Knives Out

The night air had a chill wind, and even with the light spilling out from the church and the bodies pouring out of it, the building seemed dead, somehow devoid of anything human. But there was something human in there. Draco was in there with whatever manner of beings that would bind and keep a congregation of zombies. No, Draco would be the only human there.

Harry hated having to wait, to watch until everyone was gone. He wanted to burst into the vestibule to knock over the fake holy water and hex the stone building to his foundation until he got what he wanted, but he knew from his time at war that while such grand gestures were brave, they were almost always pointless. It took a few years for him to understand why the Sorting Hat wanted to put him in Slytherin, and it had little to do with Tom Riddle. Once he'd learned to rely on his cunning instincts more than his dumb luck, things changed for him. He hoped that that lesson would serve him well now.

Perched in the shadows in the crook of a building across the way, a Disillusionment charm made him nearly impossible to find. The lights all went out but for the front lights-- now was his chance to do or die. He was partway across the street when he paused, something nagging at the back of his mind. Pushing his glasses up, he again scanned the front of the building, greeted only by silence and the ominous darkness inside. Above the double doors stood a giant backlit crucifix; Jesus stared down at him blank eyed and miserable, reminding him eerily of an Inferi.

He stared back at the figure for a long while. Was there always a crucifix there, or was this a trick? Was it actually a martyred Inferi watching for him? That's when the realization dawned on him, what nagged him shot to the forefront. No one was watching the front door.

Paranoia about the messiah-spy excluded, it was passing strange that these people, whomever they were, had kidnapped and perhaps done away with Draco knowing that Harry had been with him the last time, and weren't obviously watching for him. Unless they were, of course-- he wasn't the only wizard privy to the Disillusionment charm.

Slowly Harry backed up into the cold shadows of the building he'd been hiding against, feeling impotent. If he went into the church and was attacked and slaughtered, then he and Draco would have died and nothing would be done. The Ministry was clearly not interested in solving this, even Tonks seemed blasé about the massacre. Then again, the war had worn her down as well as everyone else. Perhaps after so many years at the Ministry and the passing of youth, righteous indignation stagnates into tolerance. Fighting the system was a game for the young, the heartened and perhaps the dying who had nothing to lose.

Harry closed his eyes and mentally scanned his resources. He'd been such a recluse for the past few years; he didn't think he had any. He could go to the Daily Prophet, but aside from the notion that people there were likely paid off as well, the printing of the information would get Draco killed, if he wasn't already dead. Who would care if Draco died besides him? It was a dubious honor and distinction to be the only one who would mourn him. No, that wasn't true; Ursius would mourn him and perhaps Millicent in her way.

Just as he was beginning to give up hope, he remembered Snape. While he couldn't imagine Snape doing anything to benefit him, he wouldn't want to see Draco dead. If he was willing to let Draco die, he wouldn't have been making him potions. Harry winced at the thought of his last confrontation with Snape, but he had to focus on getting to Draco and getting him out of there. Pride be damned, Harry needed Draco back.

--

"You silly fool. I tried to tell you that you were meddling where you should not be, but you didn't listen, you never listen." It was as if Snape had been expecting Harry to Apparate outside of the Hogwarts gates. Harry had seen little other than a flash of house-elf before the huge doors to Hogwarts castle opened and Snape's cape billowed as he dashed out to let him in. They didn't speak a word until they were in the security of the headmaster's office.

Harry couldn't meet Snape's eyes. "You didn't warn me about this. You were trying to warn me off of Draco."

"No." Snape raised his hand rather than his voice to quiet Harry before he could object. "Your mind was in the gutter."

"You've taken advantage of him before, when he was younger. He said that you were his first." Removing his glasses, he rubbed them in his cloak, pretending to clean them so as not to have to face Snape's stony glare directly. He didn't want to have this conversation right now; it was completely beyond the point. Draco could still be alive, and no matter whom he ended up with, being alive was the priority.

"Is that what he told you? That I took advantage of him? Or is that another of your assumptions?" Snape leaned forward, nearing almost close enough for Harry to see clearly without aid. It made him uncomfortable and he slid his chair back a few inches.

"You were his teacher, an authority figure to someone who was of age to be your son. I don't see how you could call it anything other than abuse." Since it was pointless to keep the charade of his missing glasses up, he shoved them back onto his face.

In response, Snape sat back in his chair. "Then it is your assumption that it was I who initiated a sexual relationship. Again, you are wrong."

"This is beside the point!" Harry sputtered. He could feel his insides twisting at how badly he'd misjudged this situation. Draco initiated the sex-- not that it mattered, as Snape was still older and wiser and should have known better. "The point is-- he's missing now. Do you know where he is?"

"It isn't beside the point if you're going to continue questioning what I tell you because of it. You seem to be operating under the delusion that I want Draco for myself. There is nothing further from the truth. The physical portion of what happened between us only happened once in a moment of weakness. I tell you this not because it is any of your business, but because it is the most efficient means of getting past this. I love Draco deeply, but I am uncomfortable with that manner of expression with anyone, in particular another man." Snape's eyes bored into Harry's, but Harry knew enough to keep his defenses up, even if what he heard shocked him.

"Oh. You're not... gay?"

"That would be the obvious conclusion, yes." Severus shifted, but maintained eye contact.

This news was surprising. No, surprising was an understatement. "Then why did you..."

"As I said before, I love him deeply and it was a moment of weakness."

Harry exhaled slowly, trying to gather his wits and avoid the thought that if he'd listened or perhaps asked, Draco's vanishing could've been avoided.

"He is headstrong, Potter. He would have attempted his work undercover either way. He sees himself as expendable in this equation because of his death sentence."

The statement seemed out of nowhere, but Harry quickly realized he'd let his defenses down while staring Snape in the eye and had been read. At least Snape wasn't raking him over the coals over his mistake. Not yet, anyway. "Thank you for not..."

"It would be unproductive to dwell on blame, particularly when the one who deserves it is the one who needs our help." Snape stood and started to pace in the way that Harry remembered Dumbledore doing.

Instinctively at the recollection, Harry looked up to the portrait of Dumbledore and back to the desk again. All of his righteous indignation over Snape being a murderer and he was chucking it away to work with the man in the hopes of getting Draco back. He was ashamed of himself, especially for judging Tonks so harshly; she was just trying to keep her job. Even if he wanted to pursue his righteous indignation, he wasn't in a position to prosecute Snape. But, as long as they were getting confessions out of the way, "Draco didn't seem positive that your murdering Dumbledore was prearranged."

The speed in which Snape whirled around was almost as alarming as the fierce glower that came with it. Harry stood ready to defend himself, but Snape never pulled his wand. After a beat, Snape gained control of his expression and his nerve steeled over. "He's not certain because I couldn't give him a clear answer. Not even I know if that's what Albus was asking me to do."

Snape appeared pained, while Harry tried to sort out what that meant. "He was pleading with you not to do it."

"Potter, Albus knew that if I didn't kill him, it would be the end of Draco. He was old and in pain. He'd been saying he was ready to die for months. I had a split second to decide what his pleading meant. I made my choice. I believe that's what he wanted." Snape gestured up to Dumbledore's portrait. "It's what he says now."

Dumbledore's portrait twinkled down at Harry and gave him an impish wink. Harry nodded as if that were some sort of answer and sat back down in defeat. So many of his assumptions had been entirely off-base, but then they often had when it came to Snape and Draco. Sitting in this chair again, in this office, he suddenly felt 11-years-old and out of his league. "How do we get Draco back?"

Taking his seat across the desk from Harry, Snape closed his eyes a moment and when he opened them, appeared back to his proscribed self. "I'm not sure what Draco has told me has been accurate. I need you to tell me everything you know, in as minute detail as you are able to remember."

Snape took notes during the conversation, his expression more grave and complexion ashen with each revelation. The one look Harry never saw flit across Snape's visage was one of surprise.

The idea that he was repeating things that Snape already knew was vexing-- he wanted to get to the bottom of this. "Stop me if you've heard this one." Harry cast a glance over Snape's desk, eyes resting on the spine of a closed tome. Raising the Dead: Principles of Creating Inferi and Maintaining-- the book was snatched away before he could finish reading it, but he'd gotten the gist. "You were trying to warn me, which means you know something. You're in the middle of this, aren't you?"

Snape's tongue created a lump under his lips as he appeared to be trying to work something from between his teeth. He exhaled slowly and put the book in question onto the center of his desk. Harry knew it was about Inferi, he didn't need to reread the cover. "If you dig deeply enough into that church and what is going on there, you will find my name attached in the beginning." He stopped speaking and stood, jostling the wooden chair against the stone floor. Each step echoed in the looming silence before Snape's loud inhale.

"What it has become is... fanaticism that is beyond my comprehension. It is the result of desperate people who-- well, let us start with the original desperate person." Snape stopped in front of the portrait of Dumbledore, his long, calloused hand pressed against his chest. The men shared a long stare. Dumbledore appeared terribly sad, but nodded to Snape to continue.

Snape returned to his desk and sat, inhaling slowly. "In Draco's sixth year, I made an Unbreakable Vow to protect him from a certain situation resulting in...." Snape gestured back to the portrait without looking at it.

"Though the vow was fulfilled through my actions, I have seen it since as my duty to protect Draco as best I could ever since." He turned and again stared at Dumbledore's portrait, then his eyes fell. "Someone needed to, and I believe-- I hope that was what was intended."

Harry leaned forward, eyes darting between Snape and Dumbledore. He tried to piece together these fragments, but he couldn't fathom how a church full of Inferi was protecting Draco, and if it were, why they kidnapped him.

"Draco and I lost touch for a few years. The war took its toll on everyone in its own way. I'm certain that you can comprehend that. Then, Draco came to me with this virus. It being what it is-- a Muggle disease-- I was caught ignorant of a deadly threat to a boy I had sworn to protect." Snape paused again to collect his thoughts, no doubt trying to couch what he would say next in the best light possible.

"I found the Muggle attempts at curing to be in disarray-- desperate and unorganized. They had no real control groups with which to experiment on, and... ghastly as it was, they were experimenting on their own people. They had no choice. They had pill cocktails that they hoped would work; they hoped were safe, but ultimately, they weren't positive and were hoping for the best. Or to at least ease the suffering. That's all I'm doing." Pressing his lips together, Snape nodded to himself and looked into Harry's eyes. "But you have to know that it wasn't meant to ever be what it is now. Someone has taken over what I'd started, which was meant to be a handful of people to test potions on before I gave them to Draco."

"You killed them," Harry pronounced the verdict that Snape handily tap danced around.

"It's what they do to their own people, Potter. I-- when it started, I was careful to choose only those who were HIV-positive. They had death sentences hanging over them anyway."

"But you killed them. You robbed them of what little life they might've been left with!" Harry stood, his glare brimming with righteousness.

"They were already the walking dead. I just made it more literal. Besides, if I found a cure, then their lives would have been spent for a better cause." Snape held his position-- eyes focused and chin held high, but his words, in spite of their sharpness, came out dull.

"Shouldn't they have been the ones to decide if they wanted to sacrifice themselves for the greater good?"

Snape ran his hand through his receding hair. "At first I was under the impression that they were willing participants."

"But you found out otherwise and didn't stop it?"

Lowering his eyes, Snape nodded. "The potions were working and I didn't question it. I didn't question what the people I'd hired were doing when they took over the church, and I never asked why because Draco was feeling better and I thought I was on the right track. I just continued to make the potions necessary to keep the Inferi moving, fresh, life-like in greater quantities. I didn't question why until..."

Harry rubbed his forehead, feeling the absence of his scar as if it were a surprise each time. "Until Draco started asking?" He pictured Draco tracking down his lover. It would make sense if Snape were telling the truth-- if Gavin had believed he'd infected Draco and believed that giving his life would save Draco, he would have done so willingly. That is, if Gavin were anything like Harry, he liked to imagine he was. But Snape could hardly tell Draco that he'd killed his lover to experiment on him, so he'd have to distance himself from the church. The distancing led to an outside element being able to take over.

Snape nodded and cleared his throat. "When I started to look into it more I was promoted to headmaster, more to shut me up and keep me busy than anything else." He rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration. "They wouldn't kill him, they know that would set them at odds with me and I could pull the plug. At the very least, he's probably getting his potions."

Harry closed his eyes. He was tired, so tired of this, so tired of Slytherin rationalization, of trying to glean the truth from slippery people, and most of all tired of Dumbledore on mute. Why wasn't he speaking? Harry to be told what the right side was, what the right thing to do was. The war, as horrid as it was, at least had a definite sense of right and wrong. When he opened his eyes, he was glaring at Dumbledore again, but still the portrait said nothing. Harry eyed Snape again with something less than accusation but more than defeat and questioned, "Then why keep him?" The pieces were falling into place, but not nearly enough that he had the full picture. With each new revelation, his plan to barge in and yank Draco out of there seemed sophomoric, but he was at a loss as to how else to approach the situation even with this new information.

"I can't imagine any other purpose than to draw you in to rescue him. They-- whoever they are-- must want you for some reason." Snape, back at his desk, traced his fingers over the leather cover of the necromancy book.

"So I should go to him." Harry headed for the door.

Snape hexed it before he reached it. "It's a trap, did you miss that part?"

"They won't harm him, but that doesn't mean I'm going to just leave him there." Harry pressed his hand to the door, imagining Draco on the other side, getting to touch him again, to feel him next to him, even if it was just for a minute before his captors sprung their trap. It would be worth it.

"No. Or at least, not alone. This is my doing, and it's about time I found out what is going on." Snape crossed to Harry, but did not get so close as to touch.

Harry felt Snape behind him, he could hear the labored breathing, but was surprised at the quiet sniff. Whirling around, he found Snape's face impassive, but his eyes were more bloodshot than usual. He regarded the seriousness of his face and then nodded slowly. "All right."

"Good. I seem to remember you having some manner of clothing that allowed you to elude me with your invisibility. Bring that. I do not think they will be entirely surprised to see me; hopefully they will allow me in with little fuss. If not, then I hope you have not allowed your dueling skills to atrophy."

It seemed brute force for a Slytherin plan, but Harry accepted it as being the fastest way to get inside. He was comforted that Draco probably wasn't being physically harmed, but given that even Snape had no idea who Draco was being held by, he still felt a sense of urgency. Harry patted Snape's shoulder, feeling some measure of sympathy, although he wasn't ready to forgive him just yet. Movement caught his eye and he found himself again staring into Dumbledore's twinkling eyes. He was smiling and nodding at Harry. At least someone appeared confident.

Harry's stomach twisted with each pat. Something niggled at him, a stray thought that he was forgetting something; that something was off here. This was going to end badly. Closing his eyes, he imagined Draco, so frail laying on the bed, lesions that he tried to cover using what little magic he had that wasn't fighting the disease to sate his vanity. The way that he'd weakly smile at Harry from the lip of the toilet, trying to show it was all right, that he was stronger than this because he didn't want Harry to worry or fuss over him. The soft apologies in the night for not being whole, not being what he should for him and holding Draco trembling under the covers, freezing in balmy heat-- Harry needed him back no matter what the cost.