He had returned to Hogwarts, to walk through halls he had never seen but which the castle revealed to him with images of crystal clarity. A single strand of light formed a path beneath his feet and illuminated his footsteps, and he followed it down toward the lowest depths of the castle. The walls to either side of him pulsed with power like layers upon layers of multi-colored veils. When he brushed past them, he could feel the magic woven into the stones as if they were silken tapestries upon the walls: spells of protection, of warmth, of welcome. He had felt that magic from the moment he had set foot within Hogwarts; the ancient castle had been his first real home, and would always be the one true home of his heart.

Today he had asked of Hogwarts a favor.

A hundred and forty-two staircases. He had already walked most of them, from steep pathways to the roof with their gargoyle sentinels to the familiar steps to the Astronomy Tower to the tiny mossy stairwell that led to a grotto by the Hogwarts Lake. He'd roamed countless hallways, corridors, forgotten passageways, chambers that had not been used in hundreds of years. The castle had shared its secrets with him; opened spelled doors to his touch, shifted staircases at his command, turned dead ends into hidden passages and innocuous Persian rugs into trap doors.

At his plea it had also kept his presence a secret from its current Guardian. He could only guess that even the castle sensed his desperation.

But for all that Hogwarts could reveal to him its inhabitants illuminated like fireflies within a maze of stone, for all that it could show him the blue-misted passages of its ghosts and close-held, fire-streaked memories of the phoenix that symbolized Light, there was one thing the castle could not do.

He passed a group of chatting students without detection, something even more insubstantial than the castle's wraiths. The children glowed as if each of them carried a light beneath their skin, and their laughter glittered in a shower of golden sparks in the air around them. He smiled a little and caught some in his hand as they passed. They warmed his palm like gentle embers before fading away.

He had discovered that not even the castle's ghosts could see him unless he willed it. Of all the creatures he had passed on his roaming path, only the unicorns had sensed his presence—they who were the purest of beings, whose blood could keep a soul earthbound even when the body was the merest breath from dying. Yet when he'd approached, mesmerized by the crystalline gazes that touched him with knowledge, the beautiful creatures had shied away from him. He'd felt a pang at that, watching the silken flow of their snowy mane, the proud lift of their heads as they fled from him. But he should have known that they could not endure the presence of someone as drenched with unnatural, violent magic as he was.

He'd dropped the hand raised involuntarily to somehow stay their flight.

There was no other way.

A hundred and forty-two staircases. The last led down—down into the shadowy spaces that never saw the sun. One more place to search before his time ran out.

He had already roved the fields surrounding the castle, the path around the lake, the Forbidden Forest, and even, with a hint of amusement, Hagrid's hut. He had methodically, painstakingly explored the castle. But this was the last place. Because if he wasn't here.

Even the castle, in spite of all its ancient power, could not tell him where to find the one he so desperately sought, for even the castle could not sense the lightless path of a lost soul.

The protections in the dungeons were darker, more wary, less welcoming—Salazar Slytherin's. But they, too, recognized him and allowed him to pass.

His heartbeat grew steadily faster and louder as he approached his destination. At the door he stopped for a moment to center himself, to be prepared for whatever he would find. He took a deep breath and reached out a ruthlessly steadied hand. The snake on the door uncoiled at his touch, granting him entrance. Harry stepped into the room.

He knew instantly that he would find no one here. More than the heatless fireplace, the unfinished scrolls scattered around tables and chairs, it was the chilling sense of emptiness permeating the room that told him he'd come in vain.

He leaned against a desk and stared at a half-curled scroll lying there. Why? Why not here? This was his home, his chosen life. Why not here, if anywhere at all?

An image of a silver-black scroll falling without sound unto that same table abruptly appeared in his mind, and he violently swept the contents of the table onto the floor with a sharp clattering of quills and inkpots. "No," he whispered. "I won't let it happen. I won't."

He jerked up as the jarring sound of laughter filtered through the open door. He drifted out into the hallway, following the sound, and the door closed silently behind him.

The Potions classroom. The laughter was coming out of the Potions classroom.

He could feel a familiar presence moving within the room. He stepped through the doorway into a surreal vision.

The room had changed so radically from what he remembered of it from only a month ago that he was tempted to go back into the corridor to check his bearings. He drifted further into the room instead. The jars of pickled animals had been removed from the shelves, and in their place were bottles of all shapes and sizes jokingly labeled as love potions and aphrodisiacs. Fairy lights glittered in clusters of multi-colored globes overhead, making the dungeon room seem as if it had been decorated for a Hallowe'en party. Laughter sounded again, and he finally realized that it was the students. The students were laughing. In Potions class.

He suddenly felt an intense, uncontrolled surge of anger flare through his veins like an Incendio spell.

"What are you doing here?!" he shouted at the man standing at the front of the classroom. "You don't belong here!"

George Weasley continued to lecture animatedly, dramatically flourishing his wand, explaining some advanced potion invented during the war to the seventh-year Hufflepuffs.

Abruptly the walls around him wrenched away, and gravity reasserted itself. He fell heavily onto his bed, the book he'd been holding in stiff fingers for most of the day crashing to the ground. He lay where he'd fallen, too weary this time even for tears.

"Oh Merlin, George, I'm sorry," he mumbled. He attempted to raise his head and gasped at the jagged red lightning that stabbed mercilessly into his skull. The world faded into a haze of hard throbbing pain, and he plunged headlong into darkness.

When he woke it was to a headache so blinding that he retched helplessly for a moment before his stomach was convinced of the fact that it was completely empty and subsided. He reached desperately for the magicked herbal pills he'd laid on the stand by his bed at the beginning of the day and gulped them down without water. It couldn't compare to Severus' headache potion, but that had run out months ago. He held still for a few minutes and waited until the pain dimmed to a dull throbbing between his eyes. Then he got shakily to his feet and stumbled to the other side of the bed.

It was a rare clear night. The gentle light of the moon was kinder to the pale face framed by lank midnight-black hair than the harsh light of the sun, and he could almost believe that the man lying there on the bed was simply asleep, like other ordinary people at this hour. He swallowed the sob clawing its way out of his throat and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. Weariness and the bolts of red shooting across the darkness beneath his lids got in the way. He shook his head impatiently and reached for one of the hands lying limply on the coverlet. Then he took a deep breath and centered again.

He checked over the web of delicate interconnected Healing spells carefully, as he did every night, and replaced the energy that had been used up during the day. He breathed a prayer of gratitude for the fact that the passive spells of maintaining the body's functions took much less energy than the active bone- and flesh-mending spells that had been layered like hundreds of tightly woven meshes over the entire body at the beginning of the healing.

When he was done he opened his eyes and raised a violently trembling hand. He touched the soft shoulder-length hair gently, running his fingers through it over and over again in a gesture of unspoken need.

For a moment he was overwhelmed with the desire to simply climb back into bed, wrap his arms around the warm torso, press his face into the crook of an elegant, pale neck, breathe in rhythm with the steady breaths until he fell asleep once more. Couldn't he for one night allow himself to believe that they were together, that everything was all right?

What would the man lying there have said to him?

"Children delude themselves into accepting pretense for reality, Mr. Potter. Children close their eyes in order not to see what they don't wish to be real."

He opened his eyes slowly, forced himself to climb shakily back to his feet. He was no longer a child, and this was his reality.

He brushed the cold tears off his cheeks. "I'll be back in a little while," he said hoarsely to the still figure on the bed, and walked out of the bedroom.

He didn't bother to use a lighting spell. He knew the way to the kitchen well enough in the dark by now, after almost two weeks.

Once there he lit an ordinary Muggle fire on the stove and dinner. The smell of the food nauseated him, but he forced himself to eat every last bite. He would desperately need the energy on the morrow.

When he finished the food he stacked the dishes in the dishwasher, blessing his luck for having found a house in Muggle London with all the amenities on such short notice; he definitely did not want to waste energy on such inconsequential things as washing dishes. He turned on the machine and padded out of the kitchen for a quick shower.

He spared a moment of gratitude for Hermione's insistence that both he and Ron take Advanced Muggle Studies. There'd been quite a few things he'd never had a chance to learn while living with the Dursleys, like finding a decent house and paying the bills. At least after the class he'd had an idea of what to do and how much things cost. Of course, she had probably never imagined that he would now be using that knowledge to hide from the entire wizarding world. He knew that she would have a pretty good idea of where he was, but he also trusted her to throw them off the trail as much as she could. Which probably gave him two and a half weeks—maybe three—before the Ministry of Magic managed to track him down. He only hoped that he would have enough time to make a decision before then.

After the shower he systematically went through the house, checking the charms he'd placed over each entrance for tampering. He had placed anti-Apparation wards effective within a half-mile radius of the house, so any wizard who wanted to enter the house would either have to trick or blast his way in. He knew with grim satisfaction that the charms were strong enough to repel an ordinary attack from any single wizard—up to and including Rufus Scrimgeour and any of his Aurors. An attack would certainly have called him up from any trance, but he wasn't so sure about the small disturbances caused by someone testing the charms. He had learned, though, that no matter the strength of the wizard, such disturbances always left an echo of itself behind that could be used to identify the spell used and, depending on the skill of the wizard, his identity.

To his immense relief, he detected no stain of tampering in any of the wards. So he finally made his exhausted way through the silent house back to the bedroom. Once there he shed his robe and climbed into bed, curling up against the lean, still form of the man lying there. "Good night, Severus," he whispered, before allowing sleep to claim him once more.