Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Harry Potter strode angrily out of the Mexico City city hall, letting the door slam loudly shut behind him as he emerged into the harsh Mexican sunlight.

He couldn’t be stuck. He just couldn’t. Not after all this time. Not after coming all this way. Not after all he’d done, all he’d found. He was here, Harry knew it. Had he tracked him across over fifteen countries with nothing more than a handful of clues to go on, only to be stymied now?

No. Snape was here. And Harry would find him.

---

“Sure I saw him,” grunted Aberforth. “Came in last night. Asked for a room. Paid up front and was gone first thing this morning.”

Harry leaned against the worn and dirty planks of the bar, taking a drink of the somewhat dusty butterbeer that he’d ordered out of politeness (it was either that or something stronger, and truth be told, he’d never much cared for Firewhisky—particularly not after the sorry state he’d been in the morning after his stag party—not even now when it would have been nice and warm after coming out of the late-December snows). “Did he have any luggage with him?”

Aberforth shrugged, wiping a glass and setting it back down behind the bar. “Two little satchels. Nothin’ else. But that weren’t unusual—not many what come here stay for too long.”

“And Lethesson wouldn’t be one of those who did,” Harry added dryly, and Aberforth shrugged again, this time in agreement.

Harry had been assigned to his current case a week ago. Someone had been selling black market, mind-altering potions. It was a normal enough occurrence in Knockturn Alley, but whoever this was had been branching out, first moving his business into the more respectable Diagon Alley, and then, more alarmingly, into Hogsmeade, making his wares accessible to the students on their Hogsmeade weekends.

That’s when things had gone from merely a regular—if unwanted—occurrence into something considerably more serious, and the investigation was kicked up a few notches. It hadn’t taken the Department of Magical Law Enforcement much time to identify their culprit as one Hypnos Lethesson, a repeat offender who already had numerous fines and three short stints in Azkaban under his belt, for crimes ranging from assault to theft—but most often for trafficking of illegal substances.

And once they had a lead to follow, they had assigned Harry to the case.

Fenton Mudd had been on it alone before, and he had been the one to finally pin a name on their anonymous criminal. Now that they had someone to track, the head of the department assigned him a novice to help with the work.

Really, it had been a refreshing experience for Harry, joining the Auror force. The rest of the Wizarding world seemed to regard him as an expert on fighting the Dark Arts—the foremost expert, no less—because honestly, he’d already vanquished the Most Hated and Feared Dark Wizard in History. These petty crooks should be no problem for him.

But the long-time members of the DMLE didn’t treat him like that. Oh, there might have been a little awe on their parts in the beginning, back when he first joined, because, well, he was Harry Potter, after all. But it quickly evaporated when it became obvious that while he could duel, he couldn’t spot a cursed object to save his life. That while he was pretty decent at putting clues together, he’d never really had to find his own clues before, having left that to Hermione. That while he was fearless in the face of a frontal assault, he was rubbish at sneaking up on anyone.

In the DMLE, he was just another greenhorn, down at the bottom of the heap, and he was treated accordingly.

And that’s why he was here, patiently tracing Lethesson’s steps, searching his last known whereabouts for some clue as to where he was going next.

Harry had been to the Hog’s Head before on business; it seemed that no matter who was in charge, who was pulling the strings at the Ministry, there was always a steady stream of small-time crooks looking to fence their wares or eavesdrop for blackmail material or find oblivion in the bottom of a potion bottle. And, it seemed, while regimes came and went, those sorts of places remained the same.

As did their owners. Harry wouldn’t exactly call Aberforth uncommunicative, it was just that he always made it a point not to pay too close attention to what went on under the tables in his establishment. He’d probably talk if he knew anything, but he really didn’t.

Harry sighed, giving his butterbeer cork a quick spin on the bar before looking up. “You mind if I have a look at his room?” he asked.

Aberforth shook his shaggy head. “Haven’t been up there to tidy it yet,” he said, wiping his hands on the grimy towel tucked in his belt loop as he came ‘round the bar.

“Good,” said Harry. “Might find something.”

Aberforth snorted as Harry followed him to the rickety flight of stairs behind the bar that led up to the bedrooms. “Doubt it—some’un on the run ain’t likely to leave much trace behind.”

Harry shrugged, smiling slightly, his hands in his pockets against the chill that pervaded the room this far from the fireplace. “Yeah—but you never know.”

The hallway was dark and dank, and there was still the lingering, unlovely aroma of goats that Harry had come to associate with Aberforth Dumbledore. They stopped at the second room to the right; with a jangle of the key ring on his belt, Aberforth opened the door and let them in.

From the looks of things, Lethesson had left in something of a hurry—probably because he was up to no good. Harry had seen the rooms here before; the few bits of dilapidated furniture were placed about the room in the same layout in all of them. But not this one; Lethesson had pushed all the furniture back to the walls, leaving a nice clear space by the hearth, with the exception of the small table, which he had pulled up close to the fire. The tabletop was scoured clean, to the point of revealing fresh wood—the mark of someone magically obliterating any trace of what had been resting on said table, so there was no chance of finding any residue of Billywig stings or hellebore syrup. The hearth was filled with ashes and the room was cold, but the now-dead coals had been banked in a fashion that looked as though they’d been heating a cauldron recently.

“Busy fellow,” Harry remarked wryly to the lanky man leaning against the doorframe. Aberforth just grunted as Harry made a sweep with his wand, his tracking spell keyed to Lethesson as he searched for anything he might have left behind; Mudd had almost managed to corner their suspect before Harry had been put on this case, and the man had made such a hasty escape that he’d dropped a few of the bottles he was carrying—bottles of just the stuff that he was being accused of selling. They were hard evidence of his guilt, as well as one of his belongings to which they could tune a spell to trace him.

Now Harry just had to find him.

“You didn’t hear anything suspicious?” he asked over the sizzlings of his spell.

Aberforth shook his head. “Kept quiet—most do what stays in my place.” He crossed his arms and regarded Harry in silence as Harry’s spell fizzled out—and, as he suspected, Lethesson had been very careful not to leave anything behind, just a stray hair or two on the dented pillow. “Them what do make noise usually don’t stay long.” He closed his mouth, and looked long around the room, his glasses glinting in the weak afternoon sunlight. “‘Specially not in this room,” he added after a moment.

Harry looked at him quizzically, his wand half raised. “This room?”

Aberforth grunted. “Rented out this room to that Trelawney woman some years ago. She made quite a racket, and was out of here and up at the castle the very next day.”

“Oh,” Harry said, and he turned, and for a moment the scene seemed to swim before his eyes: Trelawney, bedecked in beads and shawls, intoning the words of the prophecy that dictated the course of his life to the stunned Albus Dumbledore…and Snape, crouching eagerly by the keyhole before Aberforth found him and pitched him out the door, and then running back to his master with his news…

Harry shook his head, dismissing his flight of fancy. “Well, it doesn’t look like there’s anything here,” he said, “but thanks for letting me have a look anyway.” And he raised his wand again and swept it wide around the room. The still-rumpled bed made itself (Harry knew that Aberforth wasn’t one to change his sheets between guests), and the furniture went dancing back to where he knew it should go. The newly-scoured table skittered over to the window, its two accompanying chairs in hot pursuit, and the bed slid to the other wall, protesting creakily and kicking up clouds of dust and debris as it dragged its trailing, tattered blankets through years of accumulated filth on the floor to the space where it usually rested.

He set it down with a thump. The whole thing sagged with a tired wheeze, sending out a cloud of dust from beneath it; a dirty scrap of paper was blown out from under it as it settled, and it skated lightly out across the floor to come to a rest against Harry’s shoe.

Without thinking, he leaned over to pick it up, sliding his wand away in his pocket as he leaned down. “When was the last time you dusted under there, Aberforth?” he asked dryly as he straightened up, swiping at the thick layer of dust that coated the scrap with his thumb.

“When they pay me to,” he answered easily, and Harry snorted, rubbing absently at the scrap in his hand.

“Well, you were right—looks like there’s nothing here,” he said. “Sorry to have bothered you, and thanks for letting me have a look around. And please,” he added, “do let us know if Lethesson shows up here again? I know that the—er—“no questions asked” policy is part of the charm of this place, but—”

“I don’t want nobody here what sells stuff like that to kids,” Aberforth said gruffly.

Harry grinned. “Nor do we. I appreciate your help, then,” he said, and, glancing down, added, “Well, I suppose I’ll be—”

He blinked.

His mother was laughing up at him from the scrap of paper in his hands.

He just stared for a moment, and then furiously wiped the rest of the dust away. It was old, tattered ‘round the edges and folded across the front, and dirt had been ground into the creases in the paper—but the surface was still tiredly glossy beneath the layers of grime, and Harry soon found himself looking at a laughing, happy photograph of Lily Potter.

No—it was only half a photograph, he realized. Dimly, he heard Aberforth say his name, but he didn’t answer. This picture…it was…the other half was in his photo album, taken from Grimmauld Place when he was seventeen, showing his one-year-old self being chased by his father…but it had already been torn by then, his mother gone—taken—and Harry had seen it happen, when he’d dived into the misty contents of Dumbledore’s pensieve, toward the end, just before he’d…

“Did Snape come here a lot? In that last year?” he asked softly. He looked up just in time to see Aberforth’s inquiringly perplexed expression vanish behind a wall of blankness.

“No,” he answered shortly. “He never came here. Had more important things to attend to, I reckon.”

Harry frowned. “Never?” he asked.

Aberforth shook his head decisively. “Last time I saw him was back before he dispatched Albus—and even then, was for some work for the Order. I don’t think he ever came up here, to stay or nothing—except ‘that one time, before.”

Harry winced reflexively at the casual mention of what had happened atop the astronomy tower in his sixth year, but didn’t dwell on it long, instead looking down at the picture in his hands. “Then how…when could he…surely they didn’t bring him here?”

“Who?”

“The Death Eaters.” He looked up, staring blankly out at the flat grey sky beyond the high, tiny window. “Why would they bring his body here before they got rid of it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, boy,” Aberforth said roughly, the sharp sound of his voice startling Harry from his reverie. “Snape weren’t never here.”

“Then how did this get here?” Harry demanded, thrusting the picture out in front of him.

Aberforth squinted down at it. “What is it?” he asked, looking down his long nose at it; his eyes widened slightly behind his spectacles. “Wait—is that—that your mum?” he asked, his voice surprised.

“Yes! And Snape had it!”

Aberforth blinked, and when he looked up, his face was utterly closed. “I’ve never seen that before—and I don’t know how it got up here,” he said tersely. “But what I do know is that Snape weren’t here.”

“But he was!” Harry yelled, surprised by his own sudden vehemence. “He had to have been!” He yanked out his wand, tapped it twice to the photograph, and then swung it wide and yelled, “Tractus!”

And the bright yellow light crackled from his wand and arced unerringly under the bed, along the wall beneath the cracked mirror, and on the floorboards beside the bed. Triumphant, Harry called, “Accio!” and up from the floor and into his hand sailed a tiny black button and several long, dark hairs, still glittering from his tracking spell. “See!” he said, thrusting them right beneath Aberforth’s nose. “He was here!” He cast his eyes around, almost as if expecting to see the man himself standing there—and he saw a few lingering motes of light sparkling on the ground near his feet.

Harry dropped unceremoniously to his knees; there, lit up in the fading vestiges of his spell, were several dark, irregular spots on the floor beneath him, blotches of a dull, rusty colour that Harry had seen before, staining the warped and splintered floorboards of the Shrieking Shack—all that they had ever found of Snape’s body.

He used his wand to gouge out a splinter of the wood from the biggest stain, leaving a line of pale, fresh wood in its wake—the abused floor looked no worse off for the chunk missing—and then he stood.

To find Aberforth looking at him with a mixture of anger and frustration. “Potter—”

“He was here,” Harry said, his voice firm, and he looked at Aberforth—and for the first time in Harry’s life, the penetrating blue eyes of one of the Dumbledores looked away. Conviction bubbled up inside of him. “And you knew he was here.”

“I did not!” Aberforth growled, now looking angrily back up at him. “I told you, I don’t know how that got there—”

“It couldn’t have been the Death Eaters,” said Harry, cutting across Aberforth’s words as he began to pace, his strides eating easily a quarter of the tiny room in each step. “Voldemort had just ordered them all to the Forest—all except Snape, he called him to the Shrieking Shack to—and then he went right after them after he called me out—we always just assumed that he’d got rid of the body on his way out, but he didn’t need to go back into the room where Snape was to get out—stupid to think that—and anyway, he wouldn’t care enough to do it—so who did?” Harry’s hand found its way into his hair, tugging restlessly. “Did someone sneak his body out afterwards? No, no one else knew he was dead—I don’t even think the other Death Eaters did. Just us and Voldemort—but someone had to have brought him here—unless—”

The sudden realization hit Harry like a punch in the stomach. He stopped mid-stride, his mouth falling open, his insides knotting up like string. “He wasn’t dead,” he breathed.

“Don’t be stupid, Potter!” Aberforth barked. “Of course he was!”

“He was alive.” And then Harry’s stomach, which had been crawling up into his chest, sank like a stone to somewhere around his knees. “He was alive—and I left him lying there!” he said, his voice emerging as little more than a wheeze, his breath deserting him in his horror.

“Potter—you’re dreaming, now—no one but you ever survived when You-Know-Who set out to kill ‘em.”

Aberforth’s words washed over him unheeded; Harry shook his head. “No. He did—he must have—how else could he have got here?” He looked up and brandished his handful of discoveries. “He had to have come here! He—he must have—he had an antidote—a bezoar, or something—”

Aberforth barked a sardonic laugh. “Bezoars are for poisons, boy, not venom, don’t be ridiculous—”

“Or Blood-Replenishing solution!” Harry shouted. “He was in the Order—he’d have known that’s what Arthur needed when Nagini bit him!”

“And just how was he supposed to swallow a potion with his throat torn out?” Aberforth said derisively.

“He could just—” And Harry froze, before whirling where he stood and fixing Aberforth with narrowed eyes. “How did you know that?” he asked slowly.

“Know what?” Aberforth no longer looked scornful, but wary.

Harry eyed him. “Know that his throat was torn out?”

Aberforth glared at him. “You told everyone—that he was attacked by that ruddy great snake of his—”

“I said he was bitten,” Harry answered, his words even. “That didn’t mean that his throat was torn out—but it was—and you knew it.”

Aberforth looked furious, and when he next spoke, his voice was rising steadily. “Weasley was tore up by that snake—stands to reason Snape’d have been too!”

“It was you.” It was not a question. “You took him out of there—you brought him here.”

“I was fighting alongside everyone else that night!” Aberforth shouted. “I didn’t even know he was dead ‘fore Voldemort said it when the two of you was fighting!”

Harry’s fingers clenched tight, tighter around the objects in his hand, the button and the sliver of wood digging painfully into his palm, but he didn’t speak. Alive…still alive, after all this time…

“Where is he?” Harry asked; his words were sudden, but his voice was even and calm. “Where did he go?”

“You’re mental, Potter,” said Aberforth coldly. “And I’m not going to play this game with you. You’ve asked your questions—now it’s time for you to be leaving. I’ve no time for this lunacy—I have a business to run.” And he turned on his heel and stalked down the stairs.

Harry watched him go, his retreating back stiff, and then he sank down on the lumpy mattress behind him. Aberforth was right about one thing—it was ludicrous, the very idea that Snape had somehow survived, and yet…

Snape had been here, even though Aberforth denied it. They’d never found a body—something that had, sadly, happened more often than not in that last year of the war, so no one had really thought too much about it. But why would someone go to all the trouble of bringing his body here only to get rid of it? And Aberforth—what he said just didn’t add up.

Harry abruptly stood and strode down the stairs; the fetid odour of goats, stronger down in the bar proper, even in winter, assailed his nose. Aberforth was back behind his bar with a sullen air about him and didn’t look at Harry as he walked quickly through the pub and towards the door.

“Potter!”

He halted in his tracks just inside the doorframe, half in and half out of the door, that same door through which Aberforth had led them to safety that night of the battle—that night that Snape was supposed to have died.

Aberforth had come out from behind his bar; he was looking at Harry now, his blue eyes no longer cutting away, and in that moment they were more penetrating than his brother’s had ever been. “Let the dead lie, Potter,” he finally said. “Recriminations and what-might-have-beens eat at a man—and you’ve got no cause for ‘em.”

Harry stiffened. “But if he’s not dead—”

“Severus Snape is dead, Potter,” Aberforth interrupted roughly. “You of all people know what kind of life he lived—and now he’s got some measure of peace. Let it be, Potter. Let him be.”

Harry’s fist tightened involuntarily; the sliver of wood stabbed painfully into his flesh, and he turned and left without another word.

He could feel Aberforth’s eyes on him as he trudged through the snow all the way up the alley towards High Street. He stood just in the alley’s mouth, gazing up at the turrets of Hogwarts peering over the crests of the nearby hill, and then he looked up the street for a moment before Apparating away, reappearing with a crack by the sagging stile by the gate to the Shrieking Shack. He landed in a snowdrift up to his knees; he barely noticed, just extricated himself so that he could clamber over the fence and jog up the hill, quickly reaching the dilapidated porch and forcing the door open despite its rusty protests.

The Shack was as dank and miserable as it had always been, only now it was cold as well, and the warped and gaping boards offered little respite from the biting winter winds. But today Harry had no time to consider the rotting boards and the peeling wallpaper; he made his way straight into the nearly empty room that held the trapdoor to the tunnel up to Hogwarts.

An old, splintering crate and a table with a single chair sat inside, the cracked oil lamp on the tabletop extinguished for years. The floor was coated with dust that bore only the faintest ghosts of footprints past. And there, just by the crate, the old grey floorboards turned a dark brown, and if Harry squinted, he could see the vague imprint of the arms and shoulders of a man in the long-dried blood.

He dropped into a crouch, opening his hand and just staring at the stained splinter in his palm for a moment, before drawing his wand. “Gemmacus,” he muttered, pointing to the floor. A splinter of light lanced from the tip of his wand to bury itself in the stained wood.

And for a moment, nothing, and Harry felt as if he’d been pricked with a pin, all his air let out—and then his heart leapt to his throat, as a second point of light arced up from the floor and sped unerringly back to the splinter in his hand, matching that stain to the one on the floor.

It was his. It was Snape’s blood in the Hog’s Head.

He had been there.

And Harry was going to find out how.

---

Harry muttered a hurried apology in response to the indignant squawk of the little woman that he had bumped with his elbow while coming out of the lift. His arms were filled with stacks of paper, some neatly filed and some not, and it was all so hastily jumbled together that he kept losing sheets and he half-walked, half-ran through the Ministry; he’d had no time to bother with organizing it, instead just putting a haphazard charm on the whole pile to keep him from losing anything—so now as he walked, he was being chased by an ever-growing flock of loose leaves that fluttered and shushed along the floor behind him.

He took left and right turns down the hall, his feet making no sound as he strode across the thick blue carpet, leaving behind him the large offices of the senior members of the Wizarding government behind him as he travelled deep into the bowels of the building, where the more junior members were housed. He’d come this way so often that he never even needed to look up from the stack of paper in his arms as he walked, going all the way down to the little office at the end of the hall with the neatly lettered brass plaque that read:

Hermione Granger
Junior Undersecretary for the Magical Creatures Community

Harry didn’t bother knocking, just went right in. It was lunch hour, after all, and she shouldn’t be talking to anyone.

And as it turned out, she wasn’t. She and Ron sprung apart mid-snog when the door flew open. Harry didn’t bat an eye, just gave an off-hand “Hullo, Ron,” before dropping his stacks of papers and files on Hermione’s desk and saying, “Snape’s alive. And I need your help to find him.”

They stared at him as though he had bowtruckles crawling from his ears.

It was Ron who finally broke the heavy blanket of silence. “What?”

“He’s alive! Look!” Harry yanked the little cloth bag from out of his pocket and spilled its contents on Hermione’s painfully neat desk. “Look!” he said again. “This is a button from his robes—my tracking spell confirmed it. And his hair—” he unrolled the handkerchief to show the long black strands— “and this, this bloodstain—it’s an exact match to the one in the Shrieking Shack. And this picture!” He waved the torn and dirty image of his mother through the air before slapping down on the wood before them. “It was Sirius’s—the one from Grimmauld Place. Snape took it because—well, he took it, and he wouldn’t have just thrown it away—but I found it and all this other stuff in the Hog’s Head—so he couldn’t have died that night! He was there! He’s still alive, and I have to find him!”

Still they just stared at him, saying nothing, their expressions making it more than clear that they thought he’d finally gone ‘round the twist. “Don’t you see?” he demanded in aggravation. “Somehow he was in the Hog’s Head that night. And he couldn’t have been before he went to the Shack—it had to be after! He had to have survived!”

“Harry—” Hermione’s voice was quiet, halting. “Harry, Snape’s dead. We were there—we saw it—”

“We saw him get attacked,” Harry interrupted, raising one finger. “We never saw him actually die—because he didn’t. He was still alive—and we just left him there—and so now I have to find him.”

Ron made an incredulous noise. “Harry—no one could have survived that. That ruddy snake of You—Voldemort’s tore his throat right out. There wasn’t a drop of blood left in him.”

“Yes!” Harry was exultant—surely now they’d see. “And Aberforth knew it!”

“What?”

“Aberforth—that’s how I found it—found out.” His hands restlessly shuffled papers at random. “I was on the Lethesson case this week, you know, and I’d tracked him over to the Hog’s Head, and that was when I found this stuff.” He cast his hand in the direction of the small scatter of Snape’s things sitting innocuously in the pooled cloth of the bag that had just held them. “And when I started talking about it, trying to figure out how he could have been there, Aberforth let slip that he knew that Snape’s throat had been torn out, even though we three were the only ones who knew about that—Aberforth must have seen him!”

He dived into the stack on Hermione’s desk, sending more paper flying to land on the floor and then creep up back to flap at his ankles as he searched wildly for his lists. “Look—I went back through all the records of the battle, all the first-hand accounts—I even sent some letters and talked to some people—Neville, Seamus, McGonagall—and no one can account for Aberforth!” He found the lists he was looking for and waved the papers in their faces. “No one saw him between the time that the Dementors attacked us until it was all over—and he must have gone in there and got Snape out! That’s why we never found his body—he’s not dead!”

“Harry.” Hermione’s voice had gone gentle and patient now. “Just because we never found a body doesn’t mean he’s still alive—we never found Moody either; the Death Eaters didn’t leave bodies—”

“Moody was one of ours,” Harry said, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “They still thought Snape was one of theirs. They wouldn’t have done that.” He dived back into his papers. “And anyway, there wasn’t anyone who could have.”

Ron opened his mouth to speak, but Harry cut him off, brandishing another sheaf of parchment. “It’s not just the people on our side—I’ve accounted for all the Death Eaters, too.” He looked down, his eyes rapidly scanning his hastily-scribbled timeline, despite the fact that he all but knew it by heart anyway. “See, before I realized he was alive, I was just trying to figure out who had taken his body all the way back to the Hog’s Head to get rid of it—why someone would do that—and then I realized that there wasn’t anyone.” He tossed the papers down on top of his last list. “There—there’s a list of all of the Death Eaters who were captured, dead, or otherwise incapacitated, and by then, Voldemort had ordered all the rest into the Forest, and I had all their names confirmed by Yaxley and Narcissa Malfoy—and on top of that, none of their people that I talked to saw Aberforth either.”

He looked at them, meeting their eyes in turn, trying to make them see. “The only people in that Shack were him, us, and Snape—and Voldemort went right out into the Forest himself after that. He couldn’t be bothered with getting rid of a body, he was waiting for me!” Harry stabbed a finger at his chest. “So Snape’s body still should have been there—except that Aberforth went in and got him out!” He grinned elatedly as his puzzle pieces began to fall into place, and he rounded out his argument with, “And if he’d died, Aberforth wouldn’t have hidden the body or anything, he’d have told us, so we could bury him properly, but he didn’t—so Snape must still be alive!”

Harry beamed at them, waiting. Hermione was looking at one of his stacks of lists and timelines with a small crease between her eyebrows, and then she looked up. “Harry—all this is circumstantial.”

“And anyway—no one who You—Voldemort set out to kill ever survived it—‘cept you, of course,” Ron said with a frown. “And if he was that set on getting the Elder Wand, you think he’d have taken the chance of just leaving him there? No—he’d have made sure Snape was dead, and probably gone back to take care of the body, too!”

“No, no!” Harry shook his head, his euphoria souring slightly. “If he’d got rid of the body, then how did his blood and hair and things wind up in the Hog’s Head?”

“Those could have got there at any time, Harry,” said Hermione. “The other teachers chased Snape out of the school—out of a window, you said. He could have been bleeding after flying through all that broken glass, and then he went to the Hog’s Head before Voldemort summoned him—Aberforth said the Death Eaters used his place all the time—”

“But Aberforth said he never came there!” Harry said, getting angry now. Why couldn’t they see it? “And Snape wouldn’t have just dropped that picture of my mum!”

“But how could Aberforth have known whether or not Snape came there?” Ron asked stubbornly. “Everything was crazy that night—Snape might have sneaked in the back, just to regroup—and he might not have known that he dropped the picture.” Ron’s face was set. “He’s dead, mate.”

“No!” said Harry fiercely. “Because look at this!” And he snatched up the papers written on the official Gringotts letterhead. “I went to Snape’s house after I found this stuff—up north, you know, where he and my mum used to live—to see if there were any clues there. No one had been in there since that first time I went up there—but I went through everything much more carefully this time around, and I found a list of his accounts, so I went to Gringotts.” The official Ministry document pertaining to the distribution of the property of one Severus Snape, deceased, was stacked behind the letter from Gringotts, and Harry fanned it out so they could see it as he said, “He had no legal heirs, but I pulled a few strings to have all of his property put in my name—including his vault—because I didn’t want…well, anyway, it’s all mine, but when I got to the bank, the goblins told me that two months after the night Snape was supposed to have died, someone with a key and the correct number emptied Snape’s vault by owl!” he finished, in triumph. Now he had them—there was no way they could explain that away.

Hermione took the papers; Ron peered over her shoulder, frowning, and they briefly met each other’s eyes, their expressions exasperated, before turning back to Harry. “Someone could have stolen his vault key, Harry—” Hermione started.

“No!” Harry yelled, frustrated. “He’s alive! Why can’t you see it?”

“Because none of this adds up, Harry—and it’s you who can’t see it,” said Ron firmly. “You’ve found all this stuff, and now you’ve got it in your head that Snape’s out there—because you can’t let it go when it comes to Snape.” Harry furiously opened his mouth, but Ron ploughed on, “You already got him his portrait and his Order of Merlin and his monument in the Hogwarts grounds next to Dumbledore, but that’s not enough for you—now you’ve got to dream up some crazy idea that he’s still alive based on a few hairs and a bunch of garbled stories. But none of that—none of this—nothing you do will change the fact that Snape is dead.”

“But he’s not dead! Don’t you understand?!” Harry shouted back at him. “He’s not! All of this does add up—Aberforth wasn’t accounted for, all of these things were up in the Hog’s Head, despite the fact that Aberforth said he never went up there, none of the Death Eaters or Voldemort could’ve done anything with his body, and then, two months later, Snape’s vault is completely emptied! It does add up—and it adds up to Snape being still alive!”

There was a silence, save for the sound of Harry’s rapid breathing, and then Hermione finally said, “All right, Harry. Supposing he is still alive. What on earth could we do to help? It’s been over four years—and no word of him. If Snape really were alive, surely somebody would’ve seen him or heard from him somehow.”

“He’s hiding,” Harry answered immediately, starting to pace across Hermione’s floor, a bevy of papers at his feet. “No matter what I said, he’d still have to stand trial if he’d been found, even if only to be cleared—like the Malfoys did—and I know he wouldn’t have wanted that, so he’s obviously gone underground. In fact, I don’t think he’s even in the country anymore,” Harry said, coming to a stop back in front of the desk. “And that’s what I need from you, Hermione,” he said, pointing at her. “I’ve been down at the Portkey Office getting their back records—I need you to help me check the Portkey travel around the day Snape emptied his vault, because I’d be willing to bet that’s about the same time he left.”

“Harry—I’m in the middle of a case!” she said, her voice getting that shrill tone that he remembered from Hogwarts, the one she used on him when he wanted to go flying but she insisted that he do his homework. “That horrible Higgs woman is back again, trying to get the centaurs’ territory restricted so that she can build her summer home. I don’t have time to be looking through all this—” She stopped for a moment, and when she next spoke, her voice was quieter and vaguely suspicious. “For that matter, when did you have time to do all of this, Harry?” she asked, squinting at some of the papers.

“Yeah,” Ron added, looking down at the mess that Harry had made of Hermione’s desk. “Aren’t you supposed to be working on the Lethesson case?”

Harry waved a hand impatiently. “I got myself taken off the case—I had to find this out—”

“Harry!” Hermione was instantly disapproving. “You can’t just pick and choose when you want to work! You need to get back on that immediately—”

“This is more important than that!” Harry cut across her scolding.

Ron folded his arms, his expression dark. “More important than apprehending some scum who sells badly-brewed Sopophorus Solutions and Morpheus Mixtures to kids?” he asked coldly.

A noise of frustration escaped Harry, and he roughly shoved a few scattered papers onto the floor in annoyance; they gathered right back at his feet. “You just don’t understand, do you?” Harry growled, his agitation bubbling to the surface as his voice got louder and louder as he spoke. “I have to find him! I have to—we left him to die, but he’s alive, and I need—I need you two to stop patronizing me and help me find him!”

“But how, Harry?” asked Hermione painedly. “It would be impossible to track him down! If Snape really was alive and had taken a Portkey somewhere, somebody would’ve noticed, but no one has heard anything! He could have been Polyjuiced, or Disillusioned, or in any number of disguises! Not to mention that he could be anywhere, and left any number of ways—he could’ve Apparated, flown by broom, used Muggle transport—”

Harry cut across her protests yet again. “No, not Muggle—I ruled that out. Gringotts told me that none of his money was exchanged for Muggle money, so he wouldn’t have had any on him—” Harry stopped dead, his mouth falling open as a flash of inspiration slammed into his brain. “Unless…unless he counterfeited it!” he shouted at no one. “He could’ve used fake Muggle money!” His grin was wild. “I’ll be right back!”

Harry pounded out of the office, a trail of papers dashing madly behind him as he flew down the hall back to the lift. He nearly slammed into Kingsley on his way out as he careened around a sharp corner, but he didn’t stop, just called a hasty apology and kept on his way, coming to the lift. He tapped on the button repeatedly, but after ten seconds he gave up and threw himself against the door to the stairs, taking them two at a time down to level two.

He dashed down the hall, past the Auror Headquarters, and took a left into the Improper Use of Magic Office, throwing the double doors wide with both hands. Fanny Higgenbottom was sitting at the main desk, and she jumped at the sudden noise; the moment she saw Harry, she turned red and dropped the stack of papers she was using her wand to file. “Mr. Potter!” she said, her voice high.

“Hi, Fanny,” he said, panting slightly. “I need to talk to Jonathan—is he in?”

“Oh—oh, yes,” she said, her voice returning somewhat to normal but her cheeks still pink. “He just came in from lunch—is he expecting you?”

“No—something just came up on a case I’m following—I need to talk to him about it,” Harry replied, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“Well—all right.” She got up and went back into one of the offices behind her. It seemed to take forever, but finally she returned, followed by old Jonathan Sommerby, with whom Harry had worked before.

“Mr. Potter?” he said, sounding somewhat surprised. “What can I do for you today?”

“Sorry to sweep in on you like this,” Harry said, coming around to talk to him, kicking irritably at the papers still dogging his steps. “But I’m working on a case at the moment, and I need to ask you what you do about magically counterfeited Muggle money.”

“Oh, well—that’s simple enough.” Jonathan looked vaguely relieved, and relaxed as he began to warm to the topic at hand. “We track it all—we have spells on Muggle banks to monitor any enchanted notes that come through, and when we catch them, we phase them out of circulation, trading them for real currency, and we take all the counterfeit and file it away. It keeps inflation down—and we don’t want it to revert in the hands of some unsuspecting Muggle,” he added with a small smile.

“File?” Harry asked, hope surging in his chest. “You mean you know where it came from?”

“Where and when,” Jonathan affirmed.

It was almost too good to be true. “What—do you prosecute over it? Bring people in who do it?” Harry asked, breathless.

“Oh, heavens no,” Jonathan chuckled, clearly pleased to have such a rapt audience. “I don’t think the general population even knows we do it—it’s just a precaution, really. Most of it is small time stuff, just Wizards trying to blend in, which is perfectly legal under the Statute of Secrecy—but by the same token, we can’t have it circulating out in the Muggle population, either. We would just gather it all up for disposal, but we make it a point to keep close tabs on it—to make sure that someone isn’t trying to commit any major acts of fraud.” He smiled at Harry. “So we have it all catalogued and filed away in the back—we record where it was used, an approximate date when it was spent, and a description of how it was fabricated.”

Harry was grinning. “Can I have a look?”

“Of course. Right this way.”

---

“You’re what?”

Ginny stared disbelievingly up at him from the floor, where she had been drawing with Teddy, who continued with his work as if nothing had happened. Harry rose and began to pace the floor, one hand in his pocket around one of the scraps of paper he’d found in the Improper Use of Magic office; the file from which it came rested on the dining room table.

“I’m going abroad, Gin. I told you—I know Snape is alive, I’ve showed you everything— and today I finally found his trail. He left the country by hovercraft. I just know it was him,” he said, willing her to understand. “Two months after the final battle, somebody—it had to have been Snape!—emptied his vault, and then a day later, this counterfeit money shows up.” He pulled the formerly-transfigured newspaper from his pocket and waved it about; the date was July 7th of 1998. “Whoever transfigured this—Snape—took a hovercraft across the Channel to France. And that’s where I’m going—I’m going to find him.”

“I thought you were on a case, Harry,” Ginny said, frowning as she rose up off her stomach, sitting cross-legged on the rug.

“I already took the leave, Gin. I head out tomorrow,” he said, pacing back across the room and detouring around Teddy, who didn’t appear to be paying any attention to the conversation, engrossed as he was in his drawing.

“But I just got home, Harry!” Ginny protested. “I’ve been on the road with the team since Christmas, playing Quidditch non-stop for two weeks, and I get home just in time for you to hare off on some kind of mad quest?”

“It’s not mad,” Harry said, halting his mid-stride, wounded—he’d been sure that she at least would see. “I have to find him—he’s still alive, Ginny. Please—I have all this evidence—you have to believe me!”

“You have coincidences, Harry,” Ginny said firmly. “Not evidence. So nobody saw Aberforth—not everybody saw you or me, either. Does that mean we weren’t there?”

“Aberforth knew, Ginny!” he said, getting desperate. “He knew details about Snape’s injuries—only Hermione and Ron and me knew about that—I never said anything about how Nagini killed Snape!”

“He may have just been guessing, Harry,” Ginny said, her voice growing more and more impatient. “And as for the counterfeit money, wizards do that all the time—”

“But this was the only counterfeit money made at that time!” Harry interrupted, usually unwise where his wife was concerned, but he had to say his piece. “And if Snape travelled as a Muggle—which I know he did, he’s not stupid, he’d know that magic would have left trail to follow, but he just didn’t know about the money thing—he’ll have counterfeited all the money he needed all along the way—and this was the only money made then, and it was used to get out of the country. It’s got to be him. And if he’s in France, I’m going to find him.”

Ginny’s expression didn’t soften, and Harry sank wearily down into the nearest chair, his hand fisting in his hair. He had to go—he had to make her understand.

“Look, Uncle Harry!” Teddy said brightly, clambering to his feet and holding up his newly-coloured picture for inspection.

“It’s nice, Teddy,” Harry said, and then he looked at Ginny, looked into her brown eyes; his next whispered words were almost pleading. “Can’t you understand, Ginny? I need to do this—I have to find Snape.”

Ginny stared intently at him, and then released an explosive sigh, slumping where she sat. “All right, Harry,” she said at last, and his heart soared—she understood. “If you need to do this, I won’t stop you.” She looked to the side and bit her lip. “But it’s just…it’s just that—Harry, even if Snape is still alive, if all that you’ve found is right, and it really is him—he obviously doesn’t want to be found. If he is alive, then he’s hiding, Harry—and after all that, after everything, do you really think he’s going to want to see you? And really—why do you want to see him?”

Harry stared at her, his hand frozen in his hair. “I’m not going to drag him back here,” he said after a moment. “I understand that he doesn’t want to be dragged into the limelight after—after everything.” He gave his hair one last tug and then released it. “But I just—I need—I need to see him, Gin,” he said quietly. “I need to know.”

Teddy was quiet, his face solemn, and Harry knew then that he’d been following the conversation the whole time. “You’re going away, Uncle Harry?” he asked in a small voice, and Harry’s throat constricted, but he nodded.

“Well,” said Ginny after a moment. “We’ll miss you, then. Won’t we, Ted-O?” she asked, ruffling his hair, which had turned unruly and black. Teddy nodded mournfully, and Harry’s heart squeezed, and he slid out of his seat onto his knees and gathered the both of them up in his arms.

---

Squinting in the bright light, Harry sighed and struggled to calm himself down. Getting all worked up would just cloud his thinking. This was merely a setback, just like it had been in Bruges. He’d been angry there, too, when he thought he’d come to a dead end, but he’d calmed down and been sensible about things and had quickly picked up Snape’s trail again. So that’s what he’d have to do here in Mexico as well.

In retrospect, it was only natural that he would hit a snag. Especially after his journey up to now had been so surprisingly easy and filled with such good luck.

And it had been. He’d gone down to the Office of International Magical Cooperation, where they’d outfitted him with all the identification and papers he would need to assure the cooperation of the European magical governments, along with any suitable badges and whatnot should he need to interact with Muggles or their governments. Somehow, he suspected that they were being extra accommodating—the baggage that came with his name that he largely tried to avoid now and again came in handy. Once he had everything he needed, he said goodbye to his family and hopped a Portkey to Paris, where he found his way to the seat of the French Ministry. And upon his arrival, he had found them also to be extremely accommodating, probably due to the fact that he was Harry Potter. Harry had let them be as accommodating as they liked—anything to find Snape’s trail.

As it happened, the manner in which the British ministry dealt with magically counterfeited money was the standard practice all across the Continent. Harry had been ushered into a storage and filing area where the French government kept tabs on wizarding counterfeit and was told help himself. After opening the files spanning May to September of 1998, he’d cast another matching spell keyed to the money from the hovercraft port, looking for Conjured or Transfigured money that came from the same wand.

And wonderfully, miraculously, a handful of files had lit up. Harry eagerly dug them out and poured over the entries; he found that Snape, after landing on the other side of the Channel, had bought a bus ticket and shortly thereafter resurfaced in Paris, where he had used his counterfeit to pay for a motel room for a few weeks. At the apparent end of his stint there, he bought a train ticket, and the following day he booked passage on a boat from Marseille.

The French government had graciously allowed Harry to take the files in question for his investigation, and then he quickly Apparated down to the port at Marseille. He’d used his Muggle identification to gain the port’s cooperation and received a copy of their passenger boat schedule for the dates near which the money had been counterfeited. Upon comparing the prices of the tickets to the destinations available on those days, it looked as though Snape had gone to Greece.

He’d Apparated back to Paris to jump on the next Portkey to Athens. The Greek government was equally willing to help, and after he was escorted to their counterfeit repository, he repeated his tracking charms and, sure enough, he found more money made by the same wand.

Got you, Snape.

Snape had apparently booked a hotel in Athens and had spent a little money here and there during his stay, but then he’d booked a plane ticket out of the city after only two weeks.

After checking the flights that had left that day from the Athens airport and eliminating all those that cost more than Snape had spent there, as well as all those that went back to France or England, Harry had narrowed his search down to four flights out of the country. By luck, the first country he visited turned out to be the right one—Snape had flown to Rome.

And so Harry kept doggedly following the trail of paper breadcrumbs across the Continent. Snape spent quite a lot of time and Transfigured money in Rome—Harry had found his trail in deposits from several hotels and tourist attractions all over town spread out over a nearly three-month period.

However, his last counterfeit purchase in Italy had been a train ticket—Snape obviously hadn’t stayed. But it wasn’t a very expensive ticket, obviously not for a long trip, and after going to Austria and finding no trace of him, Harry went to neighbouring Switzerland, where his trail started back up. Snape had bought another short plane ticket out of the country the same day that he’d arrived. Harry had noticed that, with the exception of his trip to Athens, Snape seemed to be going from one country to the next one over. So, after getting a list of flights out of the country the day that Snape left, he opted to go first to Germany, and there he found him again.

Snape had apparently stayed in a motel in Berlin, and then purchased another short train ticket. Harry had Portkeyed first to Amsterdam, where he had come up empty-handed. But when he Apparated across the border into Brussels, he hit the jackpot. There had been no plane or bus or train ticket out of the country made with any counterfeit money—but there had been a deposit made on a flat in Bruges.

His hands were shaking when he finally found himself standing in front of the door of the nasty little flat on the south side of town, and he’d had to force them into fists so that he could knock on the door.

Disappointment had sliced so cleanly through him when a young man about his own age had answered that he had been unable to speak; Harry had just gaped at him at first, only snapping out of his stupor when in irritation the man had begun to close the door in his face. Then he’d pulled out his Muggle badge and given the fellow an abridged version of who he was and what he was doing here: that he was looking for a fugitive from the UK, and he had tracked him to this location, and did he know anything about the previous occupant? Then he’d shown him the photograph that he had tucked in his coat pocket, a copy of the original from the Daily Prophet announcing Snape’s appointment as Headmaster, carefully spelled not to move anymore.

The young man had thawed a bit after Harry explained himself, but he hadn’t known anything useful; the flat had been empty for a while by the time that he rented it, and he hadn’t recognized Snape.

Not about to give up, Harry had gamely knocked on the doors on either side, to ask if the people living there knew anything. The man on the right looked to be under the influence of some kind of chemical and had been no help at all—but the old woman on the left was a different story.

He’d been immediately assailed by the odour of cats when she shuffled to the door. When he’d showed her his badge, she had visibly brightened and invited him in. Harry had no desire to do so, but he didn’t have much choice, as he couldn’t seem to get anything out of her while standing in the corridor. He’d been sat down at her tiny kitchen table and been force-fed weak tea and stale biscuits, and then had to endure a thorough and detailed description of all manner of dirt on her neighbours—all related at maximum volume, because she seemed to be a bit deaf.

“That’s all very interesting, ma’am,” he’d said, his voice strained as he prised a cat off his leg, “but the man I’m looking for would have rented that flat in December of 1998.”

She had looked thoughtful for a moment, and Harry had briefly despaired, but then she gave a snort. “Right—Jack Hawkins,” she shouted. “English boy, I think—not at all social, rude as anything, and a very bad temper. Always skulking about, making strange noises over there—very suspicious.”

Tense and breathless, Harry had showed her the photograph, asking her if that was the man. She peered at it for a moment, her eyes narrowed. “That might have been him—his eyes were too close together, you know,” she confided loudly—much more of her shouting and Harry would be as deaf as she was. “But Jackie-boy, he was all grey on top, and his hair wasn’t so long—this one looks like a real hooligan. Mind you, Jackie-boy was no prize in the looks department, either.” She eyed the photo again. “Certainly had an awful nose like this one.”

Harry forced his throat to unlock and asked her if there was anything else she knew—and there was. She had apparently cornered Hawkins—Snape—on several occasions, and at one point had wrung out of him the fact that he worked in a bookshop a mile or so away. She’d also told him that he’d only lived there for a few months, leaving rather abruptly in the summer after he arrived, and that she hadn’t seen him since.

After another excruciating (and deafening) half-hour spent trying fruitlessly to get away from the old woman and her gossip and her cat stories and her terrible biscuits, he’d finally managed to extricate himself from her clutches. A brief stop down at the landlord’s office had yielded some rather more specific information on Snape—that he’d left on April the twenty-eighth in quite a hurry, didn’t even quibble about getting his rent back for the days he didn’t stay, or even over getting his deposit returned. He simply came down, told the man that he was leaving, and that was that.

A quick jaunt down the way had taken him to the bookshop that the old woman had mentioned. The owner’s expression had darkened when Harry asked her about her former employee. “Yes, I remember him,” she said with an angry sniff. “He was, I’ll admit, a model employee, if a bit brusque—he kept the shelves organized beautifully, and so I treated him very well. And how does he repay me? He appears one day and just quits, right out of the blue, and before he leaves, he insults me up one side and down the other, and for no reason at all!” Spots of angry colour had appeared in her pudgy cheeks at the memory. “Good riddance, as far as I’m concerned!”

She too had said that this Jack Hawkins might have been the man Harry had in his photograph—it was difficult to tell, though, because he had short grey hair and a beard, but it might be. Harry had asked about any scarring on his neck, trying to wring any last bit of information out of her, but she hadn’t known anything about that. But he had found out that the day he had come in here and let lose with his torrent of invective—he had to be Snape!—the day that he had so abruptly quit, had also been the same day that he’d left his flat.

Sure in his heart that this Jack Hawkins was in fact Severus Snape, Harry had made his way to Tovenaar Tracé, the main magical thoroughfare in Bruges. On a hunch, he’d gone to the apothecary and asked about Snape. The owner had never seen anyone that looked like Snape, nor did he know anyone by the name of Jack Hawkins—but when Harry had asked to see his accounts from the six months Snape had been there, he’d found regular purchases of boomslang skin and horn of bicorn.

Polyjuice ingredients.

Snape had been here—Harry knew it.

But after the elation of his surety had worn off, it was rapidly replaced by anxiety as Harry realized that he was at a standstill. Because in all the files of Snape’s counterfeit money, none had been for any sort of Muggle transportation that would have taken him out of the country—in fact, none of it was dated past January of 1999. So he had no idea where Snape could have gone—he had taken a job and earned some money, real money, and his paper trail had simply dried up.

Sitting on a park bench just outside the entrance to Tovenaar Tracé, Harry had pretended to admire the scenery while he mulled things over. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that Snape had left Belgium altogether. Leaving his home and his job on the same day, without waiting to collect any money that they might owe him, and burning his bridges without a second thought?

Those were the actions of a man on the run.

Something must have scared Snape, and so he’d fled, and given his previous movement, Harry would be willing to bet that he’d left the country, and in a hurry. So, acting on his hunch and in keeping with Snape’s habits in the past, Harry went to the Bruges International Airport, which was mercifully tiny, and checked their flights between April the twenty-eight and thirtieth of 1999. Most flights were tiny jaunts within Belgium or went to countries Harry had already visited, except for two—both going to Cairo.

Another Portkey later, Harry found himself in the oppressively hot clime of Egypt. Their government, once he’d managed to find a translator, had been just as cooperative (his name apparently had a long reach) and had shown him the files on counterfeit money that he asked for—and there, tucked neatly away, had been a file from April the twenty-ninth, and its contents had matched the counterfeit money he’d been tracking from Bruges. Same wand, same person—Snape.

Unfortunately, Cairo International Airport was much larger than Bruges’s, leaving Harry with a painfully long list of possible destinations. However, he took a guess and a gamble that Snape was moving east or west, rather than south, staying closer to Europe, as thus far he had kept to countries with large English-speaking populations. Also, because Snape had left Belgium so abruptly and flown all the way down to Africa, Harry had ruled out his going back to Europe—if he was scared enough to leave, he likely wouldn’t be going back. And lastly, by the amount of money in the file, Snape hadn’t purchased a terribly expensive ticket—only a relatively short jump from Cairo, not a long one like to Asia. So he came up with a list of flights that fit his narrowed bill and started working his way down the list, first going west across northern Africa.

A week later, Harry picked up his trail once again—in Morocco. The officials in Rabat gave him access to their counterfeit files, and there they were—more Transfigured banknotes, filed as having been spent at the Mohammed V International Airport in Casablanca on April the thirtieth.

And that time, it had been a lot of money. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Harry realized that the plane ticket that Snape must have purchased hadn’t been just another quick flight to the next country over, like his previous trips. No—he really was running this time, and he’d gone far away from Europe altogether—and so now, he could be anywhere.

But Harry couldn’t just give up, not now. He’d found Snape after he left Belgium, and he would find him again. So Harry had gone to the airport, had them call up their old timetables on their computers, and had resignedly begun sorting through them, to find a flight that Snape might have taken.

There was a distressingly large number, even after taking into account the fact that Snape’s movements were so rapid after leaving Bruges that he likely left on the same day that he arrived, weeding out the flights that were too expensive or not expensive enough for what he had paid, and ruling out those that went back to Europe or England.

And one of Harry’s hunches seemed to have born out as well. He’d been right—Snape seemed to stay in places where there were English-speakers. Moreover, he’d gone west from Cairo—to Harry, that seemed to imply that he was planning on going even further west from Casablanca. If that was the case, that gave him a much smaller list of flights to check—the ones that went to North and South America.

He’d decided to start with the ones that went to the States and work his way south, beginning with New York City. Which happened to be the only trip he’d had to make to the States. And good thing, too, because he’d had to present all sorts of papers and identification just to get into the country at the Portkey office, and then he’d had to go through customs, something he’d not had to go through at all during his jaunts across Europe and Africa. It reminded of him the airports he’d seen on the television—which was very odd for a wizard. He supposed that it wasn’t too terrible, but it was very strange and unfamiliar, and it was during the search of his bags that he began to suspect that for that very reason, Snape wouldn’t be here.

But he’d gone on with his search anyway; the fellow manning the customs desk seemed to have been used to explaining things to foreign wizards, telling him go out and get a taxi, to ask the driver to take him to City Hall in Lower Manhattan, and had told him which floor he’d need to go to. Which was just as strange in and of itself—the magical offices were right there in the Muggle government buildings. And no charms to keep the Muggles out, best he could tell.

He followed the man’s instructions and took himself to the city hall. He went to second floor, and into the door marked “Bureau of Internal Affairs,” and upon flashing his DMLE badge, was escorted into an office in the back, where he’d been able to direct his questions to a young lady sitting behind a computer. By then Harry was beginning to wonder if these people were magical at all.

But she had been, at least—she’d recognized his name, anyway, and had been very helpful. More than helpful, really. It turned out that the Americans weren’t so cavalier about magical counterfeiting—it was quite illegal, and they kept a tighter rein on it than they did on Muggle counterfeiting, going so far as to prosecute the offenders, rather than ignore it. The young lady—Debbie, her name plate said—not only told him that there had been no record of any magically-counterfeited money spent in New York city on the day of arrival of the flight Harry was tracking, but after a quick check on her computer had also told him that there had been no counterfeiting in any airports in that time frame—not just in New York, but anywhere in the US.

Stunned at the efficiency, it had taken Harry a moment to feel the sting of disappointment. “Are you sure? I’m looking for a—a fugitive, he may not have shown up—”

But Debbie had just shaken her head. “We are very careful about monitoring all wizards entering the country, Mr. Potter, in order to maintain the Magical Secrecy Act.”

Well—that explained why the few odd Death Eaters who had tried to escape across the Atlantic were returned with all speed. “All right, then,” he said, trying a different route. “What if he didn’t come in as a fugitive, but rather tried to come in through the normal channels and become a citizen?”

She obligingly tapped on her keyboard for a moment more, and then shook her head again. “I’m sorry, Mr. Potter, but I don’t have any wizards on file entering the US from Casablanca on the dates you’ve given.”

“You don’t have anything on a Severus Snape?” he asked, desperation creeping into his voice; he resolutely squashed it. “Or maybe a Jack Hawkins?”

She typed again, and then gave him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, and she sounded like she meant it, “but I’m afraid that the man you’re looking for just isn’t here.”

On the one hand, only having to travel to one city in order to search the entire country had been very nice. But on the other—Snape hadn’t been there. That meant Harry had to go back to his list and try to find out where he had gone.

In retrospect, Harry supposed that he had used up his luck too quickly, and that was why he was where he was now. Because after his disappointment in New York, he simply picked up where he left off and began working his way south from the States, the next place on his list being Mexico.

And in a stunning stroke of luck, he found Snape again.

Only he didn’t.

When Harry had arrived in Mexico City, he was immediately assailed by the searing afternoon heat, as hot and horrible as it had been in Egypt and Morocco. There had been no ridiculous customs, at least, no excessive security measures at the Portkey office like in the US, and the people in charge there had been pleasant on the whole, telling him in their accented English how to get to the City Hall and which offices were responsible for the magical government (it seemed that, customs aside, they weren’t too much different than the Americans with regards to their less-than-obvious separation of the magic and the Muggle).

The bureaucrats here were a bit less eager in their work than those than Harry had encountered elsewhere, but they were helpful enough, despite not seeming very enthusiastic about it. But as Harry had all the proper identification and was here on official capacity (sort of), they had taken him to a large warehouse on the next street over. Harry had thought it an odd place to keep their files on counterfeiters—until he saw it.

The doors swung open, and Harry’s jaw had dropped. He was standing in a cavernous space, filled with stacks upon stacks of counterfeit pesos, nearly to the ceiling.

He’d blinked at the sight for a moment, and looked briefly back at his guide, who was leaning against the wall with an expression of sublime boredom, before he drew his wand, tapped one of the Transfigured banknotes, and cast his tracking spell.

His heart gave that familiar triumphant leap when his spell went racing off in a dozen directions over the mountain of forged currency, and he Summoned the results. He was slapped in the face by a large number of wayward notes, still alight with the vestiges of his tracking spell, that all landed in a pile around his feet with a shush.

He flicked his wand at the mess, pulling it into a mostly ordered stack, and asked the man next to him where all this had come from.

His guide—Garcia—had shrugged laconically. “Dunno,” he replied.

Harry turned to look at him, irritated. “Where do you keep the files on all this?”

Garcia looked at him as though he was being exceptionally dense. “Files, señor?”

“Yes, files—where do you keep track of where this came from?” Harry demanded.

“It came from Mexico, señor—what else is there to know?”

Harry stared at him. “You mean—you mean this is it?” he asked incredulously, throwing his hand out at the piles of counterfeit pesos.

Garcia shrugged again. “You asked to see our counterfeit money—here it is—every bit of it. Any fake money we find, magic or not, we take it out of circulation and bring it here. When this place fills up, we get rid of it and start over,” he said.

Harry’s stomach was knotted tighter than Weasleys’ Wheezes trick shoelaces, and yet still he felt as though he had swallowed a lump of lead. “So you don’t know when or where any of this came from?” he asked hoarsely.

“No, señor. We don’t have time,” Garcia said patiently.

“What do you mean, you don’t have time?” Harry shouted, his frustration erupting. “These people are counterfeiting money—it should be noted and tracked!” He waved his hand holding the wad of banknotes for emphasis.

Garcia had regarded him steadily despite his outburst. “Señor, do you have any idea what our government has to deal with on a daily basis? Drug runners, cartels, weapons smuggling, attempted coups, and any number of various acts of crime that are prolific in my country.” He threw an arm towards the bales upon bales of fake money beside them. “And you can see for yourself the amount of counterfeiting going on here; so, unless the magical counterfeiter in question is doing it on a massive scale, we do not have time to waste the taxpayers’ money and the time of what few police we have tracking down the illegal activities of a group that constitutes less than point-one of one percent of the population.”

Harry stared at him, unable to believe that he had come this far only to lose the trail due to an indifferent bureaucracy. Finally, he forced his jaw to relax and asked, “Since this all clearly means so little to you, may I keep these?” He held up the stack of notes clutched in his hand.

“Of course,” Garcia answered with affected magnanimity. “You’re fortunate that you found what you were looking for—we were set to dispose of this load next week.”

Then he had escorted Harry out of the warehouse and back to City Hall, supremely indifferent to Harry’s mounting frustration; after a perfunctory offer to help him with anything else he needed, which Harry had tersely declined, Garcia had ushered him out of the magical offices. And that had been that.

And so here Harry was, all alone in Mexico City, with nothing to show for his efforts but a handful of fake banknotes and a dead end.

He was slumped on the worn and graffitied bench outside of the city hall, the heat pressing down on the back of his neck. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he restlessly rubbed the counterfeit pesos between his fingers before getting up and setting off down the street to try and find a place from where he could Apparate. He had been given specific instructions upon arriving on how to find the magical district of Mexico City—Calle del Magos. He needed somewhere where he could untransfigure the notes and examine what kind of paper they were made of, maybe find out when and where they had been made—and most of all, he needed to think.

He ducked down the first deserted alley he could find. Wiping a runnel of sweat away from his forehead, he closed his eyes, thought of his destination, and Apparated away.

Upon reappearing, Harry was greeted by an angry barrage of Spanish from the man that he had nearly Apparated into. Harry apologized profusely, but the just man stalked away, muttering to himself about gringos and leaving Harry to wonder just how badly he’d been insulted.

He peered about, taking in his surroundings. He felt vaguely concerned; the street looked nothing like Diagon Alley back home. In fact, at first glance Harry could see little that indicated that the street was magical at all. But upon closer inspection, Harry saw the comforting sight of a broomstick displayed in one window, and there was a young woman using her wand to shrink her armful of parcels just across the way.

Somewhat reassured, Harry pulled his wand and Snape’s transfigured bank notes from his pocket and took himself over to another graffitied wooden bench that sat outside one of the shops. Tapping the notes with his wand, they untransfigured in a flurry of movement, springing back into their original forms. Some of them were napkins or scrap pieces of paper, but some were torn from newspapers. Those that were just random bits of articles in Spanish were of no use—he had no idea what any of them said, nor how he would even begin to try and track down where they came from. He had a brief moment of excitement when he saw that a few of them were torn from the headers, but it was with a sinking feeling that he saw that they were from several different cities. There was a paper from a place called Aguascalientes, another from Guanajuato, some from Culiacán, one from Mazatlan, and two from somewhere called Zacatecas.

Harry looked down at the collection of paper in his hand, putting everything he had into not succumbing to the hopelessness that was rising up from the pit of his stomach and crowding its way up into his chest. After a moment he reached into his knapsack and drew out the map of Mexico that he’d purchased upon arriving, and with a sigh of resignation began to search for the cities that he had.

It wasn’t until he found and marked them all that he saw it. His heart gave a tiny, quick thump; the cities fell on a meandering line going north and west, all the way to a place near the coast—Culiacán.

He looked delightedly at the map in his hands. There it was, a neat little path for him to follow. It would take time, no doubt, and a lot of investigation, but at least he had a trail to follow.

Harry stood, resolute—and paused. Across the street from where he sat stood a tiled building whose wide front window was filled with bottles and jars of powders and pastes and various dried and pickled things. After consulting his Spanish dictionary to confirm that it was in fact an apothecary, Harry quickly stuffed everything in his bag, crossed the road, and went inside.

A bell rang above his head as he stepped inside, and Harry was greeted by the familiar odours of sour sulphur and rotting plants. He peered about the dark room before making his way to the front counter.

“Excuse me—do you speak English?” he asked the man standing behind it

“Yeah,” came the easy reply. “How can I help you?”

“Well, I’m an Auror, for the Ministry of Magic in the UK,” Harry said. He pulled his badge and showed it to the man in question, who raised an eyebrow at it and regarded Harry with an inscrutable look.

“I’m looking for a fugitive from abroad,” Harry went on, “and I have reason to believe that he is in Mexico. Would you happen to have seen this man?” He pulled Snape’s photograph from his pocket and set it on the counter for the man to scrutinize. “He might have shorter hair and a beard now, and maybe some scarring on his throat,” Harry supplied.

The man at the counter picked up the photo and squinted at it momentarily before passing it back to Harry. “No—can’t say that I know him.”

Harry sighed, then, with a burst of inspiration, asked, “Well, have there been any increases in sales or shipments of horn of bicorn or boomslang skin since July of 1999?”

The man stared at Harry for a moment more, apparently contemplating the situation before answering. “I’ll check my records.” And he turned and left, going into a small side office and leaving Harry to wait up front.

He drummed his fingers on the counter while he waited, but finally, the man re-emerged, holding a thick ledger in his hand, which he set down on the counter with a thunk and began to peruse the pages.

“Actually,” he said, sounding vaguely surprised, “I did have some unusually high demand for those ingredients for a few months, along with knotgrass and fluxweed—Polyjuice Potion?” he asked, looking briefly up at Harry, who nodded. The clerk looked back down at his book. “Yes, first there were purchases made here, and then later they came by mail order—always for the same amount, at the first of the month,” he said, running his finger down the columns of figures before coming to a stop. “Those orders stopped after about eight months though,” he finished.

Harry was about to thank him, but the man spoke again, and his next words sent Harry’s heart leaping somewhere up in the vicinity of his Adam’s Apple. “But the funny thing is,” he said, “now that I look at it, orders for those same amounts of those same ingredients started up again for about four more months—by mail order from some drug store up in Culiacán.”

“Culiacán?” Harry asked, his voice emerging as a croak.

“Yeah—but it didn’t last long—at least, not those ingredients.”

Harry pounced on his words. “Those? What do you mean—are there others?” he demanded.

He nodded, turning the book around so Harry could see it; he leaned down and looked where the clerk was pointing. “I never noticed it before, not until you mentioned it just now,” he said, sounding vaguely bemused by it all, “but right around the time I stopped sending the regular shipments of Polyjuice stuff, I started getting regular orders of other things—big ones—all sorts of high-end ingredients that would be harder to come by in the smaller stores. And all of them going to that same drug store in Culiacán.” The man looked up. “Those orders are still coming—have been for nearly the past four years,” he added. “Every twenty-fifth of the month.

“Just—just where is the, er, drug store in Culiacán?” Harry asked.

The man retreated back into his office for just a moment and returned with a file; he flicked it open, shuffled a few papers, and then said, “On the corner of Ciudades Hermanas and Rio Tabala. Orders are made in the name of Enrique Fernando.” He reached behind the counter and pulled out a tiny yellow pad. “Here—lemme write it down for you.”

His heart beating a wild tattoo against his ribs, Harry said thank you and quickly left the store, his little yellow lead clutched in his hand like a lifeline, and went out in search of the Portkey office.

---

Harry had found, rather to his annoyance, that he couldn’t just immediately hop a Portkey to Culiacán; apparently, in the smaller cities, there just weren’t large magical enclaves where people could Apparate or Portkey in without being noticed, but the town in question was still dense and busy enough that he wouldn’t be able to find an out-of-the-way spot to arrive in. The bored-looking woman at the office had had to call up a shop in Culiacán and get permission to use their back room as a landing pad of sorts.

So Harry had been forced to stay in Mexico City overnight, finding in a hotel in the Muggle part of the city to wait until he could go back to Calle del Magos the next morning. And go back he did, bright and early—not even bothering to read the letter that came for him, addressed in Ginny’s neat script, just cramming it in his pocket and sparing only the briefest flash of guilt over the fact that he hadn’t written home since leaving Casablanca. He arrived at the office promptly at eight—only to find that his Portkey wasn’t ready.

After nearly thirty minutes of excruciating waiting for the woman behind the desk to finish the necessary enchantments (during which Harry’s brain conjured endless visions of Snape, working as an apothecary under the assumed name Enrique Fernando, getting tipped off from his friend in Calle del Magos that Harry was here and then running), she had at last provided him with a dirty, battered old sandal. Harry snatched it up, and at his spoken “verde,” it took him in a rushing swirl of colour to land face-down on the uneven floorboards of a shop in Culiacán.

He stood up, dusting himself off, and looked around. The walls were lined with broomsticks and Quidditch gear, and Harry couldn’t help but grin, feeling a comforting surge of familiarity. But there the resemblance to anything back home ended; the shop was cramped and dark and stiflingly hot, and a group of men were sitting ‘round a table to the side under a thick haze of smoke, oblivious to Harry’s sudden appearance. A clearing throat prompted him to turn; he was greeted politely if rather casually by a man who must have been the proprietor. Harry rummaged in his pocket for some of his exchanged pesos and paid him his fee for being the drop point.

“Thank you,” said Harry, and then, “Er—gracias, I mean.”

“You’re welcome,” the man answered, his English accented but intelligible.

Before he could turn away, Harry stopped him and asked, “Excuse me, but I’m here on an investigation for the British Magical Law Enforcement Department in the UK, and I wonder if you could tell me if you’ve seen this man?” And he held out his picture of Snape.

The man’s face was wary, and he gave the photograph only the most perfunctory of glances before shaking his head. “No, señor—I’ve never seen him before.”

Harry grunted in disappointed acknowledgement as the man turned away to go out into the front of the shop. Harry looked at the photo in his hand for a moment, looked into Snape’s black eyes as he had so many times before, and then looked away and moved over to the table. As he neared he could see that there was some kind of card game going on, and from the stacks of pesos in the middle, he guessed that it was serious. Harry’s head was enveloped in the stifling blanket of cigarette smoke, but it wasn’t enough to cover the stink of the huge, unwashed bodies crammed around the tiny round table beneath the low-hanging light. “Er, excuse me, sirs,” he said politely, holding out Snape’s picture, “but I’m looking for someone—have any of you seen this man?”

There was a pause, and for a moment it seemed as though none of them had even heard him, but in the next instant, all five of them turned as a body and just stared at him.

Harry blinked beneath the press of the hard, flat stares, growing steadily more and more uncomfortable, before finally just clearing his throat, hastily thanking them for their time, and then taking himself out of the room as quickly as possible.

He passed through the main part of the shop, which was full of Muggle sports equipment; footballs, baseball bats, basketball hoops, and the like lined the walls, and Harry gave a quick nod to the proprietor before heading out into the thick morning sunshine.

He stopped just outside the door, pulling out the map of Culiacán that he had acquired in Mexico City, along with the slip of paper with the address for the town’s chemist and apothecary. It was a bit disheartening to see that it was all the way across town—why on earth were the magical businesses so scattered about?—but he just flagged a passing a taxi and managed to communicate to the driver where he wanted to go.

He was cheated horribly on the fare, he was sure, because the man either couldn’t or wouldn’t speak English, and thus Harry didn’t know how much he owed. But by that point, with the chemist’s in sight, he didn’t care, so he just gave the man the handful of notes that he demanded and crossed the street, taking a deep breath as he walked to the front door.

The ubiquitous bell jingled above his head as he opened the door to the chemist’s, the building just as dark inside as the previous magical shop. And there, sitting up at the counter, was—not Snape, but a rather greasy, pot-bellied Mexican chewing on a toothpick as he flicked through a magazine. He lolled his head around to look at Harry as he entered, sizing him up rather frankly before turning to face him with an insincere grin.

“Do—do you speak English?” Harry asked, keeping his voice pleasant despite yet another slug of disappointment.

“Sí,” the man rumbled, setting down his magazine; the girl in the picture was wearing nothing but high heels and a smile, and she winked up at Harry from the countertop as she shook her improbably large bosom at him.

“Er—are you Enrique Fernando?”

“Sí.”

“You run this store?”

The man nodded, and Harry dug around in his pocket for his badge. He flipped it out and showed it to Fernando, saying, “I’m Harry Potter, I’m an Auror with the Ministry of Magic in the UK. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

Fernando’s expression had gone from bored to wary the moment he saw the badge, but he simply nodded, eyeing him distrustfully.

“I’m searching for a fugitive from the UK. Have you seen this man?” Harry asked, sliding the picture of Snape across the counter towards Fernando, who scooped it up and scrutinized it briefly. “He may have short grey hair and a beard now,” Harry told him.

Fernando was gnawing on his toothpick and seemed to be in the middle of a headshake, but when Harry spoke, he suddenly did an abrupt double-take. Harry’s felt a jolt in his stomach as Fernando stared hard at the photo, eyes narrowed.

But then he set just it down again and slid it back to Harry across the counter, his face a study in bland disinterest. “Never seen ‘im,” he said shortly.

Harry blinked at him, and then his brows furrowed suspiciously. “Are you sure?”

Fernando looked levelly back. “Sí,” he said.

He was lying. Harry knew it as sure as he knew his own name—and there was nothing he could do about it. With a suppressed noise of frustration, Harry scooped up the picture and pocketed it. He gave Fernando a hard look, which was utterly lost on its target, before he deliberately relaxed, just looking idly around the shop. “Well—sorry to have bothered you—it’s just that I was told in Mexico City that you were a big buyer for some pretty expensive potion ingredients, and, well, the man I’m looking for was quite the potions expert.” He looked back at Fernando. “I suppose you get all those ingredients for your own brewing?” he said idly.

Fernando hesitated, just barely, and then said, “Yeah. It’s good business.”

“So, then—do you have any, er, Invigoration Draught?” Harry asked.

Fernando’s face was still blank. “Yeah—why, you buying?”

“Yeah,” Harry answered, meeting his unspoken challenge. “If you’ve got some, I’ll take it.”

Fernando looked at him narrowly, but then hove his bulk off the counter and retreated through the beaded curtain in the back, returning with a little glass bottle full of sparkling, pale orange potion. He set it on the counter with a thunk. “Two hundred pesos,” he grunted.

Harry wasn’t sure if he should be pleased or not that the man did in fact seem to be selling the potions that he claimed to brew. So he just paid him and picked up the bottle. He wasn’t necessarily an expert, but he had brewed this before, and just by looking at it he’d guess that this was a stellar example of the brew. He turned it in the light, watching it glint off the bubbles—and he froze.

The bottle was neatly labelled, written in Spanish, of course, so he couldn’t make head or tails of it—but he didn’t need to. He’d recognize that cramped, spiky handwriting anywhere—how could he not, after soaking up every word he could find written in it in his sixth year?

Snape.

Harry leaned close across the counter. “You’re positive you’ve never seen that man before?” he asked softly

Fernando leaned away from him, his expression cold. “Sí.”

“And you brewed this?”

Now Fernando scraped up a little indignation to cover his obvious distrust. “Sí. I make all of them. And if that’s all you want, then get lost.” And he picked up his magazine and went back to his girls.

Harry stared at him for a few moments more, but as far as Fernando was concerned, Harry wasn’t even there. So he left, his—Snape’s—potion in his knapsack, angry with the man’s obvious lies, and yet filled with a black sort of triumph.

Snape was here—he knew it. Now, all he had to do was find him, and then he could—well, he’d have to find him first.

Unfortunately, here was a pretty big city, and Snape could be anywhere in it. He supposed there was only one thing for it—he’d just have to start combing the area, asking around if anyone had seen him. Surely there’d be somebody somewhere who’d have spotted him—in one of the neighbouring businesses, perhaps, someone who might have noticed Snape walking by as he went to see Fernando (if he walked—there was always the chance he was Apparating. Harry sincerely hoped he wasn’t, as it would mean even more area he’d have to cover). So, badge and picture at the ready, he went outside and walked across the street to the nearest business—it looked like a saloon. The Burro Loco, the sign in the window read. He marched up to the door and swung it open.

And he froze, his hand holding the door wide. The bar, which had been full of the low hubbub of hushed voices, went utterly silent, and all eyes turned to stare at him. Harry could only blink against the obvious aura of hostility, but he finally forced his knees to life and he walked inside, passing through the forest of huge, hairy men who perched on the stools and hunched over the chairs who watched him as he went.

Harry made it to the bar—it had seemed a much longer walk than it actually was, being under the heavy press of so many unwelcoming eyes. He cleared his throat, easing himself onto an empty stool. The bartender, who was filling a beer for one of his customers, gave Harry a quick jerk of his chin in acknowledgement as the noise in the bar slowly began to rise again.

“Err—hello,” Harry said, when the man finally tossed his stained towel over his shoulder and came to stand in front of him, his hands on the bar as he stared at Harry. “Do—do you speak English?” Harry asked, shifting uncomfortably.

The bartender flicked his eyes briefly over to the man sitting by the cash register with something like amused disgust before giving Harry a perfunctory nod, reaching behind the bar for another glass that looked about as clean as those in the Hog’s Head and setting it down in front of him.

Harry pulled out his badge and flipped it out for the bartender to see. “I’m with the British police.”

The bartender’s face went cold and hard, and all sound died immediately. Harry felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and he turned slightly to look out over at the bar proper—every eye in the place was on him.

Clearing his throat again, Harry turned back to the bar and pulled out the picture of Snape, holding it out towards the bartender. “I’m looking for a fugitive—have you seen this man anywhere in town? Going to the chemist’s—I mean, the drug store across the way there?”

The bartender’s eyes never left Harry’s. He didn’t say a word, just pinned Harry with a level stare, leaning slightly forward on the bar so that Harry could smell his sour breath and stale sweat. Harry waited a moment more before he swallowed noisily, tucked his photograph away and stood. He turned to go—the men in the bar were all still staring at him, their gazes closed and suspicious, and their hands beneath their tables.

“I—I’ll just be going now,” Harry said as politely as he could, and he left as quickly as possible without looking like he was running.

Maybe just asking around like that wasn’t such a good idea.

---

Harry had flagged down another cab; this driver had thankfully spoken English, so Harry had no trouble giving him the list of the addresses of the handful of magical establishments in town. He’d blinked owlishly at it for a moment, his eyes magnified grotesquely behind his glasses, and then peeled off with a lurch and the stench of burning rubber. Harry had been jounced and jostled all over town as he had been taken to the bookshop, a nursery, the pet shop, and the back room of a general store. His only other lead of any kind had been in the nursery; the young man had squinted at the photograph for a moment and said, “Maybe he could look like someone who used to come in here…but I dunno,” and he’d shrugged indifferently and tossed the photo back to Harry.

And that had been it; none of the other wizards in town had seen anything of anyone who might be Snape. Given the manner that Snape seemed to have been staying almost exclusively in Muggle areas unless Polyjuiced in his flight across Europe, Harry wasn’t terribly surprised, but that did nothing to ease the bitter disappointment he felt.

So he just had the taxi driver take him back to the chemist’s where he started, and he began to slowly work his way along the streets, going back to his original plan of just stopping at any Muggle business that Snape might have frequented during his stay here.

Harry kicked the façade of the grocery that he had just left in frustration; these people were beyond uncooperative. He’d thought that his frosty reception in the bar had been a fluke, that he’d stumbled into some kind of gambling den or something, because aside from that Fernando person, the wizards he had spoken to this morning had been at least somewhat polite, answering his questions when he visited. But he had found to his mounting fury that the magical population seemed to be the atypical ones; in every shop and restaurant that he’d gone to today, the minute he flashed his badge, the owners clammed up and coolly refused to speak to him at all.

After two streets of this reaction to his (nominal) authority, Harry had stopped brandishing his badge when he tried to speak to them, but either the word had spread, or they just didn’t talk to anyone, because now it was past noon, and he had made exactly zero progress. No one in this town would talk to him at all.

And on top of it all, as he angrily shoved his hands in his pockets and strode down the street, he realized that he was being followed.

Harry had been so engrossed in his fruitless search that he’d paid no mind to the hulking brute of a man in the neat grey suit that he’d seen several times today lurking around the fringes of wherever Harry was at the time. But now, as he leaned back against the rough brick of the shop behind him in an effort to calm the churning frustration boiling in his middle, he spotted him again, standing like a statue beneath the awning of the bakery across the street, his hands clasped in front of him, his face expressionless behind his sunglasses.

Deliberately, Harry turned away and took off at a brisk clip, taking the next street at random, turning the corner and cutting through an alleyway, and then pretending to stop by a street vendor and perusing his menu while surreptitiously looking around the street.

And sure enough, there was that same giant of a man, in the same motionless pose by the streetlamp on the corner.

That was it. Harry had had enough of this. With his jaw clenched tight and his hand closed around the handle of his wand in his pocket, he strode quickly off and ducked down the nearest alley and waited just inside.

It didn’t take long; the man came strolling by, apparently quite oblivious to Harry, right up to the point that Harry all but leapt out in front of him. “Excuse me—are you following me?” he asked coldly.

Lord, but Harry’s comparison to a giant hadn’t been too far off—not just in height, but in breadth. Harry didn’t think he would be a match for Hagrid, but he certainly couldn’t think of anyone else who would be able to wrestle him to a draw.

The behemoth stared impassively down at Harry for a moment, before a slow smile that Harry didn’t like at all curled the corner of his mouth. “Look,” Harry said, his frustration and his hunger making him sound snippier than he would have liked, but he was past the point of caring, “I don’t know what this is about, but I’m really not interested in anything that’s going on here, okay? I’m looking for a fugitive from Britain who in is no way related to whatever it is you do here—and once I’ve found him, I’ll leave. All right?”

Harry glared upward, meeting the eyes that must be behind the reflections in the lenses of his glasses. The man didn’t move, gave no reaction for the longest time, but then he smiled again—that same unpleasant smile, and then he brushed by Harry and continued down the alley, his stride long and purposeful, as if he simply had somewhere to be and was going down the alley to get there and Harry had just happened to be in his way.

Harry waited where he was for a few minutes before cautiously walking the length of the alley and peering out into the square that it emptied into. There was no sign of his tail; he came warily out into the square proper, leaning against a worn wooden bench as he looked all around for any trace of him and finding none.

It seemed that Harry was on his own once again, thank goodness. Contrary to what some people (Snape) had said in the past, Harry wasn’t stupid—that fellow hadn’t been some small-time crook—he was hired muscle. Well—at least now he had an idea of why no one would talk to him—this whole town must be a base of operations for some kind of crime organization. He took out his Muggle badge and looked ruefully at it before putting away in his back pocket. That must have been like a flare for who ever was in charge here. No wonder someone set a tail on him. Well, he wasn’t going to use it any more, and he could only hope that the locals wouldn’t be so reluctant to speak with him now that he wasn’t obviously some kind of law.

Sighing, rid of one minor problem but no closer to solving the larger puzzle, Harry squinted at the clock across the way. It was nearly one, and as he looked up at the blazing sun overhead, his stomach none-too-subtly reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since his hurried breakfast before he went to catch his Portkey this morning.

He took in the little square; it was a bit quieter than the more commercial areas that he’d been canvassing today, away from the main hub of the town, and he was wearily pleased to find a small café off to the left. It was as good a place as any to pick back up his questioning, with the added benefit of being somewhere he would be able to grab a bite to eat before resuming his search.

The café was shady and quiet and really quite cool compared to outside, despite the absence of cooling charms or air conditioning. Harry immediately felt better upon going in, and so he approached the front counter, where a waiter was wiping some glasses and putting them away.

“Good afternoon,” Harry said. “Do you speak English?” he asked, leaning on the counter.

The waiter looked briefly up at him, never pausing in his work as he shook his head. “No. No hablo ingles,” he said, and Harry reflexively ground his teeth. This was a response to his questions that Harry had received often today; at first he had accepted it at face value, but after so many similar responses given with such wary or knowing expressions, he was now certain that well over half of them had simply been the close-mouthed population’s method of evading his questions.

“Well, is there someone who does hablo inglés?” he asked him, forcing his voice to remain even.

The man did pause this time, and looked narrowly at him for a moment, but then, amazingly, he flicked his hand to the right. “Allá,” he said, turning away again and going back to his business.

Harry followed his gesture with his eyes; lunch hour was mostly over, and the café was largely empty. Two of the filled tables were seating people who were clearly Mexicans, but at the indicated third sat a fair-skinned man who was obviously nothing of the sort. It was with a hopeful sort of relief that Harry wound his way through the tables to come to stand beside the black-clad man in question.

“Excuse me,” he said as the man raised his glass to take a drink, “but I was told you speak English?”

The man set down his glass and smiled up at him from behind his glasses, his pointed ferret’s face and narrow mouth reminding Harry unpleasantly of Draco Malfoy. “Maybe,” the man said evenly, without a trace of Mexican accent. “Have a seat.” He gestured across the table, and Harry quickly pulled up a chair from a neighbouring table and did as he was told, scooting up to the table, the boy sitting next to him edging away to give him room.

“That’s my kid,” said the man beside him—an American, from the sound of him—pointing to the dark-skinned boy on the other side of Harry. “Say hello, kid,” he instructed.

The boy straightened in his seat. “Buenos dias, señor,” he said politely, his face open and earnest, as compared to the sly, closed expression of the other.

“Hello,” Harry said, trying to be polite in return, but the morning’s frustration pushed him to skip the rest of the pleasantries and plough ahead.

He didn’t get the chance, because the American spoke even as Harry tried to open his mouth. “He’s polite, isn’t he?” he asked, smiling happily over at the boy, his tone not so much conveying pride but more of a sense of ownership.

“Er—yes, he is,” Harry agreed, trying to swing the somewhat one-sided conversation around so he could find an opening. “Well, sir, could I ask you—”

“Try my pork?”

Harry stopped mid-sentence, wrong-footed. “What?” he asked blankly, before moving his gaze down and realizing that the man was talking about his lunch—which both looked and smelled awful. “Oh—no, thank you—”

“Try my pork,” the man said again, and Harry stopped again, bristling a little, because this time it was clearly not an offer, but rather an order. But as he had yet to meet anyone since speaking to the local wizards who could speak English in this rotten little town, he reached slowly across the table towards his plate. Best not to antagonize what was currently his only source of information.

As he suspected, the pork was awful. And hot, too. Harry managed to force it down, though, with only a minimum of rebellion from his throat. “Uh…thanks,” he said, not knowing how else to respond.

“You’re welcome,” the man replied magnanimously. “Now—what can I do you for?”

Finally. Harry shifted in his seat, casting about for the proper way to broach the subject, but then deciding to skip all formalities and just dive right in. “Well, you see, sir, I’m looking for someone,” he began, looking into the sunglasses of the man next to him.

“Are you now.”

His words were not a question; they were flat, with no hint of emotion behind them, and Harry frowned—he’d hoped that as this man apparently wasn’t local that he’d be a bit more communicative than those he’d spoken to earlier.

But then the American went pleasant again, leaning forward a little. “What’s your name?” he asked politely.

“Potter—Harry Potter,” Harry answered; he reached into his pocket for Snape’s picture, but paused when he saw one of the man’s eyebrows shoot up over his sunglasses. Harry’s name had provoked that reaction often enough that he immediately knew it for what it was: recognition.

“Are you really?” the man asked, tapping the edge of his plate with his fork, “or are you just shitting me?”

Harry stared at the man. The few American wizards he’d met had all seemed to know his history…surely not…just what were the odds that the first native English speaker he’d seen here was…?

“That’s my name,” he replied slowly, giving the man a much more thorough once-over, knowing it was rude but not caring, looking for some indication that he was a wizard and finding none.

Harry relaxed marginally, a sense of relief filling him when the American was suddenly all cooperative smiles again. “Well, then—who are you looking for?” he asked, before taking another bite of that revolting pork.

“An English fellow,” Harry began, unable to keep the hope out of his voice. “An old professor of mine, actually.” His photograph had crawled deep down in his pocket; he fought to get it out, describing Snape as he did so. “About my height, a big nose, long and—well, a bit greasy hair—or it could be short now, I’m not sure.” He finally extracted the photograph, reflexively looking at it for a moment before making to push it across the table towards the stranger. “He might have a big scar on his neck—”

“I’ve never seen him before in my life.” Harry stopped mid-sentence, his mouth still hanging open as the American cut him off, his face closed—he hadn’t even looked at the picture. “But I can tell you what you should do next, mate.” Harry stiffened, watching the man lean forward. He beckoned Harry in close; in spite of himself, he leaned in to listen as the man’s voice dropped down to nearly a whisper. “Finish this,” he murmured, pointing to the plate, “pay my check—and then just get on your little broomstick and fly away!”

Harry couldn’t help his jump, in part to the sudden rise in volume, but mostly in reaction to the man’s words. He sat back abruptly, gaping.

Broomstick?!

Harry didn’t have time to say a word, because the man shot to his feet and turned to the boy beside him. “Chiclet, we’re leaving,” he barked. “Ramón!” he hollered up the front of the store.

“Wait a minute—” Harry spluttered.

The man jabbed a finger right in Harry’s face “He’s got my tab!” he called. And then grabbed the boy by the shoulder, and the two of them were speeding out of the door before Harry could even blink.

“Hey, wait!” Harry shouted, lurching to his feet, but a sharp tap on his shoulder from behind made him jump, and he turned to see who it was—the manager.

“Señor—your check,” he said with a hard smile, handing Harry the little receipt.

Harry threw his head around, but the American and his son were already out the door. Cursing under his breath, he turned and found the manager regarding him with a steely look, and it was with very bad grace that Harry fumbled through his pockets for the money to pay the man’s bill. He all but threw the money down on the table and then raced for the exit, desperate to catch the man—the American, the wizard, whoever he was—because Harry could feel in his bones that he knew where Snape was.

But they were already gone.

Dammit! Snape was here, but he couldn’t find him! Everything was all wrong here! Nobody would talk to him, he was being targeted by some kind of mafia or something, and now his last glimmer of hope of finding Snape had just vanished!

He hated this place!

He went back into the café and marched right up to the manager—Ramón, that man had called him—and gave him a decidedly dirty look before asking, “Who was that man—and I know you know! Who was he?”

The manager looked steadily back, not put off in the slightest by Harry’s manner, going calmly about his business without a pause. “No hablo inglés, señor,” he said frostily.

Harry was an inch away from pulling his wand and cursing the stubborn wanker into next week, Muggle or no, but he quelled the impulse and decided to leave before he did something foolish.

“Good day,” he said curtly, storming out of the café and back into the square.

Another dead end.

It couldn’t end this way—not after months of constant searching—not when he knew he was so close. Snape was in this town—and Harry was going to find him.

He looked up, out at the square, his eyes sliding over each of the street vendors scattered around it—there was a girl selling flowers, and another selling jewellery. He saw an older woman behind one of those little handcarts for selling food, a sour-faced man peddling belts and purses and sandals and the like, and a bored-looking boy with racks of pots and pans. Behind them was a ring of businesses—a barbershop, a clothing store full of Mexican garb, a place that seemed to sell artwork, and a handful of others. Most of them were dark and silent—closed for lunch, Harry guessed—and those that weren’t Harry couldn’t imagine Snape frequenting. But here he was, so all he could do was start his endless rounds of questions, hoping against hope that he could find a lead.

Gritting his teeth, he went over to the nearest vendor. She looked friendly enough—far friendlier than anyone else he’d encountered in this despicable country, anyway. In a few steps he was standing in front of her quaint little wooden cart full of colourful flowers. She looked expectantly at him as he approached.

“Hello—do you speak English?” he asked.

“No, señor,” she replied, and was quite polite about it.

Harry grunted in frustration, pulling out his photograph and his Spanish phrase book. Flipping through the pages, he did his best to ask her in Spanish if she’d seen Snape at all. She peered at the photograph, and then returned it with a shake of her head.

“No—lo siento, señor.”

Well, at least she had answered him—most hadn’t before. And she had honestly seemed apologetic about it. He nodded to her and went back to circling the square.

He didn’t have any more luck with the remaining members of the square than he did with the flower girl—none of them spoke English, nor had they seen Snape anywhere—and the man with all the leather refused to look at the picture at all. By the time he was approaching the last one, the old woman selling little bundles of something with a spicy, meaty smell that made his mouth water, his temper, already sorely tried by his experience in the café, had stretched to its limit.

And, of course, when he shouldered his way in next to the man who was patronizing her cart, she shook her head and replied with that phrase he had been coming to dread: “No hablo inglés.”

“¿Ha visto a este hombre?” he asked, stumbling over the Spanish as he flashed the picture of Snape. She shook her head, and he furiously made to shove it back in his pocket when he was suddenly stopped by a hand on his arm.

“Just a minute—can I have a look?”

He looked up at the woman’s customer, something very like relief filling him at the sound of English, no matter how heavily accented. “Sure,” Harry said, proffering the picture. “I’m looking for this man.”

The man next to him peered at the photograph for a long moment. “I dunno, but—does he still look like this?” he asked. “I mean, has he cut his hair or anything since this was taken?”

Harry’s heart leapt into his mouth. “Yeah—he has, actually, and he’s gone grey—why?”

“Well, I can’t be sure—I wouldn’t necessarily say it was him, but…well, with that nose—it kind of looks like that Greene guy.”

“Greene? Who’s that?” Harry demanded.

“Guy I saw in the plaza last week. Was passing through here and bumped into him.” The man scowled suddenly at the memory. “He laid into me for it too, the asshole—as if it wasn’t his fault too!”

Harry’s blood was pounding in his ears. “Who is he? What does he do here? Had you seen him before?” he asked, his questions tumbling over themselves in his eagerness.

The man looked bemused at Harry’s rush of words. “I dunno—I don’t live here. I’m just visiting my sister and happened to run into that guy while I was here.” He handed the picture back. “And like I told you, he maybe looks a bit like the one you’re looking for—he’s white and has that nose and everything—but I’m not sure.”

Harry fumbled in his pocket for his badge. “Look, I’m here with the British police—I’m just looking for this man, I’m not interested in anything else that’s going on in this town—but I’ve been having trouble since I got here—I’m sorry to ask this, but could you translate for me?”

“Well…” The man was clearly reluctant, but to Harry’s immense thankfulness, he hadn’t yet got that sullen, stubborn look that most of the locals got in response to Harry’s questions. “Actually, I was headed for the bus station.”

“Just for a minute,” Harry said desperately. “I just want to ask around the square.”

The man looked at his watch, and then after a moment said, “Well, okay.”

At long last, a break. “Could you ask the vendors if they know Greene for me?” he asked.

The man chewed the bite of his just-purchased lunch and then obligingly turned and parroted Harry’s question to the old woman who sold it to him.

Her questioning look turned sharp after he spoke, and she barked something back at him. “She wants to know who’s asking,” Harry’s interpreter said.

Harry proffered his badge along with his photograph. “Tell her I’m with the police and that I’m looking for this man. He’s not in any trouble,” he hastened to add, “but I—we just need to talk to him. And that I’m wondering if this Greene fellow is the one I’m looking for.”

A brief monologue of Spanish followed, and the old woman looked at the photograph again and scoffed, saying something to Harry’s translator with a scathing look at Harry himself.

“She says that it’s not him,” he told Harry, to his intense disappointment. “She says Greene’s older.”

“Gracias,” he said to her, disappointed, and then indicated that the man should follow him to the next cart.

And so it was the same—they still hadn’t seen the man, and those that would say more (the leather seller was still stubbornly silent) refused to entertain the notion that Greene resembled the man in the picture.

Harry’s brief surge of hope had ebbed to nearly nothing by the time they were back to the flower seller’s cart. “Look,” said the man, who had introduced himself as Carlos when halfway through their circuit, Harry had realized that he didn’t even know his name, “I may have been mistaken. It was just that nose, is all.”

“No.” Harry shook his head. “It wasn’t just the nose—I’m pretty sure he does have short grey hair now. And he always had that temper.”

Carlos bounced his eyebrows thoughtfully, tossing away the paper that had held his lunch, and then asked the girl, the last person Harry could talk to, if she knew Greene.

The girl looked vaguely startled. “¿Por qué?” she asked.

Carlos rattled something off, pointing to Harry, who showed his badge in a desultory fashion, along with his battered picture. The girl took it, and the two of them began conversing in rapid Spanish; Harry only just managed to catch the name Greene spoken a few times before Carlos turned back to him. “She said that she’s sorry, but she’s seen Greene—Don Greene, she calls him—many times in the past years, and she does think that he may look a little like this guy, but she really doesn’t think this is him,” he said as she handed back the photo.

Biting back on a curse, Harry paused and then asked, “Many times? He comes here often?”

Carlos nodded. “Apparently. She says that he comes here and sells things in the plaza,” Carlos relayed.

Harry looked up. “Sells things? Like what? What does he do?”

The girl listened to his translated query and then rattled off a long answer; Harry waited impatiently, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other, until Carlos turned to translate. “He apparently sells medicines and things. Home-brewed remedies,” he said, and Harry’s heart, which had sunk lower and lower during their trip around the square, suddenly threatened to pound right out of his chest. Carlos was going on, his expression somewhat bemused. “She says he’s generally well thought of by the locals—well, she seems to think that he’s a nice guy, anyway.” He snorted. “He certainly wasn’t when I talked to him.”

“Does she know where he lives?” Harry croaked, his mouth dry.

A brief exchange, and then, “No—but he apparently leaves in that direction when he goes home,” he said, pointing to the main street that went south from the square.

At last.

Harry barely noticed that the girl was still talking until Carlos turned back to speak to him. “She wants to make sure he isn’t in any trouble,” he said, sounding sardonically amused that anyone would be concerned about what happened to Don Greene.

Harry shook his head firmly. “No—not at all. This man I’m looking for, he—he did some great things, and I—we just need to—to make sure that he is—properly compensated.”

Carlos passed her his reassurances, which seemed to relieve her, and Harry gave her his earnest thanks before saying to Carlos, “I really don’t know how I thank you,” he said, offering his hand to the man. “You’ve been an enormous help.”

Carlos grinned back and took the proffered hand. “Not at all—just glad to be of service.” He glanced back down at his watch. “But I’m afraid that I have to go now—my bus back to Concordia leaves soon and I want to get home to my wife.”

“Sure,” said Harry, happier than he had been in days. “Safe trip—and again, thank you.” And he turned and dashed out of the square in the direction that Don Greene—Snape—went.

---

Harry stood in the street, looking up at the tired, dilapidated old façade of Number 13 Calle del Sombras.

Here he was. He’d done it. He’d found him. Three continents and over two months of tracking, tracing, and searching later, he’d found him. Because he was here. Harry knew it. He had to be. It could be no one else.

It hadn’t been easy—not even this last leg of his journey. Going south from the little square, Harry had found himself passing through progressively poorer and poorer neighbourhoods. Harry might have been disheartened by the sight of the sad, sagging buildings packed so close together if they hadn’t reminded him so much of Snape’s old house back in Manchester. In that light Harry grew positively gleeful as the air of neglect grew thicker as he went south. In fact, the whole area seemed so silent and deserted that his main difficulty was finding out where exactly he should look. The streets were very empty here, and no one here seemed to speak English either—although Harry believed these people when they said they didn’t, because he’d kept his badge out of sight and was simply asking people if they knew where to find Don Greene.

But no one seemed to. One or two people he’d met mentioned the plaza, which was no help because he wasn’t there, and so after a while, feeling slightly desperate that he might be so close only to lose his trail now, Harry had decided on a more expedient measure. After checking to make sure that no one was watching, he started to cast minute revealing spells at the houses that loomed on either side of the street, looking for the presence of magic.

But hadn’t found any, and after an hour of searching in the searing heat, his empty stomach wrapped tightly around his backbone and throttling him, his already jangling nerves were badly frayed. It was then, like a gift from the heavens, that he’d run into a sleazy, smelly Mexican shuffling along in one of the most deserted areas he’d yet come across, the first person he’d seen in nearly twenty minutes.

“Perdón,” Harry had said, “¿Ha visto a Don Greene?”

The man looked him up and down, and then a small smirk had tugged the corner of his mouth. “Maybe,” he grunted.

“You have?” Harry’s hope surged wildly. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his photograph. “Is this him? Do you know where he lives?”

The man didn’t look at the picture. “Depends,” he said.

Harry looked blankly at him. “Depends on what?” he asked, baffled.

“On how much it’s worth to you.”

Oh. Now he understood—this was familiar territory in his line of work. He reached into his pocket and fished out a thousand peso note; he wasn’t sure of the exact exchange rate, but the man’s eyebrow lifted appreciatively. He reached for it, but Harry jerked it out of his reach. “Don Greene?” he asked again, indicating the picture.

The man gave Harry a baleful look under his greasy fringe, but he looked grudgingly at the picture in his hand and then grunted. “Maybe. Dunno no Greene, but I seen some bolillo sumbitch like this one going down that street there,” he said, pointing to his right.

That was all Harry needed. “Here,” he said, thrusting the note into his hand; it vanished with all speed. “Thanks,” he said, and he hurried away, toward the street the man had indicated—Calle del Sombras, according to the rusting sign that hung crookedly from the pockmarked streetlamp.

The street was just as deserted and rundown as the others in the area, but Harry began his slow canvass all the same, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he cast his discreet revealing charm as he went by each house.

And then it happened. He’d passed Number 13, a decaying old place slumped forlornly against its neighbours, no different from the others on the street, and he cast the charm—and with a sudden tiny crackle that seemed as loud as a thunderbolt in the dusty silence of the street, the spell flashed once.

Magic.

With a tongue that felt like sandpaper, Harry spoke the words for another spell, a diagnostic this time—and it lit up too. Just barely, but it was there. Muggle-repelling charms—the tell-tale sputtering runners of purple light were unmistakable.

His fingers tightened around his wand, his hands clenching into fists as his breath began to whistle through his nose.

Here. He was here. He was here.

Harry just stood there, staring, unable to move. The building by all rights looked utterly uninhabited, and that wasn’t an illusion. But the spells were there, and by the look of them, they were regularly and well maintained.

He looked up and down the empty street; no one was in sight. Swallowing, running his dry tongue over cracked lips in a vain effort to wet them, he walked on legs that felt like rubber up to the tiny front step. Clenching his fingers on his sweating palm, he raised a shaking hand to rap once on the door.

“Yes?” The answer was low, quiet, and Harry had to strain to hear. His heart hammering in his chest, he reached forward and turned the doorknob, pushing the door open a little. Biting his lip momentarily, he then swung the door open and stepped inside, eyes scanning the room.

And there, sitting in an armchair, was a thin, angular man clad all in black, long curtains of greasy black hair swinging down and obscuring his face, and he looked up, and it was—

The American from the café.

Harry felt as though the rug had been pulled out from him, and he sagged against the door to keep from falling, his mouth gaping in numb disbelief. “Oh,” he finally said. “It’s you.”

The man turned and looked lazily up at him from where he was sprawled in his chair. “Yes—me,” he said.

“I—I’m sorry,” Harry stuttered, hearing own his voice only dimly, as if it from a great distance. “I—I was told—I think I have the wrong house—”

“No. You don’t.” The man shook his head; his voice was amiable, but his smile was cold.

“But I—I was told—” Harry began. What were you told, Harry?

“You were told,” came the answer, “to take your scrawny little bee-hind back to Jolly Olde England. Instead, you come barging into my house.”

“You—you do live here?” Harry felt as though his insides were crumpling in on themselves.

“I do.”

“Oh.”

Snape wasn’t here.

But he was, he had to be, Harry had found him—he had to be somewhere in this town!

“What do you want, Redcoat?” The American’s sudden demand jolted him back to reality. “Why are you bothering me?”

“I told you—I’m looking for someone,” Harry said, defensive.

“Yes, well—usually, when people come and live in this dump, it’s because they don’t want to be found,” the man sneered in return, and Harry stared at him. “Case in point—me,” he added, pointing to himself. “And so I suspect the same could be said for whoever you’re looking for.”

Harry opened his mouth to speak, and suddenly found that he had nothing to say, and no air in his lungs to say it with.

It didn’t matter, because the man in the room across from him spoke again and said, “Now, why don’t you do that disappearing act of yours and run along home?”

Harry stared. No—he couldn’t be, he was a Muggle, no wizard acted like he did—

No British wizard, maybe. “What do you mean, disappearing act?” he asked warily.

“What do you think?” he asked dryly. The man made a sort of flourishing gesture with one hand. “Poof! You’re gone!”

Harry swallowed. “So you’re the one who put up these wards?” he asked weakly.

The stranger grinned with nasty good cheer. “Just call me Mr. Wizard.”

But…no, this wasn’t the man who sold potions in the square—he was white, the man he’d talked to had just picked out the wrong man—that didn’t mean that Snape wasn’t here, just somewhere else, and Harry could still find him and he could—he clung to the idea like a drowning man. “Do you know Don Greene?” he asked.

The man was drumming his fingers idly on the arm of his chair, and he answered easily. “Yeah—what about him?”

“Who is he?” Harry demanded, seizing on his words, already knowing the answer—Snape.

The man shrugged indifferently. “Just some old Muggle who lived a few streets over—he made some really good spiced tea,” he said musingly, his voice casual, and Harry’s stomach thudded down nearly to the floor. “His wife died a month ago, though, and he moved away to go live with his daughter,” the man added, and when he looked back up at Harry, his brows were furrowed. “And just what do you want with him?”

Harry’s throat had seized; it took a supreme effort of will for him to force out an answer. “I—nothing.”

No, no, no—he had to find him, he had see him so he could—he was here, he’d seen his handwriting, and the man at the chemist’s had seen him, it had to be him, it was him—and the man, whoever he was, he knew where he was, and he was toying with him—

“I have to find him,” he said, reaching up to grip a handful of his hair; his voice was pleading, desperate, and he didn’t care. “Please, sir, if you—”

“Don’t ‘sir’ me.” Harry was cut off mid-sentence, and the man’s voice, all nonchalant good nature, had gone suddenly flinty. “Those who call me ‘sir’ don’t live to tell about it.” Harry gawped at him, frozen where he stood. “Now,” he said, “don’t come back here again, Potter. Ever.”

A white-hot lance of fury shot through Harry’s chest. He’d come so far, so long, worked so hard, and for nothing? For this, for some big-mouthed American to talk to him like a little boy and just send him on his way?

He jammed his hand in his pocket, going for his wand—he would show this bloody interfering bastard that he would call him whatever he pleased, and then he would make him tell him where Snape was—but he never had the chance, because the man spoke again, and his words took the wind right out of Harry’s sails.

“I have no idea who or what you are looking for, little man,” he said sharply, “but what I can tell you is that what we have here is clearly a case of mistaken identity.” Harry’s fingers went slack on the handle of his wand. “I’m not your teacher and I never was—just because I have long hair and speak English, someone clearly gave you the wrong name.” He shifted in his seat, staring hard at Harry. “But more to the point, I didn’t move down here for just for the waters—I don’t like visitors. So, why don’t you just fuck off.”

Harry stared at those blank, dark sunglasses, at the cold, impassive face looking back at him.

Mistaken identity?

At last he swallowed, his tongue feeling too thick in his mouth, and said, “Sorry to have bothered you.” His knees felt like water; he half-walked, half-stumbled through the door, shutting it behind him as he lurched out into the street like a drunken man.

He nearly tripped off the little porch as he swung blindly backwards, staggering out onto the pavement Calle del Sombras.

No. Not now. Not when he was this close.

No.

“No,” he said hoarsely, falling backwards, his back thumping on the cracked stucco of Number 13. He fisted a hand in his hair, tugging until it was painful.

No. No. Greene—home-brewed medicines, they said. The nose, the bad temper. The potions at the chemist—the writing on the label. The Polyjuice, and all that money, all across Europe. It was. It had to be—he had to be here, there was no other explanation, he had to be—

Harry bit his lip until he tasted blood, rolling sideways against the front of the building until he could press his burning face to the comparative cool of the stucco—and as he did, as he leaned against the building, he felt something crinkle in his jeans pocket.

He blinked, and then reached inside. It was Ginny’s letter. He’d forgotten it was even there.

Slowly, his movements almost those of a man in a dream, he broke the seal and opened it.

Harry,

I thought I’d write to you, seeing as we haven’t heard from you in a while—I hope that’s because you’re all absorbed in your search—in full investigation-mode, I always call it. That always means that you’ve found something, and for your sake I hope you have.

Things are quiet here—even more so since you’re gone. The season’s winding down; we still have a few games to go, but we’re not going to make the playoffs this year. The game against Appleby last month was particularly dirty; we only just lost, but the real blow was that Marie fell pretty badly and damaged her hip, so she’s been out since then and won’t be back the rest of the season. Since then we’ve been playing our reserve seeker Hortense, but she just isn’t Marie. In fact, our last game officially qualified as a rout.

I kept looking for your face in the stands.

The big news here is that Fleur is pregnant again. Dad’s thrilled, of course—he wants an army of granddaughters. He’s a sucker for little girls—believe me, I should know. I think Mum wants a boy this time, though. Teddy, incidentally, agrees with her. Based on his experience with Victoire, he’s decided that girls smell funny, and that he wants no part of it. It’ll be interesting to see which wins out—the Veela propensity for girls, or the infamous ability of the Weasleys to produce boys. George has actually started a pool.

I wish you were here to make a bet on it.

Teddy keeps asking for you. Going to visit Uncle Harry’s just isn’t the same without Uncle Harry, it seems, and Aunt Ginny is just no substitute. He’s taken to wearing your hair as often as not—I don’t think he knows he’s doing it. Andromeda told me to tell you to hurry along home before he gets himself stuck that way. But don’t you worry about us, just keep doing what you need to do until you’re done; we’re holding up fine, and we’ll keep holding up, and there will be a lamp in the window for you for when you’re finally done.

I miss you.

Keep searching as long as you need, Harry—and we’ll be waiting for you when you come back home.

I love you.

Ginny

And down below Ginny’s quick, narrow hand, there was another message, this one sprawling and crooked, written in the thick, deliberate strokes of a little boy just learning his letters, writing his way laboriously through a dictated message with his oversized goose quill, just the right size for chubby child’s fingers.

DEAR UNCLE HARRY

I MISS YOU
COME HOME SOON

LOVE
TEDDY

Harry didn’t know how long he stood there, pressed up against the wall of the house next to Number 13, just staring down at the missive in his hands. It was newsy and happy, like all of her letters—he could practically hear Ginny’s voice in his head as he read it.

Her voice, bright and energetic, just like everything about her—but with an undercurrent of sadness.

She missed him.

Ginny had said she’d miss him, when he’d told her that he was leaving, but that she wouldn’t try to make him stay, because she understood—he’d needed to do this, needed to find Snape.

Only he hadn’t.

The parchment in his hands crackled as his fingers tightened convulsively—but everything was here—he had to be here, Harry knew it—

But no one else did. Coincidences, Ginny had said. Circumstantial, Hermione called it. All those things he found—they didn’t add up, Ron said.

But he had been so sure…

Harry blinked, this throat trying to close up, and then turned and looked at the building behind him. Mistaken identity—all this time, had he been chasing a figment of his own imagination because he’d needed to?

His breathing was shallow. Voldemort had needed the Elder Wand—and as far as he was concerned, his only way to do that was to kill its owner. Ron was right—would he really leave that to chance?

And Snape—giving up his memories, telling him everything, sharing that part of him that he’d kept so secret, that he’d never wanted Harry to see—those were the actions of a dying man.

Dear God, what would he have done if Harry had been able to confront him afterwards about it? What would he have said?

What would Harry have said?

…What did he even want to say now?

What was he doing here? What did he want?

Ginny had asked him that, and he hadn’t answered her. He couldn’t.

And he couldn’t even answer himself. He didn’t know what he wanted.

But he knew what Snape would want. He would want to run, and to hide. He wouldn’t want to be found. He wouldn’t want Harry to find him—not now, not after he’d found some measure of peace.

If he was even alive at all.

And for a moment, it was as though he was standing in the doorway of the Hog’s Head, in the snow and sharp winds of Hogsmeade it the winter, away from the heat and slimy sunshine of Mexico, and looking into the piercing blue eyes of Aberforth Dumbledore.

“Let the dead lie, Potter,” he’d said. “Recriminations and what-might-have-beens eat at a man—and you’ve got no cause for ‘em.”

Harry sucked in a deep breath, reminding himself that he was here in Mexico, not back at Hogwarts—not back home. He looked at the letter in his hand, his fingers leaving creases in the parchment.

I miss you.

Come home soon.

He let his breath out, long and slow, and tucked the letter away in his pocket. He tilted his head back up, casting one last look at the building behind him in the lengthening shadows of the afternoon. And then he turned his back on it, thrusting his hands in his pockets, his fingers tight around that little scrap of home, and walked down the street, over to the cover of the nearest alley, where he Apparated away.