He spent his days in the Hogwarts infirmary after that, refusing to move from Severus' side, and even Remus could not convince him to leave. Finally, a well-meaning Ron managed to slip Sleeping Potion into his food. Even then, when they tried to approach him, he managed to cast the Furnunculus Curse on someone and, when they took away his wand, to sock someone else on the chin. He refused to feel guilty about that. They should be glad he had the wits not to cast something permanent.

He was back at the infirmary the next day, and refused to eat until he extracted a promise from McGonagall that no one would tamper with his food. He knew his friends were worried, but he felt as if he had managed to erect a wall of glass around himself, and they moved and spoke in the other world outside of the glass. In his world lay the one man, his hands still warm with life, his terrible wounds slowly mending with Poppy's expert ministrations.

It was the end of the week when Poppy came to sit in the chair opposite him and began to tell him, speaking slowly and carefully as if Harry were eleven again, about their fears. About why Severus did not return even though he was now safe, and cared for. About the bond between the soul and the body, how a soul might be lost, forever blind, forever searching for a way home.

Harry smiled, wondering why Poppy sounded as if she expected the news to shock him. He had guessed for himself, actually. So he told the Mediwitch gently that he was prepared to wait for Severus for as long as it took, that surely there was hope as long as the body breathed, lived? He expected the words to soothe her; instead, he saw the flicker of fear in Poppy's eyes.

He pushed it aside. After all, there were much more important things now to attend to. He made a trip to the dungeons to gather some of Severus' favorite books so Harry could read to him while he slept. He'd heard somewhere that it helped. He was left alone for two more days before Remus came to fetch him.

There were shadows under the other man's eyes, Harry saw as he stood to embrace him. He allowed Remus to lead him away from the infirmary room, down to the dungeons where McGonagall was waiting for them.

He saw Draco there, Arthur Weasley, a few Aurors. They stood clustered by Severus' writing table, staring at the piece of parchment lying there. A chill slithered down Harry's spine as they turned as one to look at him. Then McGonagall picked up the parchment, drawing their attention back to her. "Harry," she said gravely, heavily, her lips twisting as if the words tasted bitter on her tongue, "this appeared in Professor Snape's room this morning. I am afraid that it is now my duty to read it to all of you gathered here. For you have been called upon to bear Witness." Harry's eyes went back to the sheet of deepest ebony in McGonagall hands, drawn by the weirding glow of silver on the page.

"No," Harry said, shaking his head in horror, suddenly knowing exactly what was written on that piece of parchment. He backed away from Remus into the dark corridor. "No!" He was trembling. He turned and ran before anyone would call him back.

He transformed as he ran and burst out into the open air in his animagus form, shrieking his rage, grief, defiance at the blindingly blue sky. He flew, letting the savage predator within him take hold, until a bright stream of light collided with him in mid-air and flung him out of the sky into waiting, gentle hands.

He lay dazed while a soft voice repeated his name over and over and tender fingers stroked the bright flecks of red from the snowy feathers at his breast. And then he remembered that he had once been human, and he turned and retched out the memories of merciless satisfaction he had taken in sinking vicious talons into warm, living flesh. He shuddered as Hermione gently wrapped her arms around him, pulling him up, but did not draw away. Large, warm hands fell across his shoulders, and Ron's worried voice murmured, "Easy there, mate."

He clenched his teeth against the burning in his throat, shaking in their embrace for a small eternity. Finally Hermione asked in a soft, tentative voice, "He's...very important to you, isn't he?"

Tears seeped out from under Harry's eyelids despite his best efforts. He whispered with difficulty, "Yes."

Hermione tightened her hold around him and cleared her throat. "Then don't give up," she said, her voice thick. "There's still hope."

"I want to believe that," Harry choked, sobs rising irrevocably in his throat.

A strong hand squeezed his shoulder. "Hermione's right. If you...c-care about him that much, then you mustn't give up. I don't know what, I don't know how, but I know that we'll think of something."

Ron's arms came up to encircle both of them, and for a moment he could believe in hope.

Predictably, Hermione was the one to ask, "Do you—?"

Harry shook his head quickly, cutting her off. "I don't know," he whispered, looking away. "I don't know anything except—except that I will hate myself forever if I don't at least try."

"Well help you all we can, Harry," Hermione said solemnly. "If there's a way, we'll find it."

[[center:***]]

They returned to the castle together. Remus stood silently at the gates, watching for their return. His eyes, shadowed and bruised, recalled Harry to the fact that the other man, too, had joined in Severus' healing. Had risked his own life to do so. He ran into Remus' open arms blindly.

When he looked up, there were tear stains on Remus' cheeks. He asked in a hoarse voice, the single word, "When?"

Remus closed his eyes for a moment and replied as hoarsely, "In four days. The afternoon after the ceremony. The Ministry wanted to keep it quiet—and after the celebrations are over."

Harry felt a quick flash of anger at that, swiftly dissipated. Whatever their reasons, the Ministry had given him the perfect opportunity.

Remus was speaking again. "Harry—you...should know that..."

"No," he cut off the other man. He did not want to be bound by Severus' Will, even in this small way. He couldn't take the chance, not if he was to have even the slightest chance of succeeding with the inkling of a plan he had managed to conceive on their walk back to the castle.

Remus nodded. "Then...when you're ready."

He would never be ready. But he didn't tell Remus that. "Later," was all he said in reply.

Remus nodded again, then looked into Harry's face. "I know this is hard for you," he said carefully, "but I think he would have wanted—"

Swiftly, Harry cut him off again. He knew it. Whatever Remus had been about to say, he knew it. But he could not hear it and remain sane, functioning, unbroken. He needed to be whole to do this.

The past few days had been just barely sufficient for Severus' wounds to be healed enough to finally allow him to be carried without fear of further damage. He requested that the Potions master be levitated down to his rooms in the dungeons.

He began his search there, among the books that Severus so treasured. The wizarding world split along the lines of those who believed that all mention of Blood Wizardry should be erased, and those who wished to further its study. Eventually the forces of the former won over those of the latter, and wizards found practicing any sort of Blood Wizardry were immediately hunted down and executed. However, far from eliminating this art, the most powerful of the Blood Wizards went into hiding, eventually to discover the even more powerful Soul Wizardry, he read again without flinching. But the author, perhaps frightened by the darkness staring secretly back at him from his own words, meandered onto other topics and never mentioned either Blood Wizardry or Soul Wizardry again.

He moved on to other books, choosing them by their age, by the placement that marked them as sole editions, unpublished works, or even hand-written journals. He came to categorize the Dark Arts by the Dark Wizards who had wielded them: Sabinus Atrum, whose inventive use of the Cruciatus and Imperius curses had made him the most feared wizard of his era until he himself had been cursed by the only Unforgivable Curse he had not created; Claudius Pertennius, who had derived his power from the agony of Muggles he had tortured and then killed by piercing them through with long iron stakes; Cygnus Vepres, who had with spell and cauldron invented more than a thousand poisons and their antidotes... He learned to trace the faint path of Soul Wizardry through unwritten words and vague allusions, through pages so fragile that they would have flown from his hand like ashes if they had not been tethered by spells. In a single day he skimmed through all the books Severus owned on the subject, learning only enough to convince him that the idea he had conceived was possible, but leaving him with no idea as to how to achieve it.

He turned to his best friends for help. They smuggled to him books from the Ministry's private library, from the Restricted Section of the University Library, from the room in the Department of Mysteries that held stacks of unsorted volumes confiscated from the homes of Dark Wizards throughout the centuries.

The answer came to him slowly through the rustle of thousands of pages. It was late morning two days later when he closed the last book and opened his eyes wide to stare at the tomes piled on the tables, chairs, floor... The uncountable words he had read from them blurred in his mind and coalesced into the shape of the question that he should have asked.

"Salazar Slytherin," he whispered.

After the founding of Hogwarts, Salazar Slytherin had walked out of history into legend. But he had somehow guided his heir to power in his footsteps more than a thousand years later.

"How?" he murmured

"Memories," a voice replied, and Harry spun around.

Luna stood there. She smiled at him with that mysterious, otherworldly smile of old and held out her hand to him.

He stepped forward and took her impossibly solid hand. But that she stood in this room was in itself an impossibility; he had personally warded it so that not even a house-elf could appear within without triggering an alarm.

"Luna?" he breathed.

She nodded, still smiling. "Harry, I was asked to give you a message: He who would speak to you from across the Veil waits for you within the Mirror."

"Luna, what...? Who...?" And then he asked urgently as she began to pull away from him, "Luna, how did you get here?"

She gently extracted her hand from his. "I'm finally going to see the Rainbow-tailed Hobbobbers, Harry, and my mother, and maybe even the Leviathan. And he's there waiting for me, because you found him. Oh Harry, you found him!" And she laughed with so much joy that he could only smile through welling eyes as she became transparent and then faded away.

"Goodbye, Luna," he whispered.

He stood there staring at the spot where she had been until her words drifted back to him and he realized with a start what she had meant.

He turned, heart racing, and went to Severus' bedchamber. He paused for a moment at the door before walking in and kneeling in front of Severus' bed. He checked over the healing spells carefully, then gently touched Severus' hand and raced from the dungeons to his own rooms in the Gryffindor tower. Once there, he flung clothes, books, shoes, strange knick-knacks students had given him through the years out of his closet until he had reached the small trunk hidden there in the shadows at the very back. He paused with his hand over the lid, then flung it open and dug through musty student robes and a shrunken Firebolt to the cloth-wrapped package beneath.

He uncovered the bundle slowly, his hands trembling. A small square frame, old, grimy with age, lay nestled in the cloth. Around it were pieces of shattered glass. He stood, walked over to a window, and picked up a piece of glass. The morning sunlight flowed across its jagged edges like liquid gold. He carefully placed the piece in the mirror frame—spell-lessly, to avoid disrupting whatever enchantment might have been placed upon it, then picked up another, and another, patiently turning them around, shifting, reversing, until at last he stared at his completed, broken reflection in the mirror.

He took a deep breath and said unsteadily, "Sirius Black."

His own eyes, filling with a rapidly-rising despair, stared back at him. Sirius couldn't have known that he had broken the mirror in a fit of childish rage. Had he destroyed this chance ten years ago?

He stared into the mirror, hands fisting against stone, and whispered, "Sirius, I need you."

Mist clouded the surface of the mirror, and Harry squinted hard at the shadowy shapes that seemed to move from one crackled plane to the next. "Sirius?" he murmured.

"Harry! Harry—" A dark smudge in the mist suggested only the vague outline of a human figure, but Harry's heart leapt as he recognized the voice that seemed to be struggling to reach him from a great distance. For a moment the voice faded, then steadied: "Harry, can you hear me?"

"Y-yes," Harry said loudly, trying to project his voice into the mirror. "Sirius—"

"Harry, listen. We don't have much time," his godfather said. "We have only once chance. Tell me what you need."

Harry's mind leapt back over the books piled like small mountains of words in Severus' room. What he needed? How could he ever—? "Salazar Slytherin," he said hopelessly, and then added, remembering, "Salazar Slytherin's memories."

"Salazar Slytherin's memories," Sirius repeated slowly. "Are you sure?"

"I—yes," Harry replied.

"Then stand back," Sirius commanded.

Harry did so, and then narrowed his eyes against the sudden dazzling white light that shot out from the surface of the mirror. A chill, high-pitched wind swirled around the room, bringing with it the faint scent of decay. The light intensified until he had to close his eyes, and it flared red against his eyelids before subsiding. Sirius' voice seemed to fade almost before it reached him: "Harry, I believe in you..."

The mirror, too, had faded with the light and Sirus' voice into memory; Salazar Slytherin's memories had taken its place. Harry picked it up, a lump in his throat as he touched the richly embossed leather and then the sleeping emerald snake coiled like a sentinel across the closed covers. Somehow he knew that this book would not reveal its secret to any casual inquiry.

The knock on his door almost startled him into dropping the book. He stared at it wildly for a few seconds before hurriedly hiding Slytherin's journal in his old school trunk, locking and trap-alarming it with spells, and stuffing everything back into the closet with a wave of his wand.

He opened the door. Remus stood there. "Remus? Is—" he stiffened. "Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing's wrong, Harry." Remus tried to smile and almost succeeded. "Tonks sent me to ask if you needed—er, if you needed dress robes?"

Harry blinked at him for a moment. "Dress robes?"

"For—for the ceremony tonight," Remus reminded him.

Tonight! Harry counted the days, froze as he came to today. That meant that tomorrow— His mind galloped ahead as he plastered a smile on his face, though it was probably no more successful than Remus' attempt. "I...er...yeah, I guess I do."

Remus brightened a little. "Then maybe we can go down to Diagon Alley and have a look around?"

"That...sounds good," Harry replied cautiously.

[[break:line]]
He quickly realized, as he and Remus Apparated from Hogsmeade to Diagon Alley, the depth of worry Remus had for him. It was in his every glance, the words he picked as carefully as Hermione picked runes for her spells of ciphascriptic unlocking. Harry apologized silently to his adopted godfather as he layered his thoughts with wards and stretched his lips in empty smiles. Remus, oh Remus, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm sorry... But Remus had been bound by Severus' Will, and Harry knew that despite Remus' unwillingness, he would carry out the Will to the best of his abilities because he would respect what Severus wanted.

While he...

For a moment Harry faltered. A wizard's Will contained his last desire—a last fervent plea for something to be done or undone, something to be completed. It was passingly rare for even those who were not Witnesses to attempt to directly subvert the request made in a wizarding Will.

"Harry?"

Harry lifted his head and ran to catch up with Remus, who was waiting for him with a troubled look in his gentle brown eyes. Right or wrong, this was a path that he must walk if he ever wanted to look himself in the eye in the mirror again. And if he could really find Severus and lead him back, even if Severus should hate him forever for it...

"Even if that's the price..." Harry murmured to himself.

The two of them walked around quietly for the rest of the morning, first getting Harry measured for his formal dress robes, then purchasing shoes, gloves, a beautiful heavy velvet cloak for the lingering winter chill... Harry bore it all patiently, smiling as genuinely as he could for Remus, who had been so steadfast throughout the long years of the war, who had never neglected to visit him in the brief, rare times he had been able to leave the werewolf colony undetected, or to send him gifts for Christmas and his birthdays.

They met Tonks at the Leaky Cauldron for lunch, and Harry, seeing them together, felt a stab of—no, it was not jealousy. It could not be jealousy because there was no one for whom he wished happiness more than they. But seeing the slow, tender smile upon Remus' face, the smile he reserved for only the woman at his side, seeing the way Tonks' eyes seemed to glow with words that never needed to be voiced between them—how could anyone not feel just a bit lonely, alone beside their harmony?

Severus...

How would Severus have responded, if he had been given the chance to ask the question he had finally found enough courage for, that Christmas?

After lunch Harry left Remus and Tonks at the Leaky Cauldron after promising to meet Remus at Madam Malkin's to retrieve his robes in a few hours' time. His first stop was Gringotts, where he converted a sizable portion of his inheritance into Muggle money. Then he Apparated into Muggle London.

He'd dressed in Muggle clothes under his robes for that very reason. Nobody looked twice at him when he walked out from behind a shelf full of moldy classics in a used book store. He purchased a copy of the day's paper before exiting the store and scanned it quickly. One particular ad caught his attention. He read it over carefully. Then he located an ordinary public telephone and dialed the number it listed.

The woman who answered the phone was brisk, business-like, and reminded him very strongly of Minerva McGonagall. She agreed to meet him immediately.

In person, the woman resembled Hogwart's current Headmaster even more strongly. Her efficient, no-nonsense manner gained his trust immediately. She showed him around the location listed in the ad. The price she quoted was a bit inflated, but together they managed to work it down to something reasonable. Harry was well satisfied by the time they shook hands on the deal.

When he returned to meet Remus three hours later, he carried a load of books on rare herbs, Muggle chemical theory, and modern cryptography that he thought might interest Hermione and Severus. In his pocket, burning against his skin, was a Shrunken deed declaring him to be the new owner of a small but stylish apartment in Greater London.

[[center:***]]

The ceremony that night was designed to be a huge, lavish affair. It seemed that the Ministry of Magic had invited the entire wizarding world to the event, as if it were still trying to convince everyone that Voldemort was truly gone, and for good this time. Harry, as usual, was expected to be the star of the show—never mind the sacrifices made by Severus, Draco, Sirius, Remus, countless others, never mind the losses they'd endured throughout the long years of the war. The wizarding world needed a hero, and he, it seemed, was still it.

In another life he might even have reveled in it. He, the boy who had lived in a cupboard for eleven years of his life, then battled Voldemort for the next fourteen...even now he could scarcely comprehend that he was free, that his life was his alone to order.

Yet how could that matter at all when Severus lay pale and unmoving in his own bed, awaiting the fulfillment of his Will? How could the Order of Merlin mean anything next to the simple irrevocable fact that Severus' soul was out there somewhere, wandering, lost?

His friends had all come to see him earlier in the evening. He'd tried to communicate his gratitude and love to each of them before saying goodbye. Who knew what would happen after tonight? He didn't want to miss an opportunity to tell the people closest to him how much they meant to him, even if he had to do so obliquely. He wondered if they knew anyway. Draco, who'd been the last to leave, had paused at the door, then turned to give him a look and said quietly, "Good luck."

And then he was alone in the large empty room. He walked back into the bedroom, stood staring for a moment at Severus lying pale and still as marble. After a moment Harry knelt down by his side and bowed his head. "Merlin help me," he murmured, and lifted Severus as gently as he could by the shoulders. "I'm sorry," he whispered, struggling against the ache in his throat. "Will you forgive me?" Then he closed his eyes, took one step out of the shadowed dungeon chamber in his mind and reached for a mist-covered back alley in Hogsmeade. A moment later he had stepped with a faint pop into that mist, reaching out with one shaking hand to steady them both against a rough stone wall. He stood there for long moments, his panting breaths stirring the silk of Snape's hair under his chin. Then, when his hand had finally stopped trembling, he reached for his wand and focused his mind for the next part of the trip.

They Disapparated into a cheerily-lit bedroom decorated in whimsically inaccurate scenes from an ocean kingdom, full of vividly colored fish, leaping dolphins, and the occasional mermaid or selkie. Severus would probably hate it on principal. But it was large and airy and bright, with a beautiful view of the Thames River and the stars glittering faintly above the lights of the city. He was grateful for even that illusion of peace—for water and night sky and quiet town, and the man waiting patiently for him to walk into the dream where he waited.

That first night he did not sleep, but sat at the open window with the still body of the Potions master wrapped gently in his arms, allowing himself to finally remember a Christmas not so long ago and a gift he never had a chance to give.

"Severus," he whispered almost inaudibly into the quiet darkness, into the shaping of the first step of another long journey, "Severus... Where have you gone?"