InsaneJournal

NaNo Fanfic Part 8
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Pairings mentioned this part: Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, Remus/Tonks
Rating: PG-13


June, 1998, High-Security Wing of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries

The first time Harry saw Snape after the Battle of Hogwarts, the man was in a coma at St. Mungo's in a room guarded by Aurors.  There was a strict no-visitation policy, but who was going to deny Harry a mere three weeks after he defeated Voldemort? 

It had taken a long time for Harry to work up his nerve, and somehow the moment was anticlamactic.  Snape was just a pale, underweight, unattractive man, lying in white sheets with bandages wound around his neck.  Harry's fingers tightened around the bottle of memories in his jacket pocket and he stayed, looking down at the bane of his school existence.

"Was it worth it?" 

Harry was pretty sure that Snape couldn't understand him, even if Hermione insisted that comatose patients could hear voices.  She had been talking to Remus every day since the battle, and trying to persuade Andromeda to bring Teddy to visit.  Remus was the only person besides Snape who hadn't yet woken or died.  Charlie and Cho were big question marks for a long couple of days, but they both woke up.  Two of the Death Eaters in custody had died, and Harry had no energy to question their care the way Hermione did when she passed the clippings pinned to the wall in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place. 

Hermione also questioned Harry's choice to post every obituary or funeral announcement from the last month over their dining table.  Hermione was doing a lot of questioning, and Ron was doing a lot of avoiding Hermione, although they'd given up pretense and started sharing a room the day the three of them moved back to the old house in London. 

Harry listened to every question, from Hermione and others, but never answered.  He never said much at all, really, these days.  He spent a lot of time in a clinch with Ginny, he spent a lot of time flying aimlessly, and he spent a lot of time staring at his ceiling wishing he could sleep.  Sometimes he did sleep, and then he dreamed of snakes and wands and the baleful dead, of blood gushing over his hands and of the rush of glorious energy as he cast the Cruciatus.

Harry stared down at Snape and wondered what he felt when he cast the Avada Kedavra.  "Did you fracture your soul, then?  Or was it a mercy stroke?" 

Silence.  For some reason Harry found that this particular silence encouraged him to speak, where the understanding murmurs or trying-to-be-helpful questions from friends only reinforced his stubborn refusals. 

The words piled up behind his teeth as the silence sat, quietly waiting to be filled.  At last they could no longer be contained, and burst from him in a despairing shout.  "How could you let him do that to you?  To us?"  And he knew that of all people in the world, Snape would understand that him to mean Dumbledore. 

Voldemort had done his part, but it was the betrayal he saw in Dumbledore that made Harry want to hit something.  Dumbledore had never trusted Harry, never told him anything, and a near-death hallucination did not negate the essential horror.  Harry's thought kept circling back to that night on the tower, being immobilized, watching helplessly.

Somehow the entire past year had been that same moment repeated in slightly different form.  "It was all accidental.  What kind of Chosen One defeats their enemy by accident?

"And you, you...  I don't know what you are.  Was anything real to you, after my mum died?  And you knew her, you bastard, why does no one ever tell me anything?" 

Harry sat down in the hard hospital chair and stared at Snape's profile.  "Remus is right down the hall, you know.  He's even worse off than you.  It's like the world wants everyone who could tell me something real about my parents to disappear.  Well, you can't, do you hear?  You can't just die before you explain what these really mean."  And he took out the bottle and shook it, as if Snape could see and protest. 

Then he sighed and slumped over, head in his hands, the bottle cold against his temple.  "I don't know what to do now," he whispered. 

After a few more moments of silence, Harry ran a hand down his face and stood once more.  He tucked the bottle back into his jacket and hoped he didn't look too upset.  It wouldn't do to have the Aurors asking questions, not if he wanted to come back tomorrow, and the next day.  Until Snape either woke or died, Harry could fill the silence and put off the inevitable moment when he had to face his future. 

Two weeks later, Harry had been in to sit with Snape every day, for a few minutes on his way back from sitting with Remus, or visiting Charlie, or looking in on some of the children who had been orphaned by the war.  There was always some errand that got him in the door, and he always ended each day at Snape's bedside. 

Harry didn't know why he felt like talking in that room, although Hermione had her theories.  Harry had learned that the easiest way to shut her up about healing and therapy and empathy was to ask her how her parents were doing.  He sometimes felt guilty at the way her shoulders slumped and her mouth drooped when he asked, but after fielding so many of her well-meaning inquiries it was the only weapon he had left.  She had not thought that her parents would object so fiercely to the actions she took to protect them, but it was obvious that their current estrangement pained Hermione deeply. 

"I should feel worse about that, I suppose.  She means well, and she meant well with her parents.  She saved my arse too many times to count."  Somehow the ledger never seemed balanced with Ron and Hermione.  They tried to tell him that the ledger didn't actually exist, but it was practically carved into his skin at this point, all the ways he owed them, all the ways he had endangered them, all the ways they had almost died for no good reason except that he, Harry, existed.   

"It's like with Mrs. Weasley.  She wants to be mum for me now, and that's great, but where was she when my life was hell?  Staying out of it like Dumbledore told her to.  Sending me sweaters as if that could solve my problems, and feeding me up for as long as she had me."

Sometimes he thought he saw Snape move.  Just a twitch, a flicker of eyelash, a breath that seemed more labored than the rest. 

"I guess you really couldn't be any better to me than you were.  Voldemort was on the rise, you had a job to do.  Not to mention you actually are a bastard.  I wanted to kill you, you know.  More than I wanted Voldemort, sometimes.  Is that what you wanted?  Did you plan to let me kill you and leak your memories to me?  Or try to explain in the seconds before I could manage a curse?  Maybe you knew that I was no better at dueling than I had ever been.  I didn't even duel Voldemort!  Merlin, what a mess."

Sometimes Harry wished he had a pensieve with him so he could watch the memories in his pocket again, with Snape there.  He forgot details, no matter how many times he went back to watch them all again.  And again.  And again.

He hadn't watched the all in one sitting since the night of the battle, the night Voldemort failed again to kill him.  But he sometimes watched just the scenes of his mother's childhood.  Or the ones of them at Hogwarts, when his parents and Snape and Remus and Sirius had been young and strong and held no fear of death.

Often, though, he watched Snape with Dumbledore - first while the Headmaster was alive, then with the portrait.  "I can't believe it, sometimes.  He sent me to die.  He sent you to die plenty of times, and made you think he was doing you a favor!  I- I- wish I had never seen any of it, sometimes.  I'm so angry.  All the time, angry, it's terrible and I just want to rip something to shreds, want to scream, want to die."

There was a long pause as Harry considered what he just said.  "Sometimes I want to die.  It was easier when I was dead." 

Then Harry thought of Ron and Hermione, of Ginny, of Neville and Luna and Bill and the others who had suffered and fought just as much (sometimes he thought, more) as he had.  He thought of Moody and Tonks and Colin, and poor Dobby, who had died, who had doubtless wanted very badly to live.  Then he felt ashamed. 

"I shouldn't want to die, should I?  I should be happy.  I did what I was supposed to do." 

He sighed and pushed himself out of his chair.  "I don't know if anyone else will ever understand, and you probably won't even remember, but sometimes I think we're alike that way.  We did what we were supposed to do.  And now - what is there?" 

That night as he stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom at Grimmauld Place, he thought of the luminous silver doe picking its way through the trees to lead him to his fate, a doe born of some secret thoughts from deep within Snape, some joy that he had managed to hold on to for all those long, lonely, tragic years.  Harry pulled his wand from under his pillow and tried to cast a patronus of his own.   It took him longer than it had even in the middle of the battle, when Luna's quiet voice had given him focus.  He finally managed the casting by thinking of his mother's ten-year-old face, alight with joy as she leaped into the air from the swing, and floated to the ground. 

That was one more thing he had to thank Snape for. 
 
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