fix it fest: as the wind behaves (snarry, 1/2)
Title: as the wind behaves
Author: Caecelia (verdeckt)
Betas:: SO many thanks to accioslash and atdelphi for your invaluable advice; I learned so much from you both. ♥ Any remaining mistakes are my own.
Other pairings/threesome: Ron/Hermione
Rating: light R
Word count: 18,553
Warning(s): Harry is not quite 18.
SPOILERS/What you are fixing: (highlight for spoilers) *Snape does not exactly die. He is also ugly and somewhat deranged.*
Summary: Harry thinks he knows what he wants. Snape is unwilling to oblige him.
A/N: Written for my dear friend o_mayari.
as the wind behaves
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -
Not that final meeting
{from T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men}
The path leading from the Shrieking Shack into the Forbidden Forest is unmarked. Once he leaves the vandalised railway tracks (nearly collapsing over twisted rails and splintered, blackened timber sleepers) he has to hack one out himself. Through the overgrowth he stumbles, through weeds high and thick enough to resist every forward step, spiteful weeds that foist sharp and sticky pods onto his robes and leave vengeful scratches on his hands as he slashes them, as he careens forward and clumsily crushes them down. Sectumsempra over and over, again and again. Sweets wrappers in Honeydukes colours flutter betwixt the yellow stalks, bright and glittering reminders of youthful delusions and failed responsibilities - Sectumsempra. The severed stalks and the freed wrappers shoot in every direction, some reprovingly swatting him in the face, but he ignores them in favour of scissoring himself a path. To the forest -
To the boy - the boy -
(Severus clutches his ribs, feeling his own erratic heartbeat, trying to squeeze the constricting pain out of his chest. He gags on air that reeks of blubbery, congealed globs of blood and venom and the noisome sorcery that is surely responsible for his continued existence on this miserable plane.)
He thinks he can already feel the chill of forest magic, the damp, benighted earth pervaded with worms, minerals, ancient rowans, oaks and pines - He thinks he can smell spoiled berries, musky droppings, the ineluctable stench of general rot - His pace quickens as the shadows lengthen, as the trees draw him into their cold embrace -
Finally - an end to those bloody weeds -
He finds himself in a clearing, gasping. Black spots emerging before his eyes and his knees giving in - a tree; he braces himself against it. A fallen trunk, slathered with stained, decomposed leaves. When he lifts away his hands, it is to find them covered in a strangely glutinous sludge, the wounds on them stinging.
Severus inhales sharply, applying grimy forefinger and thumb to his eyes as though he could just press the dizziness away. He pushes his eyes almost through to his skull, fighting against the numbness fishing its way up his spine. His legs seem to have lost their capacity for feeling . . . Perhaps he should rest. But only for a moment . . . He merely . . . needs a moment to . . . breathe. He will find . . . the boy. The boy who left him . . . to rot . . . who knows how much he understood . . . whether he is prepared for his task . . .
Snape is sliding down to his knees, black silence slithering past his ears and eyes and nose . . . He shakes his head against the onslaught, a slow, painful pull of tendons and swivel of bone against bone; he attempts to think. There are not many pleasant memories left to him, but . . . he still knows where to dredge them up. Perverse though they may be, perhaps they will save a life. Lives . . .
"Expecto Patronum," he says, nearly choking when the silver doe writhes out of his wand. He sees her slender haunches rippling in the gloom before she bounds away. There is no need for him to give her a message, he thinks dizzily, resting his head on the blighted soft bark of the tree. She is the essence of what must be said. She is -
He closes his eyes and -
- - -
"I knew it," he whispers.
The doe nods gravely, as though imparting a great secret, before vanishing into a point of light that pulls at his heart as it, too, ebbs and dims.
"Oh," says Hermione in the relative darkness, her voice small.
From where Ron has been lagging behind comes the answering snap of a twig.
Harry exhales. Inhales too quickly, because he is confused. Then he lifts up his illuminated wand and squints down at what it reveals: the rail-thin figure of a man splayed over a wasted tree, his lower body submerged in a mud puddle and his face frighteningly pale beneath layers of grime, beneath snarled, greasy strands of long black hair that run in serpentine trails down his neck, where - Harry feels his hand beginning to shake - it suddenly becomes shiny and wet and - Harry's wand is slipping down to point -
- at his feet.
He stares at his trainers for a moment, trying to ease his breath, and looks up to see Hermione braving a step forward. The steep forest ground squelches beneath her feet and seems generally untrustworthy; she keeps glancing down and holding onto rocks in order to maintain her balance. Harry finds himself following the unsteady gaze of her Lumos spell, despite the inevitability with which it slowly traces over that hair and down to the grisly wound on Snape's - oh God. Harry looks away again, his chest so tight with guilt and horror, and - he can't breathe, he has to run a hand through his hair and take in several biting, cold shots of air.
Hermione has come to a halt in front of Snape. She glances back at Harry, inclining her head for him to come closer. As though this were something he should see. Harry knows that she's right, even as the horror courses through him, so he grinds his teeth and strides forward, navigating by instinct through a maze of roots and around the hulk of the fallen tree until he can squat down next to Snape. For a moment he simply huddles there, overwhelmed. It occurs to him that he should be checking for a pulse, but then he imagines what might happen were Snape to awaken and see Harry touching him . . .
Ron clears his throat. "Be careful, Harry. We don't know it's really him, after all. He could be a vampire or some kind of dodgy forest spirit or an Inferius, for all we know."
"He's not an Inferius, Ron." The very idea irritates Harry more than he can say - it reminds him of Defence lessons that had been written with Horcruxes in mind - makes a bitter fluid seep up from his stomach into his throat, because the evidence was all there, because he should have known -
Because he'd left Snape to die, and if he had been turned into an Inferius, it would have partly been Harry's own fault -
And suddenly Harry couldn't care less what Snape might think or what Ron might say or what conclusions Hermione might draw. He reaches out and pokes Snape in the shoulder. The fabric there seems almost to disintegrate beneath his touch; he thinks he can feel bone beneath the decomposing threads. "Sir? Can you hear me, sir?"
Snape, stiff and seemingly lifeless, manages to set Harry's sense of panic aflame. Harry is shaking his entire shoulder now and even warring with the idea of whether or not to put his hand on Snape's chest -
"He's definitely alive," announces Hermione with a (depressingly) confident flick of her wand, and all of a sudden Harry is self-conscious again and recoiling, resting back on his heels. Several sparkling streams - coloured silver and blue and red - are swirling around Snape's head and heart and lungs and back to her wand again. Another flick of her wand ends the diagnostic spell, and she glances at Harry, expression tense. "We need to get him back to the castle. Quickly."
"But -" Ron comes up from behind her, his face still wan from weeping most of the day and screwed up in puzzlement. "This doesn't make any sense. We saw him die, for Merlin's sake."
"Appearances can be deceiving," says Hermione briskly, transfiguring a twig into a floating stretcher.
"I don't get it either," Harry admits, running a hand through his hair and rising to his feet. He looks down at Snape - so unearthly and shrunken in this light and from this angle - and remembers a little boy stretched out in the shade of a tree, his face reflecting the brightness of a red-headed girl and consumed with happiness and hope. Harry could use a bit of that hope, now that he no longer knows what to make of his life. "Mobilicorpus," he says dully, levitating Snape onto the stretcher.
Without the doe to guide them, it is easy to feel crushed by the forest's sinister quiet. They wander for what seems like hours through the trees and thorns, jumpily wary of rogue Death Eaters and giants and werewolves . . . what a relief to finally see the castle, decimated though it is, defiantly luminescent against the starless sky . . .
"Let's just hope that Kingsley believed your story, Harry," Ron says. Harry grimaces, suddenly feeling as though he were a pig and Ron's words a carving knife. "Otherwise there'll be Aurors swarming the place, looking for Snape. They'll want him as a scapegoat, you know."
"Well, they can't have him," snaps Harry. Hermione glances at him sharply. Ron, for his part, looks away.
But then they never saw the memories. Harry glances down at the figure floating beside him on the stretcher and reaches out to (briefly) squeeze its hand. Withered to the bone and as icy as the depths of the Black Lake, it leaves a gritty slime on his palm, but Harry doesn't mind. It reminds him that Snape is alive, and it reminds him of his mum, always so near and so far - of Narcissa, whispering in his ear, saving his life as he played dead in the mud. He was reborn in the forest, motherless, anchorless as the fallen leaves . . .
He squeezes Snape's hand again and looks up at the lights of the castle. "Let's go," he says.
- - -
He wants to check up on Snape, is itching to see him, in fact, but his friends are intent on giving him advice.
"Make sure to talk a lot and hold his hand," says Hermione, swatting at a loose strand of fuzzy hair that keeps bouncing in her face. "That's what I did, and it was very helpful."
"Hermione, this is the greasy git we're talking about, not your favourite uncle." Ron shudders. "Harry can't hold his hand! Just say a few words in case he can hear you and go, mate," he adds.
"Physical contact is an essential aid to recovery," says Hermione loftily, pushing the irritating strand behind her ear. "Do try to appreciate how terribly isolating it is to be stuck in a coma, Ronald. Also, I hardly think that holding Professor Snape's hand for a few minutes amounts to such a great chore, considering all his years of sacrifice for Harry. Wouldn't you agree, Harry?"
Harry clenches, then unclenches his hand. "Yeah," he says. "Guys, thanks for the advice, but -"
"See," says Ron smugly, "Harry doesn't like your idea either."
Hermione turns on Ron, eyes narrowed. "Must you always be so deliberately unhelpful -"
"Guys!" Harry is nearly shouting. "I'll see you later, OK?"
Hermione gives him an understanding, if long-suffering look, while Ron grimaces at him in well-meant commiseration. Then they turn back to each other and continue their argument.
Harry shakes his head. He sets out for the infirmary at a brisk pace that soon becomes a full-out run.
Madam Pomfrey's stern expression may waver upon his arrival, but otherwise she does not appear particularly surprised to see him. She presses today's Daily Prophet into his hand. "You may read to him if you like," she says, leading him to the last bed in the hospital wing. Harry feels his skin prickle as they pass, first, through an invisible layer of wards, then through a set of eerily floating white hangings.
The air is overly warm and stagnant, barely stirred by the listless summer breeze. Harry grinds his teeth. The combined smell of sweetish powder and acrid cleaning spells is unpleasantly cloying. He feels a headache coming.
He gazes down at Snape, almost fully encased in tightly drawn, heavily starched sheets. His black hair has been cleaned of dead things and dried blood, and thick, limp strands of it lie draped over his shoulders. There is a vile-smelling ochre-brown poultice encircling his neck. His face has been washed and shaved, but reminds Harry of the mummified Cornish hen his Muggle teacher had once brought to class for a lesson about Ancient Egypt. Snape's face has the same sallow colour, the same dried-out, brittle, disquieting qualities as the hen, Harry thinks.
He glances at Madam Pomfrey, who has come round to adjust the poultice. Fluid the colour and consistency of iodine begins to seep out and soak into the collar of Snape's nightshirt. Harry looks away, feeling his stomach crawl.
"That should do it," says Madam Pomfrey after a moment. Harry starts, feeling caught.
He unfolds the newspaper with a snap. "Should I read to him?"
"I think he would appreciate that, yes."
Harry gulps in a breath before moving around the bed to sit in a chair positioned at Snape's side. He looks down at the newspaper without seeing the headlines, then up at Madam Pomfrey.
She nods encouragingly, skirts rustling as she turns away from him. Harry can hear the scratch of linen parting as she passes through the hangings.
Slightly rattled by the concept of being left alone with Snape, even a Snape suspended in a magical coma, Harry spends several dead seconds staring at a grainy, oversized photograph of himself. BOY-WHO-LIVED DEFEATS HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED reads the caption. He flips to the second and third page and scoffs at an article titled HARRY POTTER'S UNSUNG ACTS OF HEROISM, only to be stopped short by HARRY POTTER - MOST DANGEROUS WIZARD ALIVE? Scowling, Harry shakes the paper open to the following pages - then shakes it again, flipping past photographs of Hermione and Luna and Ron and Neville, interviews with McGonagall and Flitwick and Slughorn and - here he pauses to frown - Lucius Malfoy. There follows a cramped, nearly black page containing the names and photographs of the dead - an even more cramped and inky page with the mug shots of Death Eaters and other suspected criminals still on the run. Frustrated, Harry turns to another page. He finds himself staring at an unflattering photograph of Snape, his hair scruffy and flying all over the place, his uneven teeth bared threateningly at the camera -
Panic grips at Harry and he ends up flinging the paper to the ground. "Rubbish," he says. "All of it."
He looks up from the discarded paper, but Snape remains as lifeless as he had been when Harry had found him sprawled, limbs peculiarly askew, over a dead tree. "I won't let them get you," he vows.
Silence.
"I won't," he says, more loudly.
Snape doesn't even twitch. Curious, Harry inches the chair closer to the bed. "Thanks for everything," he says experimentally, peering at Snape's bandaged throat, then his slim, just-parted lips. He tries to imagine Snape's reaction. Probably he'd be insulted. "I know you didn't do it for me. I . . ." He trails off suddenly. "This is stupid. You probably can't even hear me."
For a long, irritated moment, Harry simply gazes down at Snape's closed eyes. The lashes are surprisingly straight and long, like a child's. Harry shifts in the chair, brows furrowing together. "I wish you could scowl or something. At least then I would know you were listening."
He looks up at the ceiling, as though seeking patience or advice, then back down at Snape's jagged profile. Even more curious now, he rises halfway to his feet and extends a finger to lightly touch the tip of Snape's strongly curved nose. It's colder than he expected. Harry cocks his head, suddenly thoughtful. "It's weird that no one's found a way to communicate with coma patients yet. You'd think there'd be a potion or something." For a moment, he thinks of Snape prowling through a hushed, smoky classroom. Then he thinks of Slughorn, a pale walrus in a waistcoat, and remembers being constantly compared to his mother.
He thinks of the Half-Blood Prince, and moves his finger down to trace the ragged curve of one emaciated cheek. "I bet you could invent a potion like that," he says, not bothering to keep the admiration out of his voice. "Too bad you haven't already. It would be really useful right now."
Harry hesitates then, unable to think of anything else to say. Slowly, he sits back in the chair.
Perhaps he should just head back to his friends. This was a stupid idea, coming to visit Snape. Seeing him unconscious just makes Harry feel guilty and inadequate. And trying to talk to him in this state is a bloody pain.
Harry gets to his feet, and in doing so first notices Snape's right hand, laid out flat against the covers. He stops moving and stares. Harry has seen these hands many times before, covered in yellow stains, nicked with bruises, white with pressure from gripping a wand, but never has he seen them this clean. Even the nails, which had been packed with earth when Harry last saw them, last gripped them, have been cut back and washed. Without the grime Snape's fingers seem exquisitely slender. They are also somewhat crooked, as if they had been broken more than once.
He sits back down and -
When Madam Pomfrey returns some time later, Harry is dozing in the chair with newspaper pages drifting aimlessly over the floor and Snape's stiff hand held loosely in his own. Her arrival startles him into letting go.
She says nothing, merely running diagnostic spells over Snape. Cautiously, Harry stretches, blinking at her through unfocused eyes.
Eventually her eyes dart towards him, crinkled in a smile. "Well done, Mr Potter," she says.
Harry blinks again, then smiles back, feeling strangely warm.
- - -
(Harry liked to watch the memories at night, when the headmistress's office was murky and there was nothing but sense-memory and the feeble glow of his wand to guide him. Albus Dumbledore seemed both more and less present when his portrait was asleep. Harry sometimes thought he could see flashes of a silver beard and garish robes in the filmy glass doors of lacquered shelves, but a closer look revealed nothing but undusted curios and mouldy grimoires and the occasional still-wrapped lemon drop. He got a thrill out of it all the same.
Harry hated and avoided the memories with Dumbledore in them, but he came to know the ones of Snape's childhood so well they began to yield to him. One day, he found himself able to interact with the scenery. He was able to climb the tree sheltering Severus and Lily and watch the musical bob of their heads. He was able to sit between them amidst the leaves and marvel at the looks on their faces.
Once, he tried to touch them. The contact was fleeting - so brief that Harry would have thought it imagined, had his fingers not came away warm.
Harry stopped watching the memories soon after that. Somehow, it became clear to him that Snape . . . Snape was those memories. Giving them back - Snape still suspended in a coma, unable to comment as Harry gripped his hand and Madam Pomfrey guided silver strands to his temple - made Harry feel blistered with elation.)
- - -
He nearly runs into the infirmary when Madam Pomfrey sends him an owl with the news, only to come skidding to a halt at the sound of raised voices.
"- what do you mean, dead?"
"Potter defeated him, Severus . . . For Merlin's sake, don't give me that look - were you expecting someone else to do the honours?"
There is a faint creaking sound as of hospital bed-hinges being squelched beneath a particularly restless patient. Snape, Harry thinks with a surge of warmth, and he can feel his heart beating in his ears even as he hears a scoff and a softly voiced, "Hardly. But you must admit it is still a surprise to hear such words, after all these years . . ."
The headmistress huffs, partly out of offence, partly understanding. Harry wonders whether she has told Snape of his demotion by the Hogwarts Board. Somehow, although Harry doubts Snape wanted to be headmaster in the first place, he thinks the news will come as a blow.
"So . . . Potter . . . he is dead as well."
"Whatever gives you that idea? The boy has been here day and night; he was the one who found you, after all. Doubtless he'll be sorely disappointed to have missed your grand awakening . . . I dare say, Severus, you look as though the boy really had died! What in Merlin's name is wrong? I . . . this was too much information at once, of course you're overwhelmed. Here, lie back a little."
"Potter is alive?"
The white hangings separating Snape from the rest of the hospital wing seem to resonate with astonishment. Harry shifts his weight between his feet. From the sound of it, Snape doesn't remember all those times Harry read to him or held his hand. With all probability, the mere sight of Harry alive would instantly send him back into a near-death state . . .
"Of course he's alive, how else would he have slain Voldemort?" McGonagall snorts, and Harry thinks he can hear the crinkling of a pillow being soundly fluffed and stuffed beneath Snape's head. "Where you do get your ideas, Severus Snape, I sometimes wonder. Now, stop working yourself up over nothing and settle back - there's a good lad. I'll send Poppy over to check on you in a moment."
There is the clicking of flat heels against stone, the rustling of rough cloth being pushed aside, and then the headmistress emerges from Snape's makeshift room. Her eyebrows rise at the sight of Harry - quickly, she snaps the hangings together and gestures at him to follow her to the other end of the nearly empty wing -
"How much of that did you hear?" she asks in a low voice, lips pursed.
"Just the bit towards the end." Harry grimaces. "I thought coma patients were supposed be aware of their surroundings . . ."
"Professor Snape is momentarily disoriented; hardly surprising, given his condition." McGonagall's eyes roam over Harry's face, stern and piercing. "Am I correct in assuming that you know why he thought you should be dead, Potter?"
Harry glances back at the hangings separating Snape from the world, feeling uncharitable all of a sudden. This is not something he wants to explain, especially not to the headmistress. "Dumbledore," he bites out.
"Ah," says McGonagall, and she seems to have figured out a great deal of what Harry has left out on her own, for her green eyes are gleaming. "Very well then, Potter. I would suggest you give Professor Snape some time to grow used to the idea of your continued existence before confirming it in the flesh. I'm sure he'll get over the shock soon enough, but you know how he can be when treading unfamiliar ground."
Harry jerks out another nod.
(He doesn't want to wait, however. Harry wants to see Snape, wants to sort out the things between them now before the new foundations of all he's been working to build up this past month are shaken down by old habit and old grudges. Besides, Snape needs to know that Harry followed the instructions left in his memories. Voldemort is really dead.)
"I'm glad we have an understanding," she says, eyes as reflective and unreadable as a cat's, it seems, before turning her back on him and heading towards Madam Pomfrey.
- - -
Harry waits from behind a pillar until McGonagall leaves - about five minutes - before returning to the hospital wing. He doesn't like disobeying her, but he can't let Snape think he's avoiding him, especially not after McGonagall herself went out and told him how Harry'd spent so much time at his bedside. And there are things Snape has to know, things he will never rest not knowing -
And this weight on Harry's chest -
This unnameable weight on his chest that only Hermione and Luna and perhaps Ron seem to understand and that even they find perturbing -
His step is buoyant, as though everything were falling into place, and yet his body is a jittering mass of nerves. He keeps clenching and unclenching his hands. There was a point where he'd contemplated taking off his glasses and using a spell to correct his vision just so Snape would see less of his dad in him, but then he'd decided that Snape can't be manipulated that way. Snape has only ever seen in Harry what he expects to see. Harry used to be the same in reverse, only that Snape's memories have made him warier of his own judgements. And so the glasses remain.
Besides, glasses are part of who he is. He's not his father just because he's near-sighted. Nor is he his mum. In fact, over the past month, after having watched and then brooded over Snape's memories nearly non-stop, Harry has come to the conclusion that he can't particularly identify with either of his parents. He loves them, yes. Just the thought of his mum is enough to start a pressure building in his throat . . . but. But they never had to make decisions quite like this.
He hopes - no, he needs Snape to understand him. His gut clenches merely at the thought, and his heartbeat grows wild.
Madam Pomfrey, thank God, is nowhere to be seen. Harry hastens towards Snape's enclave, pulling the hangings apart and securing himself behind them as quickly and noiselessly as he can. As an extra precaution (although he knows full well that only select people can enter and that privacy spells are up everywhere), he charms the hangings with the strongest silencing spell he knows.
And then he looks at Snape -
Who, tangled in sheets like a child playing fort, sweating copiously in the non-existent summer breeze, startles violently -
Harry barely has time to look before Snape enshrouds long, slender feet and the tattered hem of his single grey nightshirt beneath the bedcovers. He barely has time to look before Snape's wide-eyed expression of astonishment curdles like bad milk, his black hair whips around his head like a villain's cape, and his mouth twists into one of the ugliest scowls Harry has ever seen. "Potter!" he snarls, and it doesn't matter that he's clearly overheated and exhausted, or that Harry has been holding his hand every night for a month now - Harry is instantly angry -
And Snape's eyes flash with malice, his somewhat wan scowl giving way to thorny bared teeth and unblunted, gleeful disdain. "Speechless, are we, Potter?" he sneers, loftily arranging himself in a more comfortable position against his pillow. "I cannot imagine why - after all, you did so kindly leave me to expire in one of the most painful and undignified ways known to men -"
"I thought you were dead!"
"Obviously," Snape drawls out in the way that inevitably signals malicious amusement about to had at Harry's expense, "yes, clearly I must have been dead, otherwise we would not be having this . . . scintillating . . . conversation right now. How remiss of me, Potter, to have overlooked such a significant point of fact -"
"Look, I'm sorry I left you in the Shack - but how was I supposed to know you were alive?" Harry retorts. "Even Voldemort thought you were dead! Besides, as far as I could tell right then, you weren't just Dumbledore's murderer, you'd also betrayed my mum and dad to Voldemort -"
Snape hisses at the word mum, only to assume an apoplectic mien at Voldemort, but Harry refuses to be derailed. "Don't tell me you would have acted any differently in my shoes! Besides, you should be glad I didn't stop to help, 'cause that way you didn't have to break cover! I mean -"
Harry's jaw aches, the muscles cramping together painfully, but he doesn't care. He wants to yell his lungs out. This is not how he imagined their conversation panning out and yelling is how he smothers disappointment. And he has a few choice things to say to Snape, now that they're back to their old ways . . .
He opens his mouth, and his tongue glues itself to the roof.
Snape stares up at him, his eyes so bright and black the corneas seem to be made of thick, rippled glass. Harry stares back, unsure of what he is really seeing. Those aren't . . . tears, are they? Because tears, were they to come toppling out, would unsettle the imbalance between them in a way Harry can't even begin to contemplate. Suddenly Harry is quite ashamed, although he couldn't say why - it isn't as though Snape is actually crying. Snape probably hasn't cried since . . .
Harry feels his face beginning to warm. It doesn't help that Snape continues looking at him with perilously glittering eyes, his mouth twisted in an expression of such loathing - loathing that could just as well be directed at himself as at Harry.
Finally, Snape closes his eyes as though to ward off an incoming headache. Harry's tongue slowly unglues itself enough to speak.
"Snape . . ." Harry shuffles between his feet, noting how Snape's eyes mercifully remain closed. "I'm glad - I'm glad you survived. I would have hated myself if you'd actually died, now that I know about all the things you did for me."
Snape opens his eyes again, and Harry is instantly aware that he should have tried a different strategy, for this time their dark gleam is not only unrepentantly sinister, but worse: openly, unquestionably hostile. "About that, Potter," says Snape nastily, "I would be grateful if you told me what sort of Dark Magic you used to resurrect me from the grave. Who knows what sort of . . . deleterious . . . effects it might have . . ."
"What Dark Magic?" snaps Harry. "Besides, I thought we'd just established that I didn't lift a finger to help you!"
A murderous tic appears in Snape's jaw, prompting Harry to amend, "Though I would have, of course, had I known -"
"You are lying, Potter." Snape's tone was the iciest Harry had ever heard it. "Soon after you and your little friends left me to perish in a pool of my own blood, I did die. And remained dead for several minutes, at least, before your foolish necromancy compelled me back to life." Harry can feel his jaw drop, and Snape must notice it too, for he snarls, "I know what I felt, boy, and it was plainly your magic that was responsible -"
"Then you're imagining things!" Harry explodes, feeling vaguely sick at the thought of a necromancy spell. As though Inferi weren't bad enough . . . the thought of half-eaten corpses rising from the grave . . .
Snape looks as though he might throttle him. Stomach still crawling at the thought of the undead, Harry says loudly, "I'm sorry, but that's how it is. After you gave me your memories - you've got them all back, by the way, did you notice? - I didn't waste a second before going off to die myself. Believe it or not, I went out and did exactly what I was supposed to do. It wasn't until after Voldemort killed me - well, he actually killed his Horcrux, which is why I didn't really die -"
Snape stares at him with such a mixture of irritation and consternation that his face seems even uglier than usual, which in turn makes Harry think that he isn't explaining very well. "Your doe only found me after it was all over," he tries again. "I had no idea that you were alive until she showed up. Honest. And I definitely don't know any necromancy spells. Though, now that I think of it, I'll bet - anything - Malfoy does. Maybe he cast the spell - or maybe it was his dad." Harry shudders. "Yeah, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it must have been his dad -"
"You know very well that the Malfoys weren't in the slightest way involved," snaps Snape. He is no longer looking at Harry, sneering instead at the hangings around his bed. He looks absent, almost, or concentrated, as though trying to call up a memory . . .
Harry is fairly certain that Snape has gotten some aspect of his story wrong - if not the bits about necromancy, then definitely the part about Lucius Malfoy. After all, he'd been near the scene, hadn't he? Harry's head fills with disturbing images of Malfoy, murmuring incantations, bent over Snape's bled-out corpse . . .
Could Snape have died? Is he really alive?
Harry feels rather sick now, as though someone had punched a pronged fork through the lining of his gut. Swallowing, he tries to think of something, anything else. He finds his gaze wandering over Snape's vaguely sneering face, and breathing in a sigh of relief.
Snape is gaunt, too gaunt, and fine droplets of sweat have amassed above his lips and at the crown of his brow. The hair Madam Pomfrey has been heroically trying to keep clean is matted at places and frizzy at others. His skin, pulled so tightly over his skull that Harry wonders whether it hurts or feels unpleasantly stretched all the time, has a generally clammy and greenish-pale appearance that also reminds Harry of the time Aunt Petunia was horribly seasick. The shadowed depressions of his cheeks, the swollen red ridges of his eyes, and the uncommonly severe lines dragging alongside his mouth only secure the image in Harry's mind - so that for a moment, he can even envision Snape on a boat that smells overpoweringly of seaweed and barnacles and salt - Snape in his threadbare robes, exhausted and eroded and swaying dangerously on his feet -
He looks away before Snape can catch him daydreaming. "Why do you think you were dead? You didn't -" He hesitates. "You didn't see Dumbledore, did you?"
Snape twitches and slowly turns to stare angrily at Harry. "I did," he says in a menacing tone that just dares Harry to contradict him.
Harry is not about to contradict him; he is, in fact, too busy coming to terms with the fact that Snape actually died. He swallows, hard. "That's odd. He didn't mention seeing you when I was there."
"I did not speak to him," says Snape significantly, lifting his chin and narrowing his eyes. Harry does not understand the gleam to them now; it speaks neither of hatred nor anger nor sorrow. If anything, there is something at once satisfied and expectant about the way Snape's eyes continue to probe Harry's face. "There, Potter," he says, quiet and smug and fixated on Harry, "I believe we have established the fact of my death. Unlike your eminent self, I was not . . . empowered, shall we say, with a means of returning from the beyond. Ergo, I could not be here now without your having performed some seriously misguided spell."
"I wish you'd stop harping on about that," Harry says, but the annoyance has gone out of him. Indeed, Harry is rather tempted to sit down in his usual chair beside Snape's bed and gather up Snape's bony hand in his own. Talking about death makes him eager for comfort, even the meagre comfort represented by Snape, he supposes. And given what they both have experienced of death . . . "You make it sound like it's a crime for you to be alive."
"I await my escort to Azkaban at any moment," says Snape, but he sounds more sarcastic than resigned, and his eyes, while hooded, have not yet ceased their exhaustive perusal of Harry's face.
"You're not going to Azkaban," says Harry with a touch of impatience. He looks at the tempting chair, thinks about what scathing things Snape might say, then grits his teeth and strides over. Snape's eyebrows are climbing into his hairline, although it's unclear what his astonishment is due to: the announcement or the fact that Harry, despite much gnashing of teeth, is willingly standing right next to him.
"How is that?" Snape drawls, dark eyes now riveted on Harry, who grinds his teeth again for good measure, then plops into the chair.
Harry glowers at the water jug positioned on the nearby bedside table in an attempt to undermine Snape's eerily intense scrutiny. "Kingsley's taken care of everything," he says, and cannot help but glance at Snape for his reaction. He gets nothing but that skin-crawling stare. Harry feels his brow furrowing as he continues, "There was a trial, you know. I testified on your behalf and they dropped all charges. You've also got an Order of Merlin, Second Class. Sorry I couldn't get them to agree to a First. And the Board has given their permission for you to teach at Hogwarts again, if you really want, although I for one would definitely understand if you told them just to piss off . . ."
Harry is discomposed, to say the least, when he fails to provoke a single reaction out of Snape. Even the mention of his Order of Merlin, Second Class does nothing to rile up any of the expected pleasure or spite. Instead, which is even more discomposing, Snape's attention has remained unremittingly directed on Harry - lingering on his throat and his mouth and especially his eyes. Reflecting on this fact only makes it worse and somehow all the more exciting. Harry can feel the hair on his arms standing on end and his palms growing sweaty and itchy against his jeans. Of course, the explanation for Snape's behaviour is probably not the one Harry is hoping for. The earth would probably have to come to a standstill for that to happen . . . Undoubtedly, Snape is just looking for signs of Lily in Harry's face.
Harry digs his fingers into his knees, suddenly rather keenly feeling the pressure of being compared to a parent, yet again.
God, why doesn't Snape seem to care about his Order of Merlin? And why won't he stop looking at him?
It is therefore with some considerable relief on Harry's part when Snape finally turns his gaze to other objects in the room. The tension that has left Harry, however, seems to have settled in between Snape's deeply depressed shoulders. "Where is my wand?"
"In here." Eager to dispel the atmosphere between them, Harry leans forward and energetically opens a drawer in the table bearing the water jug. He does not notice Snape reaching in for his wand until their hands are practically touching.
Snape frowns and swats him away -
Harry thinks he hears a crackling sound and feels a shock, as if an electric spark had just shot between their fingers -
Jerking back in dismay, Harry pushes as far into his chair and away from Snape as possible. That has definitely never happened to him before, he thinks over his pounding heart. That should never, ever happen again. (Especially as it only serves to confirm that Harry is, for lack of a better word, screwed.) Bloody hell, what was that?
Sneaking a glance upward, Harry immediately forgets his consternation at having never forged an electrical connection with Ginny before - Harry forgets his consternation over the even more distressing sight of Snape completely engrossed by his wand - as though nothing extraordinary had just taken place! Could Harry have merely imagined . . .?
Well, Harry is not going to make a fool of himself by asking that question aloud. After all, Snape is rather skilled at using denial to make Harry look like an idiot or a liar. No, the only way to get Snape to tell the truth about something like this is to force the situation - to make him acknowledge its truth, so to speak -
Narrowing his eyes with determination, Harry sneaks his hand forward and grabs one of Snape's - just as if it were a Snitch. It flutters and pulses and attempts to escape him just as a Snitch would, as well.
But Harry has never held a Snitch as electrifying as Snape's hand. Why didn't he realise this before, when Snape was still pleasantly unconscious?
"Potter!" Snape is twitching madly against Harry, his wand slipping from nervous fingers onto the bedcovers.
"What?" Harry retorts, gently gathering those thin, elongated fingers (with long nails whose oval form he has spent many a night admiring) and their arched palm to his chest. "We do this all the time. I hold your hand a few hours a day, or have you forgotten? Madam Pomfrey says it's good for healing."
"Surely you do not believe in such nonsense," snarls Snape, trying to free his hand without success, the clear effect of muscle atrophy from a month's lack of exercise. "Get off, Potter," he snaps, trembling now, and Harry gets a good look at his eyes - wider than he has ever seen them, the whites literally gleaming with panic. Unfortunately, as Harry well knows, Snape has a tendency to respond to panic with anger. "This is a new low even for you, Potter," he hisses furiously, wrist snapping like a dying fish, fingers scraping, scratching Harry's palm. "Let go of me at once, and I may be inclined to overlook your little lapse - are you listening, Potter?" Snape snorts unpleasantly. "Clearly, death has not improved you by a whit . . . Very well then, Potter, consider yourself warned. I am not above helping you gain a reputation for having molested a teacher -"
Harry decides to tune Snape out. In a repeat experiment with electric shock, he lightly runs a finger against Snape's palm. The result is anything but disappointing: this time, he can feel the way Snape's already straining muscles tense - see the way his already dilated eyes seem to grow even larger and darker - the way the blood seems to drain from his already sickly face . . .
"Potter," Snape says in a dangerously quiet voice. Harry is shocked to realise that both of them have gone completely still, an effect, however, that Snape completely ruins by resuming his futile attempts to free his hand. "I will only say this once more. Unhand me."
"This could be crucial to your recov-"
"Before I hex you, Potter!"
"Fine, fine," grumbles Harry, opening his hand. He expects Snape to withdraw his hand immediately. What he doesn't expect is for Snape to have the strength to suddenly grab him by the collar and drag him, choking, up to his eye-level -
Snape's fingers flex and flutter against Harry's throat. He's not all that strong, Harry senses. Just the attempt to crush Harry's oesophagus is taking the wind out of him . . .
"Try another stunt like that again," Snape mutters, "and I will make you live to regret it . . ."
There is a throbbing vein about to pop in Snape's brow, Harry notices in between painfully constricted breaths. He also looks a bit deranged with his crooked teeth bared and his enormous nostrils flaring wide and his eyes, shot through with yellow patches and broken red veins, practically dilated to the limit. It's not the best look on him . . . but Harry finds it strangely exciting anyway.
"Potter! Are you listening, Potter? I mean every word I say . . . try something like that with me again, and you will come to deeply regret having crossed Severus Snape . . ."
Harry closes his eyes and succumbs to the stranglehold, but only because that's the best angle with which to lean his forehead against Snape's. The spark, he notes with dizzy satisfaction, is unmistakeable this time -
Snape yelps, shrinking back from Harry like a rumpled blackbird with trembling, bulging eyes.
"Did you feel it?" Harry gasps.
Snape shakes his head, eyes still wide with shock. "You are insane," he breathes.
Harry needs a moment to regain control of his breathing before he can speak again, but he gestures wildly at Snape's hand.
"It's good for both of us," he says, "even if you don't remember." And when Snape's lip curls with disbelief, Harry tells him what Hermione and Madam Pomfrey have so often explained: "It helped with your recovery. Madam Pomfrey said so. And as for me - it makes me feel grounded, I suppose. Like I'm useful."
"Insane," Snape repeats, and yet Harry thinks he can see an echo of himself in those eyes.
"Please?" Harry asks, pointedly scooting off the bed - Snape had dragged him over the edge in his attempt to intimidate him - and back onto the chair, but keeping his hand extended. "I won't touch you again - not if you really don't want me to."
Snape eyes him warily as he carefully re-arranges himself against the pillow and smoothes down the covers.
"See to it that you don't," he sniffs.
Harry gazes forlornly at the hands now picking away imaginary lint from the covers. Slender bones hammer up against the skin as Snape moves his fingers with a precision that reminds Harry of the exposed, splintered mallets in Mrs Figg's piano. "I should have known you'd be the same," he sighs.
"Had I realised the depths to which you have sunk, I would have had you thrown out of here," Snape says coldly.
"What's wrong with a bit of hand-holding?" Harry retorts. "It helped you loads while you were unconscious."
"At that point, I was unaware that you -"
"So you do remember something!" Harry exclaims, ready to cling to anything that could prove that some things, at least, have changed between them.
"I certainly remember being dragged back from the afterlife against my will, forced to obey the call of your magic!" Snape spits. "Yes, Potter - your magic. Can you imagine the agony I felt at finding myself once again alive on the floor of the Shrieking Shack, knowing it was you who had summoned me?" Snape's voice drops so that it is barely above a whisper. "Surely it is not beyond the grasp of your imagination, Potter, to envision what it must have been like for me, believing you had either failed to understand or wilfully ignored my dying message . . . believing I had failed utterly, and in so doing damned the entire wizarding world -"
"Of course I can imagine what you must have felt - I can imagine it all too well, thanks very much! How do you think I felt all the time?" shouts Harry past the lump building in his throat.
For a moment, Snape seems taken aback, and retreats slightly beneath the covers. His gaze, however, continues to search Harry's face with eyes that glitter malice and disdain and possibly something else . . . something desperate, perhaps.
Harry stares back, feeling desperate himself. Then, unable to take the scrutiny any longer, he bows his head and says, "Sorry. I do realise that not everything's about me. I know you had an awful time of it, Snape. I'm sorry."
Snape is back to sitting up straight, his mouth curled with disgust. "I do not need your pity," he snaps. "I want answers, Potter - answers! You must tell me what spell you used, and how long - how long I will be forced to bear this mortal coil before I am fated to move beyond the veil once more!"
"Snape, I don't know." Harry senses that it would be a bad idea to let Snape think too much about this, despite his growing belief that a certain stone may have been involved in Snape's resurrection, so he rushes ahead to belabour an old point. "But - just indulge me this once - give me your hand for a minute, would you?"
Black eyes narrow suspiciously. Harry thinks he sees something shift in their depths, and is inclined to describe it as a resurfacing of panic, even though he's hardly ever read Snape right before. "Please," Harry stresses, hoping his sincerity is clearly written across his face.
"If it will make you more inclined to answer my questions . . ." Snape says in a strangled voice. He makes a show of reluctantly placing a hand on the edge of the bed. Harry smiles and covers it with his own, much smaller palm and squarish fingers.
"Thanks."
Snape shoots him an annoyed look. "Is there a valid reason you wanted my hand, or am I to be subjected to further rubbish about naturopathic healing?"
Harry squeezes the hand beneath his. "Do I feel real, Snape?"
Snape makes a gagging sound.
"Well?"
"I have no inclination to play this game," Snape says icily, his entire arm vibrating with tension. "Whatever schemes you're hatching, Potter - either spit them out, or give me my hand back right now."
"It's just . . ." Harry skates his palm along Snape's lean fingers, enjoying their length and willowy, elongated shape. Snape's hands . . . they have a strange kind of beauty, like slender spiders dancing on webs. "If you weren't really alive, I doubt that you could feel this. I've summoned spirits before. You can't touch them, and you definitely can't put them in a coma or feed them or even look them in the eye the way I can look at you. I tend to think . . . whatever brought you back, you weren't entirely dead when it happened."
For several moments, there is no sound but for the slight rasp of Snape's breathing (the wound on his neck is not entirely healed, despite being covered by a thick, unnaturally shiny pink scar) and the faint filing of skin grazing against skin.
Harry smiles at their hands. "This is nice."
Snape's fingers twitch in response. Harry looks up and is astonished to see a faint trace of red climbing up that long, sallow neck. Intrigued, Harry tries to meet Snape's eyes, but they always seem to dart out of reach whenever Harry tries to pin them down.
"Are you quite finished?" Snape spits out after one more of these failed attempts, his now-reddened face twisted with mockery and misery and something else Harry has to guess at, but would probably peg as self-loathing if asked.
Harry shifts in his chair, wary. "Dunno. You?"
"I don't know what to make of this farce, Potter," he snarls, face turning sallow once more. The effect is remarkably ugly, and would have undoubtedly disgusted Harry at an earlier point in his life.
"It's not a farce," says Harry, privately reminding himself that he isn't that boy anymore. "I know what you're trying to do, by the way. It's not going to work."
Snape scowls. "I have no idea what you are babbling about, Potter. Just what do you think I am trying to do? Other than attempting to pry the information that is my due from your fantastically warped and infantile mind?"
"If information were all you really wanted, you'd just use Legilmency," Harry points out, ignoring the deepening of Snape's scowl. He licks his lips and squeezes Snape's hand, as raw-boned and twiggy as a scarecrow's, then says with all the conviction and wisdom he can muster: "You can try and hide all you want - you can try and disguise yourself all you want. But you won't be able to make me hate you."
"How very touching," says Snape with a sneer, looking as though he deeply regrets ever having surrendered one of his limbs to Harry. "I'm sure I'll remember this conversation once you've left Hogwarts with your little friends."
Harry blinks. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Snape glares, finally meeting Harry's eyes. "You are thick," he says in a voice heavy with disgust. And then he is somehow sliding his hand out from under Harry's. Harry tries to hold him down at first, but then Snape curses -
The water jug explodes on its own, showering Harry with a shock-cloud of dust and unpleasantly cool liquid -
Shaken, Harry pulls pieces of jug out of his hair and from his shoulders. His limbs are trembling and there's a small gash in his upper arm and he can't quite bring himself to look at Snape. "What was that for?" he asks finally, quietly.
There is no immediate answer. Harry makes the mistake of glancing up.
Snape sneers at him, completely unapologetic, and Harry thinks his heart will stop at the sight, there is such accusation and loathing and malicious glee twisted into the lines of Snape's face. "You'll live," he says in a scathing voice. "Now, get out."
And Harry does nearly turn to go, partly because he is soaked to the bone and covered in itchy, pulverised bits of blue glazed porcelain, but mostly because Snape is being an utter arse. Something tells him to hold his ground, however.
Snape's face twists even further, so that he fairly resembles a yellow-toothed, underfed rat. "Idiot. I said to leave."
Harry shakes his head against the pain building up in his throat, the pain of being kicked in the teeth. "Why?"
"Because I can't stand the sight of you, that's why," sneers Snape, and his tone is so perfectly, so thoroughly hateful that Harry doesn't even stop to think about the possible reason. He curls a trembling lip in real disgust, breathes hard against his constricting throat, and spins on his heel to march away -
The mostly-intact handle of the jug lands against the hangings with a powerful thud. "And don't even think of coming back!"
Harry is too infuriated to reply.
- - -
"What's gotten into you, mate?" Ron asks, wiping soot and sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. Harry can't help but feel a pang of guilt whenever he thinks about all the work Ron - and Seamus and Dean and Neville and Luna and Ginny and . . . well everyone but himself, really - has been putting into helping re-build the castle. Harry himself only ever comes down to help when Snape gets other visitors, such as the Malfoys. His only reason for being here now is that Snape is . . . is . . .
He kicks at a sharply curved stone with the toe of his trainers, imagining it to be Snape's nose. "I'm just tired."
"Yeah?" Ron squints at him, not so easily fooled. His lips twist to one side, a mark of disapproval that never fails to make Harry squirm inwardly. "You were visiting him again, weren't you."
Harry stops kicking in order to turn his glare on Ron. "Not this again."
Ron steps close enough to lower his voice and still be heard above the construction work. "You've got to stop this, Harry. It's not healthy. Obsessing about your mum . . . I mean, I can see how it would be a shock, learning that Snape fancied her, of all people -"
"Ron!" Harry exclaims, stunned. "That's not it at all!"
"Oh," says Ron, rubbing a red spot on his arm without the slightest trace of sheepishness. "Well, what is it, then? Ginny reckons it had to be your mum - Snape being the last person who really knew her, and all, and then with the way you kept sneaking off to have a look at that Pensieve -"
"Ginny's the one obsessed with my mum." Harry scowls. "I should never have let her see Snape's memories. Also, Ron? This may be news to you, but I returned them ages ago."
Ron frowns at Harry's critical mention of Ginny - such mentions have been growing rather frequent lately, especially since Hermione's mediating influence Portkeyed off to Australia - but after a moment of hesitation, he braves a smile and claps Harry on the arm. "Well, I suppose you'd tell us what's bothering you if it were really important. We're all worried about you, though, Harry - Ginny especially."
"Thanks," says Harry darkly. He glares over his shoulder at the group of students levitating blocks of stone to form a wall, searching for long trails of carrot red hair. "Where is Ginny, anyway?"
Ron squints and scratches a spot behind his ear. "The greenhouses, maybe? I think I saw her going off with Luna and Neville."
"Right," Harry says, angry for reasons he isn't inclined to inspect and rather itching to take it all out on Ginny. How dare she give Ron a distorted account of Harry's . . . feelings for his mum? She doesn't even understand Lily - or him, Harry is beginning to suspect. "Well, I'm going to find her."
". . . OK," says Ron doubtfully. "Er, see you later then."
"Later," Harry says, storming off without a backward glance.
- - -
(Ginny snuck out to see the memories too: once, officially, with Harry, and then other times when she knew she wouldn't be missed. When Harry said he was returning them to Snape, she'd snuck out for the last time. Desperation and admiration and confusion had warred in her as she'd tried to manipulate the Pensieve into giving her what she wanted.
Lily was flirting with James and secretly laughing at Snape and Ginny was so filled with understanding and disgust - who knew what Harry got up to with Snape, all those times he came to see him - that she tried to meld with Lily, to stand in for her in a way. Harry's mother had crept through her mouth and limbs like an immaterial eel, weightless and yet somehow depositing the sediment of self-disgust on her tongue. Ginny had not quite recovered, not quite managed to move out of Lily's space when she told Snivellus to wash his pants.)
- - -
Part II
Author: Caecelia (verdeckt)
Betas:: SO many thanks to accioslash and atdelphi for your invaluable advice; I learned so much from you both. ♥ Any remaining mistakes are my own.
Other pairings/threesome: Ron/Hermione
Rating: light R
Word count: 18,553
Warning(s): Harry is not quite 18.
SPOILERS/What you are fixing: (highlight for spoilers) *Snape does not exactly die. He is also ugly and somewhat deranged.*
Summary: Harry thinks he knows what he wants. Snape is unwilling to oblige him.
A/N: Written for my dear friend o_mayari.
as the wind behaves
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -
Not that final meeting
{from T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men}
The path leading from the Shrieking Shack into the Forbidden Forest is unmarked. Once he leaves the vandalised railway tracks (nearly collapsing over twisted rails and splintered, blackened timber sleepers) he has to hack one out himself. Through the overgrowth he stumbles, through weeds high and thick enough to resist every forward step, spiteful weeds that foist sharp and sticky pods onto his robes and leave vengeful scratches on his hands as he slashes them, as he careens forward and clumsily crushes them down. Sectumsempra over and over, again and again. Sweets wrappers in Honeydukes colours flutter betwixt the yellow stalks, bright and glittering reminders of youthful delusions and failed responsibilities - Sectumsempra. The severed stalks and the freed wrappers shoot in every direction, some reprovingly swatting him in the face, but he ignores them in favour of scissoring himself a path. To the forest -
To the boy - the boy -
(Severus clutches his ribs, feeling his own erratic heartbeat, trying to squeeze the constricting pain out of his chest. He gags on air that reeks of blubbery, congealed globs of blood and venom and the noisome sorcery that is surely responsible for his continued existence on this miserable plane.)
He thinks he can already feel the chill of forest magic, the damp, benighted earth pervaded with worms, minerals, ancient rowans, oaks and pines - He thinks he can smell spoiled berries, musky droppings, the ineluctable stench of general rot - His pace quickens as the shadows lengthen, as the trees draw him into their cold embrace -
Finally - an end to those bloody weeds -
He finds himself in a clearing, gasping. Black spots emerging before his eyes and his knees giving in - a tree; he braces himself against it. A fallen trunk, slathered with stained, decomposed leaves. When he lifts away his hands, it is to find them covered in a strangely glutinous sludge, the wounds on them stinging.
Severus inhales sharply, applying grimy forefinger and thumb to his eyes as though he could just press the dizziness away. He pushes his eyes almost through to his skull, fighting against the numbness fishing its way up his spine. His legs seem to have lost their capacity for feeling . . . Perhaps he should rest. But only for a moment . . . He merely . . . needs a moment to . . . breathe. He will find . . . the boy. The boy who left him . . . to rot . . . who knows how much he understood . . . whether he is prepared for his task . . .
Snape is sliding down to his knees, black silence slithering past his ears and eyes and nose . . . He shakes his head against the onslaught, a slow, painful pull of tendons and swivel of bone against bone; he attempts to think. There are not many pleasant memories left to him, but . . . he still knows where to dredge them up. Perverse though they may be, perhaps they will save a life. Lives . . .
"Expecto Patronum," he says, nearly choking when the silver doe writhes out of his wand. He sees her slender haunches rippling in the gloom before she bounds away. There is no need for him to give her a message, he thinks dizzily, resting his head on the blighted soft bark of the tree. She is the essence of what must be said. She is -
He closes his eyes and -
- - -
"I knew it," he whispers.
The doe nods gravely, as though imparting a great secret, before vanishing into a point of light that pulls at his heart as it, too, ebbs and dims.
"Oh," says Hermione in the relative darkness, her voice small.
From where Ron has been lagging behind comes the answering snap of a twig.
Harry exhales. Inhales too quickly, because he is confused. Then he lifts up his illuminated wand and squints down at what it reveals: the rail-thin figure of a man splayed over a wasted tree, his lower body submerged in a mud puddle and his face frighteningly pale beneath layers of grime, beneath snarled, greasy strands of long black hair that run in serpentine trails down his neck, where - Harry feels his hand beginning to shake - it suddenly becomes shiny and wet and - Harry's wand is slipping down to point -
- at his feet.
He stares at his trainers for a moment, trying to ease his breath, and looks up to see Hermione braving a step forward. The steep forest ground squelches beneath her feet and seems generally untrustworthy; she keeps glancing down and holding onto rocks in order to maintain her balance. Harry finds himself following the unsteady gaze of her Lumos spell, despite the inevitability with which it slowly traces over that hair and down to the grisly wound on Snape's - oh God. Harry looks away again, his chest so tight with guilt and horror, and - he can't breathe, he has to run a hand through his hair and take in several biting, cold shots of air.
Hermione has come to a halt in front of Snape. She glances back at Harry, inclining her head for him to come closer. As though this were something he should see. Harry knows that she's right, even as the horror courses through him, so he grinds his teeth and strides forward, navigating by instinct through a maze of roots and around the hulk of the fallen tree until he can squat down next to Snape. For a moment he simply huddles there, overwhelmed. It occurs to him that he should be checking for a pulse, but then he imagines what might happen were Snape to awaken and see Harry touching him . . .
Ron clears his throat. "Be careful, Harry. We don't know it's really him, after all. He could be a vampire or some kind of dodgy forest spirit or an Inferius, for all we know."
"He's not an Inferius, Ron." The very idea irritates Harry more than he can say - it reminds him of Defence lessons that had been written with Horcruxes in mind - makes a bitter fluid seep up from his stomach into his throat, because the evidence was all there, because he should have known -
Because he'd left Snape to die, and if he had been turned into an Inferius, it would have partly been Harry's own fault -
And suddenly Harry couldn't care less what Snape might think or what Ron might say or what conclusions Hermione might draw. He reaches out and pokes Snape in the shoulder. The fabric there seems almost to disintegrate beneath his touch; he thinks he can feel bone beneath the decomposing threads. "Sir? Can you hear me, sir?"
Snape, stiff and seemingly lifeless, manages to set Harry's sense of panic aflame. Harry is shaking his entire shoulder now and even warring with the idea of whether or not to put his hand on Snape's chest -
"He's definitely alive," announces Hermione with a (depressingly) confident flick of her wand, and all of a sudden Harry is self-conscious again and recoiling, resting back on his heels. Several sparkling streams - coloured silver and blue and red - are swirling around Snape's head and heart and lungs and back to her wand again. Another flick of her wand ends the diagnostic spell, and she glances at Harry, expression tense. "We need to get him back to the castle. Quickly."
"But -" Ron comes up from behind her, his face still wan from weeping most of the day and screwed up in puzzlement. "This doesn't make any sense. We saw him die, for Merlin's sake."
"Appearances can be deceiving," says Hermione briskly, transfiguring a twig into a floating stretcher.
"I don't get it either," Harry admits, running a hand through his hair and rising to his feet. He looks down at Snape - so unearthly and shrunken in this light and from this angle - and remembers a little boy stretched out in the shade of a tree, his face reflecting the brightness of a red-headed girl and consumed with happiness and hope. Harry could use a bit of that hope, now that he no longer knows what to make of his life. "Mobilicorpus," he says dully, levitating Snape onto the stretcher.
Without the doe to guide them, it is easy to feel crushed by the forest's sinister quiet. They wander for what seems like hours through the trees and thorns, jumpily wary of rogue Death Eaters and giants and werewolves . . . what a relief to finally see the castle, decimated though it is, defiantly luminescent against the starless sky . . .
"Let's just hope that Kingsley believed your story, Harry," Ron says. Harry grimaces, suddenly feeling as though he were a pig and Ron's words a carving knife. "Otherwise there'll be Aurors swarming the place, looking for Snape. They'll want him as a scapegoat, you know."
"Well, they can't have him," snaps Harry. Hermione glances at him sharply. Ron, for his part, looks away.
But then they never saw the memories. Harry glances down at the figure floating beside him on the stretcher and reaches out to (briefly) squeeze its hand. Withered to the bone and as icy as the depths of the Black Lake, it leaves a gritty slime on his palm, but Harry doesn't mind. It reminds him that Snape is alive, and it reminds him of his mum, always so near and so far - of Narcissa, whispering in his ear, saving his life as he played dead in the mud. He was reborn in the forest, motherless, anchorless as the fallen leaves . . .
He squeezes Snape's hand again and looks up at the lights of the castle. "Let's go," he says.
- - -
He wants to check up on Snape, is itching to see him, in fact, but his friends are intent on giving him advice.
"Make sure to talk a lot and hold his hand," says Hermione, swatting at a loose strand of fuzzy hair that keeps bouncing in her face. "That's what I did, and it was very helpful."
"Hermione, this is the greasy git we're talking about, not your favourite uncle." Ron shudders. "Harry can't hold his hand! Just say a few words in case he can hear you and go, mate," he adds.
"Physical contact is an essential aid to recovery," says Hermione loftily, pushing the irritating strand behind her ear. "Do try to appreciate how terribly isolating it is to be stuck in a coma, Ronald. Also, I hardly think that holding Professor Snape's hand for a few minutes amounts to such a great chore, considering all his years of sacrifice for Harry. Wouldn't you agree, Harry?"
Harry clenches, then unclenches his hand. "Yeah," he says. "Guys, thanks for the advice, but -"
"See," says Ron smugly, "Harry doesn't like your idea either."
Hermione turns on Ron, eyes narrowed. "Must you always be so deliberately unhelpful -"
"Guys!" Harry is nearly shouting. "I'll see you later, OK?"
Hermione gives him an understanding, if long-suffering look, while Ron grimaces at him in well-meant commiseration. Then they turn back to each other and continue their argument.
Harry shakes his head. He sets out for the infirmary at a brisk pace that soon becomes a full-out run.
Madam Pomfrey's stern expression may waver upon his arrival, but otherwise she does not appear particularly surprised to see him. She presses today's Daily Prophet into his hand. "You may read to him if you like," she says, leading him to the last bed in the hospital wing. Harry feels his skin prickle as they pass, first, through an invisible layer of wards, then through a set of eerily floating white hangings.
The air is overly warm and stagnant, barely stirred by the listless summer breeze. Harry grinds his teeth. The combined smell of sweetish powder and acrid cleaning spells is unpleasantly cloying. He feels a headache coming.
He gazes down at Snape, almost fully encased in tightly drawn, heavily starched sheets. His black hair has been cleaned of dead things and dried blood, and thick, limp strands of it lie draped over his shoulders. There is a vile-smelling ochre-brown poultice encircling his neck. His face has been washed and shaved, but reminds Harry of the mummified Cornish hen his Muggle teacher had once brought to class for a lesson about Ancient Egypt. Snape's face has the same sallow colour, the same dried-out, brittle, disquieting qualities as the hen, Harry thinks.
He glances at Madam Pomfrey, who has come round to adjust the poultice. Fluid the colour and consistency of iodine begins to seep out and soak into the collar of Snape's nightshirt. Harry looks away, feeling his stomach crawl.
"That should do it," says Madam Pomfrey after a moment. Harry starts, feeling caught.
He unfolds the newspaper with a snap. "Should I read to him?"
"I think he would appreciate that, yes."
Harry gulps in a breath before moving around the bed to sit in a chair positioned at Snape's side. He looks down at the newspaper without seeing the headlines, then up at Madam Pomfrey.
She nods encouragingly, skirts rustling as she turns away from him. Harry can hear the scratch of linen parting as she passes through the hangings.
Slightly rattled by the concept of being left alone with Snape, even a Snape suspended in a magical coma, Harry spends several dead seconds staring at a grainy, oversized photograph of himself. BOY-WHO-LIVED DEFEATS HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED reads the caption. He flips to the second and third page and scoffs at an article titled HARRY POTTER'S UNSUNG ACTS OF HEROISM, only to be stopped short by HARRY POTTER - MOST DANGEROUS WIZARD ALIVE? Scowling, Harry shakes the paper open to the following pages - then shakes it again, flipping past photographs of Hermione and Luna and Ron and Neville, interviews with McGonagall and Flitwick and Slughorn and - here he pauses to frown - Lucius Malfoy. There follows a cramped, nearly black page containing the names and photographs of the dead - an even more cramped and inky page with the mug shots of Death Eaters and other suspected criminals still on the run. Frustrated, Harry turns to another page. He finds himself staring at an unflattering photograph of Snape, his hair scruffy and flying all over the place, his uneven teeth bared threateningly at the camera -
Panic grips at Harry and he ends up flinging the paper to the ground. "Rubbish," he says. "All of it."
He looks up from the discarded paper, but Snape remains as lifeless as he had been when Harry had found him sprawled, limbs peculiarly askew, over a dead tree. "I won't let them get you," he vows.
Silence.
"I won't," he says, more loudly.
Snape doesn't even twitch. Curious, Harry inches the chair closer to the bed. "Thanks for everything," he says experimentally, peering at Snape's bandaged throat, then his slim, just-parted lips. He tries to imagine Snape's reaction. Probably he'd be insulted. "I know you didn't do it for me. I . . ." He trails off suddenly. "This is stupid. You probably can't even hear me."
For a long, irritated moment, Harry simply gazes down at Snape's closed eyes. The lashes are surprisingly straight and long, like a child's. Harry shifts in the chair, brows furrowing together. "I wish you could scowl or something. At least then I would know you were listening."
He looks up at the ceiling, as though seeking patience or advice, then back down at Snape's jagged profile. Even more curious now, he rises halfway to his feet and extends a finger to lightly touch the tip of Snape's strongly curved nose. It's colder than he expected. Harry cocks his head, suddenly thoughtful. "It's weird that no one's found a way to communicate with coma patients yet. You'd think there'd be a potion or something." For a moment, he thinks of Snape prowling through a hushed, smoky classroom. Then he thinks of Slughorn, a pale walrus in a waistcoat, and remembers being constantly compared to his mother.
He thinks of the Half-Blood Prince, and moves his finger down to trace the ragged curve of one emaciated cheek. "I bet you could invent a potion like that," he says, not bothering to keep the admiration out of his voice. "Too bad you haven't already. It would be really useful right now."
Harry hesitates then, unable to think of anything else to say. Slowly, he sits back in the chair.
Perhaps he should just head back to his friends. This was a stupid idea, coming to visit Snape. Seeing him unconscious just makes Harry feel guilty and inadequate. And trying to talk to him in this state is a bloody pain.
Harry gets to his feet, and in doing so first notices Snape's right hand, laid out flat against the covers. He stops moving and stares. Harry has seen these hands many times before, covered in yellow stains, nicked with bruises, white with pressure from gripping a wand, but never has he seen them this clean. Even the nails, which had been packed with earth when Harry last saw them, last gripped them, have been cut back and washed. Without the grime Snape's fingers seem exquisitely slender. They are also somewhat crooked, as if they had been broken more than once.
He sits back down and -
When Madam Pomfrey returns some time later, Harry is dozing in the chair with newspaper pages drifting aimlessly over the floor and Snape's stiff hand held loosely in his own. Her arrival startles him into letting go.
She says nothing, merely running diagnostic spells over Snape. Cautiously, Harry stretches, blinking at her through unfocused eyes.
Eventually her eyes dart towards him, crinkled in a smile. "Well done, Mr Potter," she says.
Harry blinks again, then smiles back, feeling strangely warm.
- - -
(Harry liked to watch the memories at night, when the headmistress's office was murky and there was nothing but sense-memory and the feeble glow of his wand to guide him. Albus Dumbledore seemed both more and less present when his portrait was asleep. Harry sometimes thought he could see flashes of a silver beard and garish robes in the filmy glass doors of lacquered shelves, but a closer look revealed nothing but undusted curios and mouldy grimoires and the occasional still-wrapped lemon drop. He got a thrill out of it all the same.
Harry hated and avoided the memories with Dumbledore in them, but he came to know the ones of Snape's childhood so well they began to yield to him. One day, he found himself able to interact with the scenery. He was able to climb the tree sheltering Severus and Lily and watch the musical bob of their heads. He was able to sit between them amidst the leaves and marvel at the looks on their faces.
Once, he tried to touch them. The contact was fleeting - so brief that Harry would have thought it imagined, had his fingers not came away warm.
Harry stopped watching the memories soon after that. Somehow, it became clear to him that Snape . . . Snape was those memories. Giving them back - Snape still suspended in a coma, unable to comment as Harry gripped his hand and Madam Pomfrey guided silver strands to his temple - made Harry feel blistered with elation.)
- - -
He nearly runs into the infirmary when Madam Pomfrey sends him an owl with the news, only to come skidding to a halt at the sound of raised voices.
"- what do you mean, dead?"
"Potter defeated him, Severus . . . For Merlin's sake, don't give me that look - were you expecting someone else to do the honours?"
There is a faint creaking sound as of hospital bed-hinges being squelched beneath a particularly restless patient. Snape, Harry thinks with a surge of warmth, and he can feel his heart beating in his ears even as he hears a scoff and a softly voiced, "Hardly. But you must admit it is still a surprise to hear such words, after all these years . . ."
The headmistress huffs, partly out of offence, partly understanding. Harry wonders whether she has told Snape of his demotion by the Hogwarts Board. Somehow, although Harry doubts Snape wanted to be headmaster in the first place, he thinks the news will come as a blow.
"So . . . Potter . . . he is dead as well."
"Whatever gives you that idea? The boy has been here day and night; he was the one who found you, after all. Doubtless he'll be sorely disappointed to have missed your grand awakening . . . I dare say, Severus, you look as though the boy really had died! What in Merlin's name is wrong? I . . . this was too much information at once, of course you're overwhelmed. Here, lie back a little."
"Potter is alive?"
The white hangings separating Snape from the rest of the hospital wing seem to resonate with astonishment. Harry shifts his weight between his feet. From the sound of it, Snape doesn't remember all those times Harry read to him or held his hand. With all probability, the mere sight of Harry alive would instantly send him back into a near-death state . . .
"Of course he's alive, how else would he have slain Voldemort?" McGonagall snorts, and Harry thinks he can hear the crinkling of a pillow being soundly fluffed and stuffed beneath Snape's head. "Where you do get your ideas, Severus Snape, I sometimes wonder. Now, stop working yourself up over nothing and settle back - there's a good lad. I'll send Poppy over to check on you in a moment."
There is the clicking of flat heels against stone, the rustling of rough cloth being pushed aside, and then the headmistress emerges from Snape's makeshift room. Her eyebrows rise at the sight of Harry - quickly, she snaps the hangings together and gestures at him to follow her to the other end of the nearly empty wing -
"How much of that did you hear?" she asks in a low voice, lips pursed.
"Just the bit towards the end." Harry grimaces. "I thought coma patients were supposed be aware of their surroundings . . ."
"Professor Snape is momentarily disoriented; hardly surprising, given his condition." McGonagall's eyes roam over Harry's face, stern and piercing. "Am I correct in assuming that you know why he thought you should be dead, Potter?"
Harry glances back at the hangings separating Snape from the world, feeling uncharitable all of a sudden. This is not something he wants to explain, especially not to the headmistress. "Dumbledore," he bites out.
"Ah," says McGonagall, and she seems to have figured out a great deal of what Harry has left out on her own, for her green eyes are gleaming. "Very well then, Potter. I would suggest you give Professor Snape some time to grow used to the idea of your continued existence before confirming it in the flesh. I'm sure he'll get over the shock soon enough, but you know how he can be when treading unfamiliar ground."
Harry jerks out another nod.
(He doesn't want to wait, however. Harry wants to see Snape, wants to sort out the things between them now before the new foundations of all he's been working to build up this past month are shaken down by old habit and old grudges. Besides, Snape needs to know that Harry followed the instructions left in his memories. Voldemort is really dead.)
"I'm glad we have an understanding," she says, eyes as reflective and unreadable as a cat's, it seems, before turning her back on him and heading towards Madam Pomfrey.
- - -
Harry waits from behind a pillar until McGonagall leaves - about five minutes - before returning to the hospital wing. He doesn't like disobeying her, but he can't let Snape think he's avoiding him, especially not after McGonagall herself went out and told him how Harry'd spent so much time at his bedside. And there are things Snape has to know, things he will never rest not knowing -
And this weight on Harry's chest -
This unnameable weight on his chest that only Hermione and Luna and perhaps Ron seem to understand and that even they find perturbing -
His step is buoyant, as though everything were falling into place, and yet his body is a jittering mass of nerves. He keeps clenching and unclenching his hands. There was a point where he'd contemplated taking off his glasses and using a spell to correct his vision just so Snape would see less of his dad in him, but then he'd decided that Snape can't be manipulated that way. Snape has only ever seen in Harry what he expects to see. Harry used to be the same in reverse, only that Snape's memories have made him warier of his own judgements. And so the glasses remain.
Besides, glasses are part of who he is. He's not his father just because he's near-sighted. Nor is he his mum. In fact, over the past month, after having watched and then brooded over Snape's memories nearly non-stop, Harry has come to the conclusion that he can't particularly identify with either of his parents. He loves them, yes. Just the thought of his mum is enough to start a pressure building in his throat . . . but. But they never had to make decisions quite like this.
He hopes - no, he needs Snape to understand him. His gut clenches merely at the thought, and his heartbeat grows wild.
Madam Pomfrey, thank God, is nowhere to be seen. Harry hastens towards Snape's enclave, pulling the hangings apart and securing himself behind them as quickly and noiselessly as he can. As an extra precaution (although he knows full well that only select people can enter and that privacy spells are up everywhere), he charms the hangings with the strongest silencing spell he knows.
And then he looks at Snape -
Who, tangled in sheets like a child playing fort, sweating copiously in the non-existent summer breeze, startles violently -
Harry barely has time to look before Snape enshrouds long, slender feet and the tattered hem of his single grey nightshirt beneath the bedcovers. He barely has time to look before Snape's wide-eyed expression of astonishment curdles like bad milk, his black hair whips around his head like a villain's cape, and his mouth twists into one of the ugliest scowls Harry has ever seen. "Potter!" he snarls, and it doesn't matter that he's clearly overheated and exhausted, or that Harry has been holding his hand every night for a month now - Harry is instantly angry -
And Snape's eyes flash with malice, his somewhat wan scowl giving way to thorny bared teeth and unblunted, gleeful disdain. "Speechless, are we, Potter?" he sneers, loftily arranging himself in a more comfortable position against his pillow. "I cannot imagine why - after all, you did so kindly leave me to expire in one of the most painful and undignified ways known to men -"
"I thought you were dead!"
"Obviously," Snape drawls out in the way that inevitably signals malicious amusement about to had at Harry's expense, "yes, clearly I must have been dead, otherwise we would not be having this . . . scintillating . . . conversation right now. How remiss of me, Potter, to have overlooked such a significant point of fact -"
"Look, I'm sorry I left you in the Shack - but how was I supposed to know you were alive?" Harry retorts. "Even Voldemort thought you were dead! Besides, as far as I could tell right then, you weren't just Dumbledore's murderer, you'd also betrayed my mum and dad to Voldemort -"
Snape hisses at the word mum, only to assume an apoplectic mien at Voldemort, but Harry refuses to be derailed. "Don't tell me you would have acted any differently in my shoes! Besides, you should be glad I didn't stop to help, 'cause that way you didn't have to break cover! I mean -"
Harry's jaw aches, the muscles cramping together painfully, but he doesn't care. He wants to yell his lungs out. This is not how he imagined their conversation panning out and yelling is how he smothers disappointment. And he has a few choice things to say to Snape, now that they're back to their old ways . . .
He opens his mouth, and his tongue glues itself to the roof.
Snape stares up at him, his eyes so bright and black the corneas seem to be made of thick, rippled glass. Harry stares back, unsure of what he is really seeing. Those aren't . . . tears, are they? Because tears, were they to come toppling out, would unsettle the imbalance between them in a way Harry can't even begin to contemplate. Suddenly Harry is quite ashamed, although he couldn't say why - it isn't as though Snape is actually crying. Snape probably hasn't cried since . . .
Harry feels his face beginning to warm. It doesn't help that Snape continues looking at him with perilously glittering eyes, his mouth twisted in an expression of such loathing - loathing that could just as well be directed at himself as at Harry.
Finally, Snape closes his eyes as though to ward off an incoming headache. Harry's tongue slowly unglues itself enough to speak.
"Snape . . ." Harry shuffles between his feet, noting how Snape's eyes mercifully remain closed. "I'm glad - I'm glad you survived. I would have hated myself if you'd actually died, now that I know about all the things you did for me."
Snape opens his eyes again, and Harry is instantly aware that he should have tried a different strategy, for this time their dark gleam is not only unrepentantly sinister, but worse: openly, unquestionably hostile. "About that, Potter," says Snape nastily, "I would be grateful if you told me what sort of Dark Magic you used to resurrect me from the grave. Who knows what sort of . . . deleterious . . . effects it might have . . ."
"What Dark Magic?" snaps Harry. "Besides, I thought we'd just established that I didn't lift a finger to help you!"
A murderous tic appears in Snape's jaw, prompting Harry to amend, "Though I would have, of course, had I known -"
"You are lying, Potter." Snape's tone was the iciest Harry had ever heard it. "Soon after you and your little friends left me to perish in a pool of my own blood, I did die. And remained dead for several minutes, at least, before your foolish necromancy compelled me back to life." Harry can feel his jaw drop, and Snape must notice it too, for he snarls, "I know what I felt, boy, and it was plainly your magic that was responsible -"
"Then you're imagining things!" Harry explodes, feeling vaguely sick at the thought of a necromancy spell. As though Inferi weren't bad enough . . . the thought of half-eaten corpses rising from the grave . . .
Snape looks as though he might throttle him. Stomach still crawling at the thought of the undead, Harry says loudly, "I'm sorry, but that's how it is. After you gave me your memories - you've got them all back, by the way, did you notice? - I didn't waste a second before going off to die myself. Believe it or not, I went out and did exactly what I was supposed to do. It wasn't until after Voldemort killed me - well, he actually killed his Horcrux, which is why I didn't really die -"
Snape stares at him with such a mixture of irritation and consternation that his face seems even uglier than usual, which in turn makes Harry think that he isn't explaining very well. "Your doe only found me after it was all over," he tries again. "I had no idea that you were alive until she showed up. Honest. And I definitely don't know any necromancy spells. Though, now that I think of it, I'll bet - anything - Malfoy does. Maybe he cast the spell - or maybe it was his dad." Harry shudders. "Yeah, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it must have been his dad -"
"You know very well that the Malfoys weren't in the slightest way involved," snaps Snape. He is no longer looking at Harry, sneering instead at the hangings around his bed. He looks absent, almost, or concentrated, as though trying to call up a memory . . .
Harry is fairly certain that Snape has gotten some aspect of his story wrong - if not the bits about necromancy, then definitely the part about Lucius Malfoy. After all, he'd been near the scene, hadn't he? Harry's head fills with disturbing images of Malfoy, murmuring incantations, bent over Snape's bled-out corpse . . .
Could Snape have died? Is he really alive?
Harry feels rather sick now, as though someone had punched a pronged fork through the lining of his gut. Swallowing, he tries to think of something, anything else. He finds his gaze wandering over Snape's vaguely sneering face, and breathing in a sigh of relief.
Snape is gaunt, too gaunt, and fine droplets of sweat have amassed above his lips and at the crown of his brow. The hair Madam Pomfrey has been heroically trying to keep clean is matted at places and frizzy at others. His skin, pulled so tightly over his skull that Harry wonders whether it hurts or feels unpleasantly stretched all the time, has a generally clammy and greenish-pale appearance that also reminds Harry of the time Aunt Petunia was horribly seasick. The shadowed depressions of his cheeks, the swollen red ridges of his eyes, and the uncommonly severe lines dragging alongside his mouth only secure the image in Harry's mind - so that for a moment, he can even envision Snape on a boat that smells overpoweringly of seaweed and barnacles and salt - Snape in his threadbare robes, exhausted and eroded and swaying dangerously on his feet -
He looks away before Snape can catch him daydreaming. "Why do you think you were dead? You didn't -" He hesitates. "You didn't see Dumbledore, did you?"
Snape twitches and slowly turns to stare angrily at Harry. "I did," he says in a menacing tone that just dares Harry to contradict him.
Harry is not about to contradict him; he is, in fact, too busy coming to terms with the fact that Snape actually died. He swallows, hard. "That's odd. He didn't mention seeing you when I was there."
"I did not speak to him," says Snape significantly, lifting his chin and narrowing his eyes. Harry does not understand the gleam to them now; it speaks neither of hatred nor anger nor sorrow. If anything, there is something at once satisfied and expectant about the way Snape's eyes continue to probe Harry's face. "There, Potter," he says, quiet and smug and fixated on Harry, "I believe we have established the fact of my death. Unlike your eminent self, I was not . . . empowered, shall we say, with a means of returning from the beyond. Ergo, I could not be here now without your having performed some seriously misguided spell."
"I wish you'd stop harping on about that," Harry says, but the annoyance has gone out of him. Indeed, Harry is rather tempted to sit down in his usual chair beside Snape's bed and gather up Snape's bony hand in his own. Talking about death makes him eager for comfort, even the meagre comfort represented by Snape, he supposes. And given what they both have experienced of death . . . "You make it sound like it's a crime for you to be alive."
"I await my escort to Azkaban at any moment," says Snape, but he sounds more sarcastic than resigned, and his eyes, while hooded, have not yet ceased their exhaustive perusal of Harry's face.
"You're not going to Azkaban," says Harry with a touch of impatience. He looks at the tempting chair, thinks about what scathing things Snape might say, then grits his teeth and strides over. Snape's eyebrows are climbing into his hairline, although it's unclear what his astonishment is due to: the announcement or the fact that Harry, despite much gnashing of teeth, is willingly standing right next to him.
"How is that?" Snape drawls, dark eyes now riveted on Harry, who grinds his teeth again for good measure, then plops into the chair.
Harry glowers at the water jug positioned on the nearby bedside table in an attempt to undermine Snape's eerily intense scrutiny. "Kingsley's taken care of everything," he says, and cannot help but glance at Snape for his reaction. He gets nothing but that skin-crawling stare. Harry feels his brow furrowing as he continues, "There was a trial, you know. I testified on your behalf and they dropped all charges. You've also got an Order of Merlin, Second Class. Sorry I couldn't get them to agree to a First. And the Board has given their permission for you to teach at Hogwarts again, if you really want, although I for one would definitely understand if you told them just to piss off . . ."
Harry is discomposed, to say the least, when he fails to provoke a single reaction out of Snape. Even the mention of his Order of Merlin, Second Class does nothing to rile up any of the expected pleasure or spite. Instead, which is even more discomposing, Snape's attention has remained unremittingly directed on Harry - lingering on his throat and his mouth and especially his eyes. Reflecting on this fact only makes it worse and somehow all the more exciting. Harry can feel the hair on his arms standing on end and his palms growing sweaty and itchy against his jeans. Of course, the explanation for Snape's behaviour is probably not the one Harry is hoping for. The earth would probably have to come to a standstill for that to happen . . . Undoubtedly, Snape is just looking for signs of Lily in Harry's face.
Harry digs his fingers into his knees, suddenly rather keenly feeling the pressure of being compared to a parent, yet again.
God, why doesn't Snape seem to care about his Order of Merlin? And why won't he stop looking at him?
It is therefore with some considerable relief on Harry's part when Snape finally turns his gaze to other objects in the room. The tension that has left Harry, however, seems to have settled in between Snape's deeply depressed shoulders. "Where is my wand?"
"In here." Eager to dispel the atmosphere between them, Harry leans forward and energetically opens a drawer in the table bearing the water jug. He does not notice Snape reaching in for his wand until their hands are practically touching.
Snape frowns and swats him away -
Harry thinks he hears a crackling sound and feels a shock, as if an electric spark had just shot between their fingers -
Jerking back in dismay, Harry pushes as far into his chair and away from Snape as possible. That has definitely never happened to him before, he thinks over his pounding heart. That should never, ever happen again. (Especially as it only serves to confirm that Harry is, for lack of a better word, screwed.) Bloody hell, what was that?
Sneaking a glance upward, Harry immediately forgets his consternation at having never forged an electrical connection with Ginny before - Harry forgets his consternation over the even more distressing sight of Snape completely engrossed by his wand - as though nothing extraordinary had just taken place! Could Harry have merely imagined . . .?
Well, Harry is not going to make a fool of himself by asking that question aloud. After all, Snape is rather skilled at using denial to make Harry look like an idiot or a liar. No, the only way to get Snape to tell the truth about something like this is to force the situation - to make him acknowledge its truth, so to speak -
Narrowing his eyes with determination, Harry sneaks his hand forward and grabs one of Snape's - just as if it were a Snitch. It flutters and pulses and attempts to escape him just as a Snitch would, as well.
But Harry has never held a Snitch as electrifying as Snape's hand. Why didn't he realise this before, when Snape was still pleasantly unconscious?
"Potter!" Snape is twitching madly against Harry, his wand slipping from nervous fingers onto the bedcovers.
"What?" Harry retorts, gently gathering those thin, elongated fingers (with long nails whose oval form he has spent many a night admiring) and their arched palm to his chest. "We do this all the time. I hold your hand a few hours a day, or have you forgotten? Madam Pomfrey says it's good for healing."
"Surely you do not believe in such nonsense," snarls Snape, trying to free his hand without success, the clear effect of muscle atrophy from a month's lack of exercise. "Get off, Potter," he snaps, trembling now, and Harry gets a good look at his eyes - wider than he has ever seen them, the whites literally gleaming with panic. Unfortunately, as Harry well knows, Snape has a tendency to respond to panic with anger. "This is a new low even for you, Potter," he hisses furiously, wrist snapping like a dying fish, fingers scraping, scratching Harry's palm. "Let go of me at once, and I may be inclined to overlook your little lapse - are you listening, Potter?" Snape snorts unpleasantly. "Clearly, death has not improved you by a whit . . . Very well then, Potter, consider yourself warned. I am not above helping you gain a reputation for having molested a teacher -"
Harry decides to tune Snape out. In a repeat experiment with electric shock, he lightly runs a finger against Snape's palm. The result is anything but disappointing: this time, he can feel the way Snape's already straining muscles tense - see the way his already dilated eyes seem to grow even larger and darker - the way the blood seems to drain from his already sickly face . . .
"Potter," Snape says in a dangerously quiet voice. Harry is shocked to realise that both of them have gone completely still, an effect, however, that Snape completely ruins by resuming his futile attempts to free his hand. "I will only say this once more. Unhand me."
"This could be crucial to your recov-"
"Before I hex you, Potter!"
"Fine, fine," grumbles Harry, opening his hand. He expects Snape to withdraw his hand immediately. What he doesn't expect is for Snape to have the strength to suddenly grab him by the collar and drag him, choking, up to his eye-level -
Snape's fingers flex and flutter against Harry's throat. He's not all that strong, Harry senses. Just the attempt to crush Harry's oesophagus is taking the wind out of him . . .
"Try another stunt like that again," Snape mutters, "and I will make you live to regret it . . ."
There is a throbbing vein about to pop in Snape's brow, Harry notices in between painfully constricted breaths. He also looks a bit deranged with his crooked teeth bared and his enormous nostrils flaring wide and his eyes, shot through with yellow patches and broken red veins, practically dilated to the limit. It's not the best look on him . . . but Harry finds it strangely exciting anyway.
"Potter! Are you listening, Potter? I mean every word I say . . . try something like that with me again, and you will come to deeply regret having crossed Severus Snape . . ."
Harry closes his eyes and succumbs to the stranglehold, but only because that's the best angle with which to lean his forehead against Snape's. The spark, he notes with dizzy satisfaction, is unmistakeable this time -
Snape yelps, shrinking back from Harry like a rumpled blackbird with trembling, bulging eyes.
"Did you feel it?" Harry gasps.
Snape shakes his head, eyes still wide with shock. "You are insane," he breathes.
Harry needs a moment to regain control of his breathing before he can speak again, but he gestures wildly at Snape's hand.
"It's good for both of us," he says, "even if you don't remember." And when Snape's lip curls with disbelief, Harry tells him what Hermione and Madam Pomfrey have so often explained: "It helped with your recovery. Madam Pomfrey said so. And as for me - it makes me feel grounded, I suppose. Like I'm useful."
"Insane," Snape repeats, and yet Harry thinks he can see an echo of himself in those eyes.
"Please?" Harry asks, pointedly scooting off the bed - Snape had dragged him over the edge in his attempt to intimidate him - and back onto the chair, but keeping his hand extended. "I won't touch you again - not if you really don't want me to."
Snape eyes him warily as he carefully re-arranges himself against the pillow and smoothes down the covers.
"See to it that you don't," he sniffs.
Harry gazes forlornly at the hands now picking away imaginary lint from the covers. Slender bones hammer up against the skin as Snape moves his fingers with a precision that reminds Harry of the exposed, splintered mallets in Mrs Figg's piano. "I should have known you'd be the same," he sighs.
"Had I realised the depths to which you have sunk, I would have had you thrown out of here," Snape says coldly.
"What's wrong with a bit of hand-holding?" Harry retorts. "It helped you loads while you were unconscious."
"At that point, I was unaware that you -"
"So you do remember something!" Harry exclaims, ready to cling to anything that could prove that some things, at least, have changed between them.
"I certainly remember being dragged back from the afterlife against my will, forced to obey the call of your magic!" Snape spits. "Yes, Potter - your magic. Can you imagine the agony I felt at finding myself once again alive on the floor of the Shrieking Shack, knowing it was you who had summoned me?" Snape's voice drops so that it is barely above a whisper. "Surely it is not beyond the grasp of your imagination, Potter, to envision what it must have been like for me, believing you had either failed to understand or wilfully ignored my dying message . . . believing I had failed utterly, and in so doing damned the entire wizarding world -"
"Of course I can imagine what you must have felt - I can imagine it all too well, thanks very much! How do you think I felt all the time?" shouts Harry past the lump building in his throat.
For a moment, Snape seems taken aback, and retreats slightly beneath the covers. His gaze, however, continues to search Harry's face with eyes that glitter malice and disdain and possibly something else . . . something desperate, perhaps.
Harry stares back, feeling desperate himself. Then, unable to take the scrutiny any longer, he bows his head and says, "Sorry. I do realise that not everything's about me. I know you had an awful time of it, Snape. I'm sorry."
Snape is back to sitting up straight, his mouth curled with disgust. "I do not need your pity," he snaps. "I want answers, Potter - answers! You must tell me what spell you used, and how long - how long I will be forced to bear this mortal coil before I am fated to move beyond the veil once more!"
"Snape, I don't know." Harry senses that it would be a bad idea to let Snape think too much about this, despite his growing belief that a certain stone may have been involved in Snape's resurrection, so he rushes ahead to belabour an old point. "But - just indulge me this once - give me your hand for a minute, would you?"
Black eyes narrow suspiciously. Harry thinks he sees something shift in their depths, and is inclined to describe it as a resurfacing of panic, even though he's hardly ever read Snape right before. "Please," Harry stresses, hoping his sincerity is clearly written across his face.
"If it will make you more inclined to answer my questions . . ." Snape says in a strangled voice. He makes a show of reluctantly placing a hand on the edge of the bed. Harry smiles and covers it with his own, much smaller palm and squarish fingers.
"Thanks."
Snape shoots him an annoyed look. "Is there a valid reason you wanted my hand, or am I to be subjected to further rubbish about naturopathic healing?"
Harry squeezes the hand beneath his. "Do I feel real, Snape?"
Snape makes a gagging sound.
"Well?"
"I have no inclination to play this game," Snape says icily, his entire arm vibrating with tension. "Whatever schemes you're hatching, Potter - either spit them out, or give me my hand back right now."
"It's just . . ." Harry skates his palm along Snape's lean fingers, enjoying their length and willowy, elongated shape. Snape's hands . . . they have a strange kind of beauty, like slender spiders dancing on webs. "If you weren't really alive, I doubt that you could feel this. I've summoned spirits before. You can't touch them, and you definitely can't put them in a coma or feed them or even look them in the eye the way I can look at you. I tend to think . . . whatever brought you back, you weren't entirely dead when it happened."
For several moments, there is no sound but for the slight rasp of Snape's breathing (the wound on his neck is not entirely healed, despite being covered by a thick, unnaturally shiny pink scar) and the faint filing of skin grazing against skin.
Harry smiles at their hands. "This is nice."
Snape's fingers twitch in response. Harry looks up and is astonished to see a faint trace of red climbing up that long, sallow neck. Intrigued, Harry tries to meet Snape's eyes, but they always seem to dart out of reach whenever Harry tries to pin them down.
"Are you quite finished?" Snape spits out after one more of these failed attempts, his now-reddened face twisted with mockery and misery and something else Harry has to guess at, but would probably peg as self-loathing if asked.
Harry shifts in his chair, wary. "Dunno. You?"
"I don't know what to make of this farce, Potter," he snarls, face turning sallow once more. The effect is remarkably ugly, and would have undoubtedly disgusted Harry at an earlier point in his life.
"It's not a farce," says Harry, privately reminding himself that he isn't that boy anymore. "I know what you're trying to do, by the way. It's not going to work."
Snape scowls. "I have no idea what you are babbling about, Potter. Just what do you think I am trying to do? Other than attempting to pry the information that is my due from your fantastically warped and infantile mind?"
"If information were all you really wanted, you'd just use Legilmency," Harry points out, ignoring the deepening of Snape's scowl. He licks his lips and squeezes Snape's hand, as raw-boned and twiggy as a scarecrow's, then says with all the conviction and wisdom he can muster: "You can try and hide all you want - you can try and disguise yourself all you want. But you won't be able to make me hate you."
"How very touching," says Snape with a sneer, looking as though he deeply regrets ever having surrendered one of his limbs to Harry. "I'm sure I'll remember this conversation once you've left Hogwarts with your little friends."
Harry blinks. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Snape glares, finally meeting Harry's eyes. "You are thick," he says in a voice heavy with disgust. And then he is somehow sliding his hand out from under Harry's. Harry tries to hold him down at first, but then Snape curses -
The water jug explodes on its own, showering Harry with a shock-cloud of dust and unpleasantly cool liquid -
Shaken, Harry pulls pieces of jug out of his hair and from his shoulders. His limbs are trembling and there's a small gash in his upper arm and he can't quite bring himself to look at Snape. "What was that for?" he asks finally, quietly.
There is no immediate answer. Harry makes the mistake of glancing up.
Snape sneers at him, completely unapologetic, and Harry thinks his heart will stop at the sight, there is such accusation and loathing and malicious glee twisted into the lines of Snape's face. "You'll live," he says in a scathing voice. "Now, get out."
And Harry does nearly turn to go, partly because he is soaked to the bone and covered in itchy, pulverised bits of blue glazed porcelain, but mostly because Snape is being an utter arse. Something tells him to hold his ground, however.
Snape's face twists even further, so that he fairly resembles a yellow-toothed, underfed rat. "Idiot. I said to leave."
Harry shakes his head against the pain building up in his throat, the pain of being kicked in the teeth. "Why?"
"Because I can't stand the sight of you, that's why," sneers Snape, and his tone is so perfectly, so thoroughly hateful that Harry doesn't even stop to think about the possible reason. He curls a trembling lip in real disgust, breathes hard against his constricting throat, and spins on his heel to march away -
The mostly-intact handle of the jug lands against the hangings with a powerful thud. "And don't even think of coming back!"
Harry is too infuriated to reply.
- - -
"What's gotten into you, mate?" Ron asks, wiping soot and sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. Harry can't help but feel a pang of guilt whenever he thinks about all the work Ron - and Seamus and Dean and Neville and Luna and Ginny and . . . well everyone but himself, really - has been putting into helping re-build the castle. Harry himself only ever comes down to help when Snape gets other visitors, such as the Malfoys. His only reason for being here now is that Snape is . . . is . . .
He kicks at a sharply curved stone with the toe of his trainers, imagining it to be Snape's nose. "I'm just tired."
"Yeah?" Ron squints at him, not so easily fooled. His lips twist to one side, a mark of disapproval that never fails to make Harry squirm inwardly. "You were visiting him again, weren't you."
Harry stops kicking in order to turn his glare on Ron. "Not this again."
Ron steps close enough to lower his voice and still be heard above the construction work. "You've got to stop this, Harry. It's not healthy. Obsessing about your mum . . . I mean, I can see how it would be a shock, learning that Snape fancied her, of all people -"
"Ron!" Harry exclaims, stunned. "That's not it at all!"
"Oh," says Ron, rubbing a red spot on his arm without the slightest trace of sheepishness. "Well, what is it, then? Ginny reckons it had to be your mum - Snape being the last person who really knew her, and all, and then with the way you kept sneaking off to have a look at that Pensieve -"
"Ginny's the one obsessed with my mum." Harry scowls. "I should never have let her see Snape's memories. Also, Ron? This may be news to you, but I returned them ages ago."
Ron frowns at Harry's critical mention of Ginny - such mentions have been growing rather frequent lately, especially since Hermione's mediating influence Portkeyed off to Australia - but after a moment of hesitation, he braves a smile and claps Harry on the arm. "Well, I suppose you'd tell us what's bothering you if it were really important. We're all worried about you, though, Harry - Ginny especially."
"Thanks," says Harry darkly. He glares over his shoulder at the group of students levitating blocks of stone to form a wall, searching for long trails of carrot red hair. "Where is Ginny, anyway?"
Ron squints and scratches a spot behind his ear. "The greenhouses, maybe? I think I saw her going off with Luna and Neville."
"Right," Harry says, angry for reasons he isn't inclined to inspect and rather itching to take it all out on Ginny. How dare she give Ron a distorted account of Harry's . . . feelings for his mum? She doesn't even understand Lily - or him, Harry is beginning to suspect. "Well, I'm going to find her."
". . . OK," says Ron doubtfully. "Er, see you later then."
"Later," Harry says, storming off without a backward glance.
- - -
(Ginny snuck out to see the memories too: once, officially, with Harry, and then other times when she knew she wouldn't be missed. When Harry said he was returning them to Snape, she'd snuck out for the last time. Desperation and admiration and confusion had warred in her as she'd tried to manipulate the Pensieve into giving her what she wanted.
Lily was flirting with James and secretly laughing at Snape and Ginny was so filled with understanding and disgust - who knew what Harry got up to with Snape, all those times he came to see him - that she tried to meld with Lily, to stand in for her in a way. Harry's mother had crept through her mouth and limbs like an immaterial eel, weightless and yet somehow depositing the sediment of self-disgust on her tongue. Ginny had not quite recovered, not quite managed to move out of Lily's space when she told Snivellus to wash his pants.)
- - -
Part II