This one is less teeny.
Title: Last Call
Words: ~1400
Characters: Snape, Harry
Warning: again, ouchy. After DH.
The old tunnel was no more welcoming than it had ever been, but Harry didn't mind. He let his fingers run through the dirt-crusted bits of root protruding from the walls, trying to work out what to say.
Which was of course ridiculous. He didn't need to say anything. He didn't even have to be here. Someone else could have retrieved the body.
But no. Just as it had been his job to bring back Cedric, and just as it had been his job to bury Dobby, this was his to take care of. He stepped out of the earthen tunnel and into the room, and crossed to look down.
There was a lot of blood, dried now, soaked into the floor. He thought of the time Nagini had struck Arthur, of how it had felt to be the snake, sinking fangs into flesh, and wondered, absurdly, whether they should have tried to stitch his wounds closed; perhaps on a half-blood Muggle stitches would work. But that was neither here nor there, and he had a task to do.
He crouched on the sticky floor and set a hand on the cold chest, then pulled out his wand. He only meant to clean up enough to make it less difficult to tolerate carrying him, but the Tergeo stuck in his throat, and after a moment, he Summoned one of the ragged dusty bed-curtains instead, and stood, casting scouring charms on it, instead. It was only a rag; a few more holes wouldn't matter. Then, he crouched again, casting Aguamenti, washing away the blood with spouting water, running the wet cloth unnecessarily over his brow and his great hooked nose and the back of his neck.
"You really were a bastard to me," he said finally, standing up and casting Lumos to see that he'd got it all. "Even if you had your reasons."
Snape's body lay still on the wooden floor, now also clean from being practically flooded.
Harry dried the wet cloth of Snape's robes, then cast a preservation charm because even a wizard's body would begin to decompose. "I wish I'd worked it all out sooner, you know."
He paused, imagining the sneer that would have drawn.
"It just seems really unfair."
Right, 'sneer' didn't begin to describe the response he'd have got there; he was nearly sure a cuff to the back of the head and (another) reminder that life is not fair would have been only the beginning.
He sighed and bent to pick up the wiry body, hefting it over his shoulder awkwardly. "Also, you know, it would have been all right to tell me more than twelve seconds before you died." He headed back toward the tunnel, then stopped and held up his wand. "Accio Resurrection Stone."
Turning the thing in his hand was awkward while holding the body, but he didn't really want to put him down, so he managed it. "Snape?"
"Potter."
Harry turned, inadvertently swinging the boots on Snape's feet through ghost-Snape's midsection. "Oh. Um. Sorry. For a skinny man you're kind of heavy."
"You might use a levitation charm, if you're set upon dragging my corpse out of here." The ghost swallowed convulsively as it spoke, and Harry closed his eyes.
"Sorry. We did that to you once, you know, levitating you out of here. It didn't seem nice to do it again. But I didn't mean to make you come look--shit. I just wanted to say something to you, before I say to everyone else."
"And you decided this wasn't something you could do after you disposed of the body?"
"I didn't realize it would bother you. I mean. You've always been so bloody cold, and even if. Shit, I suck at this."
"Quite."
"Sorry."
"Go on. What was so urgent?"
"Um. Remus is dead. And Tonks, and, and a lot of people. Bellatrix. Oh, Voldemort, of course."
"Of course. I see how that would require my presence."
"No, just. I was leading up to it.
"Obviously. Half your friends are dead, and yet, you are not."
"He didn't exactly tell you everything. Dumbledore."
"Shocking."
"Yeah, I know. He wasn't that good at that. Um. You're getting heavy. Walk with me?"
"You could just leave it here, you know. Seal up the tunnel, let the rats have their way--"
"No."
The ghost shrugged. "It was worth a try. What, exactly, did you need of me now?"
"Oh! I didn't need. Well, yes I did, I suppose. I just wanted to say, look, this sounds kind of pathetic, but I just wanted to say thank you, and also, I was a prat. A lot."
The ghost came along next to him through the tunnel, passing through chunks of root and earth. It was silent for a long while, then said, "It's possible, I suppose, that when I was fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, I was also something of a dunderhead. About certain things."
Harry nodded. "I saw."
"Everything?"
"Yeah. I kind of thought probably you didn't have that much control over what all I got?"
"Not as much as I'd have liked."
"Right. Anyway. It didn't seem, I know what you're going to say, but I'm saying this anyway, didn't seem fair that you had all these years with only Dumbledore, and then this year, not even that. I always had Ron and Hermione. Well, almost always. Ron took a bit of a break there in the middle. And I always had you, even if I didn't know it."
The ghost pursed its lips. "Life isn't fair."
"I knew you were going to say that. And I had a hundred other people. And you. For someone. Not even. It's just." He sighed as they came out under the Whomping Willow and started toward the castle. "I just thought I should tell you thank you. For all the times, even with the sword, for all these years. Do you know my idiot cousin said thank you to me, just before I left their house?"
The ghost frowned. "I fail to see--"
"Petunia's son; you can imagine how well it went over with her. My point is, I'm afraid I might be doing as much a crap job as he did, and I might always have been as hard to deal with… well. I'm going to lose the stone again. And leave it lost, this time, somewhere far away from me."
"I see."
"So I won't summon you to me again. You can…"
"Bugger off?"
"What? No. Do whatever it is souls do, when they're not rescuing me."
Ghost Severus nodded.
"That's, um. That's all. I just was going to take you, er, your body. I was just going to take it up to Dumbledore's. Your. The headmaster's office until we can work out how to do the funeral." Harry paused. "You knew he hadn't told you everything, didn't you?"
"Neither of them ever did."
"And you still carried on."
"So did you, Potter."
"Yeah. Still." Harry started up the stairs to the headmaster's office, then stopped and carefully set the body on the stairs halfway up and turned to face Severus. He held up the ring. "Given I just told him a little while ago I was going to leave this lost, I probably shouldn’t take it up there."
"Foresight, Potter?" Snape's spirit smirked. "Be still my --oh, wait."
Harry groaned. "You choose now to be funny?"
"It wasn't, very."
"Well, yes, but comparatively. Anyway, Thanks. I'm pretty sure you'll get at least a posthumous award, too. Not that you probably care very much now. I told Voldemort, before he died."
"I expect he was disgruntled."
"You might say."
"That's satisfying, at least."
Harry nodded. "For everyone. Except him." He paused. "I, um, don't want to keep you."
"I find I'm in no particular hurry."
"Right. Um. Anyway. That was all I had to say, unless you wanted to call me a dunderhead once more. For old times' sake."
"My statement, or lack thereof, won't change the truth."
"Not about this, no." Harry put his hand in his pocket to drop the ring so he could lose it again later, then picked up the body once more to take it upstairs.
The collective headmasters gasped as he entered the room, and he looked around. "No one will bother him up here," he said. "He deserves a fitting funeral."
Dumbledore's portrait nodded, and said, "We shall watch over him."
"Thanks." Harry arranged the body comfortably on the floor, and said goodbye.