The World Keeps Its Own Secrets - Chapter 8
Title: The World Keeps Its Own Secrets
Author: neddiheht
Rating: A possibly racey R in places
Pairing: Snarry (Severus Snape/Harry Potter)
Word count: 2335
Disclaimer: Harry Potter, Severus Snape and all other characters, places, etc. from the Harry Potter universe are the property of J.K. Rowling. No claim of ownership is intended by this piece of fan fiction.
Summary: When Harry is sent back in time to avoid the killing curse, he finds himself in a mask of his own creation, faceless, voiceless, friendless, teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts for his sole confidante, Albus Dumbledore. But one of the professors is suspicious, and won't let the secrecy of the new Defense professor go.
---
He knelt by the body of Severus Snape. It had not yet grown cold, but the venom had mixed with the dead man's blood and was working already to destroy what was left of his body. The soul itself had fled. He reached over to the far arm, the marked arm, and pulled the mark of the Dark Lord from the man's body with a muttered spell. Even in death the mark resisted, pulled and tried to call out to its master, but in the end the dark lines of mark pulled away from the flesh leaving the arm as pale as the rest of the man's body. He smoothed down the dark greasy hair, running a hand along the pasty white flesh of the dead man's face, his touch tender, almost loving.
"Who are you?" asked a voice from behind. The kneeling man did not need to look or guess to know that a wand was drawn and pointed at him.
"Leave me in peace," said the man, recognizing the professor's voice immediately. They had been friendly, almost, once. "I have little time." His voice wavered oddly, resonant and impossible, the truth of it concealed by layers of magic wrapped around his vocal cords.
"You are too late," said the professor who had walked in on the scene, his wand drawn, but no longer pointed quite so deliberately. "The Dark Lord's serpent is deadly."
"There is much that can be done in the face of death, Horace," said the kneeling man, not bothering to look up, but continuing to cup the dead man's cheek tenderly. "You of all people should know that."
Horace hesitated. As a potions master he was too aware of the dangerous and forbidden draughts that might stave off death, or even restore someone recently deceased to life. But this man's soul had fled.
"He was my student, once. The best I ever had. I would not see his body soiled by living death."
The kneeling man turned, his face still concealed, "We are bonded, Horace, I could not defile him so."
The professor hesitated. Bonded? Snape? He'd had no idea the man had taken that drastic step. Few couples in the wizarding world dared. "Then what do you intend to do?"
The man pulled a vial out of his robes. "The moment was foreseen."
"How?" Horace asked. He couldn't help but recognize the impossible brew the man held. He stepped closer and even in the dim light, skilled eyes picked up on the tears that still fell from within the hood to fall on the fallen body of the once formidable potions master.
The man pulled back his hood and stared back at the professor, choosing to answer how he had foreseen the event rather than address the vial in his hand. "I lived through it," he said simply, quietly. The glasses were no longer round, and the hair was still somewhat unkempt, and the eyes were still the green that Horace recalled... he still had his mother's eyes. The scar had faded considerably, and there were hints of gray, just hints, at each temple.
"Harry?"
"Leave me to my love, Horace, while I still have a chance to save him."
Horace nodded once solemnly and apparated away with an audible pop.
Harry Potter turned back to the fallen form and raised the head of the dead potion master, pouring the contents of the bottle down his throat and forcing the dead body to swallow with a quick flick of his wand. "Please, Sev," he pleaded quietly, his desperation edging into his voice. "Come back to me..."
---
Kingsley Shacklebolt stood bewildered. In front of him was a man he had known for many years. A young man he respected. A young man who was no longer so very young. And he held a dead man in his arms.
"He betrayed us all, Harry."
"Minister, I need you to do this for me."
"Harry..."
"In two weeks my younger self will testify and explain to you how important this man was to our victory. He will tell you and the world that this man is a hero. That he did not deserve to die. That he sacrificed his entire life selflessly to protect the Boy-Who-Lived."
Kingsley looked at the older Harry Potter... and he knew it was indeed Harry Potter. He'd gone through all the usual tests of identification. "Yet this supposedly dead man lives. How? And why? Can you tell me at least that?"
"The water of life, Kingsley. I used the water of life. As for why... I love him. He needs care, private care, in St. Mungos. Protected and secret. Even with so potent a potion... he was very nearly dead. It will take time for him to recover."
"Harry... the water of life will bring back his life, but not his soul."
"Minister. Kingsley. We are bonded. Our soul is one."
Kingsley's eyes grew very large. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "For you, Harry, I will do this thing. I hope your testimony proves him more than the traitor I believe him to be."
---
A hooded man stood at the grave of her son. It had been a year since the defeat of Voldemort and few visited the grave anymore. He was, like so many others, too much a reminder of what had been lost. Arthur had pushed her to let go, and she knew the sentiment was well meant, that Arthur grieved also, in his way. They had all lost so many friends, to have also lost a son had nearly broken them both.
Molly approached slowly. "Did you know my son?" she asked quietly, her wand quickly at the ready just in case.
The man's head turned slightly. "One always remembers those who made one laugh," said a voice from the confines of the hood, it's tone and character clearly masked with magic.
A smile touched Molly's lips briefly. He had always made everyone laugh, her son. "He gets few visitors anymore."
"It is easier, Mrs. Weasley, for some to let go of the past than for others."
"Do I know you?"
She could almost hear a chuckle. "I only came to pay my respects. You were my real purpose."
"Me?"
"You visit every Thursday," said the man, his voice still filled with an odd and clouded resonance. "I would speak to you of our Savior."
Molly suddenly became angry, her wand once again ready. "Look you, I do not take kindly to people using my son to get to Harry!"
"He has not come out of Grimmauld Place in months, Molly," he said, turning to look at her, the inside of his cowl concealed in an inky blackness. "Surely you know that."
"How did you know about Grimmauld Place?" Molly's wand now pointed directly at the man, the experienced witch more than ready to strike. Harry's residence was a well kept secret; only members of the Order had known about it, and a few Death Eaters, all of them dead.
"I know more about Harry Potter than most," he said, "more than even you know, and you were the closest thing to a mother he had."
"Harry saved our world," said Molly simply. "If he craves peace, surely we owe him that."
"It is not what he needs."
"And how would you know what he needs?" snapped Molly. This was not what she intended when she set out from the Burrow this morning.
"It is enough that I know," said the man, not moving.
"Not to me."
The man hesitated for a moment, turning away and then looking toward her, his face still hidden in the all too clearly magically enhanced shadows of his cowl. "Did you know that Harry Potter is bonded, Molly?"
Understanding suddenly washed over Molly's face. Harry's unhappiness, his loneliness in the end, his pushing away of everyone he loved, even... "That's why he turned down Ginny. But how, when?"
"Fifteen years ago. At the age of nineteen."
"Fifteen years ago he was four," said Molly uncertainly.
"A true bond calls through all the ages of person's life, Molly, as you know well," said the man, reaching to press a hand against his chest just over his heart. "I am here to warn you. Next week Harry Potter will finally emerge from Grimmauld Place. A rumor will reach him that Severus Snape survived the night of Voldemort's attack, by way of a poor choice of words in an owl from Horace Slughorn, and he will go to Hogwarts to speak with Minerva and his former potions master about it. Horace saw something that night, you see. But there is a man waiting at Hogwarts, a Death Eater cunningly hidden who has lain in wait for this moment, for just this opportunity. He will use the killing curse on Harry. We both know how few defenses there are against it."
"There are none. You can't stop a killing curse. Only Harry has ever survived the killing curse, and twice at that."
"That's not quite true. You can evade a killing curse. You can dodge it. You can be somewhere else... or some when," said the man, looking briefly away. "No one uses the one sure defense, the defense of time, because it's impossible and dangerous and risks so much with paradox. But someone did. Someone knew. Someone threw Harry out of the path of the curse and hurled him into the vortex of time. That someone is you."
"But... he'd have to..." Molly practically staggered backward. This was Harry they were speaking of, Harry Potter... her son Ron's dearest friend since their first year at Hogwarts. The man her only daughter had fallen madly in love with. "You can't ask him to..."
The man threw back his hood. "Yes, Molly, I can. And I know what it means, and what it will mean. I will have to walk through the years back. But I will thank you for it."
"Harry... what..."
"You must not fail me. Please. I need him, and unless this happens, I will never meet him as intended. Even if I somehow survive the curse, I will go through life incomplete, alone, and I will fade. And I would not do that to him. I love him too much."
"But Harry," said Molly stepping up to him, "this is a paradox, you are risking..."
"Time is not so fragile as the Ministry would have people think," said Harry curtly.
Molly hesitated and looked at him straight in the eyes. "Bonded... Harry... why?"
"There's only one reason to accept a bond, Molly," said Harry. "Of all the people I know in the wizarding world, you are the one who understands this best."
Molly could believe that, it was likely she and Arthur were the only bonded couple Harry knew. Even his parents had not taken that step. "Is there truly no other way?"
"There are many... I've had years to think of alternatives. But none will place me where I need to be to find love. You treated me as family, Molly. You do not truly know what that meant to me. What it still means. But I have known love, and I would rather that curse strike me down than live without it."
"What about Ron and Hermione? They love you, Harry."
Harry hung his head, looking at his feet. "And I have missed them, all these long years." Harry looked up and his green eyes burned. "But I love him. And I cannot give him up."
Molly studied the no longer quite so young man before her, stepped forward, and pulled him into her arms. "Then it will be done, my dear, dear boy. It will be done. But we will miss you."
"And I you."
---
Harry didn't see the cloaked and hooded figure behind him. He couldn't. He'd left Grimmauld Place only hours ago, and made his way to the very edge of Hogwarts itself. He was let in, of course. In past the construction. In past the collapsing towers and devastation. His heart tore at the sight of it. In the midst of the wreckage came Minerva McGonagall, his old teacher, now headmistress. The man had risen from within the stone to which he had bound himself. Risen and drawn his wand to speak the curse before any could react. Screams erupted from the courtyard. Wands were drawn. Curses flew.
But only two of these curses could matter. One, screamed in fury by the figure of a Death Eater, cackling madly. Perhaps he had been driven insane by the loss of his lord, or perhaps merely by the act of being a stone all this time for the chance to kill Harry Potter. His curse was simple, a ray of green light accompanied by the feared words of an Unforgiveable Curse, "Avada Kedavra!"
The other curse came from the most unlikely of places. A red haired matronly woman, full of cheer and rosy cheeks, touched with an enduring sadness, for it was here that she had lost a son. Her words were quietly spoken, but firm. And her curse was spoken first. Green light sailed for the savior of the wizarding world, carrying death and hopelessness. But where it was aimed, there was no longer a living creature to slay. Harry Potter had disappeared entirely, without a trace. The Death Eater who cursed him fell to the ground, struck by dozens of curses all at once. Minerva looked at Molly, standing, her wand still pointed at the spot where Harry had been.
"What have you done?" said Minerva, her voice quiet but carrying across the field.
Molly looked at her former teacher, a tear falling down her cheek as she covered her face with her hands, but when she spoke it was not to the formidable headmistress, nor to the Aurors who surrounded her, but to the spot where Harry had disappeared. "For you Harry. As I promised."
Prev Chapter Master Post Next Chapter
Author: neddiheht
Rating: A possibly racey R in places
Pairing: Snarry (Severus Snape/Harry Potter)
Word count: 2335
Disclaimer: Harry Potter, Severus Snape and all other characters, places, etc. from the Harry Potter universe are the property of J.K. Rowling. No claim of ownership is intended by this piece of fan fiction.
Summary: When Harry is sent back in time to avoid the killing curse, he finds himself in a mask of his own creation, faceless, voiceless, friendless, teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts for his sole confidante, Albus Dumbledore. But one of the professors is suspicious, and won't let the secrecy of the new Defense professor go.
---
He knelt by the body of Severus Snape. It had not yet grown cold, but the venom had mixed with the dead man's blood and was working already to destroy what was left of his body. The soul itself had fled. He reached over to the far arm, the marked arm, and pulled the mark of the Dark Lord from the man's body with a muttered spell. Even in death the mark resisted, pulled and tried to call out to its master, but in the end the dark lines of mark pulled away from the flesh leaving the arm as pale as the rest of the man's body. He smoothed down the dark greasy hair, running a hand along the pasty white flesh of the dead man's face, his touch tender, almost loving.
"Who are you?" asked a voice from behind. The kneeling man did not need to look or guess to know that a wand was drawn and pointed at him.
"Leave me in peace," said the man, recognizing the professor's voice immediately. They had been friendly, almost, once. "I have little time." His voice wavered oddly, resonant and impossible, the truth of it concealed by layers of magic wrapped around his vocal cords.
"You are too late," said the professor who had walked in on the scene, his wand drawn, but no longer pointed quite so deliberately. "The Dark Lord's serpent is deadly."
"There is much that can be done in the face of death, Horace," said the kneeling man, not bothering to look up, but continuing to cup the dead man's cheek tenderly. "You of all people should know that."
Horace hesitated. As a potions master he was too aware of the dangerous and forbidden draughts that might stave off death, or even restore someone recently deceased to life. But this man's soul had fled.
"He was my student, once. The best I ever had. I would not see his body soiled by living death."
The kneeling man turned, his face still concealed, "We are bonded, Horace, I could not defile him so."
The professor hesitated. Bonded? Snape? He'd had no idea the man had taken that drastic step. Few couples in the wizarding world dared. "Then what do you intend to do?"
The man pulled a vial out of his robes. "The moment was foreseen."
"How?" Horace asked. He couldn't help but recognize the impossible brew the man held. He stepped closer and even in the dim light, skilled eyes picked up on the tears that still fell from within the hood to fall on the fallen body of the once formidable potions master.
The man pulled back his hood and stared back at the professor, choosing to answer how he had foreseen the event rather than address the vial in his hand. "I lived through it," he said simply, quietly. The glasses were no longer round, and the hair was still somewhat unkempt, and the eyes were still the green that Horace recalled... he still had his mother's eyes. The scar had faded considerably, and there were hints of gray, just hints, at each temple.
"Harry?"
"Leave me to my love, Horace, while I still have a chance to save him."
Horace nodded once solemnly and apparated away with an audible pop.
Harry Potter turned back to the fallen form and raised the head of the dead potion master, pouring the contents of the bottle down his throat and forcing the dead body to swallow with a quick flick of his wand. "Please, Sev," he pleaded quietly, his desperation edging into his voice. "Come back to me..."
---
Kingsley Shacklebolt stood bewildered. In front of him was a man he had known for many years. A young man he respected. A young man who was no longer so very young. And he held a dead man in his arms.
"He betrayed us all, Harry."
"Minister, I need you to do this for me."
"Harry..."
"In two weeks my younger self will testify and explain to you how important this man was to our victory. He will tell you and the world that this man is a hero. That he did not deserve to die. That he sacrificed his entire life selflessly to protect the Boy-Who-Lived."
Kingsley looked at the older Harry Potter... and he knew it was indeed Harry Potter. He'd gone through all the usual tests of identification. "Yet this supposedly dead man lives. How? And why? Can you tell me at least that?"
"The water of life, Kingsley. I used the water of life. As for why... I love him. He needs care, private care, in St. Mungos. Protected and secret. Even with so potent a potion... he was very nearly dead. It will take time for him to recover."
"Harry... the water of life will bring back his life, but not his soul."
"Minister. Kingsley. We are bonded. Our soul is one."
Kingsley's eyes grew very large. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "For you, Harry, I will do this thing. I hope your testimony proves him more than the traitor I believe him to be."
---
A hooded man stood at the grave of her son. It had been a year since the defeat of Voldemort and few visited the grave anymore. He was, like so many others, too much a reminder of what had been lost. Arthur had pushed her to let go, and she knew the sentiment was well meant, that Arthur grieved also, in his way. They had all lost so many friends, to have also lost a son had nearly broken them both.
Molly approached slowly. "Did you know my son?" she asked quietly, her wand quickly at the ready just in case.
The man's head turned slightly. "One always remembers those who made one laugh," said a voice from the confines of the hood, it's tone and character clearly masked with magic.
A smile touched Molly's lips briefly. He had always made everyone laugh, her son. "He gets few visitors anymore."
"It is easier, Mrs. Weasley, for some to let go of the past than for others."
"Do I know you?"
She could almost hear a chuckle. "I only came to pay my respects. You were my real purpose."
"Me?"
"You visit every Thursday," said the man, his voice still filled with an odd and clouded resonance. "I would speak to you of our Savior."
Molly suddenly became angry, her wand once again ready. "Look you, I do not take kindly to people using my son to get to Harry!"
"He has not come out of Grimmauld Place in months, Molly," he said, turning to look at her, the inside of his cowl concealed in an inky blackness. "Surely you know that."
"How did you know about Grimmauld Place?" Molly's wand now pointed directly at the man, the experienced witch more than ready to strike. Harry's residence was a well kept secret; only members of the Order had known about it, and a few Death Eaters, all of them dead.
"I know more about Harry Potter than most," he said, "more than even you know, and you were the closest thing to a mother he had."
"Harry saved our world," said Molly simply. "If he craves peace, surely we owe him that."
"It is not what he needs."
"And how would you know what he needs?" snapped Molly. This was not what she intended when she set out from the Burrow this morning.
"It is enough that I know," said the man, not moving.
"Not to me."
The man hesitated for a moment, turning away and then looking toward her, his face still hidden in the all too clearly magically enhanced shadows of his cowl. "Did you know that Harry Potter is bonded, Molly?"
Understanding suddenly washed over Molly's face. Harry's unhappiness, his loneliness in the end, his pushing away of everyone he loved, even... "That's why he turned down Ginny. But how, when?"
"Fifteen years ago. At the age of nineteen."
"Fifteen years ago he was four," said Molly uncertainly.
"A true bond calls through all the ages of person's life, Molly, as you know well," said the man, reaching to press a hand against his chest just over his heart. "I am here to warn you. Next week Harry Potter will finally emerge from Grimmauld Place. A rumor will reach him that Severus Snape survived the night of Voldemort's attack, by way of a poor choice of words in an owl from Horace Slughorn, and he will go to Hogwarts to speak with Minerva and his former potions master about it. Horace saw something that night, you see. But there is a man waiting at Hogwarts, a Death Eater cunningly hidden who has lain in wait for this moment, for just this opportunity. He will use the killing curse on Harry. We both know how few defenses there are against it."
"There are none. You can't stop a killing curse. Only Harry has ever survived the killing curse, and twice at that."
"That's not quite true. You can evade a killing curse. You can dodge it. You can be somewhere else... or some when," said the man, looking briefly away. "No one uses the one sure defense, the defense of time, because it's impossible and dangerous and risks so much with paradox. But someone did. Someone knew. Someone threw Harry out of the path of the curse and hurled him into the vortex of time. That someone is you."
"But... he'd have to..." Molly practically staggered backward. This was Harry they were speaking of, Harry Potter... her son Ron's dearest friend since their first year at Hogwarts. The man her only daughter had fallen madly in love with. "You can't ask him to..."
The man threw back his hood. "Yes, Molly, I can. And I know what it means, and what it will mean. I will have to walk through the years back. But I will thank you for it."
"Harry... what..."
"You must not fail me. Please. I need him, and unless this happens, I will never meet him as intended. Even if I somehow survive the curse, I will go through life incomplete, alone, and I will fade. And I would not do that to him. I love him too much."
"But Harry," said Molly stepping up to him, "this is a paradox, you are risking..."
"Time is not so fragile as the Ministry would have people think," said Harry curtly.
Molly hesitated and looked at him straight in the eyes. "Bonded... Harry... why?"
"There's only one reason to accept a bond, Molly," said Harry. "Of all the people I know in the wizarding world, you are the one who understands this best."
Molly could believe that, it was likely she and Arthur were the only bonded couple Harry knew. Even his parents had not taken that step. "Is there truly no other way?"
"There are many... I've had years to think of alternatives. But none will place me where I need to be to find love. You treated me as family, Molly. You do not truly know what that meant to me. What it still means. But I have known love, and I would rather that curse strike me down than live without it."
"What about Ron and Hermione? They love you, Harry."
Harry hung his head, looking at his feet. "And I have missed them, all these long years." Harry looked up and his green eyes burned. "But I love him. And I cannot give him up."
Molly studied the no longer quite so young man before her, stepped forward, and pulled him into her arms. "Then it will be done, my dear, dear boy. It will be done. But we will miss you."
"And I you."
---
Harry didn't see the cloaked and hooded figure behind him. He couldn't. He'd left Grimmauld Place only hours ago, and made his way to the very edge of Hogwarts itself. He was let in, of course. In past the construction. In past the collapsing towers and devastation. His heart tore at the sight of it. In the midst of the wreckage came Minerva McGonagall, his old teacher, now headmistress. The man had risen from within the stone to which he had bound himself. Risen and drawn his wand to speak the curse before any could react. Screams erupted from the courtyard. Wands were drawn. Curses flew.
But only two of these curses could matter. One, screamed in fury by the figure of a Death Eater, cackling madly. Perhaps he had been driven insane by the loss of his lord, or perhaps merely by the act of being a stone all this time for the chance to kill Harry Potter. His curse was simple, a ray of green light accompanied by the feared words of an Unforgiveable Curse, "Avada Kedavra!"
The other curse came from the most unlikely of places. A red haired matronly woman, full of cheer and rosy cheeks, touched with an enduring sadness, for it was here that she had lost a son. Her words were quietly spoken, but firm. And her curse was spoken first. Green light sailed for the savior of the wizarding world, carrying death and hopelessness. But where it was aimed, there was no longer a living creature to slay. Harry Potter had disappeared entirely, without a trace. The Death Eater who cursed him fell to the ground, struck by dozens of curses all at once. Minerva looked at Molly, standing, her wand still pointed at the spot where Harry had been.
"What have you done?" said Minerva, her voice quiet but carrying across the field.
Molly looked at her former teacher, a tear falling down her cheek as she covered her face with her hands, but when she spoke it was not to the formidable headmistress, nor to the Aurors who surrounded her, but to the spot where Harry had disappeared. "For you Harry. As I promised."
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