Invictus Chapter 59/59
Blackness covered everything. His hands groped blindly in the dark, but found nothing.
“Harry?”
Where had Harry gone? He had to be sure that he’d survived.
“HARRY!” The name echoed, vanishing down endless corridors.
Pain flowed in, rising swiftly and steadily, like water about to drown him.
“Harry!” This time, something caught in his throat, cutting off his breath. He shoved his fingers blindly in the direction of the pain to connect with skin. Thank Merlin, he had skin. He felt around until his fingers connected with something hard that wasn’t flesh or bone. He ripped it out, then the other one, then his eyes opened.
Nothing.
Wait. His eyes, his face, his mouth, his lips, his fingers, his toes. Was this death? Oh, this was worse than he had imagined. Let him be nothing, anything but a body floating in nothingness.
Wait. Something rested on him. Something he could feel beyond the pain. He forced his fingers to curl, to touch. There. Robes. Robes.
He laughed, then cried. Robes. He lived. He had to be alive.
He forced his fingers to move, ignoring the pain, ignoring how his body screamed at him. He forced his hand into his pocket and grabbed the spherical bottle. Slowly, agonizingly, he thumbed off the lid, raised it to his lips, and drank the Healing Potion inside.
His throat screamed with every gulp he took. He could do this. He had to stay alive. If he didn’t stay alive, Harry couldn’t.
Why was everything black? Had he gone blind? Damn it! He shouldn’t have openly drunk that Healing Potion! He returned his hand to his side and waited. Listened. Nothing.
Ever so slowly, he reached into his robes and grabbed Harry’s wand. He cast a detection spell. No living hearts within twenty feet. He cast wards, those of concealment and protection. Warning wards as invisible and unobtrusive as he could make them. The effort of it left him exhausted, pained, and he concentrated on popping open all the healing capsules inside of him, as well as the one last Blood Replenishing potion. Had he failed to remove all traces of the venom? Was that why he still hurt?
No, he’d bother with that later. Now, he had to make sure Harry’s body remained intact.
“Lumos.” Light burst from the tip of Harry’s wand and caught on the covering thrown over him. He pushed it to the side, and the light spilled out into the room, falling on the table next to him and its occupant, who’d been covered by a similar sheet to the one that had covered him.
A morgue of some sort. The battle had ended. Who had won? Where was Harry’s body?
He downed another Healing Potion before he attempted to move his legs. A spike of pain shot through him and he had to take a moment to rest and let the pain pass. Steeling himself, he tenderly worked his way to a sitting position, then swung his legs and left the table. As he slid off the table, he knocked something to the floor. He bent down to examine the crushed remains of a potion capsule. This had been in his neck. The healing potion had been applied after he’d been attacked. Harry. Only Harry knew about the capsules. What did that mean? Had Harry come across his body in the forest before the ceremony? What had happened? He glanced at Albus’s and Phineas’s portraits, but they were empty.
He replaced his body with another one to confuse anyone who came to check on the corpses. Casting spells of detection and concealment, he made his way outside of the morgue, and found himself in the Hogwarts dungeon. The building, normally full of life, even at night, remained eerily quiet. Sucking down a Polyjuice potion, he changed his clothes into Muggle clothing covered by a nondescript robe. Harry’s wand in hand, he crept his way towards the South exit. No portraits stood in their frames. No house-elves scurried between the rooms. No ghosts swept into walls.
It wasn’t until he mounted the stairs and reached South exit that he found another soul, even if she was dead.
“What happened?” he asked the Grey Lady.
She peered at him, cocking her head slightly to the side as if she recognised his form within the Polyjuice and couldn’t imagine why he wore a different body. “The Death Eaters attacked the castle. Harry Potter killed Voldemort, turning the battle into victory for the Order.”
Oh, Merlin. His knees shook and he had to lean against the wall for support. “Harry lives?” It couldn’t be. How could he live if Harry did as well?
“Yes,” she said. “I did not like the noise, so I avoided the fuss. I heard he was taken to Saint Mungo’s for shock, but he lives.”
It had worked. Giving Harry all three Hallows, convincing him to lay down his life willingly. It shouldn’t have worked; by all rights, Harry should have died but then, when did Harry ever follow the rules? “He lives,” he said, more to assure himself than anything else.
“Yes,” she said simply before she walked off through a wall.
He just wanted to sink to the floor and rest until his heart stopped pounding and he could breathe normally again, but he had work to do. The Anti-Apparition wards had been removed, so he cautiously Apparated to Saint Mungo’s, which was a horrid mess of screaming patients and busy Healers. No one paid him any mind as he picked his way through the wards to the one most likely to contain Harry.
He didn’t need to look hard. Two Aurors stood guard outside a door that had to be Harry’s. More measures had to be in place protecting Harry. Getting in without being detected would not be easy. He didn’t dare risk it in his weakened state. He waited.
Before long, the door opened, and Ginny Weasley emerged, her face drawn and tired, but hopeful. Severus met her near the lift.
“How is he?”
“Oh!” She started, falling back slightly. “He’ll be fine,” she said, smiling slightly. “He was tired, that’s all. And who are you?”
“Just a supporter,” he said. His hand moved to Harry’s wand, but then stopped. As stupid and silly as it was, he wasn’t ready to give all of Harry away just yet. “Take care of him. He needs it.”
He left before she could respond, before he could do something stupid like threatening to kill her if she ever broke Harry’s heart. Harry would love her more than she deserved, more than anyone deserved. If she failed to realise that, she was a fool.
Outside of Saint Mungo’s, he Apparated toward where he thought the prison to be, taking several stops to avoid splinching himself. Once he’d made his way to France, he closed his eyes and pictured the prison on detail: the cage, the kitchen, the potions lab, his bedroom. He Apparated straight to the kitchen.
Harry turned back to the counter. Although his knife fell correctly at first, he mangled the onions. Probably on purpose.
“You’re ruining them,” said Severus without any heat as he approached.
A crafty look in his eyes, Harry stepped to the side and motioned for Severus to approach. “Show me how.”
Making his way to the cellar, Severus placed the notes for Harry under the mattress inside the copy of Frankenstein. Inside the front cover, he duplicated the inscription that had once graced his copy. He doubted Harry would return - too many terrible memories lingered in this place - but if he did, he had the right to know the truth.
He replaced the mattress and smoothed out the sheets.
Harry's warm fingers curled around his wrists, guiding him to the pebbled nipples. "Here, touch me here."
"Like this?" he asked, rolling the hard nubs between his thumbs and forefingers. He needn't have asked; Harry's loud moan told him exactly what he needed to know.
"Yes, just like that."
Unable to stay in a room so thick with memories, Severus left, heading towards his lab. He collected a few of the more rare ingredients - just in case - and removed any trace of Harry, including both of the clones, which he destroyed. The Dark Lord hadn’t taken the one he knew about to the ceremony. He’d never intended to transplant Harry’s soul.
Severus lifted his own clone out of the pit and carefully placed it inside of bag charmed with Wizard Space. Replacing the cauldron, he left the prison for the last time. At that point, his body had healed enough that he could Apparate straight to Hogwarts. Replicating his wounds as best he could, he put his clone on the empty slab, dressing it in the robes he’d been wearing when he nearly died.
He set Harry’s wand on the clone’s chest.
He ought to return it. The more he kept of his old life, the easier it would be for his past to find him. Then again, he needed a wand, and Harry’s responded to him with more familiarity than any other wand he’d tried. Even his own.
Picking up the wand, he shoved it into his pocket and left the morgue.
As he walked out onto the grounds of Hogwarts, pink tinged the horizon. Dawn. How fitting. Time to do what he’d never done before: Live. Not for an uncertain future, not for Harry, but for himself.
Maybe he should go find a beach in Australia. Harry would like that.
The End.
The Release of Sisyphus Chapter 1
Epilogue to Nights of Gethsemane and Invictus.