Author's Note: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away, a Jedi apprentice wrote stories in her spare time. Actually, about eight years ago in law school, a law student unwound during exam time by writing hurt-comfort stories. This story is one of three ficlets that I posted exclusively to a small website which is now defunct, alas, and I've been asked by several readers to re-post them. So sorry it took me this long to get around to it! (Obviously, since this is from 2005, it is AU after OOTP.)

"Severus," Voldemort sighed, his voice downright patronizing. "Why did you ever think you could betray me for this long and never be found out?"

Forced to his knees by two Death Eaters, their hands still gripping his shoulders, Snape scowled. I knew I would be found out one day, one way or another. I merely did not care.

Aloud, he said nothing. The Dark Lord's thin white lip curled slightly, and he remarked, "So this was why you studied Occlumency, I suppose. To hide your treachery." Severus didn't bother to deny it. "I am surprised you never attempted to Legilimize me, Severus, to further Dumbledore's petty aims. Ah, but I suppose you knew I would catch you at once. Did he actually VALUE you, Severus?"

Snape gritted his teeth. Get on with it.

"Crucio."

That part went on for some time; Severus had no means of tracking it, but even if he'd been able to, he would not have. For he knew his former Master enough to be well aware that traditional methods of torture would only be the beginning.

He was...incredibly...right.

Once he was slumped, panting and raspy-voiced in a ring of black robes while the Dark Lord looked on, he heard him say, "Bring out the boy."

Snape's head shot up. No.

The Dark Lord smirked at him as two Death Eaters approached, half-dragging a staggering, skinny figure toward Severus. "Oh yes. Just imagine, Severus. You betrayed me for nothing. Tonight, my victory over Dumbledore's forces, and your fate, will be sealed."

As Snape looked on, his mind screaming denials, the Death Eaters threw the dark-haired newcomer to the ground beside him. Grunting, breathing shallowly as though his ribs pained him, the boy raised his head, blinking pain-filled green eyes at Snape.

Well. In a word, damn.

Damn, damn, DAMN, DAMN, DAMN!

To his complete astonishment, Harry Potter smiled, as well as his split lip and bruised face permitted. "'Lo, Professor," he grunted, sounding vaguely amused. "Sorry I'm...not...in class."

Severus blinked. In what could only be explained by hours upon hours of imprisonment, taunting, and torture, some emotion he could not remember ever having felt before, and hardly even identify, rushed through him. Potter managed a weak laugh, and Snape was still more shocked to find his own mouth twisting into a half-smile.

He justified his next words by the desire to see the look on the Dark Lord's face. "Detention for sure, Mr. Potter. You'll be scrubbing cauldrons for this."

The boy actually grinned at him. Severus wondered how long Potter had been here, imprisoned and tortured. Perhaps that was why he too seemed to be harboring some new feeling toward Snape that definitely had not existed during their previous dealings at Hogwarts and the Order.

Predictably, the Dark Lord was a bit taken aback by the exchange, knowing full well how Snape felt about Potter—and vice versa. But as Severus should have expected, he seized upon that and promptly turned it against them.

"So, Severus, you are capable of sentimentality after all. I am impressed; I had thought your heart quite frozen. Was it some protective instinct that inspired you to defend your enemy's scrawny whelp?"

"Oh, please, HE'S called me worse things than that!" Potter snapped, jerking his head at Severus.

"Quiet," Severus muttered at him, but without ire. They were both staring down the Killing Curse, and they both knew it. Whatever awaited them before death, the end result would be the same.

But the Dark Lord, to Snape's surprise, was angrier at him than at the boy. "I think, Severus, you will learn your lesson of what happens when your protective instinct leads you to treachery." He pointed his wand at the boy, muttered an incantation, and Harry cried out, falling onto his back and writhing, though not to the degree that a Cruciatus would have made him. "So you trained him, I see. Occlumency—but not good enough, the child is far too emotional." Red eyes gleamed cruelly at Snape as he watched the groaning boy. "The worst fate of all for traitors, Severus. You've won Potter a reprieve at least. He will die first, while you watch...and hear...everything."

A surge of the darkest magic in existence caught Severus, swirling around his head, and into it, tearing through his mind as the man gasped in spite of himself. Then a sensation, not unlike a powerful Legilimency, took over, the violent impact of a mind forced into his, connected, fused...

STOP IT!

The pain and the magic stopped, but the voice remained. Not in his ears, but in his mind.

Please, just bloody get it over with.

Severus stared. The Death Eaters were reapplying Crucio to Harry, with much zeal, but along with the boy's shrieks out loud, he could hear something in his head...

It's almost over it's almost over it's almost over...hang on, hang on...

"What the hell..." he muttered.

The Dark Lord laughed.

Severus flinched as the boy's agony grew and Voldemort added to the torture. Harry's screams became twofold, in Snape's ears and in his mind, until he could bear no more and roared, "STOP IT!"

The curses stopped, but the Dark Lord laughed. "Ah, Severus, so you do care indeed! I was hoping you would!" Then he turned his wand on the boy and hexed him again. Severus lunged to stop it as his mind was pierced by a wail of misery, only to get himself hexed in the bargain and hauled away. "Keep him where he can see, Lucius!"

Harry's head turned weakly, glassy green eyes seeking Severus. His lips moved soundlessly, but Snape heard a voice in his head. Professor?

Potter? he thought inadvertently, and the boy half-nodded.

Sorry... Then the hexing started again.

Snape would have closed his eyes, but it would do no good against the litany of agony in his mind. He twisted against the restraining hands, still held on his knees, trying in vain to Occlude, when the boy's pain-wracked voice suddenly cried out between his ears,

Professor! DROP!

He couldn't have ignored that command even if he'd wanted to. He did, just as a spectacular, blazing wave of searing magic erupted outward like a concussive explosion, roaring over his head with blinding brilliance and searing power. He knew its source from the stab of actual physical pain from that strange connection in his mind, and had no doubt from the shrieks behind him that had he not ducked, he would be dead.

The air cleared, and he began crawling at once toward the motionless heap on the ground near several grotesquely-steaming Death Eater corpses. At first, Severus feared the boy had killed himself along with their enemies, but a vague, semi-coherent mumble of, Bloody...hell...worked... told him otherwise.

"Potter," he hissed, reaching the boy's side. Cautiously, he shook his shoulder. "Potter!"

"P'fessor?" the boy's breathing was shallow. "Where...Vold'mort..."

The words echoed strangely in Snape's head, along with vague murmurings that must be semiconscious thoughts. Severus shook his head against the disorientation of the wounded boy and began pulling him upright. "We must go. If any of them survived—"

"N-no," the boy mumbled. "Get me to...him...quick...have to...kill..."

"What?"

Either must die at the hand of the other...I have...to kill him...help...

"What do you mean?

Prophecy... Harry's eyes were very glassy, and Severus knew he wouldn't last much longer. "Quick..." the boy breathed at him. "I have...finish it..."

"Bloody hell," Severus muttered. Ignoring his own injuries, he hauled the boy up, half-dragging, half-carrying him to another steaming pile, this one on the ground in front of a chair beside the corpse of a large snake.

Harry wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, then hissed as the Dark Lord moved slightly. iI need to find something...fast...way to kill him.../i

Severus scrambled over to the carcass of the snake, picked up the nearest dropped wand, and severed one of its large fangs. He tore off a scrap of robe, wrapped the fang to keep the poison from touching his or Harry's skin, and handed it to the boy.

Harry's waning strength beat at him, a phantom pain in his mind, but somehow the seventeen-year-old found the ability to clutch the fang in his fists and drive the thing straight into the Dark Lord's throat. Severus hauled him quickly back, afraid of what would come next, but the demise of the deadliest wizard in a hundred years was remarkably anti-climactic.

With a gurgle, some twitches, and a distinctly foul smell, the Dark Lord Voldemort perished. Somehow, Severus knew it instinctively when he died, though he suspected that it was in fact Harry Potter who really felt it.

And he was right. Potter raised a hand to his scar with a vague moan, and pitched over.

Finally...done...

Snape caught him and hauled him into his arms, ignoring his own wounded body's strenuous protests. Harry would not be able to travel on his own, but prudence dictated getting as far away from this as possible before waiting for rescue. Dumbledore and the rest of the Order would doubtless have registered a magical surge that powerful—along with half the wizarding world—and they'd soon discover Voldemort was dead.

How easy it feels to say his name now, he thought, feeling as though some of the weariness lifted from him.

No kidding... the boy thought at him.

Severus staggered with the semiconscious teenager as far into the woods surrounding the Death Eater meeting place as he could, then lowered himself and Harry to the ground. "Stay awake, Potter. The Order will be here shortly."

To his extreme alarm, Harry's lips barely moved, his eyes were half-lidded, and all he heard in his mind was a vague, Tired...

"HARRY!" he snapped, shaking the boy vigorously, getting mental protests. "Stay AWAKE, dammit! You've just defeated the bloody Dark Lord; I'll not have you dying on me now!"

"'s over," Harry murmured.

"Yes, it's over. Your celebrity is going to be even more obnoxious than ever, not to mention your friends' fawning," Snape informed him.

The voice in his mind startled him with its vehemence. GOD, not that. Think I'd rather die...

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Get outta m'head," Harry mumbled, his thoughts echoing it.

I'm done...finished...just let me sleep now...

Snape slapped him. "You are NOT going to sleep! Wake UP!"

STOP IT! the pained tone startled him, and Harry was glaring. Severus was even more startled by tears in the boy's eyes. "Jus' leav'me 'lone!" I'm tired...tired of trying...fighting...don't want to die fighting too...

"You are not...going...to die," Severus grated at him, squeezing his shoulders hard in lieu of slapping him this time. "Damn it, child, you're free. We are all free for the first time in years, and we are not going to face our freedom with the burden of your bloody martyrdom spoiling it!"

Harry actually smiled. He hadn't the strength to really laugh, but Severus heard it in his head. Well, that's a good reason. He sighed quietly. I want Sirius...

Severus swore under his breath. The boy was fading fast. In the inky darkness and silence, he noticed something that hadn't struck him before—he could almost SEE what was in the boy's mind. Some vague image of Black, laughing and smiling, that Severus knew was no thought of his own, seemed to have invaded his mind, with a sense of longing, along with images that had clearly come from wizard photographs of James and Lily Potter.

As Potter's consciousness slipped further and further away, his subconscious was apparently taking over, and Severus could not shut out the thoughts of the boy's family, the ones who had loved him and were long dead, and the ones still alive who had never...what?

Snape remembered the scenes from Occlumency training, the rather bizarre sense of humor the boy's Muggle relatives seemed to have about taunting him, but he hadn't thought it went so far as...he knew now. He knew because the boy knew, and the emotion in those thoughts could never be feigned. Severus had known the misery of isolation as a child, and had shut that memory out long ago for the sake of his mission as well as his life, but now it hit him with a force that took his breath, on the unguarded mental wanderings of a dying child.

Loneliness. Loss. Longing...

"Potter," he croaked, shaking the boy cautiously. "Harry. You have..." he struggled to make his mind function. He had to regain control of them both. Your friends. Granger—Hermione and...Ron Weasley. Your Gryffindor friends, and the rest of the Weasley family. Now that the war is over your are...you are free to be with them...

Some sense of coherence returned, and he heard the boy sigh, "Yeah." And Remus...maybe...if he wants... Severus was surprised by the uncertainty in that thought. Surely Potter was aware just how much that werewolf doted on him. Lupin could be downright insipid when the subject of Harry came up.

But it was clear to him from the feelings that were seeping into his mind from the boy's...Harry himself was completely unaware of it. Even at this point, to Harry Potter, the concern of others for him was a foreign concept, and impossible to recognize.

Then Harry shivered, and Severus frowned. Shock. He leaned back against the bole of a large tree and pulled the boy against his chest, wrapping his arm and as much of his robe as he could manage around him. "You must stay awake, Potter. You must try." Harry's breath caught, and Severus attempted to shift him. "Are you uncomfortable?"

"Mm-mm," the boy managed, but in his mind, Severus heard almost from a distance, It's kind of nice...

"What?"

But Harry didn't respond, and though Severus hissed and shook him, the boy had lost the strength to speak. So he huddled against the tree and tightened his grip on the boy, praying the Order would find them in time to save him.

Worse ways to die... said Harry's voice in his mind, sounding sleepy.

Harry, if you can hear me, stay with me, he tried, but Harry didn't seem to hear.

It's like Ron's Mum...kind of...only Snape doesn't like me...

Since you have managed to dispatch the Dark Lord, Potter, I will concede that you have grown on me. Now stay awake! Severus thought furiously at him, though he wondered why the boy was comparing him to Molly Weasley.

Tighter...

"What?" he said aloud, confused.

It's kind of nice...like this...going to sleep...

Damn it, Harry, do not go to sleep!

Just wish he'd...hold me tighter... Harry's thoughts were soft and sleepy, and Severus could almost feel the lethargy taking the boy. Helpless and shaken, just as when they'd been prisoners and tortured, all he could do was watch and listen. Harry's eyes were almost closed, his dark head resting against Snape's shoulder. 'm so tired...I want...sleep now...it's over...all over...Mum, Dad...Sirius...I did it...

"Harry, don't die on me!" Severus hissed, trying to jostle him.

There...tighter... Despairing, Severus tightened his grip. If all he would be able to do was comfort the dying boy, he supposed he owed it to him. Is that what...it's like? Held...a mum or...dad...so nice...

HARRY! Severus thought as loudly as he could.

Harry moaned softly into his robe, and in his mind, he heard, Just let me...hold on...tighter...let me pretend...someone who...loves...

Snape's breath caught in disbelief. "Harry..."

Never had...like that...

Harry.

Really nice...

HARRY! HARRY!

But there was silence.

Severus was unconscious when the Order found him, lying against the bottom of a tree with Harry Potter clutched in his arms.

He woke in the hospital wing of Hogwarts to see Albus Dumbledore's smiling face, and the first thing that came to him was a surge of triumph at remembering Lord Voldemort was dead.

And then he remembered Harry. And realized that in his mind, there was only himself.

Albus touched him in concern when he saw the look on Snape's face. "Severus, what is it?"

"He's gone," Snape grated out. "Isn't he? Dead."

Dumbledore smiled. "Yes, at last. You did it..."

Severus shook his head. "I meant Harry."

Albus blinked in dismay, and Severus closed his eyes. "We nearly lost you both reversing Tom's spell."

Severus's eyes flew open. "What?!"

With a nod of confusion, Albus explained, "The spell, remember? Binding your minds? Some dark variant of Legilimency, it seems. I feared for awhile we'd have to leave you two that way. But it worked."

Before Severus could make sense of what the headmaster meant, a weak voice called, "Professor?"

Hardly daring to believe it, Severus sat up. Two beds over, a small form half-buried in blankets and gifts from well-wishers shifted, turning toward him. Weary green eyes framed by dark hair and a too-pale face met Snape's.

"Harry?" he heard himself say.

Closing his eyes again, Potter said, "Thanks, sir."

For everything.

What the HELL...

And two beds down, he saw the infuriating brat, his eyes still closed. Smiling.

~Fin~