Somehow Voldemort had learned of his training with the mysterious, elusive free-elves, and tracked him to their secret labyrinthine forest home. Then he had caught, tortured, and killed several elven children and left their bodies for the elves to find. It had been a message, of course: a blunt, brutal reminder of the reach of a Dark Lord's power for Harry, for the Order, for their allies.

Harry left, though the elves never blamed him. He returned to the Order of the Phoenix, determined to become more than just a pawn on the chessboard, determined to have his revenge. Albus had suspected betrayal, and Snape had suggested a trap. Harry, who'd wanted the bastard, had agreed to act as bait.

They carefully leaked information about an envoy from the elves staying in one of their hidden safehouses on his way to a meeting with the Order—when actually, it was a disguised Harry creating an illusion with elven mind-magic to fuel their delicate deception.

The plan started to disintegrate almost as soon as it was set in motion.

The moon had not yet risen in the sky when Harry began his spell. His wand flowed into his hand without conscious thought as he closed his eyes and focused his mind on the scene he wished to create: a single unsuspecting elven messenger, small body cloaked in forest shades of green and brown, just beginning to settle in for the night. It was an elaborate, complex illusion—not outside the bounds of his capabilities, but intricate enough that Harry was grateful for the smooth holly and the warmth of phoenix feather between his fingers to carry and shape his magic. Even after two years with the elves, he still found it easier to perform magic with his wand in his hand.

Harry flung out his mind like a fishnet over the little hut and its grounds. He touched the minds of birds settling into the surrounding fir trees for the night, a few squirrels quarreling over a cache of pine cones, a badger snuffling in the undergrowth for berries. The Order's wards, a great dome which had activated when they entered the safehouse, glowed steadily at the perimeters of the clearing. It had not been tampered with.

Harry sank his consciousness into the wooden walls of the hut's single room around him and then into the stone foundations beneath. He wove his thoughts like a spider's web across the floor and walls and windows until the room glittered with the strands of his illusion. When he was done, he struck the last thread of the illusion deep into the foundations beneath his feet and opened his eyes.

A sickle moon had risen above the gently swaying tips of the fir trees. Anyone spying on them would now be convinced that he saw a small house-elf-sized being in a hooded cloak moving quietly about the wooden cabin; more than that, the alien feel of the magic Harry had just performed would lend credence to his illusion.

Harry tucked away his wand with a small sigh, wistfully wishing for a cup of elven wild forest tea, brewed with fresh-fallen rain and tasting of the subtle, clear sweetness of moonflowers. He had all but lived on the stuff during his stay with the elves, and he still missed it. Maybe he'd be able to coax Dobby into making him a batch..

"Well?" the low, impatient voice at his shoulder recalled him abruptly to reality.

Harry resisted the urge to take a step away, refusing to give his companion the satisfaction of seeing his disconcertion. "It's done," he said curtly.

At the man's dubious silence, Harry explained irritably, "You don't see it because you know what's supposed to be here. They don't, so they'll see the illusion I created."

"Let's hope your illusions are somewhat more.authentic.than your potions, Potter," Snape replied with the ever-present sneer in his voice as he moved away to meld once more with the shadows at the back of the room.

Harry bit back a resentful retort. He knew that he had barely scraped an 'Exceeds Expectation' on his Potions NEWT, and only because the Ministry had leaned on Snape to give Harry a grade that would have allowed him to be considered a candidate for Auror training. The Ministry's meddling had been as bitter a draught to swallow for Harry as it had been for Snape. But he knew that though he had done as well on his Potions NEWT as Draco, who had received an 'Outstanding', Snape, that spiteful bastard, would never have allowed him to pass without external pressure.

Harry had believed that following in his parents' footsteps as an Auror was the only road he could ever walk. He had leapt at the chance to be taught by the elves, who were unparalleled masters of Occlumency and other mind-magics, because they were more weapons he could use against Voldemort and his Death Eaters. But his two years with the free-elves had touched his conceptions of the world in unforeseen ways While sitting with the elves beneath the stars with Hedwig on a low pine-limb beside him, listening to stories and songs passed down through the centuries, Harry had begun to understand the hope buried at the root of the war with Voldemort. Perhaps it had been the unquestioning acceptance the elves had shown him from the very first moment they had had allowed him to enter the forests that had been hidden from man for hundreds of years. Or perhaps he had seen something of true peace, there among the trees untouched by time. He had made a vow to protect that peace.

Then the children had been taken, and he had known that he could not stay. So after two years with the free-elves he had returned to London and quietly informed the Ministry that he no longer had any interest in becoming an Auror. Albus had only smiled when he had asked to return to Hogwarts as an assistant, and cheerfully commented that there were some things he could learn only by teaching. So he had returned to his heart's home as an Assistant Professor, and had not looked back from that decision.

This particular mission would be the first in which he was to play a key role, and he had to wonder what Albus could gain by insisting that Snape, of all people, accompany him in this undertaking. He had reluctantly accepted only because it was obvious that Albus would not agree to the plan without Snape's presence—and he had wanted his chance at Voldemort's agent badly enough that he would have taken a slime-tailed slug, had that been Albus' condition.

Still, as he sat down cross-legged beside the door to wait, Harry fervently wished that Albus had chosen any other person but the black, brooding presence behind him. The festering hatred that had taken root between them like well-watered devil's snare in Harry's first year had not diminished upon Harry's return to Hogwarts, and it was all Harry could do sometimes to be civil to the man. Snape, of course, made no such effort. He continually undermined Harry's efforts to contribute to the Order of the Phoenix, and it was a rare meeting when the dour Potions master didn't try to dismiss his ideas as the worthless rantings of a young hothead in that quiet, subtle way that Harry did not know how to counter. It was enough to drive a bloody ghost to drink.

Harry sighed again, noiselessly this time. Draco, he could have worked with; for all his arrogant posturing, his old rival had at least learned to consider opinions other than his own, and he surely knew enough of the Dark Arts to be useful. He would even have preferred Neville over Snape, for all that his friend had chosen the Healer's path. Snape radiated menace like a cobra poised to strike at any wrong move on his part; he prickled constantly at the edges of Harry's consciousness. Harry was certain that any small mistakes on his part tonight would be carried back to the Order to be used as further evidence of his incompetence. It chipped away at his concentration and left him jumping at shadows. But Snape it had to be, and Snape it was.

"For all that quack Lockhart's protestations to the contrary, theatrical sighing will not make the time go faster, Potter," came the cold mocking voice out of the darkness.

Harry silently recited an obscure elven spell for mesmerizing tree slugs—twice—before attempting to answer. "If my presence bothers you, perhaps you would like to return to your dungeons for the night.Professor," Harry suggested as pleasantly as he could.

"And miss another spectacular demonstration of the famous Potter predilection for failure? I think not," Snape replied smoothly.

Harry's hands clenched involuntarily into fists at his side. "I will not fail," he bit out.

"That remains to be seen," Snape coolly responded. "If it were up to me, the Order would never have allowed someone so appallingly untried within its ranks. But of course, once again the great Harry Potter has brushed aside rules set for ordinary mortals and done exactly as he wished." Snape's voice lowered to a velvet murmur. "But this is no longer Hogwarts, Potter. This time, you are playing with lives. And you don't even realize it yet."

Harry's heart pounded loudly in his throat. "Do you think that I believe this to be a game?" he demanded.

"Do you not?" Snape asked still softly, almost lazily. "You have certainly given ample evidence of your contempt for those who hold opinions differing from yours throughout the years. How seriously did you apply yourself to any subject at Hogwarts? And yet you tell me that it was not a game to you? How many times were you allowed to get away with something simply because of that scar on your forehead? You would have been expelled a dozen times over for the lack of respect you held for the rules if not for the Headmaster's incomprehensible favoritism."

"Not for lack of trying on your part, I'm sure," Harry replied shortly, stomach churning. He could not allow himself to be distracted, not now. Not with the illusion depending on his belief in his own abilities as much as it did on his magic. He asked with a hint of steel in his own voice, "Speaking of favoritism, exactly how many points did you have to award Malfoy for shaking Scrimgeour's hand to get Slytherin to win the House Cup that year?"

"No more than McGonagall gave you for managing to sprout feathers from your ears, I'm sure. Did Ms. Granger give you a potion for that, perhaps?" Snape replied silkily.

"No, she didn't," Harry retorted. "But I've always wondered what it was Malfoy took to have that tail poking out of his arse. Was that one of your new inventions, or just a failed Polyjuice Potion?"

There was a moment of utter silence. A familiar chill sliced through Harry. His muscles tensed in automatic response to the unseen storm gathering on the other side of the room. He would be able to dodge any hex or curse Snape threw at him, he was almost certain. But then—what? Would he return to Hogwarts in humiliation, admit to Albus that he had failed the mission because of some petty squabble?

The seconds thudded by to the rhythm of his heartbeat. The back of his neck crawled with the clammy warning of hostile magic. But still there was no movement from Snape, no hiss of a curse, no flare of vengeful magic.

Slowly, Harry sank down against the stone at his back. He closed his eyes, remaining perfectly still. Gradually the fine hairs along the back of his neck settled. A voice finally snarled, tightly in control once more, "For your information, Potter, I have not failed a potion since my Fifth Year, when your father and his sycophants managed to empty a bottle of chimera scales into my Calming Potion. You can be sure that I was quite vindicated when your father failed the Potions OWLS."

Harry opened his mouth and closed it again, swallowing the fire that threatened to explode from him once more. "Stop," he said tightly. "Don't."

"Don't what, Potter?" Snape taunted. "Don't tell you about how—for once—the great James Potter couldn't manage to succeed at something simply through charisma and a facile tongue? Don't tell you how your grandfather, the distinguished Harold Potter, had to beg the Ministry to take your father as an Auror? Don't tell you about your father's cowardice and bigotry, and his unparalleled arrogance?"

"My father was an excellent Auror!" Harry interrupted harshly, the blood pounding thickly at his temples. He forced his hands to remain braced flat against the stone floor. "And despite all the things you say about him, he still saved your life!"

"'Saved my life'," Snape spat. "Yes—saved it—so that he could bind me to the protection of his dimwitted brat. And do you imagine that I have not paid my debt to him? Do you think that I owe anything to you or your father?"

Harry shivered at the caressing, knife-edge cold that had entered Snape's bitter voice. "No," he whispered, too softly for Snape to hear.

"Don't think that your father didn't have warning of his friends' treachery, Potter," Snape continued in a low snarl. "But he chose to risk the lives of his wife and his son on the vaulted tenets of Gryffindor friendship because he refused to believe the warnings of a Death Eater spy!"

"You—you thought that Sirius would betray my father," Harry growled, the words boiling over like molten fire over a caldera despite his best endeavors to force calm upon himself.

"And I was right," Snape answered with a sneer, the ice in his voice further fueling Harry's anger. "If not for Sirius Black's cowardice, your parents may yet have survived Voldemort's attack."

"I won't let you talk about my godfather that way!" Harry hissed.

"Afraid of the truth?" Snape mocked acidly, and Harry's hands clenched around stone. "Are you going to hex me for it?"

They were not enemies; he willed himself to believe that. Snape, however unpleasant the man himself, was an ally. Someone Albus trusted.

Albus. Harry froze for a split-second. Then his eyes narrowed as he teased at the thought that had flashed across his mind. Was this a test? Did Albus accede to his request for that reason? Had he asked Snape to do this? To bait him, to chip away at his equilibrium like a delicate chisel at an ice statue? Was he truly that fragile? Could Albus really be that calculating, that ruthless?

Harry shook his head. "I—you—" he tried, before the first silent clanging of the alarms interrupted him. The abrupt movement of the shadow at the back of the room as it stood and stepped out of sight range jarred him back to reality. He took several quick breaths of the cool forest air, forcing calm upon himself and pushing everything but the imminent battle out of his mind. To do otherwise would mean a failure he could not tolerate.

He had barely enough time to mutter a basic protective spell before the tiny wooden cabin exploded with fire. He had intentionally made his spell weak so that the power of the Death Eater's own spell would camouflage his entirely human magic. The wards had blunted most of the power of the attack, but the wooden timbers of the cabin had been set ablaze. They had a matter of minutes before the structure collapsed. Harry remained by the door, waiting for the Death Eater's next move.

The door swung open on silent hinges. Harry, standing to one side, raised his wand and prepared to immobilize the Death-masked figure stepping through the threshold. Except that the man who had entered was not masked, and Harry knew the face beneath the hood of the black robe. He froze.

"Crucio," the other man said in a curiously monotonous, empty voice.

Harry fell writhing to the floor, wand still clutched uselessly in his hand.

The other wizard did not even seem to be aware of the fire as he unhurriedly bent to peer at Harry through flat, expressionless eyes. Harry screamed once before he could stop himself. His fingernails broke and bled as he half-raised himself from the floor and fell back again, clawing uselessly against stone. The man raised his wand once more.

"Petrificus Totalus," interjected the calm, cool voice from back of the room. A soft thud signaled the abrupt end of pain. Harry collapsed upon the floor, cheek pressed against cool stone, panting harshly and coughing as smoke entered his lungs.

Snape stepped silently to his side. He leaned down and gently pushed away the hood from the prone man's face with the tip of his wand. "Imperius," he murmured, and Harry sighed with relief.

He moaned softly as he raised himself up to his hands and knees, gingerly testing bones that felt as if they should have been pulverized within his body. Snape looked over at him irritably. "Don't move," he snapped, and with a sweep of his wand doused the fire. He stepped over his paralyzed captive to Harry's side. "Don't you know anything, you stupid boy?" Snape continued, scowling. "Straining your body after being cursed by the Cruciatus is the easiest way to cause permanent damage to yourself."

Harry glared defiantly up at Snape. "You could have pulled your rescue act a bit sooner."

"Ah, but I could hardly have guessed that the great Harry Potter, disciple of magics the rest of us are too lowly to learn, would have needed rescuing," Snape sneered.

Harry clenched his teeth and stood. He swayed dangerously as the liquefied bones of his legs protested their abuse. "We're supposed to be working together, Snape," he pointed out through clenched teeth, and coughed again.

"Really, Mr. Potter," Snape responded with cool sarcasm. "And yet I was under the impression that you would much preferred to carry out this mission alone tonight."

"That's—look out!" Harry shouted hoarsely. He half-stumbled, half-fell against Snape, barely managing to shove them both out of the path of the too-familiar bolt of green light that blasted the door off its hinges. Snape grunted as they fell in a tangle of robes and limbs. Harry's elbow jarred painfully against the heated stone floor, knocking his wand out of his hand.

He retaliated desperately with the strength of his mind alone, knowing that they were both dead as soon as their unseen attacker formulated the next curse. In the next moment his seeking mind found the alien presence in its hiding place among the shadows of the great fir trees that surrounded their little hut. He threw a barrier around the other mind, trapping it while it lay open and vulnerable in the moment before it could cast the next deadly curse.

The other mind seemed to freeze as it became aware of its ensnarement. Then it began to struggle frantically against his like a butterfly caught in a jar, which threw its tiny body at the glass walls again and again without regard for its own fragile wings. Harry held onto the barrier grimly. His scrabbling fingers found his wand lying a little distance away on the floor. He grabbed it with a sweaty, trembling hand that made holding the wand a precarious task. He raised himself to his knees, a hex upon his lips.

Suddenly Harry's barriers fractured in a violent backlash of wild hatred and fear, and he reeled from the torrent of images that rushed into his mind through his shattered walls. They twisted across his vision, too fast and too overwhelmingly vivid to comprehend—until they stopped at the image of a tall, skeletal man standing over him with burning red eyes.

Voldemort.

The images spiraled around that single name, spun around a whirlwind of terror that washed both their minds with darkness. He had failed, and the price of that failure— The images stopped, fell away into a descending spiral of nothingness. The struggling abruptly ceased.

The butterfly faded, leaving only a smearing of bright gold dust from its wings upon the shattered glass. Harry fell, screaming, back to himself.

[[center:***]]

There were strong, steady hands on his shoulders, holding him upright. Harry had a moment to be surprised by that, before he took in a trembling breath and drew away, standing shakily.

He stumbled to the door, clutching hard at the doorframe to keep from falling. He squinted at the darkness beyond the hut, but his blurring eyes could make out nothing. A soft light approached him from behind, and he half-turned to see Snape pass him with his wand aglow in his hand. Harry followed.

They stopped a few feet from the hut, behind a large fir tree rustling its evergreen needles gently in the night breeze. Both of them paused, gazing at the long-boned fingers still clutching the cherrywood wand, revealed from the obscuring cover of an Invisibility Cloak when the Death Eater had fallen over on his side.

After a long moment of silence, Snape quietly bent down and drew away the hood of the Invisibility Cloak with his wand. He straightened. Freed from Snape's shadow, the Death Eater's hair burned like raw gold in the thin band of moonlight falling through the trees. Harry closed his eyes.

"Bellatrix's protégé Snape said with no emotion at all in his voice. He raised his wand, but stopped with Harry's hand on his arm.

"Let me," Harry whispered. "Let me finish it."

There was a flash of surprise in Snape's hooded black eyes, followed by the flicker of something of which Harry could not interpret. Then he nodded silently, arm falling away.

Harry gazed at the Death Eater's face. He had come hunting for this man like a falcon on the trail of a rattlesnake. He had imagined looking into the Death Eater's eyes before he cast the Killing Curse, imagined triumph or vindication or satisfaction. He had never thought to feel this bitter regret that now stifled him under its weight like memories of shame upon an old man.

He raised his wand in a double-handed grip, shaken to find that even so he could not seem to hold it steady. For the elves, he reminded himself. For their children. Our answer to Voldemort.

He closed his eyes again and opened them. I have already killed him. Let me finish it. Let me have the strength.to finish this. "Avada.Kedavra," he said softly, and green lightning crackled from the tip of his wand. The Death Eater's body arched slightly and fell back onto the ground.

The earth tilted erratically beneath Harry's feet. He put out a hand blindly to brace himself and met only empty air. "You were right. The Order shouldn't have accepted me," he murmured, before his legs folded beneath him.

His last thought was a surprised one. The ground had somehow managed to levitate itself up to meet him, and smelled—not of decaying pine needles—but of fresh mountain tea leaves and wild mint. He breathed deeply. The world faded away once more.