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Footsteps patter toward him and Albus hastily wipes his cheeks and cleans his robes. It won't be Severus, he knows that, and yet he hopes. On the off-chance, he remains kneeling while he casts a wordless Lumos.
A child in school robes stands before him, startled, teetering from foot to foot. Green eyes. Black hair. Oh dear God, no.
"Harry." He speaks the name still sweeping in waves through his inflamed soul, and the boy jumps back, alarmed.
"Bloody hell," he says. "Why does everyone think I look like my dad?" Those telltale eyes sweep the darkness. "Where in Merlin's name am I?"
Albus sees his mistake now: the boy is pointier, scruffier, more keenly observant of his surroundings than Harry ever was.
He breaks the news gently. "The afterlife, I'm afraid."
Skinny and dishevelled, the boy gnaws a thumbnail. "You're sure? Sorry, I mean, shouldn't it be more—I don't know, interesting to look at? Be rotten if it's always this dark." He squints at Albus again, timid and defensive and curious all at once. The resemblance to Harry disrupted by brusquer mannerisms and spikier features, he reminds Albus now of someone else, although it's not clear who. "Have we met before? I've never—oh, crumbs, if this is the afterlife, are you—sorry, sir, but are you death? Because you're the oldest bloke I've ever seen."
"No," Albus chuckles, although he's taken aback. "My name's Albus, dear boy."
The child's gaze has been ranging anxiously over the shadows, but now he whips around. "Cor, is it? Mine, too. Everyone shortens it to Al, though." His wary, calculating stare sends another wave of grief through Albus. Never look to see Severus Snape again.
"So you're him, then—that Albus?"
Albus nods. He hopes so. "I knew your father. It must grieve him terribly to have lost you."
The boy studies him a moment, then shrugs. "S'pose. He never liked me much." When Albus makes a shocked noise, he says impatiently, "Oh, I know he loves me. That's different. It's just—he's only himself to blame, Mum says." He emits an unPotter-like snort, and Albus adds this to his assessment. Neither James nor Harry was ever so afflicted with nerves. "Love-hate, that's what she calls it. Naming me Albus Severus. Hard to tell which is which, from the way Dad talks about them."
Albus.
Severus.
Can it be? Surely not. Albus sits very still, his mind expanding through the possibilities. A terrible suspicion uncoils in his abdomen, and the poison slithers through his veins. He feels disoriented. And dear Merlin, jealous.
With a cry, the boy pounces.
"Oh, fantastic! I lost hold of it when the snake bit me, but look! Here it is!" He holds up Severus' discarded wand, and Lumos bursts from the tip. "Take that!" he whispers, pointing into the darkness. "Death to Gryffindors! Bloody James," he confides, eyes glowing with fury. "Told me to follow those wanker friends of his sneaking off into the Forbidden Forest. I hid behind some tree roots, and this snake slithered out. The Gryffindors all screamed and ran away. I didn't."
The problem with Slytherins exhibiting courage, Albus has noticed, is that it frequently gets them killed. "So you died."
"Looks like it." The boy is suddenly gloomy. No longer diverted by the wand, he swings it listlessly back and forth, then takes a step closer, scepticism flashing from him like a knife. "Are you really the famous wizard my dad talks about? The one I'm named for?"
"I am," Albus says. If Severus can be immodest about his body, Albus might as well be immodest about his reputation. He would think it a good moment to stand up and look imposing, but he suspects Al would see it as a threat and flee accordingly.
"D'you play games?" the boy says in a reedy, hopeful voice. He hasn't yet learned the damascene art of folding his thoughts impenetrably inward. "Chess, for instance. Do you play that?"
Warming to Harry's child, Albus peers over his spectacles. "As a matter of fact, I do."
"Brilliant! I mean, of course. Me too." With a head-ducking glance, the boy says, "I play to win."
Surely it's appropriate to twinkle here. "Excellent. So do I."
"I knew it!" crows the lad, wand pointed at Albus again, which is irksome. "You are a Slytherin, aren't you?"
Still prickly from defending himself to Severus on the same charge, Albus starts to expound upon the concept 'technically untrue,' but Al scoffs. "Slytherins play to win. Trust me, I've done the research. I'm documenting the war, you know? I've got books and notes and souvenir albums and I've—don't tell Dad, but I sneaked a look into his Pensieve one of those times he fell asleep over his firewhisky. He has sad days, Mum says. Gets it into his head—or out of his head, actually. To look back. He almost never forgets to put them away. His memories, I mean. But this one time he did, and— " Al quiets, turning the wand over and over in his hands. "It was a bit dismal. Dad's pretty convinced Slytherins are awful, you know? And they were awful. Mostly."
He shoots Albus a dubious, dissecting glance. "I'll tell you what. Dad sees you a lot differently than I do."
"As my association with Harry spanned years and our encounter may be tallied in minutes, it's not surprising, don't you think?" Freed of the grim necessity of wooing children to his cause, Albus thinks it fair to tease. "I'd hazard your father has a finer appreciation for hard choices than— "
"Dad thought you were nice," Al says. "I don't." His tone dares Albus to find fault. Of course, he can't possibly know that Harry's gullibility had been one of the things Albus cherished about him, to the point, truth be told, of exploiting it.
"Ah. Well, you're not alone. I'm afraid 'niceness' was an occasional casualty of my position." It's downright refreshing, if humbling in its way, to sit on one's haunches and be found wanting by a first year. "Perhaps over time you can be persuaded to change your mind."
Al shrugs. "I'm not nice, either, come to that." He flicks his wand, startled when a spark of intent flares and fizzles at the end. "There's loads of fascinating stuff being dug up, d'you know? About you. I skipped the earlier bits. What you did in the war, that's what interests me. Bloody hell, if what they say is true, you outplayed Voldemort. It was ace the way you manoeuvred my dad around the board. The pawn who made king! As for that wanker Snape— "
"Professor Snape," Albus corrects a tad sharply, more to relieve his own feelings than in defence of Severus, who isn't here to have his wounded.
Al steps back, arms crossed in a tightly elegant sulk. Children often have moments of spontaneous grace, but they're usually not so self-conscious about it. Eyes shadowed, he smiles, lips thin and red, not at all like a boy who has just died.
If Albus didn't know better, he'd say that smile owed something to blood. Fresh blood. The question, of course, would be whose.
"You outplayed absolutely everybody, you old snake. There's no fucking way you're a Gryffindor."
Albus straightens up. That's not a child's voice. That sounds like—
"If our choices do indeed make us who we are," pursues the voice with heart-stopping distinctness, "then tell me, Dumbledore: who are you? You set up the board. You wrote the rulebook, then wiped your arse on the rules. You moved us as you saw fit, and won. While I, for reasons that no longer matter, chose you, and lost. But as my personal history attests, and your adage implies, it's always possible," the low snarl rises to a childish treble, "to change one's mind."
Albus is prevented from responding by the boy's body-convulsing sneeze, signalling Al's repatriation to his own soul.
In life, steeped in insecurities—every one of which Albus assiduously cultivated for the greater good—Severus had rarely managed to wrongfoot him. Albus refuses to let him do so now. He doesn't regret it. He can't afford to. He would have told Severus, if he'd stayed to listen, that he had made the only choice he could. If he were to poll all those who benefitted, those he saved from misery and bloodshed, he would, beyond the shadow of a doubt, win again.
Renewed circulation tingling through his calves, he creaks to his feet, dusting sand grains off his robes and from his beard with shaky dignity.
"Well, that's neither here nor there," he announces, throat dry. "Shall we go? This place is rather depressing, now you mention it."
The boy bounces forward, ambidextrously swapping wand hands as he lays claim to Albus' gnarled fingers. "D'you mind if I call you 'old snake'?" he says cheerfully, swinging their joined hands back and forth as he leads the way. "Since we can't both be Albus." He stops, the flicker of a serpent's tongue forking from his perceptive green glance. "I'll find us a chessboard, all right? We'll play—five rounds, is that enough? And if I'm good, and I win, you'll send me back."
"Oh, my dear," Albus murmurs, distressed. He feared something like this was in the offing. The confusion between 'good' and 'winning' doesn't escape his notice. "I'm afraid it doesn't work that way."
"You can do it, though, right? Like you did for my dad."
"Your father was a special case," Albus says gently. "I wish I could. But—"
"You can," the boy insists, letting go of him and backing away. "You have to. You're Albus Dumbledore. I'm Albus Severus. You can save me. That's what you do."
"No," Albus protests, regret scorching along the paths left by Severus' betrayal. "The truth is, I never had that kind of power. I'm terribly sorry, but—"
"No! You're lying!" A sudden glitter of tears stripes the pale cheeks of Harry's son. He levels the wand. "You're the one who set up the game. I saw. I watched you. Even Dad knows, he just won't admit it. You're the one who decided who lived or died. You could do it if you wanted to."
"I'm afraid you misunder—"
"Imperio," shrieks the boy, jabbing his wand at Albus' forehead. Nothing happens. "You're lying! You've always lied! You're not a Gryffindor. That's what Gryffindors do! They save people! They don't leave them to die of fucking snake bite!"
He slashes the air in frustration, then focuses the wand on Albus again, snarling, "Imperio! Crucio! Avada Kedavra!" The air rings with shock, and the poison in Albus' system rushes forward, ecstatic as absinthe, the part that greets darkness and obsessive love and sneering lips with a snake of competitive lust. "I hate you!" screams his namesake, and for a moment Albus thinks he'll throw the wand in his face. Instead the boy whirls as dramatically as his other namesake and pelts off across the border, sand crunching under his heels, his sobs echoing long after he's gone.
The venom sliding inside Albus like a sleepless night whispers: Follow him. He needs you.
His mind uncompromised by recent events, he resists the temptation. Instead he lifts his head and looks around. Behind him, as in a theatre in which the house lights have dimmed and all is black, only the glow under the curtain hem visible, with the willed suspense of an audience forgetting to breathe until it starts to rise, he sees a distant lightening of the darkness.
A molten, eye-searing line of gold incises the horizon.
Albus exhales. The landscape lifts with dream-like solemnity from black to grey, crowned with fire. The child is nowhere to be seen. In fact, the world appears strangely empty, untouched. The light (the colour of poppies and peonies now, so tender and exalted) drives the shadows out of his blood; an unwanted exorcism, because the shadows are all he has left of Severus.
He has done everything he could, but Merlin help him, he doesn't wish to be alone with his victory. He had hoped to ask Ariana's forgiveness. Or consult Godric Gryffindor on the terrible cost of being right. Neither wish has been vouchsafed him. Meanwhile, the one who knew him most deeply, who—the word will never stop sounding out of place—loved him the longest, has left without a backward glance, choosing the brief candle of life over an eternity spent at his side.
Very well. There are others, are there not? Grindelwald, for instance. Albus' fallen angel, split and twisted like a lightning-struck tree. Together, perhaps, they will locate the boy who is neither Albus nor Severus, the boy who looks like but cannot be Harry. Albus has an inkling of where to search first; apparently the afterlife is a nest of snakes, and Salazar Slytherin has already proved himself more than willing to play God.
But no. Gellert is only a symbol to him now, and the boy has run away. Both boys.
He allows himself one last melancholy look, drinking in the austere beauty of the Scottish hillsides, chilly with shadow save for where the rising sun heats the high-most green. Then, knowing what he leaves behind by making this choice, he steps out into the desert, this last, bleak, breathtaking echo of Severus' existence, turning so that his back is to the sun.
The path laid down by his shadow stretches before him. He knows if he follows it he will find what he's looking for. He still wishes—oh how he wishes—he could have risked this in life, but more than his own soul was at stake then; and what lives in the darkness should, he has long since decided, be left in darkness.
His motives still as mixed as the day he outwitted the Sorting Hat, Albus strides forward, robes waving like a colourful spring morning, the parched-smelling breeze winnowing his beard. His hair glistens auburn in the sun, and he notices that instead of lying straight, his shadow loops through the dunes, winding from side to side. It will lead him into a maze of blind turns, forward and back as the sun travels overhead, reversing his shadow's path so that he walks the same ground twice. He won't rest until the sun sets once more in a blaze so sublime the sky sheds its veil of light, and pale blue becomes black, the true, inscrutable face of the universe; until he meets himself coming forward or back, his past and future fusing in a single encounter; and if time doesn't stop, if the choice is still his, he will find out the truth.
He will judge. Has been judged, indeed: Aberforth, Severus, Harry's son, the postwar world. He can't deny they have the right, but none are as qualified as he. The fact is, he could be anything. That was the great lesson he learned in his youth, the great and terrible thing Gellert showed him, and it hasn't grown less true with time.
Because with Albus Dumbledore, you never know. He could be anything. He's the wizard behind the curtain, but also the master of ceremonies standing in plain sight, making it impossible to tell whether the curtain is rising or falling. It's rather exciting, frankly. He's alone in the desert, readier than he's ever been to face himself, and he could be anything. And no one will be hurt. No one will ever know.
Anything. Anything at all.
***
"Harry, he's waking up."
In the infirmary bed, the small boy stirs. Harry shoots Poppy a haggard look and grips his son's thin hand. "Al," he whispers. "Thank Merlin. Can you hear me?"
The boy focuses on him without speaking, green eyes cloudy with suspicion. "Al?" Harry says anxiously. "It's me. Dad. How do you feel? Do you know where you are?" He waits. "Albus?"
"What did you call me?" croaks the child, then catches his breath and sinks deeper into the pillow, apparently overcome. Harry strokes his lank, shaggy hair, and for a sluggish moment his son accepts the petting, briefly sedated into accepting his lot.
"Sorry, old chap," Harry whispers, struggling for levity. "I thought it was the Severus part of your name you objected to. I'll stick to Al if you prefer."
The boy's eyes blaze open again, and his hand grips Harry's with furious strength. "Albus? My name?" he rasps, and then bursts out as if it's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard. "You're my father?"
"Of course I am," Harry says brokenly, signalling Poppy with a frantic look. "Al. Don't you know me?"
"Hush," Poppy says, already standing beside him, a vital-signs spell dancing through the colour spectrum above Al's bed. "No need to be fussed. His mind's bound to be a bit hazy from the after-effects of the venom." She tucks away her wand, smiling warmly. "Are you up for some tea, Mr. Potter?"
The boy's unnerving gaze shifts to her, and he just breathes. Then the faintest hint of a smile creeps onto his pale face. "Could do," he says. "Strong, though. No sugar." He goes back to consuming Harry with his eyes. Harry lets him, returning the look, glad of it, his heart aching with relief.
"What happened to me?" Al whispers, voice hoarse.
"A snake," Harry says miserably. "In the Forbidden Forest. A snake bit you."
Al nearly sprains his fingers, squeezing tight, and then to Harry's astonishment bursts out in peals of high-pitched laughter.
"My life is a joke," Al gasps, coughing and falling back against the pillow. "Even my fucking death is a joke."
Forcing himself not to panic, Harry kneels on the floor and scoops his son close. Exhausted and heartsore, he rocks the panting boy, fending off all threats with his body and his magic, his very life. Al clutches him, face grinding into Harry's shoulder, small, gulped sobs of suppressed hysteria hissing between his teeth. A surge of protective fury shakes Harry so hard he has to remind himself not to crush the boy.
Ginny's in the guest room just off the ward. Poppy persuaded her to catch an hour's rest while Harry sat vigil. He should fetch her. He should. But he doesn't want to let go. He doesn't—bloody hell, he needs to calm down. It's all right. Letting go of Al won't hurt him.
Al's having none of it. When Harry makes to stand, he twines himself in Harry's robes, getting dragged half off the bed. "Where are you going? Don't leave me."
"Just to let your mum know you're awake," Harry soothes him. "Don't you want to see her?"
Al glares at him as if he's mental. "No. I want you. Not her. You." Harry lets the boy pull him back down to the bed, gratified despite a small squirm of unease. Just as well Ginny isn't here to have her feelings hurt.
Poppy appears with mugs of tea, and Al relaxes enough to sit propped up against his pillow, blowing on the steam. His gaze darts around the infirmary, marvelling, taking in every detail. He sips, spilling a little when his hand shakes. Harry mops up after him. Startled, Al breaks out in a smile of unfathomable delight, a conspiratorial smile, and Harry can't help it. Besotted, he smiles back.
Nothing's more terrifying than sitting helpless at your son's bedside, unable to do a thing but watch him die. Unconditional love has always eluded Harry in his dealings with Al, but it's there now, with a spectacular and almost supernatural force, a kind of physical tingle that makes him want to take on the world.
"A snake bit me," Al tells him with a tremulous laugh, and for a moment his face goes a little maniacal, as if it's the best joke ever. "An old snake with blue eyes. And I—do you know what I did?" His voice cracks. "I bit him back."
The weird humour seizes Harry, too, and they grin raggedly at each other.
Then the hilarity fades, and Al says, "I killed him. All that kneeling, and look where it got me. Because I was so bloody unlovable."
His expression's ravaged, remote, and sweet Merlin, no eleven-year-old has any right to sound so bitter. "Al," Harry says. "Look at me," and the boy's head snaps up, searching.
They get stuck in that moment, straining toward each other. Confused, Harry frowns down at his knees.
"You think I'm disgusting, don't you?" Al says, strange and low.
Harry's stomach does a flip, because Al may be wrong in the particular but he's perfectly well aware that he's a Slytherin in a family of Gryffindors. "Don't be daft, you ninny. I love you, you know that."
"Because I'm your son," and when he looks up again, Al's touching his own lips, rubbing them in a way that, if he weren't a recuperating first-year in an infirmary bed, would be almost sensuous. As the thin finger travels from side to side, it draws a lopsided smile in its wake, and the boy's brow clears. Harry's mesmerised. Everything about his subtle, introverted child seems new and special to him now, like a second chance.
Al whispers to him, breathless, "It's a start, I suppose."
Wanting only to be encouraging, Harry nods. Al responds with a throaty, insinuating chuckle that drives a quick blush through his veins.
Suddenly decisive, the boy levitates his tea things out of the way, rattling them to the window ledge (what? how?—but Harry thinks proudly: without his wand), then scoots over, leaning against him. "I thought you'd hate me for being in Slytherin," he admits, muffled against Harry's robes.
Harry knows when he's being called out. "But you're my Slytherin," he says, putting an arm around his son. "That makes all the difference."
Shivering, Al burrows closer, stroking Harry's back as if he's the one doing the consoling, and if his arm is wound a little too low around Harry's middle, well, he supposes it's not worth making an issue of it. This is his oddball son, his lost boy, the only one of his children to remind him of himself; of himself before he landed at Hogwarts and learned to make friends.
"Gryffindor and Slytherin," he says inanely into Al's unwashed hair. The fever-damp boy squirms against him, snickering. Or perhaps sobbing, Harry can't tell and he can't help, he can only pat Al's ribs through his flannel nightshirt. "There, you see? The best of both worlds."
Pawing free, Al rears back, red-nosed and tousled, and it's true, his eyes are wet, glittering with tears of—grief, it could be. Rage. Not mirth. The glaring light across their surfaces makes that unlikely.
"Don't be an imbeci—" The sentence snaps off. Drawing a congested breath, Al looks down at the infirmary blanket, then slants Harry a fragment of a smile, scornful and mad with secrets. "Never mind. You're Gryffindor enough for us both." He waits a beat before adding, "'Dad.'"
Harry hears the quotes—he'd be deaf not to—and raises his eyebrows in mock affront. He can already predict the day Al starts spitting, "Dad," the way Snape once spat, "Potter." But that will be fine, brilliant in fact. Because Al will be alive to do the spitting, and that's all that matters.
The boy's shoulders hunch then, fragile with doubt. "I need— Will you bring me— " When Harry exclaims, "Anything," Al whispers, "A mirror." Surprised, Harry glances around the infirmary in case he sees one sitting out in plain sight, and there's a bizarre, brittle moment when he's about to stand. Al's tired face whitens with—Harry's not sure. But nothing good. So he settles for transfiguring his own empty teacup, frowning when Al practically snatches it from his hands.
If Ginny were here, she'd say, "Manners." But Ginny isn't.
Al holds up the glass and strokes it, then outlines his damp eyes with disbelieving fingers. "Look at me," he says, voice stifled with choked-back emotion. His fingers touch the mirror and return to his face, touch and return, like a student who can't believe his Polyjuice experiment would involve such total physical estrangement.
Transfiguration reversed, the teacup falls from his hand to his lap with a thump, and Al knuckles his eyes as though trying to blind himself.
"Hey, none of that." Harry pries the angry hand away, dashing a reassuring kiss across the top of Al's head. His son jerks back, snarling. When he realises how close Harry is, the black of his pupils expands, driving out the green.
"I'm one of the family," he breathes as if trying it on, just the slightest enigmatic quiver to his voice. His words puff over Harry's chin.
This is what it means to be a father, this overwhelming need to keep one's child from harm. "Of course you are," Harry cries. "And you always will be. For God's sake, Al, don't ever doubt it."
His son flops down, sighing, and curls into himself, as if the trauma of living instead of dying has finally caught up with him. He repeats, "Always," in a blank voice, then turns his face to the pillow. The trembling line of his mouth tightens. He looks so young, so helpless, a creature pieced together from leftover bits of black and white, skin pale as a Pensieve memory, hair greasy as a cauldron stewing with the simmering, potentially unsavoury ingredients that combine to make Al who he is (and of course Harry's thoughts stray immediately to Snape, but he forgives Al for reminding him, because that was the point).
Poppy rustles from her office, waits until Harry nods, then nods back and leaves the ward, shutting the door behind her.
Silence falls. Gentle in case his son's asleep, Harry strokes his cheek, coaxing the pinched lips to soften.
Al's eyelid twitches suddenly. "Bloody hell."
Harry suppresses a snort. Not that he has any intention of scolding, but parents aren't supposed to actually condone bad language. Al twists deeper into the pillow, teeth bared. "He lost."
Not sure he heard right, Harry starts to say, "Who?" but catches himself in time. No need to wake the boy unless it's a nightmare.
"Albus. Lost the game," his son mutters.
If he's talking about himself in the third person, he must be dreaming. Harry feathers Al's hair with calming fingers. He really ought to send Ginny a Patronus or at least a parchment pigeon. She'll be outraged he didn't wake her at once.
Al's dream-voice insists, "You know what that means, don't you?"
His head shifts on the pillow, and the corner of his mouth touches Harry's palm, then turns more fully, lips dragging open. Harry freezes when Al's tongue poses a wet question, transgressive, tender, his lips cushiony, pressing down so sweetly, a quick breath across licked skin.
How utterly… Harry can't think of the word. Disconcerting (depraved). James would never behave like this. Lily might pretend-bite him or race around in circles, squealing like a baby crup. Al means something else by it, something (horrifying) (impossible) (wrong), and Harry wills his fast-beating heart to be reasonable, be adult, not betray him, because it's punching all the way down in his gut.
Afraid to call attention to what just happened, he leaves his hand where it is, a shadow across Al's eyes, all the while his stomach is filling up with pain.
It's just a dream. You can't blame a person for dreaming, right?
Against the ball of his thumb, the boy's soft eyelashes dip once, twice.
Then Al turns over, knees drawn up, his slightly greasy black head fitting just so into the cup of Harry's hand. It's as if he's asking to be blessed. Hesitating, Harry runs the work-calloused pad of his thumb across Al's lips, watching as his impulsive caress pulls a thin, private smile onto his son's sleeping face. It's all right, then. It will be. Al's brain hasn't been poisoned.
"Just a dream," he says aloud, to reassure himself. "It doesn't mean anything."
"On the contrary," Al murmurs, watching him from the corner of one eye. Awake. Wide awake. "It means more than you can possibly imagine." His squint pierces the dark place over Harry's heart. "It means, you gullible fool, I've won."
A hiss whispers through the air then, an exhalation of esses, as if the snake that bit his son has somehow twisted into the room. Al changes position, pillowing his cheek on Harry's palm. His lips brush Harry's finger, teeth ticking against his wedding ring, sending horrible, unwanted sparks straight to that shadow in his stomach.
Something inside Harry flutters in refusal, desperate to escape the truth, but he's pinned by that kiss like a butterfly to a corkboard. He sits as if spellbound, body-bound, staring at the changeling child in the bed—his child, his Slytherin—while the waves of his heartbeat shake him, shake Hogwarts, shake the veil between life and death.
The pinch on his ring finger flares to pain as Al bites down, breaking the skin, a betrayal as searing as the sudden fire that spikes his blood. An inflammation of magic rips through Harry, berserk, out of control. He's dreaming, or Al is. No, they both are, because none of this makes sense, none of it, even as the poison takes over, unstoppable, blistering his heart before it occurs to him to scream for Poppy.
His entire body's irradiated now, burning from the inside out with understanding. An agony that's almost indistinguishable from hatred.
"Al," he gasps, gripping the boy's head and rocking it back and forth as if he might yank it sideways and break his neck. "Albus." But he's not the one doing the rocking, Al is; Al who's shaking his head no, vehement in the cradle of Harry's hands, no. His lip curls, a cross between terror and triumph, and Harry's been caught in that death glare before, that anguished, soul-sucking Look at me.
"Where—" he stutters, even before the certainty has quite reached his brain. "Where's my son?"
Across Al's bottom lip, there's a streak of blood.
"How should I know? Wherever little snakes go when the big snakes catch them, I expect. After the Gryffindors leave them to die." The sleepy blink with which he says this should be innocent; it's not. "Consoling Dumbledore for my defection, perhaps. I shouldn't worry. They'll get on together like a house on fire."
"Al," Harry says, weeping, because his child is gone forever. He can't stop repeating, even though the name means nothing now: "Al."
Delicate, unpitying fingers feel their way up his face, and his tears steam to nothing with a sting of magic. Harry cries harder. One hand grips the back of his neck, but he fights the compulsion to give in.
Breathing wetly, he blinks down at the fine furrow of concentration—oh Merlin, how could he have forgotten. At start of term, they'd meant to have Poppy check Al for nearsightedness. He reckons that won't be a problem now. The boy watches him raptly, beyond redemption, the face of a child who's never had anything he wanted, ever. Until now. He's got what he wants now. A faint, covetous wonder teases his mouth, as if Harry is a magical secret whose existence no one else in the world suspects.
When in fact it's the other way around.
"Al," Harry says, grieving. "Oh, Al, I'm so sorry."
Darkly the boy purrs, "What did you just call me?"
He can't do this. He can't. Poppy will come in. Ginny will catch them at it. Oh God, he can't tell her. Al's gone, and Ginny must never know.
Body smaller and purer than the spirit that's seized it, the boy tightens his thin arms around Harry's neck. "Don't be an idiot," he says, at eleven already a ruthless Legilimens. "I'm not gone, you fool. I'm right here. Look at me."
Hands flattening the unresisting body to the bed, Harry stares down at that upturned, unblinking hunger, and sees mirrored in it exactly what he feels. The self-hating passion swoons through him again, exhuming memory, destroying reason, and he has never loved anyone or anything like this, a torment equal parts damning and freeing, utterly despicable.
Gloriously consuming.
"Severus," he sobs, an explosion of defeat, because the love that will poison his life has a name.
"Very prescient of you, Potter," whispers the Slytherin in the bed. "Or should I say, Dad," his eyes green-ringed, glittering like contaminated water, black wells sunk into another world through which his soul rises shark-like to the surface, lips startling with blood, thin hands pulling Harry down, under, forcing him to breathe through his disgust and swallow the taste of copper: a child's lips burning, a child's tongue that closes the poisonous circle and drowns Harry in a dead man's treacherous, feverish, insatiable, unrewarded, and at long last realised desire.