Where Draco surprises everyone, carefully crafted plans fall apart, and Severus prepares himself for an indefinite amount of time spent with Harry.

He holds it like a smoking gun.

And everyone is so shocked that for several agonizing seconds, they all just stand and stare. He stares, too, at the wand stuck out in front of him as though he never meant for it to happen.

A flash of green light.

The body tipping, falling, flying for a moment, and disappearing into the mist. Descending toward the ground.

In some indescribable way everything has gone horribly wrong. In a trifle over lost seconds, Draco Malfoy seems to have damned us all.

In a flash of green light, the plan is about to change.

You're too late.

And I'm holding an armful full of Potter, who won't stop wriggling and screaming, and I close my eyes and turn on the spot and pray to Merlin that the old fool had enough foresight to lift the wards before he—

I feel the tug behind my navel, and Potter goes slack.

Oh, thank you, Albus.

But not really, because everything is ruined now, thanks to a small dispute in seconds and an old man who created two pieces of a puzzle out of the two most unlikely people in the world.

Packing my trunk is a wasted effort. Oblivious to my panic, Potter follows me around from room to room, screaming various unimportant and asinine questions in my general direction.

Where are we?

What are you doing?

Why the bloody fuck did you grab me?

"Potter!" I snap. "While I would love to play a theatrical game of 'act the bastardly villain' we don't exactly have time for this. Do me a favor. Stop. Speaking."

There is an uncomfortable five seconds of silence when he realizes that I know something he doesn't, and I think for a blessed moment that he's actually heeded my words.

It's only been minutes, but it feels like days, and I almost consider Apparating back to the tower and letting Bellatrix have at me. It would be oh so much more pleasant than attempting to get the boy to calm down. Then again, the sudden realization that he doesn't actually know the whole story seems to have silenced him well enough.

His mouth opens and closes. I can tell from his face that he is mistrustful. Good. He should be. I ignore the fact that even after so many Occlumency lessons I can see his feelings plain on his face. I mentally add teaching to the long list of things I hadn't planned to do this summer.

You look like a trout, I want to say, but time is ticking away in a frantic flurry of seconds that I wasn't planning on needing. Time itself seems to be crumbling apart and rushing between my fingers. I need some tea. Better. I need some scotch.

"Where are we?" he asks slowly, and I award him a point for keeping his anger in check. Then again, if he feels as numb as I do right now, then it is not that great a feat.

Spinner's End, I almost say, but I'm sure that that means nothing to the boy. "My home," I say instead. My voice sounds as though I've choked on sawdust. He nods and glances around.

Packing is pointless. I throw my empty trunk to the ground and grab him by the wrist and throw open the door. "Do you have any money?" I bark, because my mind is racing and there are so many eventualities that I had never even considered. His questions sting because I don't have answers to any of them.

He glances back at my house and snorts. "Yes. And a fair bit more than you do, by the looks of it." I'm sickened by how much his return to sloppy wit calms me. Pulls me back to reality. I tell myself that it's easier to deal with a brat than a young man with post traumatic stress disorder.

"Potter," I grunt. "We really do not have time for this." The other houses on the street are dark. I think of Albus's deluminator and wish that I had the luxury.

But for some strange, infuriating reason, this manages to provoke him. "We don't have time? Well, why the bloody hell not, Snape?" His voice is half sarcastic and half pleading. I bump Occulmency lessons up higher on the list of things to do.

"You have information I— we— need. You're going to give it to me," I repeat, dragging him out into the middle of the street with me. I'm not answering his question. I don't exactly care. We have a matter of minutes, perhaps seconds, until the street is swarming with Death Eaters. He does not understand, of course, that there was a way tonight was supposed to go.

If he doesn't do as I say, and soon, we're both going to end up dead before I can explain.

His eyes flick to the cobblestones. "I'm not supposed to," he mumbles. Stupid, annoying boy.

"As you might have noticed, Potter, tonight didn't go how it was supposed to," I hiss, preparing to Apparate us out. Better to travel light, anyway, and what few possessions I might actually have desired to save are— it doesn't matter.

I freeze as the lights come on in the house across the way. Potter tries to squirm out of my grasp. "I will not wrestle a grown brat the street in the middle of the night while people are attempting to kill me. Now unless you want your limbs scattered across the Scottish countryside, I suggest you stand still."

I almost breathe a sigh of relief when the tug behind my navel signifies our departure.

I am not particularly fond of the Forest of Dean. I am more fond of it, however, then I am of having my arse handed to me by any of several Death Eaters who are certainly out for my blood. With a flick of my wand I cast a hasty tempus. It's only been an hour since everything went wrong.

Potter fidgets irritably across from me, staring in my general direction. "Why did you grab me?" he blurts out angrily, and I realize that even though he's looking at me, he's staring straight through me at Dumbledore's corpse. I take a deep breath. He would rather be rushing to the body now, bending alongside it, a martyr in the ways that he has lost all those he loves. The realization that I completely understand makes my stomach twist.

"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," I manage, even though I've said those words several different times already. He looks annoyed.

"Snape. What the hell are you talking about?" he snaps, but he doesn't look as though he expects an answer. I think about where I would be right now if everything had gone according to plan. Most likely in the dining hall at Malfoy Manor, with a watchful eye on Draco.

I wonder where Potter would be. Most likely mourning Albus properly, cursing my evil, twisted deceit from the bottom of his resilient heart.

"I was supposed to do it," I rasp, and he glances up at me through the curtain of his lashes.

"Excuse me?"

"I was supposed to kill him."

Pull yourself together.

I cannot. Years and years, an entire life a spy, and I'm losing it over a sudden change in plans.

Not entirely true.

Potter bristles. I wonder what exactly he has taken the wrong way this time. The air in our painstakingly conjured tent feels suddenly frigid. The claustrophobia that overcame me as I struggled to pack inside my home is returning. "You mean to tell me that Vol—"

"Do not say his name!" I hiss, but the reprimand does not touch him.

"—that Voldemort" he puts emphasise on the word "wanted you to kill Dumbledore. And now that Draco did it instead, you're in danger and you've dragged me along into it with you."

I would like to highlight the ridiculousness of that statement. As far as I am concerned, it is Potter who has always dragged me into danger. But that isn't the point.

"I mean to tell you," I say, bristling in turn, "that Albus wanted me to kill him, and now that Draco's done it instead, the carefully laid path to the Dark Lord's destruction is veering dangerously off course." That shuts him up.

Not for long enough. Never for long enough.

"Why did he want you to kill him?" I can hear the heartbreak in his voice, along with the question he is really asking. Why didn't he tell me?

There is a complicated answer, a long story on a dark night to a young man who I don't particularly care for. Instead, easily: "It was a mercy killing. Better I do it than anyone else. His hand, I'm sure you've noticed, he didn't have much longer, anyway."

He doesn't say anything, but rage pours off of him in waves. This is the most uncomfortable position I have been in in years. Spying is grueling work, but a life guarding my thoughts has not left me receptive to the easily bared emotions of adolescents.

"You were supposed to hate me," I clarify, so that he might direct his attention to the way things might have been different. I have no desire to spell the entire thing out for him. "But I was too late, and Draco—"

"No one thought he would actually do it, did they? And I was in the way. And you saved me. Again." He sounds defeated. I nod. It's nice to hear something that slightly resembles gratitude coming from the boy's traditionally defiant mouth. However, it seems a small victory, now, as the two of us sit, sharing a defeat on the ruddy dirt of the forest floor.

"So we're on the run now," he says. Good. He's finally caught on. I wonder what we're going to do. "I— do you know about the Horcruxes?" He asks the last so quietly that I'm sure I heard him wrong.

"Horcrux?" I snap, waiting for him to correct his own mistake. But he looks up at me with such bleak despair in his eyes that my heart nearly stops.

"Horcruxes," he corrects. "Seven."

Seven.

This night has gone worse than I could have possibly imagined.