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“The Stone, Severus…? You wish access to the Stone?” The headmaster’s brow creased, and he shot a sharp, examining stare at his Potions master. Finally Dumbledore sighed and said, “It is impossible to grant your request, Severus. As to the Stone… it has been destroyed.”
There was a long, flat pause. Then Severus stated, quite coolly, “Then the boy… the boy must die.”
Poppy wasn’t deceived by the young man’s apparent calmness; she saw how his hands had clenched at Dumbledore’s words, and how his Adam’s apple jumped before he spoke.
Nor was Poppy willing, even for a moment, to entertain his defeatism. She stepped forward and declared robustly, “Nonsense! Once the headmaster has figured out what curse You-Know-Who caught the boy with, he can perform the appropriate counter-curse. It’s merely a matter of keeping the child stable until then.”
“Merely.” Snape rounded on her and smiled unpleasantly. “But phoenix tears, and even the Phoenix Tears Draught, are failing to do so. The only restorative stronger is the Elixir of Life itself. Which cannot now be brewed, or so the headmaster has just told us. Unless you are proposing—“ the crooked smile stretched into a leer—“that we follow recent precedent and utilize unicorn blood, or the potions based on that?”
Poppy sniffed, disdaining either to answer that obscenity or to feed the young man’s despair. She turned instead to Dumbledore, saying, “Headmaster, are you certain that you can’t identify the curse affecting Harry?”
Only, Dumbledore responded by spreading his hands wide, the usual twinkle entirely absent from his eyes. “Whatever Lord Voldemort did was done wandlessly and nonverbally, Poppy. I have no indications on which to hazard a guess, with our diagnostic charms failing.”
Poppy felt her own hand tighten on her wand at the headmaster’s pronouncement.
But Severus straightened abruptly, intent. With that prodigious beak of his, he seemed a hunting hawk, wheeling in midair to dive on prey it had suddenly sighted.
Poppy, distracted by the image, tried to remember if any natural hawks were black.
The young man spoke quite softly, however. “But the boy—the boy himself must know what he experienced. With that to guide us….”
Dumbledore shook his head, gesturing at the small figure lying silent on the cot. “Harry can scarcely tell us anything at this time, Severus.”
“Can he not?” Snape’s eyes were hard and challenging, holding Dumbledore’s.
Poppy looked from the one to the other, realizing what Severus was suggesting even as the headmaster exclaimed, “To invade a child’s mind in such a manner—that’s a gross violation of professional ethics and of all decency, Severus!”
“To save the child’s very life?” Severus drew a breath and argued, “Headmaster, Potter is dying. He is sinking, and if we cannot arrest and reverse this curse, he will be lost. I think that if there is any chance that the boy’s mind holds a clue that may assist us to heal him, it is our duty to find that clue.”
He paused and added stiffly, “I do not, of course, suggest that I should be the proper person to perform the Legilimancy.”
Poppy had been thinking while Severus contended with Dumbledore. “And, headmaster, it is permissible so long as the child’s guardians consent. His guardian aunt and uncle are Muggles, so legally he counts as a Muggle-born, and you stand in loco parentis for such decisions. It would be perfectly legal, and I agree with Severus as to the necessity.”
Dumbledore thought for a moment and then sighed. “You are both right, and I should not let my extreme distaste for such measures weigh with me.” He turned with no more ado, conjured a chair next to Harry’s cot, and seated himself comfortably.
“Legilimens!”
Poppy had never before witnessed this spell. It was fascinating to watch expressions chase each other across Dumbledore’s face in response to nothing she (or any outside observer) could observe. It was unnerving, too, even a little frightening, to see Dumbledore’s sharp eyes unfocused. Mostly the headmaster seemed intent and a little anxious at what he was witnessing. Once he moved a little, as though in protest, and his mouth thinned.
The small body on the bed lay unmoving throughout.
Finally the headmaster stirred and looked up, his eyes once again registering the room about him. He appeared, if anything, grimmer than before.
“Unfortunately, the boy’s memories but confirm what I had previously suspected. Madam Pomfrey, if you will excuse the two of us, Severus and I need to confer privately about this. Severus, to my office.”
The young man nodded, turning towards the door even as Dumbledore rose. But Poppy had one more question, of lesser importance but still nagging at her. “Headmaster, the Stone… I mean, your friends, the Flamels, will …. how did the Stone come to be destroyed?”
Severus turned back to hear the answer. Dumbledore sighed again. “Lord Voldemort, in his extreme malice… as he discorporated… well, you know the power of a death-curse from such a powerful wizard. Even if it wasn’t quite a proper death. And his last curse had two targets.
“He’d want to kill his enemy even at the very moment of the other’s victory.
“And if he couldn’t possess the Stone, no one should.”
Snape’s mouth twisted at that, and he snorted. The two men exited together, and Poppy was left alone to what she still hoped would not prove a deathbed vigil.
Magic being unavailing to help Harry now, she reached out her hand and smoothed his messy black hair away from that angry scar.
Over and over.
*
Albus judged the story of a death-curse blasting the Stone as the better one to give Poppy and Severus. Severus, at least, clearly accepted the tale as entirely characteristic of his former master, and it seemed that Poppy might have done the same.
Nicolas, however, could not be fobbed off with such a lie.
The Flamels had known when they gave their Stone as bait to Albus’s trap that it could never be allowed to fall into Voldemort’s hands. They had consented to its destruction if that were required at the last, though all three had agreed that the Mirror really ought to suffice to entrance and trap both Voldemort’s putative agent and Voldemort himself.
Who could possibly have predicted that the boy should come and remove the Stone from the Mirror’s protection before Voldemort had had time to succumb to the Mirror’s captivation?
The Flamels’ last dose of the Elixir would keep them alive until Midsummer, and then Albus’s mentor would be no more.
Albus had very deeply regretted the necessity, but what else could he have done?
He remembered the scene that had met him when he’d stepped through Snape’s flames…
The first impression forced upon him had been the three voices screaming, an unholy trio. The boy’s, an agonized soprano. Tom’s distinctive high, cold voice ordering frantically, “Kill!” And the man, bellowing like a tortured animal. Like nothing human.
Three voices—but only two figures struggling before the Mirror, one taller, one very small. And the discarded turban. Many things became clear to Albus in that instant; even he had not expected quite such audacity of Tom.
Albus raced forward, eyes on the lump in Harry’s pocket, calling futilely (he knew it was futile even as he shouted), “Harry! Harry!”
As Albus reached the struggling figures, he realized that the stink filling his nostrils was the stench of burning flesh. He raised his wand and hesitated, unsure where first to aim.
The boy clung with both hands to the man’s bared forearm, which was charred and smoking. Blistered and smoking, too, was Quirrell’s face, the flesh actually peeling off the bones as the magical fire ate it. The cracks where the flesh had not yet flaked off wept fluid as golden and salt as tears, though much more viscous.
Flaking and blackening, too, was the flesh on the hand with which Quirrell, screaming, was trying to beat off the boy’s hold on his burning arm.
But the boy, eyes shut, screaming in his own agony, held on, as tenacious as any Krup refusing to give up its death-grip, though the prey disintegrated in its jaws.
With an inhuman howl, Quirrell’s body spasmed in a final paroxysm, wrenching the charred, stinking arm-bones from the boy’s grip at last.
The two bodies collapsed.
And in the sudden, ringing, silence, for just a moment Albus had dared to hope.
Then a mist rose from Quirrell’s head, and Albus recognized Tom’s ghastly face, even less human than it had been when Albus had last seen it. Instantly Albus had cast the strongest ghost-binding spell he knew, an improvement over the Ministry standard that he’d invented, but his necromantic attempt had failed and the spirit was free to flee.
Well, Albus had reflected, Tom wasn’t truly a ghost, and he hadn’t really died here.
Not yet, at least.
Albus knelt by the bodies—one still-smoldering, the other unconscious. He was interested to note that the boy’s hands were entirely unblistered.
What then, if not fire, had been the source of Harry’s pain?
He cast a diagnostic spell that would have surprised and alarmed Poppy Pomfrey. As Albus had predicted (though not expecting the confirmation to proceed in quite this direction), the shock from, in a sense, killing oneself, had been utterly overwhelming. And coupled with the damage the boy had done to himself in holding Quirrell as he had, it would quite possibly prove fatal. Only one restorative—well, two—were likely to be potent enough to revive him now.
Albus felt his face settle in uncharacteristic lines as he gently levitated the boy’s limp body and set himself to navigating his way back out of the trap. Quirrell’s body he left to be fetched later; the boy must be his first responsibility.
An anxious Pomfrey and Snape met him by the chessboard.
As Poppy took over levitating Harry, Snape demanded elucidation of Albus in one harsh word.
“Quirrell?” Snape asked.
“Dead,” was all he said.
*
Albus shook off his memories as they entered his office, collecting himself firmly. He gestured to a chair. Snape shook his head, not unexpectedly, and instead started pacing, his turns sharp and tight. Albus warded the room for privacy and sat down heavily, toying with a silver gyroscope.
“Headmaster?” Snape finally asked. He’d paused by the window, his attention all apparently directed to the sun-drenched view.
Albus shut his eyes for a moment. “As I said in front of Poppy, Harry’s memories merely confirm my previous suspicions.”
Snape turned slowly to face him, a black shape against the light.
Albus told him, “Lord Voldemort’s malice isn’t the true problem. The boy’s actions are. And a self-inflicted curse… is much harder to cure. Sometimes… impossible.”
Snape’s voice was a mere exhale, void of expression. “Self-inflicted.”
Albus closed his eyes. “When I entered that chamber… Quirrell was shrieking in agony and trying to escape Harry. The boy—the boy had discovered that Voldemort, or anyone possessed by Voldemort, could not touch his flesh without intense pain. Burns. It would seem that the protection wrought by Lily’s death to save Harry from Voldemort, would not suffer Voldemort to touch her son directly. Not directly. Any direct attack must fail.
“Presumably, just as it originally cast Lord Voldemort’s Killing Curse back on its caster, it cast malicious touches by one possessed by him against the perpetrator.
“Though Quirrell’s hex on Harry’s broom didn’t rebound—it wasn’t a direct attempt against Harry, you see.”
Snape said nothing. After a moment Albus resumed, “But Lily’s shield—that great protection—was in its essence purely protective. Voldemort’s direct curse was reflected back upon him, when he cast a direct curse. When he laid violent hands upon the child—through Quirrell, his host and his physical tool—what he received back was a warning to let go. The strongest possible warning—agony. Burning. One’s simplest reflex would be to recoil. And if one recoiled—nothing more. No further harm. A purely protective shield.
“We can probably trace in this Lily Potter’s truest nature—anything at all to protect her child, but nothing beyond to curse her enemy. A truly shining soul. But Harry misused this protection. He didn’t understand that he did so, he cannot possibly be blamed for doing so—but he misused it.”
The black shape had turned away from Albus. By his posture, Snape was gripping the windowsill. Eventually he said roughly, “Misused it? How so?”
Albus said sadly, “He perverted a sacred protection that should have been purely protective. He used it aggressively. When he understood that Quirrell couldn’t touch him without pain, without agony, without gross damage, he used that knowledge to cause harm to his enemy. Quirrell responded correctly to Lily’s shield’s warning—he stopped attempting to lay violent hands on Lily’s child, and started just trying to get away.
“Only Harry held him, Severus. Harry laid his hands on Quirrell’s arm and held him. Harry wouldn’t let him get away, even while seeing that he was causing Quirrell agony, seeing that he was burning him.”
Snape whirled from the window. “And if the child had let Quirrell walk away unscathed, no doubt at the next moment Quirrell would have turned, wand in hand, to kill the child!”
“No doubt at all. You know it; I know it; the child, clinging desperately to the man’s arm, knew it when he held him. But Severus, that does not alter the case.
“Harry perverted a sacred protection. For excellent reasons—to save his own life, and to keep the Stone from falling into Voldemort’s hands. No one could argue with his motivations; no one could conceivably wish, rather, that the Stone should have fallen into Lord Voldemort’s hands, or Harry been killed.
“But still, Harry perverted a sacred protection. And he used it to kill. To kill a man who, at that moment, whatever his other intentions towards Harry, was struggling, desperately and in pain, to do no more than to escape.
“And Harry killed him, in utmost agony.
“I witnessed it, Severus. I heard Quirinus’s screams. I saw his last convulsion. And I saw Harry collapse in the exact same instant as his victim.
“Harry did this to himself.”
This time it was Severus who shut his eyes.
*
Snape had resumed his pacing, and Albus was a little concerned at his hard face. So Albus set himself to think how a Slytherin might respond to this challenge.
A true Slytherin wouldn’t accept defeat; he’d look for possible ways around.
Eyes intent, Albus watched his potions master pacing before the windows, registering the set of his mouth.
Eventually the young man stopped by a window and stared out at the Forbidden Forest, frowning fiercely.
Albus looked at the direction of his gaze and nodded a little, theory confirmed. He said gently, “Severus—you do understand, don’t you, that it wouldn’t work to kill a unicorn and give Harry the blood without his knowledge, trying to save the boy from being accursed by taking the guilt for the transgression solely upon yourself?
Snape spun from the window and met his eyes. Albus bore down on him: “That has been tried, several times, and the attempts have all failed, Severus, failed utterly. In all cases, both the giver and the recipient bore the resulting curse. Even though, in most of those cases, the recipient was indeed utterly unconscious of his guilt when he drank. The blood itself is cursed, and to draw it or to drink it, either one, is to attaint oneself. You can’t inflict that ghastly fate on the boy. There is no way there to save Harry.”
Albus drew a breath. “There is no way at all that I can see, and you may believe that I have looked, Severus.”
Snape’s face was white. “Unless. Unless I can find a way to make the Phoenix Tears Draught even stronger, strong enough to counter even this.”
Albus sighed a little. He should stop Severus from wasting himself on such futile efforts. Yet, as with Poppy, Albus couldn’t bear to eradicate all hope sooner than he must.
Let them be comparatively happy for a time, striving to prevent the inevitable. Soon enough they’d have to accept the truth.
Albus would grant his followers such small mercies as he could, and himself endure the knowledge that the temporary hope he’d allowed them was false.
*
Phoenix tears, asphodel petals, narcissus bulbs… it was actually quite a simple formula. Only the extreme rarity of phoenix tears kept it from the standard pharmacopeia.
Not a consideration at Hogwarts under this headmaster, but in force most everywhere else. No wonder this formula had never been stringently examined for possible improvements.
So Severus examined it. Stringently.
The last ingredient, added while the potion was cooling, was three drops of the brewer’s blood. A symbolic offering of the brewer’s own life-force and power.
Severus hadn’t troubled to heal the small cut on his finger from when he’d brewed the standard—ineffective in the child’s case—formula.
He stared at the tiny wound, thinking about offerings.
*
“Mipsy. This cauldron contains an almost-complete potion for the Potter boy. The one who is dying now; you elves have heard about that child, yes? In a moment I shall do something that is likely to cause me to faint. Ignore me if I do. It is imperative that you obey me in this. Once I collapse, if I do, you must stir this potion three times sunwise. If it turns gold, as I believe it will, you must take it instantly to Madam Pomfrey to administer to the child. Instantly, do you understand me? The child may die if you disobey me in any particular. I believe this to be his only chance of a cure.”
He bent down and met the elf’s eyes. “Mipsy, do you understand me?
“Do you promise to obey my instructions , in every particular?”
The elf nodded twice, eyes huge, and positioned herself by the cauldron, stirring stick raised.
Severus regarded her narrowly for a moment more, and then nodded in acceptance and approval. The elf’s ear’s perked proudly.
Severus stepped back away from the cauldron, far enough that when he fell—if he fell—he would not upset it. He took a breath, pointed his wand at his own heart, and cast.
*
Poppy was jubilant, but the Headmaster looked grave despite the near-certainty of Potter’s recovery. He was, nonetheless, unstinting in his praise. “Astonishing work, Severus. I had not thought my formula susceptible to any further improvement; I must confess myself to be jealous. Sometime when we have the leisure you will have to tell me what changes you made to effect such an increase in my potion’s potency. However, now that it seems the boy will make a recovery, I fear that we two have another urgent matter to discuss.”
He led the way back to his office, and drew out his Pensieve. “This,” he said, drawing a memory-strand from his mind, and displaying it.
The silver figure told the boy, “No, no, no. I tried to kill you…. Why do you think he wanted to referee your next match?... All the other teachers thought Snape was trying to stop Gryffindor from winning, he did make himself unpopular…. Oh, he does, heavens yes. He was at Hogwarts with your father, didn’t you know? They loathed each other. But he never wanted you dead.”
The memory-figure sucked itself back into the Pensieve.
Severus gave himself a moment to reflect, and then spoke. “You are concerned that the boy might decide that he had misjudged me.”
His voice was quite even, Severus was pleased to note.
“As always, your quick apprehension of the problem does you credit, Severus. Should the boy start to believe you trustworthy—well. We’ve discussed how the Dark Lord might eventually try to use such trust.”
Dumbledore’s voice had been warmly approving. But now it dropped and chilled. “But the problem is worse, even, than I believe you yet realize, Severus. The boy had never fit in amongst the Muggles with whom he was raised, no more than had you. He got a taste of being accepted, applauded even, here at Hogwarts, for the first time in his life. Then that acceptance was withdrawn and he was ostracized by his fellows, due to his being caught in his—successful—attempt to rescue Hagrid from that dragon-hatching folly. And Harry felt that pain keenly; you will have observed how his behavior and demeanor changed in response.
“And Quirrell has just told him that the social punishment that Harry had involuntarily brought upon himself in the course of rescuing a dear friend, you had voluntarily incurred to protect an enemy’s child, a boy you hated, and one who had treated you constantly with marked disrespect and suspicion.”
Dumbledore paused; Severus made no response.
“It could scarcely be worse if someone were to enumerate for him how many times you had suffered torture for passing on to Lord Voldemort information that turned out, alas, to be have been poor. Indeed, the latter might even be better. That would as yet be unreal for him, however heroic; this was a sacrifice any child of that age could appreciate, and one which he himself had just endured. If we gave Harry time to think about it…”
Severus steepled his fingers and spoke to them. “So we must not. His attention must be re-directed. Immediately. Presumably, if you haunt his bedside, headmaster, you may do so as soon as he awakes.”
The headmaster nodded. “So as to nip in the bud any tendency to admire or sympathize with you. Have you any suggestions to make on that head?”
Severus considered the problem presented for his analysis. “Not instantly, no, but I observe a further condition that must be met. Anything that we impart to the boy may eventually be evaluated by the Dark Lord. We dare not assume the boy won’t encounter him again, nor that the Dark Lord would not interrogate him. Fully. On all matters of interest.
“It is imperative, therefore, that anything that comes directly from you be consistent with what the Dark Lord believes you to believe of me. And I think in this instance that it must come directly from you, that it would be too chancy to try again to maneuver, say, Hagrid, into imparting selected information and attitudes to the boy.”
Dumbledore nodded. “James Potter, then, must be the key. Your stratagem to assure Quirrell that you’d all-but-forgotten Harry’s mother seems to have been entirely successful; Quirrell didn’t even think to mention a former fondness as a possible reason for you to protect Lily’s son. I congratulate you on that.”
Severus returned his attention strictly to his steepled fingers. Which had turned white at the tips and knuckles.
Which fact had probably not escaped Dumbledore’s notice. Little did.
After an uncomfortable silence, the headmaster mused, “The Dark Lord believes me to accept that you’d regretted bitterly bringing into danger someone who had saved your own life, however much you otherwise loathed each other. He, conversely, believes himself to know that you had suffered a little compunction on that head, just enough to display for my benefit to convince me of your repentance, but not enough to affect your actions. And that, at that long-ago moment when you’d successfully feigned to me to have repented, the feelings that you’d displayed for my benefit had been augmented by your more genuine regret at endangering James Potter’s wife, whom at that time you wanted for yourself. An infatuation from which you’ve since wholly recovered.”
Severus let that summary stand.
“So, Severus, I think the next important question is: what does your former master believe to have been your true reason for interfering with Quirrell’s attempts on Harry’s life this year? We cannot entirely trust what he fed to Quirrell and Quirrell to Harry, but Harry’s mother does seem to be off the table as a possible motive.”
“Ex—expediency.” Severus cleared his throat and looked up. “That I—that most of the former Death Eaters are trying to make their way as best they can in the Dark Lord’s absence. You’re my patron; Harry Potter is your protégé; I’d make a show of protecting Harry for that reason alone. To curry your favor. But if I could convince you that I was doing it because I felt a debt to Harry’s father, I would. You’d think the better of me then, which would be all to my advantage.”
“Not necessarily.” Dumbledore was directing that alarming twinkle of his in Severus’s direction; Severus tried not to recoil visibly. Dumbledore continued, “Not if I believed—oh, let us say—that I believed you eager to repay your debt to Harry’s father for saving your life, by saving his only son’s life, in order that, all debts finally settled, you could resume in peace your uninterrupted loathing of James Potter and his lookalike son. That tiny grain of true compunction finally eased.”
Severus was rendered speechless between revulsion and admiration.
Dumbledore beamed at him. “Severus, I do believe that that should serve.”