I tapped the Mortiscope. For a moment I thought I’d seen the greyish mist that filled it swirl a little, but perhaps it had been the torchlight behind me flicker in an errant draught; whatever it was, it wasn’t swirling now. I looked across to the faces, all waiting for me to point them in the directions in which they had to go. I cannot remember ever feeling so alone. I had had Minerva at one side and Severus at the other for so long now that they had become part of me, and it would be several days still before Minerva would be fit again, but, thank Merlin, she would make it… and Severus… my heart refused to contemplate the possibility that he was lost to us.

Arthur and Molly had just finished going over their plans to convert the Burrow into an orphanage. Word had come through yesterday that the whole project was going to be funded by the Ministry, and they certainly hadn’t wasted any time in putting their scheme together. I suspected it was held together much the way the Burrow was, with a few quick spells and not much in the way of glue; that thought warmed my heart a little, it would be wonderful. Molly’s home, so used to the bickering laughter of children, had mourned their loss to their adult lives, and there were no better two people fitted to the daunting task of caring for those whose parents had fallen in our struggle.

Arthur had left the Ministry a few months ago when his situation became untenable. Lucius Malfoy knew Arthur was my man, and he had made sure Fudge shoved him into a small corner where he could do no damage to his plans. Arthur had no heart to go back, despite the fact that Malfoy had toppled from his position of power, and seemed to have fled. I was considering giving Arthur the post of teacher of Muggle Studies; he’d do well in all respects, and it would keep him from under Molly’s feet.

I shied away from thinking who would teach Potions; Severus had held the post for so long, even in his absence over the months when he was at Voldemort’s side, laying his plans and plotting his downfall. To hand the post to anyone for next term would be admission of what I was beginning to dread. Again the Mortiscope seemed to flutter; I saw Sirius watching it closely.

‘Albus… what does it mean when it does that?’ he asked.

‘For the love of Merlin… we’re not still banging on about bloody Snape are we?’ Moody growled from his chair. ‘We’ve got more important things to worry about than the whereabouts of one traitor who eventually turned tail when he was cornered.’

‘Why can’t you shut up and recognise what’s in front of your nose, you… you tired old has been. No one here is ever going to give up hope of finding him while he’s still alive… just like he never gave up even when we all believed he was a traitor… just… just shut up…’ Neville Longbottom trailed off, either having run out of steam, or in the realisation that everyone was looking at him.

I confess I don’t know if I were the most surprised person in room when Neville stood up from where he’d placed himself between Ginny and Hermione. He was still as timid as he’d ever been, but he had developed a passion for the potions that he had always made a mess of under Severus’s relentless scrutiny. When he found what they could do when applied to the wounded, it had so fascinated him that he had decided to make it his life’s work. We all watched him in open-mouthed admiration.

I went back to Sirius’s question; now I knew I hadn’t been imagining it, the smoke had moved. ‘It means he is alive, Sirius. I cannot tell you any more, except that wherever he is, he is very weak and… his wounds may well be mortal. It is longer and longer between the movements in the Mortiscope now. I fear if we do not find him very soon it may be too late to save him.’

‘What will it do when… if he dies?’ Harry asked quietly.

I knew he was feeling Severus’s absence as keenly as most of us, just as I knew that something had happened between them. I prayed again that Severus would live to see the faith in him, in this room alone. ‘The Mortiscope will die too, Harry.’ I watched him frown. ‘It will cease to exist. When a Mortiscope is linked for so long to one man, as this one has been linked to Severus, it becomes part of him in some obscure way, and cannot exist without his life… if Severus were to die, it would simply disappear.’

I watched the flicker of hope rise in Sirius’s eyes, replacing the dead flat blue they had been when he’d come in. ‘Are you saying he’s definitely alive?’

I had to be careful. I knew what I believed. I knew the Mortiscope was probably right… but I’d had one linked to Voldemort when he had been banished by Harry when he was an infant… that one had disappeared, but I’d known even then that Voldemort wasn’t dead. ‘I’m as sure as I can be.’ I explained my doubts to them, and the reasoning behind them. It was Neville again who seemed to find a way of explaining that, which I confess had never occurred to me; he was turning out to be a bit of a star turn.

‘But… but when Harry destroyed Voldemort when he was a baby… he did destroy what was his body then, didn’t he? I mean he had to live off others until he got a new body… I… em.’ He looked around helplessly for someone to explain what he seemed to understand.

‘Go on, Neville,’ Hermione urged him. ‘Please… this is really important.’

‘It’s just that… well, Voldemort and his body were never really one thing, his mind went from body to body. Maybe your Mortiscope at that time was attached to whatever body he had, but not his mind… but Severus’s, I mean Professor Snape’s… well, he’s only ever had one body and one mind… so… I think… erm...’

He trailed away, red-faced and gasping into the profound silence that was broken after a few long moments by Hermione. ‘That is quite brilliant, Neville, why didn’t I think of that?’

‘Maybe you’re not as smart as he is,’ young Ron snorted from Harry’s side.

Just then Kingsley burst in the door; he was out of breath too, and agitated. ‘We’ve hit a pocket of resistance on the moor beside Little Hangleton,’ he said. ’The place is swarming with the remnants of the Death Eaters. They’re under the control of Lucius Malfoy. I need soldiers… something’s going on and I don’t know what it is.’

*****

SIRIUS

I don’t even remember standing, but I do remember realising why the Mortiscope on Dumbledore’s desk kept swirling. Whatever was going on in Little Hangleton was to do with Voldemort’s remains being there. Tom Riddle had gone home to die, and wherever his remains were, Snape was too… and I was suddenly sure that the swirling mist in Dumbledore’s Mortiscope was his way of trying to reach us. He was in danger, which was laughable for a man whom we’d almost assumed dead… or would have been if it hadn’t been so fucking unfunny.

‘What are we waiting for?’ I said to no one in particular; they’d all stood up anyway. I chafed as Dumbledore issued his instructions; I could never get used to the fact that it wasn’t Snape who was doing that. I think that was what I’d found most difficult in the last months when he’d been away with Voldemort… just the fact that he wasn’t there.

I flung orders over my shoulder as we clattered down the stone steps and out into the courtyard. I had Harry at my side, and Bill and Remus; Kingsley had Ron and Charlie and Hestia. We’d always fought like this, this unspoken chain; each knew the others’ actions: what to do, how to deploy, what to do for one another in certain situations; we were soldiers. I saw Hermione, Neville and Ginny rushing across the lawn. ‘No… You can’t come.’ I shook my head; none of them was battle trained, I had enough blood on my hands.

‘Stop fussing like an old woman, Sirius. We have to come. He’ll need help which you aren’t able to give him…’ Hermione gave me her “I know-it-all” look. ‘Unless you were going for a fight, and not Professor Snape, after all.’

*****

SEVERUS

I wondered if this were what happened when one died. Did we just lie in whatever gutter our body had picked, and watch in detachment as that vessel for our hearts and minds fell away to dust? I wanted my heart to feel freedom now, in case tomorrow it was gone and I never knew its taste. My thinking had become unclear, disjointed; sometimes I remembered being a small boy, I remembered running and falling into the river, and then I found myself thinking about yellow… maybe it was the great fields of sunflowers that grew near my childhood home.

I knew it had been days since I had moved, since I had flexed any of my muscles; they would have begun to waste already, a fickle thing this body. I felt no pain; for long periods I felt no pain, my thinking times, they were. I began to think of blue; I’d think of blue for while… until the pain returned. It was a good colour; it was the colour of the sky and cornflowers and peace… and Sirius Black’s eyes… a different kind of pain.

My breathing had become very slow, very thin, as though the air mattered little to my body, as though it were dying bit by bit and didn't need the pitiful reward of each grudging gasp. From somewhere the idea that I had forgotten to repent came to me, repent my deeds of blood, regret my forlorn hopes, and all the battles lost. The cold and the pain and the hunger refused to rush me to my end; it tarried cruelly and let me count the cost. Even now I lay in death as I had in life, trapped between hopeless ambition and helpless folly, with only the blinding faith that what I had done was somehow right providing that last frontier around my fading heart. I had not surrendered, and I would not now. It would have to do; I had no more left to offer. Perhaps I would sleep for a while; that would be good, I wondered if it would be possible. I began to think of red; red was the colour of blood, the colour of danger.

*****

HARRY

It was still daylight when we began to Apparate to Little Hangleton. Kingsley and I both had an idea of the layout of the place; I’d been here with Cedric Diggory… a lifetime ago, and he’d been here an hour or so ago. I suspected little had changed. I knew the spot the Death Eaters would be defending; I’d met Lucius Malfoy here in another life. I smiled grimly to myself; I’d met my mother and father here too, and I knew James and Lily would approve of what we’d come here for.

We assembled about a half a mile from the graveyard, where Kingsley’s men had reported sighting the Death Eaters. They would think Voldemort was there, and hence, Severus would also be there; I thought I knew differently.

I knew the mechanics of Legilimency, although I’d never tried it before; I’d been too busy closing my mind down. I knew Voldemort was dead though, there was no need now, and if we found anything of him, which I doubted, it would only be earthly remains, broken reminders of where we should never be allowed to be led again. Best they found nothing, I thought, best no relics remained on this earth for some other warped mind to seize upon, and build a mental shrine to, as Riddle had built one to Salazar Slytherin. But we weren’t here for Voldemort; he was as much history as he was dust, we were here for the man I knew in my heart was still alive.

I began to try to cast my mind out in a kind of equal and opposite Occlumency; I knew I would recognise his if I came across it. I knew the others could feel me becoming remote; they left me to it, perhaps mistaking it for something else. The nearer we got to the graveyard the more I tried to concentrate, and I caught Ginny giving me sidelong looks.

‘Can you feel him?’ she asked me with a frown.

‘You know what I’m doing?’

She nodded and gave me her little smile. ‘I’m trying too, Harry… I’m trying as hard as I know how.’

Sirius came over to my side. ‘The main force is heading in just now,’ he said. ‘Is there anywhere around here you think he’d be?’ He had his wand drawn, and his face was grim and set; I knew what price he wanted to extract.

‘I don’t think he’s here,’ I said. ‘I think he’ll be up at the manor.’ I nodded up to where the Riddle family home sat in brooding ruins. ‘Ginny and I are going to see if we can find his awareness.’

His eyebrow rose to her. ‘I didn’t know you were Legilimens.’

She smiled back at him. ‘I think I’d prefer if you kept it a secret… from my brothers at any rate.’

‘I think that’s very wise. I’m not sure any of them could bear that knowledge,’ I said, as I felt myself grin back at her. I realised how much I liked Ginny, how much I’d always liked her. She was everything all of the Weasleys were, but she had a little bit of icing. She had a wonderful wit, dry and subtle, and had always been at least three steps ahead of her brothers in everything; I began to understand why. I turned to Sirius. ‘Either you take Malfoy or I do… but I want it to be one of us. He’s got debts to square.’

Sirius’s eyes had gone that flat cold blue they went when he was angry. ‘He’s mine, Harry. I owe him; I’ve owed him for a very long time. I’m going to drag him back alive to stand trial.’ He gave a cold smile, and I knew he was thinking about the public humiliation of one of his oldest adversaries, and about the thought of him rotting in the horrors of Azkaban as Sirius himself had done. I owed Malfoy too; he’d stolen Draco back from me, but I left Sirius to it. He nodded to the shell of the house. ‘Go and find Severus,’ he said. ‘We’ll deal with this lot.’

*****

REMUS

There were so many emotions running high in that place. Sirius was like a spring coiled too tightly. I heard him gasp as we caught sight of Lucius. ‘Not yet… not yet,’ I hissed, pulling at his arm.

We waited until we saw Kingsley’s men line up on the other side of the graveyard. There were about fifteen Death Eaters; the only ones I knew were Malfoy and Rockwood. We numbered twenty, with surprise adding another five to our number. I knew Hermione, Ginny and Neville had gone up to the ruin that sat on the hill, with Harry; they seemed to think if Snape were alive, he would be there. I was glad, this was going to be ugly… short but ugly.

Malfoy looked a mess; gone was the debonair façade of the gentleman he’d always pretended to be, and all that was left was the hard-faced bullying thug he really was. He seemed to have the Death Eaters searching the place for Severus, as though he could lead them ultimately to Voldemort; they’d even begun to desecrate some of the graves. Malfoy’s desperation was showing as he screamed orders to troops who appeared not to owe him any allegiance.

Kingsley gave his signal, and we advanced.

*****

HARRY

I began to despair of finding him; we’d crossed and re-crossed that ruin a dozen times, crossed the grounds and the surrounding field, and found nothing. I’d been so sure… and now it looked as though I were wrong. Maybe he was down in that graveyard. Had I just been too cowardly to start there; had that place had too many bad associations for me? I didn’t think so. I paused for a moment, and drew my mind back as I watched our troops form a guard around the Death Eaters’ last stand. Four lay dead, and the rest were bound and unconscious. Only Lucius Malfoy was awake; Sirius had obviously wanted him to witness his final defeat. I shook my head at the futility of it all; Malfoy would go to his grave believing himself to be wronged. I suspected even Azkaban would not rob him of that.

I turned away; I had seen enough… and then I felt it. I saw Ginny had stopped in her tracks, and my heart leapt as I realised she’d felt it too. I walked slowly to her, trying to cast my mind before me, not even knowing what I was doing… and then I saw it. Merlin help us all, we must have walked past where he was at least a dozen times. My heart didn’t know whether to sing for joy, or drop in despair. I moved closer… he couldn’t possibly be alive, not lying here for days in the open. ‘Please…’ I heard myself whisper, as Neville and Hermione realised what the bundle of charred cloth and rubbish lying against the back wall of the ruined garden was. ‘Please… please…’ I breathed.

*****

SEVERUS

I felt them. I had been thinking about green at the time, struggling to remember what it looked like, what it smelt like, when I felt the tiny push against my mind. I knew what it was; it started me back to something approaching full consciousness. It was the push of an inexperienced Legilimens, and even as unskilled as it was, I had no defence left, no way of closing my own mind down. Let them come and destroy what was left of me… I would welcome the release.

Again I felt it… someone different: female, young, more subtle… then the first person again. I didn’t dare believe; I couldn’t bear to find I was wrong. They were closing in on me from different directions.

I heard a voice. It rose above the ragged sighing of my pitiful breath. ‘Get Sirius… get him quickly.’ I dared not believe Harry Potter had come back for me. Potter had come for me, and he’d brought Sirius. It was too much for my tired heart; maybe a day or two ago… maybe if I’d been a little stronger I could have waited… waited to die in the way every man dreams of, in the arms of his beloved... but now, now it was too much. I felt myself slipping away, as someone touched what had once been me.

*****