a sardonic laugh. “Bezoars are for poisons, boy, not venom, don’t be ridiculous-”
“Or Blood-Replenishing solution!” Harry shouted. “He was in the Order-he’d have known that’s what Arthur needed when Nagini bit him!”
“And just how was he supposed to swallow a potion with his throat torn out?” Aberforth said derisively.
“He could just-” And Harry froze, before whirling where he stood and fixing Aberforth with narrowed eyes. “How did you know that?” he asked slowly.
“Know what?” Aberforth no longer looked scornful, but wary.
Harry eyed him. “Know that his throat was torn out?”
Aberforth glared at him. “You told everyone-that he was attacked by that ruddy great snake of his-”
“I said he was bitten,” Harry answered, his words even. “That didn’t mean that his throat was torn out-but it was-and you knew it.”
Aberforth looked furious, and when he next spoke, his voice was rising steadily. “Weasley was tore up by that snake-stands to reason Snape’d have been too!”
“It was you.” It was not a question. “You took him out of there-you brought him here.”
“I was fighting alongside everyone else that night!” Aberforth shouted. “I didn’t even know he was dead ‘fore Voldemort said it when the two of you was fighting!”
Harry’s fingers clenched tight, tighter around the objects in his hand, the button and the sliver of wood digging painfully into his palm, but he didn’t speak. Alive…still alive, after all this time…
“Where is he?” Harry asked; his words were sudden, but his voice was even and calm. “Where did he go?”
“You’re mental, Potter,” said Aberforth coldly. “And I’m not going to play this game with you. You’ve asked your questions-now it’s time for you to be leaving. I’ve no time for this lunacy-I have a business to run.” And he turned on his heel and stalked down the stairs.
Harry watched him go, his retreating back stiff, and then he sank down on the lumpy mattress behind him. Aberforth was right about one thing-it was ludicrous, the very idea that Snape had somehow survived, and yet…
Snape had been here, even though Aberforth denied it. They’d never found a body-something that had, sadly, happened more often than not in that last year of the war, so no one had really thought too much about it. But why would someone go to all the trouble of bringing his body here only to get rid of it? And Aberforth-what he said just didn’t add up.
Harry abruptly stood and strode down the stairs; the fetid odour of goats, stronger down in the bar proper, even in winter, assailed his nose. Aberforth was back behind his bar with a sullen air about him and didn’t look at Harry as he walked quickly through the pub and towards the door.
“Potter!”
He halted in his tracks just inside the doorframe, half in and half out of the door, that same door through which Aberforth had led them to safety that night of the battle-that night that Snape was supposed to have died.
Aberforth had come out from behind his bar; he was looking at Harry now, his blue eyes no longer cutting away, and in that moment they were more penetrating than his brother’s had ever been. “Let the dead lie, Potter,” he finally said. “Recriminations and what-might-have-beens eat at a man-and you’ve got no cause for ‘em.”
Harry stiffened. “But if he’s not dead-”
“Severus Snape is dead, Potter,” Aberforth interrupted roughly. “You of all people know what kind of life he lived-and now he’s got some measure of peace. Let it be, Potter. Let him be.”
Harry’s fist tightened involuntarily; the sliver of wood stabbed painfully into his flesh, and he turned and left without another word.
He could feel Aberforth’s eyes on him as he trudged through the snow all the way up the alley towards High Street. He stood just in the alley’s mouth, gazing up at the turrets of Hogwarts peering over the crests of the nearby hill, and then he looked up the street for a moment before Apparating away, reappearing with a crack by the sagging stile by the gate to the Shrieking Shack. He landed in a snowdrift up to his knees; he barely noticed, just extricated himself so that he could clamber over the fence and jog up the hill, quickly reaching the dilapidated porch and forcing the door open despite its rusty protests.
The Shack was as dank and miserable as it had always been, only now it was cold as well, and the warped and gaping boards offered little respite from the biting winter winds. But today Harry had no time to consider the rotting boards and the peeling wallpaper; he made his way straight into the nearly empty room that held the trapdoor to the tunnel up to Hogwarts.
An old, splintering crate and a table with a single chair sat inside, the cracked oil lamp on the tabletop extinguished for years. The floor was coated with dust that bore only the faintest ghosts of footprints past. And there, just by the crate, the old grey floorboards turned a dark brown, and if Harry squinted, he could see the vague imprint of the arms and shoulders of a man in the long-dried blood.
He dropped into a crouch, opening his hand and just staring at the stained splinter in his palm for a moment, before drawing his wand. “Gemmacus,” he muttered, pointing to the floor. A splinter of light lanced from the tip of his wand to bury itself in the stained wood.
And for a moment, nothing, and Harry felt as if he’d been pricked with a pin, all his air let out-and then his heart leapt to his throat, as a second point of light arced up from the floor and sped unerringly back to the splinter in his hand, matching that stain to the one on the floor.
It was his. It was Snape’s blood in the Hog’s Head.
He had been there.
And Harry was going to find out how.
Harry muttered a hurried apology in response to the indignant squawk of the little woman that he had bumped with his elbow while coming out of the lift. His arms were filled with stacks of paper, some neatly filed and some not, and it was all so hastily jumbled together that he kept losing sheets and he half-walked, half-ran through the Ministry; he’d had no time to bother with organizing it, instead just putting a haphazard charm on the whole pile to keep him from losing anything-so now as he walked, he was being chased by an ever-growing flock of loose leaves that fluttered and shushed along the floor behind him.
He took left and right turns down the hall, his feet making no sound as he strode across the thick blue carpet, leaving behind him the large offices of the senior members of the Wizarding government behind him as he travelled deep into the bowels of the building, where the more junior members were housed. He’d come this way so often that he never even needed to look up from the stack of paper in his arms as he walked, going all the way down to the little office at the end of the hall with the neatly lettered brass plaque that read:
Hermione Granger
Junior Undersecretary for the Magical Creatures Community
Harry didn’t bother knocking, just went right in. It was lunch hour, after all, and she shouldn’t be talking to anyone.
And as it turned out, she wasn’t. She and Ron sprung apart mid-snog when the door flew open. Harry didn’t bat an eye, just gave an off-hand “Hullo, Ron,” before dropping his stacks of papers and files on Hermione’s desk and saying, “Snape’s alive. And I need your help to find him.”
They stared at him as though he had bowtruckles crawling from his ears.
It was Ron who finally broke the heavy blanket of silence. “What?”
“He’s alive! Look!” Harry yanked the little cloth bag from out of his pocket and spilled its contents on Hermione’s painfully neat desk. “Look!” he said again. “This is a button from his robes-my tracking spell confirmed it. And his hair-” he unrolled the handkerchief to show the long black strands- “and this, this bloodstain-it’s an exact match to the one in the Shrieking Shack. And this picture!” He waved the torn and dirty image of his mother through the air before slapping down on the wood before them. “It was Sirius’s-the one from Grimmauld Place. Snape took it because-well, he took it, and he wouldn’t have just thrown it away-but I found it and all this other stuff in the Hog’s Head-so he couldn’t have died that night! He was there! He’s still alive, and I have to find him!”
Still they just stared at him, saying nothing, their expressions making it more than clear that they thought he’d finally gone ‘round the twist. “Don’t you see?” he demanded in aggravation. “Somehow he was in the Hog’s Head that night. And he couldn’t have been before he went to the Shack-it had to be after! He had to have survived!”
“Harry-” Hermione’s voice was quiet, halting. “Harry, Snape’s dead. We were there-we saw it-”
“We saw him get attacked,” Harry interrupted, raising one finger. “We never saw him actually die-because he didn’t. He was still alive-and we just left him there-and so now I have to find him.”
Ron made an incredulous noise. “Harry-no one could have survived that. That ruddy snake of You-Voldemort’s tore his throat right out. There wasn’t a drop of blood left in him.”
“Yes!” Harry was exultant-surely now they’d see. “And Aberforth knew it!”
“What?”
“Aberforth-that’s how I found it-found out.” His hands restlessly shuffled papers at random. “I was on the Lethesson case this week, you know, and I’d tracked him over to the Hog’s Head, and that was when I found this stuff.” He cast his hand in the direction of the small scatter of Snape’s things sitting innocuously in the pooled cloth of the bag that had just held them. “And when I started talking about it, trying to figure out how he could have been there, Aberforth let slip that he knew that Snape’s throat had been torn out, even though we three were the only ones who knew about that-Aberforth must have seen him!”
He dived into the stack on Hermione’s desk, sending more paper flying to land on the floor and then creep up back to flap at his ankles as he searched wildly for his lists. “Look-I went back through all the records of the battle, all the first-hand accounts-I even sent some letters and talked to some people-Neville, Seamus, McGonagall-and no one can account for Aberforth!” He found the lists he was looking for and waved the papers in their faces. “No one saw him between the time that the Dementors attacked us until it was all over-and he must have gone in there and got Snape out! That’s why we never found his body-he’s not dead!”
“Harry.” Hermione’s voice had gone gentle and patient now. “Just because we never found a body doesn’t mean he’s still alive-we never found Moody either; the Death Eaters didn’t leave bodies-”
“Moody was one of ours,” Harry said, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “They still thought Snape was one of theirs. They wouldn’t have done that.” He dived back into his papers. “And anyway, there wasn’t anyone who could have.”
Ron opened his mouth to speak, but Harry cut him off, brandishing another sheaf of parchment. “It’s not just the people on our side-I’ve accounted for all the Death Eaters, too.” He looked down, his eyes rapidly scanning his hastily-scribbled timeline, despite the fact that he all but knew it by heart anyway. “See, before I realized he was alive, I was just trying to figure out who had taken his body all the way back to the Hog’s Head to get rid of it-why someone would do that-and then I realized that there wasn’t anyone.” He tossed the papers down on top of his last list. “There-there’s a list of all of the Death Eaters who were captured, dead, or otherwise incapacitated, and by then, Voldemort had ordered all the rest into the Forest, and I had all their names confirmed by Yaxley and Narcissa Malfoy-and on top of that, none of their people that I talked to saw Aberforth either.”
He looked at them, meeting their eyes in turn, trying to make them see. “The only people in that Shack were him, us, and Snape-and Voldemort went right out into the Forest himself after that. He couldn’t be bothered with getting rid of a body, he was waiting for me!” Harry stabbed a finger at his chest. “So Snape’s body still should have been there-except that Aberforth went in and got him out!” He grinned elatedly as his puzzle pieces began to fall into place, and he rounded out his argument with, “And if he’d died, Aberforth wouldn’t have hidden the body or anything, he’d have told us, so we could bury him properly, but he didn’t-so Snape must still be alive!”
Harry beamed at them, waiting. Hermione was looking at one of his stacks of lists and timelines with a small crease between her eyebrows, and then she looked up. “Harry-all this is circumstantial.”
“And anyway-no one who You-Voldemort set out to kill ever survived it-‘cept you, of course,” Ron said with a frown. “And if he was that set on getting the Elder Wand, you think he’d have taken the chance of just leaving him there? No-he’d have made sure Snape was dead, and probably gone back to take care of the body, too!”
“No, no!” Harry shook his head, his euphoria souring slightly. “If he’d got rid of the body, then how did his blood and hair and things wind up in the Hog’s Head?”
“Those could have got there at any time, Harry,” said Hermione. “The other teachers chased Snape out of the school-out of a window, you said. He could have been bleeding after flying through all that broken glass, and then he went to the Hog’s Head before Voldemort summoned him-Aberforth said the Death Eaters used his place all the time-”
“But Aberforth said he never came there!” Harry said, getting angry now. Why couldn’t they see it? “And Snape wouldn’t have just dropped that picture of my mum!”
“But how could Aberforth have known whether or not Snape came there?” Ron asked stubbornly. “Everything was crazy that night-Snape might have sneaked in the back, just to regroup-and he might not have known that he dropped the picture.” Ron’s face was set. “He’s dead, mate.”
“No!” said Harry fiercely. “Because look at this!” And he snatched up the papers written on the official Gringotts letterhead. “I went to Snape’s house after I found this stuff-up north, you know, where he and my mum used to live-to see if there were any clues there. No one had been in there since that first time I went up there-but I went through everything much more carefully this time around, and I found a list of his accounts, so I went to Gringotts.” The official Ministry document pertaining to the distribution of the property of one Severus Snape, deceased, was stacked behind the letter from Gringotts, and Harry fanned it out so they could see it as he said, “He had no legal heirs, but I pulled a few strings to have all of his property put in my name-including his vault-because I didn’t want…well, anyway, it’s all mine, but when I got to the bank, the goblins told me that two months after the night Snape was supposed to have died, someone with a key and the correct number emptied Snape’s vault by owl!” he finished, in triumph. Now he had them-there was no way they could explain that away.
Hermione took the papers; Ron peered over her shoulder, frowning, and they briefly met each other’s eyes, their expressions exasperated, before turning back to Harry. “Someone could have stolen his vault key, Harry-” Hermione started.
“No!” Harry yelled, frustrated. “He’s alive! Why can’t you see it?”
“Because none of this adds up, Harry-and it’s you who can’t see it,” said Ron firmly. “You’ve found all this stuff, and now you’ve got it in your head that Snape’s out there-because you can’t let it go when it comes to Snape.” Harry furiously opened his mouth, but Ron ploughed on, “You already got him his portrait and his Order of Merlin and his monument in the Hogwarts grounds next to Dumbledore, but that’s not enough for you-now you’ve got to dream up some crazy idea that he’s still alive based on a few hairs and a bunch of garbled stories. But none of that-none of this-nothing you do will change the fact that Snape is dead.”
“But he’s not dead! Don’t you understand?!” Harry shouted back at him. “He’s not! All of this does add up-Aberforth wasn’t accounted for, all of these things were up in the Hog’s Head, despite the fact that Aberforth said he never went up there, none of the Death Eaters or Voldemort could’ve done anything with his body, and then, two months later, Snape’s vault is completely emptied! It does add up-and it adds up to Snape being still alive!”
There was a silence, save for the sound of Harry’s rapid breathing, and then Hermione finally said, “All right, Harry. Supposing he is still alive. What on earth could we do to help? It’s been over four years-and no word of him. If Snape really were alive, surely somebody would’ve seen him or heard from him somehow.”
“He’s hiding,” Harry answered immediately, starting to pace across Hermione’s floor, a bevy of papers at his feet. “No matter what I said, he’d still have to stand trial if he’d been found, even if only to be cleared-like the Malfoys did-and I know he wouldn’t have wanted that, so he’s obviously gone underground. In fact, I don’t think he’s even in the country anymore,” Harry said, coming to a stop back in front of the desk. “And that’s what I need from you, Hermione,” he said, pointing at her. “I’ve been down at the Portkey Office getting their back records-I need you to help me check the Portkey travel around the day Snape emptied his vault, because I’d be willing to bet that’s about the same time he left.”
“Harry-I’m in the middle of a case!” she said, her voice getting that shrill tone that he remembered from Hogwarts, the one she used on him when he wanted to go flying but she insisted that he do his homework. “That horrible Higgs woman is back again, trying to get the centaurs’ territory restricted so that she can build her summer home. I don’t have time to be looking through all this-” She stopped for a moment, and when she next spoke, her voice was quieter and vaguely suspicious. “For that matter, when did you have time to do all of this, Harry?” she asked, squinting at some of the papers.
“Yeah,” Ron added, looking down at the mess that Harry had made of Hermione’s desk. “Aren’t you supposed to be working on the Lethesson case?”
Harry waved a hand impatiently. “I got myself taken off the case-I had to find this out-”
“Harry!” Hermione was instantly disapproving. “You can’t just pick and choose when you want to work! You need to get back on that immediately-”
“This is more important than that!” Harry cut across her scolding.
Ron folded his arms, his expression dark. “More important than apprehending some scum who sells badly-brewed Sopophorus Solutions and Morpheus Mixtures to kids?” he asked coldly.
A noise of frustration escaped Harry, and he roughly shoved a few scattered papers onto the floor in annoyance; they gathered right back at his feet. “You just don’t understand, do you?” Harry growled, his agitation bubbling to the surface as his voice got louder and louder as he spoke. “I have to find him! I have to-we left him to die, but he’s alive, and I need-I need you two to stop patronizing me and help me find him!”
“But how, Harry?” asked Hermione painedly. “It would be impossible to track him down! If Snape really was alive and had taken a Portkey somewhere, somebody would’ve noticed, but no one has heard anything! He could have been Polyjuiced, or Disillusioned, or in any number of disguises! Not to mention that he could be anywhere, and left any number of ways-he could’ve Apparated, flown by broom, used Muggle transport-”
Harry cut across her protests yet again. “No, not Muggle-I ruled that out. Gringotts told me that none of his money was exchanged for Muggle money, so he wouldn’t have had any on him-” Harry stopped dead, his mouth falling open as a flash of inspiration slammed into his brain. “Unless…unless he counterfeited it!” he shouted at no one. “He could’ve used fake Muggle money!” His grin was wild. “I’ll be right back!”
Harry pounded out of the office, a trail of papers dashing madly behind him as he flew down the hall back to the lift. He nearly slammed into Kingsley on his way out as he careened around a sharp corner, but he didn’t stop, just called a hasty apology and kept on his way, coming to the lift. He tapped on the button repeatedly, but after ten seconds he gave up and threw himself against the door to the stairs, taking them two at a time down to level two.
He dashed down the hall, past the Auror Headquarters, and took a left into the Improper Use of Magic Office, throwing the double doors wide with both hands. Fanny Higgenbottom was sitting at the main desk, and she jumped at the sudden noise; the moment she saw Harry, she turned red and dropped the stack of papers she was using her wand to file. “Mr. Potter!” she said, her voice high.
“Hi, Fanny,” he said, panting slightly. “I need to talk to Jonathan-is he in?”
“Oh-oh, yes,” she said, her voice returning somewhat to normal but her cheeks still pink. “He just came in from lunch-is he expecting you?”
“No-something just came up on a case I’m following-I need to talk to him about it,” Harry replied, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“Well-all right.” She got up and went back into one of the offices behind her. It seemed to take forever, but finally she returned, followed by old Jonathan Sommerby, with whom Harry had worked before.
“Mr. Potter?” he said, sounding somewhat surprised. “What can I do for you today?”
“Sorry to sweep in on you like this,” Harry said, coming around to talk to him, kicking irritably at the papers still dogging his steps. “But I’m working on a case at the moment, and I need to ask you what you do about magically counterfeited Muggle money.”
“Oh, well-that’s simple enough.” Jonathan looked vaguely relieved, and relaxed as he began to warm to the topic at hand. “We track it all-we have spells on Muggle banks to monitor any enchanted notes that come through, and when we catch them, we phase them out of circulation, trading them for real currency, and we take all the counterfeit and file it away. It keeps inflation down-and we don’t want it to revert in the hands of some unsuspecting Muggle,” he added with a small smile.
“File?” Harry asked, hope surging in his chest. “You mean you know where it came from?”
“Where and when,” Jonathan affirmed.
It was almost too good to be true. “What-do you prosecute over it? Bring people in who do it?” Harry asked, breathless.
“Oh, heavens no,” Jonathan chuckled, clearly pleased to have such a rapt audience. “I don’t think the general population even knows we do it-it’s just a precaution, really. Most of it is small time stuff, just Wizards trying to blend in, which is perfectly legal under the Statute of Secrecy-but by the same token, we can’t have it circulating out in the Muggle population, either. We would just gather it all up for disposal, but we make it a point to keep close tabs on it-to make sure that someone isn’t trying to commit any major acts of fraud.” He smiled at Harry. “So we have it all catalogued and filed away in the back-we record where it was used, an approximate date when it was spent, and a description of how it was fabricated.”
Harry was grinning. “Can I have a look?”
“Of course. Right this way.”
“You’re what?”
Ginny stared disbelievingly up at him from the floor, where she had been drawing with Teddy, who continued with his work as if nothing had happened. Harry rose and began to pace the floor, one hand in his pocket around one of the scraps of paper he’d found in the Improper Use of Magic office; the file from which it came rested on the dining room table.
“I’m going abroad, Gin. I told you-I know Snape is alive, I’ve showed you everything- and today I finally found his trail. He left the country by hovercraft. I just know it was him,” he said, willing her to understand. “Two months after the final battle, somebody-it had to have been Snape!-emptied his vault, and then a day later, this counterfeit money shows up.” He pulled the formerly-transfigured newspaper from his pocket and waved it about; the date was July 7th of 1998. “Whoever transfigured this-Snape-took a hovercraft across the Channel to France. And that’s where I’m going-I’m going to find him.”
“I thought you were on a case, Harry,” Ginny said, frowning as she rose up off her stomach, sitting cross-legged on the rug.
“I already took the leave, Gin. I head out tomorrow,” he said, pacing back across the room and detouring around Teddy, who didn’t appear to be paying any attention to the conversation, engrossed as he was in his drawing.
“But I just got home, Harry!” Ginny protested. “I’ve been on the road with the team since Christmas, playing Quidditch non-stop for two weeks, and I get home just in time for you to hare off on some kind of mad quest?”
“It’s not mad,” Harry said, halting his mid-stride, wounded-he’d been sure that she at least would see. “I have to find him-he’s still alive, Ginny. Please-I have all this evidence-you have to believe me!”
“You have coincidences, Harry,” Ginny said firmly. “Not evidence. So nobody saw Aberforth-not everybody saw you or me, either. Does that mean we weren’t there?”
“Aberforth knew, Ginny!” he said, getting desperate. “He knew details about Snape’s injuries-only Hermione and Ron and me knew about that-I never said anything about how Nagini killed Snape!”
“He may have just been guessing, Harry,” Ginny said, her voice growing more and more impatient. “And as for the counterfeit money, wizards do that all the time-”
“But this was the only counterfeit money made at that time!” Harry interrupted, usually unwise where his wife was concerned, but he had to say his piece. “And if Snape travelled as a Muggle-which I know he did, he’s not stupid, he’d know that magic would have left trail to follow, but he just didn’t know about the money thing-he’ll have counterfeited all the money he needed all along the way-and this was the only money made then, and it was used to get out of the country. It’s got to be him. And if he’s in France, I’m going to find him.”
Ginny’s expression didn’t soften, and Harry sank wearily down into the nearest chair, his hand fisting in his hair. He had to go-he had to make her understand.
“Look, Uncle Harry!” Teddy said brightly, clambering to his feet and holding up his newly-coloured picture for inspection.
“It’s nice, Teddy,” Harry said, and then he looked at Ginny, looked into her brown eyes; his next whispered words were almost pleading. “Can’t you understand, Ginny? I need to do this-I have to find Snape.”
Ginny stared intently at him, and then released an explosive sigh, slumping where she sat. “All right, Harry,” she said at last, and his heart soared-she understood. “If you need to do this, I won’t stop you.” She looked to the side and bit her lip. “But it’s just…it’s just that-Harry, even if Snape is still alive, if all that you’ve found is right, and it really is him-he obviously doesn’t want to be found. If he is alive, then he’s hiding, Harry-and after all that, after everything, do you really think he’s going to want to see you? And really-why do you want to see him?”
Harry stared at her, his hand frozen in his hair. “I’m not going to drag him back here,” he said after a moment. “I understand that he doesn’t want to be dragged into the limelight after-after everything.” He gave his hair one last tug and then released it. “But I just-I need-I need to see him, Gin,” he said quietly. “I need to know.”
Teddy was quiet, his face solemn, and Harry knew then that he’d been following the conversation the whole time. “You’re going away, Uncle Harry?” he asked in a small voice, and Harry’s throat constricted, but he nodded.
“Well,” said Ginny after a moment. “We’ll miss you, then. Won’t we, Ted-O?” she asked, ruffling his hair, which had turned unruly and black. Teddy nodded mournfully, and Harry’s heart squeezed, and he slid out of his seat onto his knees and gathered the both of them up in his arms.
Author's Note: Homage to Star Trek: TOS.
Table of Contents | Next
Author: Mrs. Hyde and das_mervin
Fandom: Harry Potter/Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Word Count: 23,765
Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements and some language
Summary: Harry Potter searches for Snape. A companion fic to “Strange Bedfellows.”
Author’s Notes: Well, we’re sorry to say that you aren’t going to see Harry anymore. He went home when Sands told him to, and so the boys don’t hear from him again. But, with no more information on him, his little scene in Chapter 10 feels a bit like a loose end. So here we take a break from our fic to present to you a scene from the Director’s Cut of “Strange Bedfellows” that shows you how Harry Potter came to Culiacán and why he left.
DEAD ENDS
PART I
Harry Potter strode angrily out of the Mexico City city hall, letting the door slam loudly shut behind him as he emerged into the harsh Mexican sunlight.
He couldn’t be stuck. He just couldn’t. Not after all this time. Not after coming all this way. Not after all he’d done, all he’d found. He was here, Harry knew it. Had he tracked him across over fifteen countries with nothing more than a handful of clues to go on, only to be stymied now?
No. Snape was here. And Harry would find him.
“Sure I saw him,” grunted Aberforth. “Came in last night. Asked for a room. Paid up front and was gone first thing this morning.”
Harry leaned against the worn and dirty planks of the bar, taking a drink of the somewhat dusty butterbeer that he’d ordered out of politeness (it was either that or something stronger, and truth be told, he’d never much cared for Firewhisky-particularly not after the sorry state he’d been in the morning after his stag party-not even now when it would have been nice and warm after coming out of the late-December snows). “Did he have any luggage with him?”
Aberforth shrugged, wiping a glass and setting it back down behind the bar. “Two little satchels. Nothin’ else. But that weren’t unusual-not many what come here stay for too long.”
“And Lethesson wouldn’t be one of those who did,” Harry added dryly, and Aberforth shrugged again, this time in agreement.
Harry had been assigned to his current case a week ago. Someone had been selling black market, mind-altering potions. It was a normal enough occurrence in Knockturn Alley, but whoever this was had been branching out, first moving his business into the more respectable Diagon Alley, and then, more alarmingly, into Hogsmeade, making his wares accessible to the students on their Hogsmeade weekends.
That’s when things had gone from merely a regular-if unwanted-occurrence into something considerably more serious, and the investigation was kicked up a few notches. It hadn’t taken the Department of Magical Law Enforcement much time to identify their culprit as one Hypnos Lethesson, a repeat offender who already had numerous fines and three short stints in Azkaban under his belt, for crimes ranging from assault to theft-but most often for trafficking of illegal substances.
And once they had a lead to follow, they had assigned Harry to the case.
Fenton Mudd had been on it alone before, and he had been the one to finally pin a name on their anonymous criminal. Now that they had someone to track, the head of the department assigned him a novice to help with the work.
Really, it had been a refreshing experience for Harry, joining the Auror force. The rest of the Wizarding world seemed to regard him as an expert on fighting the Dark Arts-the foremost expert, no less-because honestly, he’d already vanquished the Most Hated and Feared Dark Wizard in History. These petty crooks should be no problem for him.
But the long-time members of the DMLE didn’t treat him like that. Oh, there might have been a little awe on their parts in the beginning, back when he first joined, because, well, he was Harry Potter, after all. But it quickly evaporated when it became obvious that while he could duel, he couldn’t spot a cursed object to save his life. That while he was pretty decent at putting clues together, he’d never really had to find his own clues before, having left that to Hermione. That while he was fearless in the face of a frontal assault, he was rubbish at sneaking up on anyone.
In the DMLE, he was just another greenhorn, down at the bottom of the heap, and he was treated accordingly.
And that’s why he was here, patiently tracing Lethesson’s steps, searching his last known whereabouts for some clue as to where he was going next.
Harry had been to the Hog’s Head before on business; it seemed that no matter who was in charge, who was pulling the strings at the Ministry, there was always a steady stream of small-time crooks looking to fence their wares or eavesdrop for blackmail material or find oblivion in the bottom of a potion bottle. And, it seemed, while regimes came and went, those sorts of places remained the same.
As did their owners. Harry wouldn’t exactly call Aberforth uncommunicative, it was just that he always made it a point not to pay too close attention to what went on under the tables in his establishment. He’d probably talk if he knew anything, but he really didn’t.
Harry sighed, giving his butterbeer cork a quick spin on the bar before looking up. “You mind if I have a look at his room?” he asked.
Aberforth shook his shaggy head. “Haven’t been up there to tidy it yet,” he said, wiping his hands on the grimy towel tucked in his belt loop as he came ‘round the bar.
“Good,” said Harry. “Might find something.”
Aberforth snorted as Harry followed him to the rickety flight of stairs behind the bar that led up to the bedrooms. “Doubt it-some’un on the run ain’t likely to leave much trace behind.”
Harry shrugged, smiling slightly, his hands in his pockets against the chill that pervaded the room this far from the fireplace. “Yeah-but you never know.”
The hallway was dark and dank, and there was still the lingering, unlovely aroma of goats that Harry had come to associate with Aberforth Dumbledore. They stopped at the second room to the right; with a jangle of the key ring on his belt, Aberforth opened the door and let them in.
From the looks of things, Lethesson had left in something of a hurry-probably because he was up to no good. Harry had seen the rooms here before; the few bits of dilapidated furniture were placed about the room in the same layout in all of them. But not this one; Lethesson had pushed all the furniture back to the walls, leaving a nice clear space by the hearth, with the exception of the small table, which he had pulled up close to the fire. The tabletop was scoured clean, to the point of revealing fresh wood-the mark of someone magically obliterating any trace of what had been resting on said table, so there was no chance of finding any residue of Billywig stings or hellebore syrup. The hearth was filled with ashes and the room was cold, but the now-dead coals had been banked in a fashion that looked as though they’d been heating a cauldron recently.
“Busy fellow,” Harry remarked wryly to the lanky man leaning against the doorframe. Aberforth just grunted as Harry made a sweep with his wand, his tracking spell keyed to Lethesson as he searched for anything he might have left behind; Mudd had almost managed to corner their suspect before Harry had been put on this case, and the man had made such a hasty escape that he’d dropped a few of the bottles he was carrying-bottles of just the stuff that he was being accused of selling. They were hard evidence of his guilt, as well as one of his belongings to which they could tune a spell to trace him.
Now Harry just had to find him.
“You didn’t hear anything suspicious?” he asked over the sizzlings of his spell.
Aberforth shook his head. “Kept quiet-most do what stays in my place.” He crossed his arms and regarded Harry in silence as Harry’s spell fizzled out-and, as he suspected, Lethesson had been very careful not to leave anything behind, just a stray hair or two on the dented pillow. “Them what do make noise usually don’t stay long.” He closed his mouth, and looked long around the room, his glasses glinting in the weak afternoon sunlight. “‘Specially not in this room,” he added after a moment.
Harry looked at him quizzically, his wand half raised. “This room?”
Aberforth grunted. “Rented out this room to that Trelawney woman some years ago. She made quite a racket, and was out of here and up at the castle the very next day.”
“Oh,” Harry said, and he turned, and for a moment the scene seemed to swim before his eyes: Trelawney, bedecked in beads and shawls, intoning the words of the prophecy that dictated the course of his life to the stunned Albus Dumbledore…and Snape, crouching eagerly by the keyhole before Aberforth found him and pitched him out the door, and then running back to his master with his news…
Harry shook his head, dismissing his flight of fancy. “Well, it doesn’t look like there’s anything here,” he said, “but thanks for letting me have a look anyway.” And he raised his wand again and swept it wide around the room. The still-rumpled bed made itself (Harry knew that Aberforth wasn’t one to change his sheets between guests), and the furniture went dancing back to where he knew it should go. The newly-scoured table skittered over to the window, its two accompanying chairs in hot pursuit, and the bed slid to the other wall, protesting creakily and kicking up clouds of dust and debris as it dragged its trailing, tattered blankets through years of accumulated filth on the floor to the space where it usually rested.
He set it down with a thump. The whole thing sagged with a tired wheeze, sending out a cloud of dust from beneath it; a dirty scrap of paper was blown out from under it as it settled, and it skated lightly out across the floor to come to a rest against Harry’s shoe.
Without thinking, he leaned over to pick it up, sliding his wand away in his pocket as he leaned down. “When was the last time you dusted under there, Aberforth?” he asked dryly as he straightened up, swiping at the thick layer of dust that coated the scrap with his thumb.
“When they pay me to,” he answered easily, and Harry snorted, rubbing absently at the scrap in his hand.
“Well, you were right-looks like there’s nothing here,” he said. “Sorry to have bothered you, and thanks for letting me have a look around. And please,” he added, “do let us know if Lethesson shows up here again? I know that the-er-“no questions asked” policy is part of the charm of this place, but-”
“I don’t want nobody here what sells stuff like that to kids,” Aberforth said gruffly.
Harry grinned. “Nor do we. I appreciate your help, then,” he said, and, glancing down, added, “Well, I suppose I’ll be-”
He blinked.
His mother was laughing up at him from the scrap of paper in his hands.
He just stared for a moment, and then furiously wiped the rest of the dust away. It was old, tattered ‘round the edges and folded across the front, and dirt had been ground into the creases in the paper-but the surface was still tiredly glossy beneath the layers of grime, and Harry soon found himself looking at a laughing, happy photograph of Lily Potter.
No-it was only half a photograph, he realized. Dimly, he heard Aberforth say his name, but he didn’t answer. This picture…it was…the other half was in his photo album, taken from Grimmauld Place when he was seventeen, showing his one-year-old self being chased by his father…but it had already been torn by then, his mother gone-taken-and Harry had seen it happen, when he’d dived into the misty contents of Dumbledore’s pensieve, toward the end, just before he’d…
“Did Snape come here a lot? In that last year?” he asked softly. He looked up just in time to see Aberforth’s inquiringly perplexed expression vanish behind a wall of blankness.
“No,” he answered shortly. “He never came here. Had more important things to attend to, I reckon.”
Harry frowned. “Never?” he asked.
Aberforth shook his head decisively. “Last time I saw him was back before he dispatched Albus-and even then, was for some work for the Order. I don’t think he ever came up here, to stay or nothing-except ‘that one time, before.”
Harry winced reflexively at the casual mention of what had happened atop the astronomy tower in his sixth year, but didn’t dwell on it long, instead looking down at the picture in his hands. “Then how…when could he…surely they didn’t bring him here?”
“Who?”
“The Death Eaters.” He looked up, staring blankly out at the flat grey sky beyond the high, tiny window. “Why would they bring his body here before they got rid of it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, boy,” Aberforth said roughly, the sharp sound of his voice startling Harry from his reverie. “Snape weren’t never here.”
“Then how did this get here?” Harry demanded, thrusting the picture out in front of him.
Aberforth squinted down at it. “What is it?” he asked, looking down his long nose at it; his eyes widened slightly behind his spectacles. “Wait-is that-that your mum?” he asked, his voice surprised.
“Yes! And Snape had it!”
Aberforth blinked, and when he looked up, his face was utterly closed. “I’ve never seen that before-and I don’t know how it got up here,” he said tersely. “But what I do know is that Snape weren’t here.”
“But he was!” Harry yelled, surprised by his own sudden vehemence. “He had to have been!” He yanked out his wand, tapped it twice to the photograph, and then swung it wide and yelled, “Tractus!”
And the bright yellow light crackled from his wand and arced unerringly under the bed, along the wall beneath the cracked mirror, and on the floorboards beside the bed. Triumphant, Harry called, “Accio!” and up from the floor and into his hand sailed a tiny black button and several long, dark hairs, still glittering from his tracking spell. “See!” he said, thrusting them right beneath Aberforth’s nose. “He was here!” He cast his eyes around, almost as if expecting to see the man himself standing there-and he saw a few lingering motes of light sparkling on the ground near his feet.
Harry dropped unceremoniously to his knees; there, lit up in the fading vestiges of his spell, were several dark, irregular spots on the floor beneath him, blotches of a dull, rusty colour that Harry had seen before, staining the warped and splintered floorboards of the Shrieking Shack-all that they had ever found of Snape’s body.
He used his wand to gouge out a splinter of the wood from the biggest stain, leaving a line of pale, fresh wood in its wake-the abused floor looked no worse off for the chunk missing-and then he stood.
To find Aberforth looking at him with a mixture of anger and frustration. “Potter-”
“He was here,” Harry said, his voice firm, and he looked at Aberforth-and for the first time in Harry’s life, the penetrating blue eyes of one of the Dumbledores looked away. Conviction bubbled up inside of him. “And you knew he was here.”
“I did not!” Aberforth growled, now looking angrily back up at him. “I told you, I don’t know how that got there-”
“It couldn’t have been the Death Eaters,” said Harry, cutting across Aberforth’s words as he began to pace, his strides eating easily a quarter of the tiny room in each step. “Voldemort had just ordered them all to the Forest-all except Snape, he called him to the Shrieking Shack to-and then he went right after them after he called me out-we always just assumed that he’d got rid of the body on his way out, but he didn’t need to go back into the room where Snape was to get out-stupid to think that-and anyway, he wouldn’t care enough to do it-so who did?” Harry’s hand found its way into his hair, tugging restlessly. “Did someone sneak his body out afterwards? No, no one else knew he was dead-I don’t even think the other Death Eaters did. Just us and Voldemort-but someone had to have brought him here-unless-”
The sudden realization hit Harry like a punch in the stomach. He stopped mid-stride, his mouth falling open, his insides knotting up like string. “He wasn’t dead,” he breathed.
“Don’t be stupid, Potter!” Aberforth barked. “Of course he was!”
“He was alive.” And then Harry’s stomach, which had been crawling up into his chest, sank like a stone to somewhere around his knees. “He was alive-and I left him lying there!” he said, his voice emerging as little more than a wheeze, his breath deserting him in his horror.
“Potter-you’re dreaming, now-no one but you ever survived when You-Know-Who set out to kill ‘em.”
Aberforth’s words washed over him unheeded; Harry shook his head. “No. He did-he must have-how else could he have got here?” He looked up and brandished his handful of discoveries. “He had to have come here! He-he must have-he had an antidote-a bezoar, or something-”
Aberforth barked a sardonic laugh. “Bezoars are for poisons, boy, not venom, don’t be ridiculous-”
“Or Blood-Replenishing solution!” Harry shouted. “He was in the Order-he’d have known that’s what Arthur needed when Nagini bit him!”
“And just how was he supposed to swallow a potion with his throat torn out?” Aberforth said derisively.
“He could just-” And Harry froze, before whirling where he stood and fixing Aberforth with narrowed eyes. “How did you know that?” he asked slowly.
“Know what?” Aberforth no longer looked scornful, but wary.
Harry eyed him. “Know that his throat was torn out?”
Aberforth glared at him. “You told everyone-that he was attacked by that ruddy great snake of his-”
“I said he was bitten,” Harry answered, his words even. “That didn’t mean that his throat was torn out-but it was-and you knew it.”
Aberforth looked furious, and when he next spoke, his voice was rising steadily. “Weasley was tore up by that snake-stands to reason Snape’d have been too!”
“It was you.” It was not a question. “You took him out of there-you brought him here.”
“I was fighting alongside everyone else that night!” Aberforth shouted. “I didn’t even know he was dead ‘fore Voldemort said it when the two of you was fighting!”
Harry’s fingers clenched tight, tighter around the objects in his hand, the button and the sliver of wood digging painfully into his palm, but he didn’t speak. Alive…still alive, after all this time…
“Where is he?” Harry asked; his words were sudden, but his voice was even and calm. “Where did he go?”
“You’re mental, Potter,” said Aberforth coldly. “And I’m not going to play this game with you. You’ve asked your questions-now it’s time for you to be leaving. I’ve no time for this lunacy-I have a business to run.” And he turned on his heel and stalked down the stairs.
Harry watched him go, his retreating back stiff, and then he sank down on the lumpy mattress behind him. Aberforth was right about one thing-it was ludicrous, the very idea that Snape had somehow survived, and yet…
Snape had been here, even though Aberforth denied it. They’d never found a body-something that had, sadly, happened more often than not in that last year of the war, so no one had really thought too much about it. But why would someone go to all the trouble of bringing his body here only to get rid of it? And Aberforth-what he said just didn’t add up.
Harry abruptly stood and strode down the stairs; the fetid odour of goats, stronger down in the bar proper, even in winter, assailed his nose. Aberforth was back behind his bar with a sullen air about him and didn’t look at Harry as he walked quickly through the pub and towards the door.
“Potter!”
He halted in his tracks just inside the doorframe, half in and half out of the door, that same door through which Aberforth had led them to safety that night of the battle-that night that Snape was supposed to have died.
Aberforth had come out from behind his bar; he was looking at Harry now, his blue eyes no longer cutting away, and in that moment they were more penetrating than his brother’s had ever been. “Let the dead lie, Potter,” he finally said. “Recriminations and what-might-have-beens eat at a man-and you’ve got no cause for ‘em.”
Harry stiffened. “But if he’s not dead-”
“Severus Snape is dead, Potter,” Aberforth interrupted roughly. “You of all people know what kind of life he lived-and now he’s got some measure of peace. Let it be, Potter. Let him be.”
Harry’s fist tightened involuntarily; the sliver of wood stabbed painfully into his flesh, and he turned and left without another word.
He could feel Aberforth’s eyes on him as he trudged through the snow all the way up the alley towards High Street. He stood just in the alley’s mouth, gazing up at the turrets of Hogwarts peering over the crests of the nearby hill, and then he looked up the street for a moment before Apparating away, reappearing with a crack by the sagging stile by the gate to the Shrieking Shack. He landed in a snowdrift up to his knees; he barely noticed, just extricated himself so that he could clamber over the fence and jog up the hill, quickly reaching the dilapidated porch and forcing the door open despite its rusty protests.
The Shack was as dank and miserable as it had always been, only now it was cold as well, and the warped and gaping boards offered little respite from the biting winter winds. But today Harry had no time to consider the rotting boards and the peeling wallpaper; he made his way straight into the nearly empty room that held the trapdoor to the tunnel up to Hogwarts.
An old, splintering crate and a table with a single chair sat inside, the cracked oil lamp on the tabletop extinguished for years. The floor was coated with dust that bore only the faintest ghosts of footprints past. And there, just by the crate, the old grey floorboards turned a dark brown, and if Harry squinted, he could see the vague imprint of the arms and shoulders of a man in the long-dried blood.
He dropped into a crouch, opening his hand and just staring at the stained splinter in his palm for a moment, before drawing his wand. “Gemmacus,” he muttered, pointing to the floor. A splinter of light lanced from the tip of his wand to bury itself in the stained wood.
And for a moment, nothing, and Harry felt as if he’d been pricked with a pin, all his air let out-and then his heart leapt to his throat, as a second point of light arced up from the floor and sped unerringly back to the splinter in his hand, matching that stain to the one on the floor.
It was his. It was Snape’s blood in the Hog’s Head.
He had been there.
And Harry was going to find out how.
Harry muttered a hurried apology in response to the indignant squawk of the little woman that he had bumped with his elbow while coming out of the lift. His arms were filled with stacks of paper, some neatly filed and some not, and it was all so hastily jumbled together that he kept losing sheets and he half-walked, half-ran through the Ministry; he’d had no time to bother with organizing it, instead just putting a haphazard charm on the whole pile to keep him from losing anything-so now as he walked, he was being chased by an ever-growing flock of loose leaves that fluttered and shushed along the floor behind him.
He took left and right turns down the hall, his feet making no sound as he strode across the thick blue carpet, leaving behind him the large offices of the senior members of the Wizarding government behind him as he travelled deep into the bowels of the building, where the more junior members were housed. He’d come this way so often that he never even needed to look up from the stack of paper in his arms as he walked, going all the way down to the little office at the end of the hall with the neatly lettered brass plaque that read:
Hermione Granger
Junior Undersecretary for the Magical Creatures Community
Harry didn’t bother knocking, just went right in. It was lunch hour, after all, and she shouldn’t be talking to anyone.
And as it turned out, she wasn’t. She and Ron sprung apart mid-snog when the door flew open. Harry didn’t bat an eye, just gave an off-hand “Hullo, Ron,” before dropping his stacks of papers and files on Hermione’s desk and saying, “Snape’s alive. And I need your help to find him.”
They stared at him as though he had bowtruckles crawling from his ears.
It was Ron who finally broke the heavy blanket of silence. “What?”
“He’s alive! Look!” Harry yanked the little cloth bag from out of his pocket and spilled its contents on Hermione’s painfully neat desk. “Look!” he said again. “This is a button from his robes-my tracking spell confirmed it. And his hair-” he unrolled the handkerchief to show the long black strands- “and this, this bloodstain-it’s an exact match to the one in the Shrieking Shack. And this picture!” He waved the torn and dirty image of his mother through the air before slapping down on the wood before them. “It was Sirius’s-the one from Grimmauld Place. Snape took it because-well, he took it, and he wouldn’t have just thrown it away-but I found it and all this other stuff in the Hog’s Head-so he couldn’t have died that night! He was there! He’s still alive, and I have to find him!”
Still they just stared at him, saying nothing, their expressions making it more than clear that they thought he’d finally gone ‘round the twist. “Don’t you see?” he demanded in aggravation. “Somehow he was in the Hog’s Head that night. And he couldn’t have been before he went to the Shack-it had to be after! He had to have survived!”
“Harry-” Hermione’s voice was quiet, halting. “Harry, Snape’s dead. We were there-we saw it-”
“We saw him get attacked,” Harry interrupted, raising one finger. “We never saw him actually die-because he didn’t. He was still alive-and we just left him there-and so now I have to find him.”
Ron made an incredulous noise. “Harry-no one could have survived that. That ruddy snake of You-Voldemort’s tore his throat right out. There wasn’t a drop of blood left in him.”
“Yes!” Harry was exultant-surely now they’d see. “And Aberforth knew it!”
“What?”
“Aberforth-that’s how I found it-found out.” His hands restlessly shuffled papers at random. “I was on the Lethesson case this week, you know, and I’d tracked him over to the Hog’s Head, and that was when I found this stuff.” He cast his hand in the direction of the small scatter of Snape’s things sitting innocuously in the pooled cloth of the bag that had just held them. “And when I started talking about it, trying to figure out how he could have been there, Aberforth let slip that he knew that Snape’s throat had been torn out, even though we three were the only ones who knew about that-Aberforth must have seen him!”
He dived into the stack on Hermione’s desk, sending more paper flying to land on the floor and then creep up back to flap at his ankles as he searched wildly for his lists. “Look-I went back through all the records of the battle, all the first-hand accounts-I even sent some letters and talked to some people-Neville, Seamus, McGonagall-and no one can account for Aberforth!” He found the lists he was looking for and waved the papers in their faces. “No one saw him between the time that the Dementors attacked us until it was all over-and he must have gone in there and got Snape out! That’s why we never found his body-he’s not dead!”
“Harry.” Hermione’s voice had gone gentle and patient now. “Just because we never found a body doesn’t mean he’s still alive-we never found Moody either; the Death Eaters didn’t leave bodies-”
“Moody was one of ours,” Harry said, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “They still thought Snape was one of theirs. They wouldn’t have done that.” He dived back into his papers. “And anyway, there wasn’t anyone who could have.”
Ron opened his mouth to speak, but Harry cut him off, brandishing another sheaf of parchment. “It’s not just the people on our side-I’ve accounted for all the Death Eaters, too.” He looked down, his eyes rapidly scanning his hastily-scribbled timeline, despite the fact that he all but knew it by heart anyway. “See, before I realized he was alive, I was just trying to figure out who had taken his body all the way back to the Hog’s Head to get rid of it-why someone would do that-and then I realized that there wasn’t anyone.” He tossed the papers down on top of his last list. “There-there’s a list of all of the Death Eaters who were captured, dead, or otherwise incapacitated, and by then, Voldemort had ordered all the rest into the Forest, and I had all their names confirmed by Yaxley and Narcissa Malfoy-and on top of that, none of their people that I talked to saw Aberforth either.”
He looked at them, meeting their eyes in turn, trying to make them see. “The only people in that Shack were him, us, and Snape-and Voldemort went right out into the Forest himself after that. He couldn’t be bothered with getting rid of a body, he was waiting for me!” Harry stabbed a finger at his chest. “So Snape’s body still should have been there-except that Aberforth went in and got him out!” He grinned elatedly as his puzzle pieces began to fall into place, and he rounded out his argument with, “And if he’d died, Aberforth wouldn’t have hidden the body or anything, he’d have told us, so we could bury him properly, but he didn’t-so Snape must still be alive!”
Harry beamed at them, waiting. Hermione was looking at one of his stacks of lists and timelines with a small crease between her eyebrows, and then she looked up. “Harry-all this is circumstantial.”
“And anyway-no one who You-Voldemort set out to kill ever survived it-‘cept you, of course,” Ron said with a frown. “And if he was that set on getting the Elder Wand, you think he’d have taken the chance of just leaving him there? No-he’d have made sure Snape was dead, and probably gone back to take care of the body, too!”
“No, no!” Harry shook his head, his euphoria souring slightly. “If he’d got rid of the body, then how did his blood and hair and things wind up in the Hog’s Head?”
“Those could have got there at any time, Harry,” said Hermione. “The other teachers chased Snape out of the school-out of a window, you said. He could have been bleeding after flying through all that broken glass, and then he went to the Hog’s Head before Voldemort summoned him-Aberforth said the Death Eaters used his place all the time-”
“But Aberforth said he never came there!” Harry said, getting angry now. Why couldn’t they see it? “And Snape wouldn’t have just dropped that picture of my mum!”
“But how could Aberforth have known whether or not Snape came there?” Ron asked stubbornly. “Everything was crazy that night-Snape might have sneaked in the back, just to regroup-and he might not have known that he dropped the picture.” Ron’s face was set. “He’s dead, mate.”
“No!” said Harry fiercely. “Because look at this!” And he snatched up the papers written on the official Gringotts letterhead. “I went to Snape’s house after I found this stuff-up north, you know, where he and my mum used to live-to see if there were any clues there. No one had been in there since that first time I went up there-but I went through everything much more carefully this time around, and I found a list of his accounts, so I went to Gringotts.” The official Ministry document pertaining to the distribution of the property of one Severus Snape, deceased, was stacked behind the letter from Gringotts, and Harry fanned it out so they could see it as he said, “He had no legal heirs, but I pulled a few strings to have all of his property put in my name-including his vault-because I didn’t want…well, anyway, it’s all mine, but when I got to the bank, the goblins told me that two months after the night Snape was supposed to have died, someone with a key and the correct number emptied Snape’s vault by owl!” he finished, in triumph. Now he had them-there was no way they could explain that away.
Hermione took the papers; Ron peered over her shoulder, frowning, and they briefly met each other’s eyes, their expressions exasperated, before turning back to Harry. “Someone could have stolen his vault key, Harry-” Hermione started.
“No!” Harry yelled, frustrated. “He’s alive! Why can’t you see it?”
“Because none of this adds up, Harry-and it’s you who can’t see it,” said Ron firmly. “You’ve found all this stuff, and now you’ve got it in your head that Snape’s out there-because you can’t let it go when it comes to Snape.” Harry furiously opened his mouth, but Ron ploughed on, “You already got him his portrait and his Order of Merlin and his monument in the Hogwarts grounds next to Dumbledore, but that’s not enough for you-now you’ve got to dream up some crazy idea that he’s still alive based on a few hairs and a bunch of garbled stories. But none of that-none of this-nothing you do will change the fact that Snape is dead.”
“But he’s not dead! Don’t you understand?!” Harry shouted back at him. “He’s not! All of this does add up-Aberforth wasn’t accounted for, all of these things were up in the Hog’s Head, despite the fact that Aberforth said he never went up there, none of the Death Eaters or Voldemort could’ve done anything with his body, and then, two months later, Snape’s vault is completely emptied! It does add up-and it adds up to Snape being still alive!”
There was a silence, save for the sound of Harry’s rapid breathing, and then Hermione finally said, “All right, Harry. Supposing he is still alive. What on earth could we do to help? It’s been over four years-and no word of him. If Snape really were alive, surely somebody would’ve seen him or heard from him somehow.”
“He’s hiding,” Harry answered immediately, starting to pace across Hermione’s floor, a bevy of papers at his feet. “No matter what I said, he’d still have to stand trial if he’d been found, even if only to be cleared-like the Malfoys did-and I know he wouldn’t have wanted that, so he’s obviously gone underground. In fact, I don’t think he’s even in the country anymore,” Harry said, coming to a stop back in front of the desk. “And that’s what I need from you, Hermione,” he said, pointing at her. “I’ve been down at the Portkey Office getting their back records-I need you to help me check the Portkey travel around the day Snape emptied his vault, because I’d be willing to bet that’s about the same time he left.”
“Harry-I’m in the middle of a case!” she said, her voice getting that shrill tone that he remembered from Hogwarts, the one she used on him when he wanted to go flying but she insisted that he do his homework. “That horrible Higgs woman is back again, trying to get the centaurs’ territory restricted so that she can build her summer home. I don’t have time to be looking through all this-” She stopped for a moment, and when she next spoke, her voice was quieter and vaguely suspicious. “For that matter, when did you have time to do all of this, Harry?” she asked, squinting at some of the papers.
“Yeah,” Ron added, looking down at the mess that Harry had made of Hermione’s desk. “Aren’t you supposed to be working on the Lethesson case?”
Harry waved a hand impatiently. “I got myself taken off the case-I had to find this out-”
“Harry!” Hermione was instantly disapproving. “You can’t just pick and choose when you want to work! You need to get back on that immediately-”
“This is more important than that!” Harry cut across her scolding.
Ron folded his arms, his expression dark. “More important than apprehending some scum who sells badly-brewed Sopophorus Solutions and Morpheus Mixtures to kids?” he asked coldly.
A noise of frustration escaped Harry, and he roughly shoved a few scattered papers onto the floor in annoyance; they gathered right back at his feet. “You just don’t understand, do you?” Harry growled, his agitation bubbling to the surface as his voice got louder and louder as he spoke. “I have to find him! I have to-we left him to die, but he’s alive, and I need-I need you two to stop patronizing me and help me find him!”
“But how, Harry?” asked Hermione painedly. “It would be impossible to track him down! If Snape really was alive and had taken a Portkey somewhere, somebody would’ve noticed, but no one has heard anything! He could have been Polyjuiced, or Disillusioned, or in any number of disguises! Not to mention that he could be anywhere, and left any number of ways-he could’ve Apparated, flown by broom, used Muggle transport-”
Harry cut across her protests yet again. “No, not Muggle-I ruled that out. Gringotts told me that none of his money was exchanged for Muggle money, so he wouldn’t have had any on him-” Harry stopped dead, his mouth falling open as a flash of inspiration slammed into his brain. “Unless…unless he counterfeited it!” he shouted at no one. “He could’ve used fake Muggle money!” His grin was wild. “I’ll be right back!”
Harry pounded out of the office, a trail of papers dashing madly behind him as he flew down the hall back to the lift. He nearly slammed into Kingsley on his way out as he careened around a sharp corner, but he didn’t stop, just called a hasty apology and kept on his way, coming to the lift. He tapped on the button repeatedly, but after ten seconds he gave up and threw himself against the door to the stairs, taking them two at a time down to level two.
He dashed down the hall, past the Auror Headquarters, and took a left into the Improper Use of Magic Office, throwing the double doors wide with both hands. Fanny Higgenbottom was sitting at the main desk, and she jumped at the sudden noise; the moment she saw Harry, she turned red and dropped the stack of papers she was using her wand to file. “Mr. Potter!” she said, her voice high.
“Hi, Fanny,” he said, panting slightly. “I need to talk to Jonathan-is he in?”
“Oh-oh, yes,” she said, her voice returning somewhat to normal but her cheeks still pink. “He just came in from lunch-is he expecting you?”
“No-something just came up on a case I’m following-I need to talk to him about it,” Harry replied, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“Well-all right.” She got up and went back into one of the offices behind her. It seemed to take forever, but finally she returned, followed by old Jonathan Sommerby, with whom Harry had worked before.
“Mr. Potter?” he said, sounding somewhat surprised. “What can I do for you today?”
“Sorry to sweep in on you like this,” Harry said, coming around to talk to him, kicking irritably at the papers still dogging his steps. “But I’m working on a case at the moment, and I need to ask you what you do about magically counterfeited Muggle money.”
“Oh, well-that’s simple enough.” Jonathan looked vaguely relieved, and relaxed as he began to warm to the topic at hand. “We track it all-we have spells on Muggle banks to monitor any enchanted notes that come through, and when we catch them, we phase them out of circulation, trading them for real currency, and we take all the counterfeit and file it away. It keeps inflation down-and we don’t want it to revert in the hands of some unsuspecting Muggle,” he added with a small smile.
“File?” Harry asked, hope surging in his chest. “You mean you know where it came from?”
“Where and when,” Jonathan affirmed.
It was almost too good to be true. “What-do you prosecute over it? Bring people in who do it?” Harry asked, breathless.
“Oh, heavens no,” Jonathan chuckled, clearly pleased to have such a rapt audience. “I don’t think the general population even knows we do it-it’s just a precaution, really. Most of it is small time stuff, just Wizards trying to blend in, which is perfectly legal under the Statute of Secrecy-but by the same token, we can’t have it circulating out in the Muggle population, either. We would just gather it all up for disposal, but we make it a point to keep close tabs on it-to make sure that someone isn’t trying to commit any major acts of fraud.” He smiled at Harry. “So we have it all catalogued and filed away in the back-we record where it was used, an approximate date when it was spent, and a description of how it was fabricated.”
Harry was grinning. “Can I have a look?”
“Of course. Right this way.”
“You’re what?”
Ginny stared disbelievingly up at him from the floor, where she had been drawing with Teddy, who continued with his work as if nothing had happened. Harry rose and began to pace the floor, one hand in his pocket around one of the scraps of paper he’d found in the Improper Use of Magic office; the file from which it came rested on the dining room table.
“I’m going abroad, Gin. I told you-I know Snape is alive, I’ve showed you everything- and today I finally found his trail. He left the country by hovercraft. I just know it was him,” he said, willing her to understand. “Two months after the final battle, somebody-it had to have been Snape!-emptied his vault, and then a day later, this counterfeit money shows up.” He pulled the formerly-transfigured newspaper from his pocket and waved it about; the date was July 7th of 1998. “Whoever transfigured this-Snape-took a hovercraft across the Channel to France. And that’s where I’m going-I’m going to find him.”
“I thought you were on a case, Harry,” Ginny said, frowning as she rose up off her stomach, sitting cross-legged on the rug.
“I already took the leave, Gin. I head out tomorrow,” he said, pacing back across the room and detouring around Teddy, who didn’t appear to be paying any attention to the conversation, engrossed as he was in his drawing.
“But I just got home, Harry!” Ginny protested. “I’ve been on the road with the team since Christmas, playing Quidditch non-stop for two weeks, and I get home just in time for you to hare off on some kind of mad quest?”
“It’s not mad,” Harry said, halting his mid-stride, wounded-he’d been sure that she at least would see. “I have to find him-he’s still alive, Ginny. Please-I have all this evidence-you have to believe me!”
“You have coincidences, Harry,” Ginny said firmly. “Not evidence. So nobody saw Aberforth-not everybody saw you or me, either. Does that mean we weren’t there?”
“Aberforth knew, Ginny!” he said, getting desperate. “He knew details about Snape’s injuries-only Hermione and Ron and me knew about that-I never said anything about how Nagini killed Snape!”
“He may have just been guessing, Harry,” Ginny said, her voice growing more and more impatient. “And as for the counterfeit money, wizards do that all the time-”
“But this was the only counterfeit money made at that time!” Harry interrupted, usually unwise where his wife was concerned, but he had to say his piece. “And if Snape travelled as a Muggle-which I know he did, he’s not stupid, he’d know that magic would have left trail to follow, but he just didn’t know about the money thing-he’ll have counterfeited all the money he needed all along the way-and this was the only money made then, and it was used to get out of the country. It’s got to be him. And if he’s in France, I’m going to find him.”
Ginny’s expression didn’t soften, and Harry sank wearily down into the nearest chair, his hand fisting in his hair. He had to go-he had to make her understand.
“Look, Uncle Harry!” Teddy said brightly, clambering to his feet and holding up his newly-coloured picture for inspection.
“It’s nice, Teddy,” Harry said, and then he looked at Ginny, looked into her brown eyes; his next whispered words were almost pleading. “Can’t you understand, Ginny? I need to do this-I have to find Snape.”
Ginny stared intently at him, and then released an explosive sigh, slumping where she sat. “All right, Harry,” she said at last, and his heart soared-she understood. “If you need to do this, I won’t stop you.” She looked to the side and bit her lip. “But it’s just…it’s just that-Harry, even if Snape is still alive, if all that you’ve found is right, and it really is him-he obviously doesn’t want to be found. If he is alive, then he’s hiding, Harry-and after all that, after everything, do you really think he’s going to want to see you? And really-why do you want to see him?”
Harry stared at her, his hand frozen in his hair. “I’m not going to drag him back here,” he said after a moment. “I understand that he doesn’t want to be dragged into the limelight after-after everything.” He gave his hair one last tug and then released it. “But I just-I need-I need to see him, Gin,” he said quietly. “I need to know.”
Teddy was quiet, his face solemn, and Harry knew then that he’d been following the conversation the whole time. “You’re going away, Uncle Harry?” he asked in a small voice, and Harry’s throat constricted, but he nodded.
“Well,” said Ginny after a moment. “We’ll miss you, then. Won’t we, Ted-O?” she asked, ruffling his hair, which had turned unruly and black. Teddy nodded mournfully, and Harry’s heart squeezed, and he slid out of his seat onto his knees and gathered the both of them up in his arms.
Author's Note: Homage to Star Trek: TOS.
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