Fic: Lost Boys 12/14 - Choices
Oct. 20th, 2007 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hobgoblinnPrologue - Two Dads
Part 1 - Visions of the Afterlife
Part 2 - Little Boy Lost
Part 3 - Detention
Part 4 - An Intruder
Part 5 - Conversations with the Dead, Part 1
Part 6 - Conversations with the Dead, Part 2
Part 7 - Another Life
Part 8 - A Sudden Illness
Part 9 - Spectres of the Past
Part 10 - The Pensieve
Part 11 - The Headmaster’s Portrait
Title: Lost Boys, 12/14 - Choices
Rating: FRT (PG)
Distribution: Sure. Let me know where it’s going. Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
snape_after_dh ficathon.
Feedback: Makes me write more. Or feel guilty for not writing more. Flames make me toasty.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lady_clover, rainkatt emmessann and Wee Hob for fantastic beta work. Remaining mistakes are, of course, my own.
DISCLAIMER: The characters are the property of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Books, and whoever else may have a hold on them. I own nothing in the Potterverse, or anywhere else, for that matter. Strictly for entertainment, and no profit is being made. Please sue somebody else. David Dursley, however, is mine. Please ask before you borrow him.
”And what became of those memories, Harry?”
***
“I just-- I didn't want to leave them lying around where anybody might stumble across them. Wouldn't, um, be the first time that's happened. So-- I took them. Into myself.”
“Harry!” Hermione gasped. “Are you crazy? That was terribly dangerous!”
Harry looked away, but said defensively, “They've saved me quite a few times. Knowing counter-curses I didn't know I knew. And-- they're the only memories I have of my Mum. I just wanted-- I've kept them safe.”
“So, do you have... you know, all Snape’s memories?” Ron sounded horrified.
Harry thought about how to answer that. Finally he said, “I have some clear memories of the things I saw that night in the pensieve-- about my mum, and the things Professor Dumbledore wanted him to make sure I knew before I faced Voldemort. Everything else is really... hazy.”
Dumbledore’s portrait looked at Harry over his painted spectacles much as his model had in life, when he’d suspected Harry was not telling him everything. The expression on his old Potion Master’s face was also familiar-- a disbelieving sneer. To Harry’s relief, neither one challenged his story openly. And Ron and Hermione looked too shocked to question it.
“Ah. This is quite unforeseen,” the portrait said. “Harry, the Mirror feeds on the desires of the living. It would seem that your taking these memories into yourself has kept part of Severus alive inside you all these years. While he shunned the living and had no contact with them, this posed no difficulty. But something has kindled a spark in him again, now-- his friendship with your young cousin.”
“So what do we do?”
“You shall have to restore Severus' memories to him. Once they reside in his dead soul instead of your living one, the connection between you and the mirror and the boy should be broken.”
Harry thought for a minute. “But I've tried, over the years, to pull those memories back out, into a Pensieve. You know, to really be able to see my Mum again, not just in the memory of it. I've never been able to do it. It's like, those patterns aren't really mine, but they've entwined around memories and thoughts that are mine. I can't separate them out anymore.”
“They cannot be restored as they were removed, not now. You both must consent to the transfer, and it may be quite painful. You will probably want to anchor each other for it-- I believe you, Severus, are able to manifest as a solid form, when you wish? Yes, then. An embrace, I think, would be best. The memories will then flow back where they truly belong.” The old man cocked his head as if listening, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Then he added, “But you had better do this soon. I fear the boy does not have much time at all.”
***
At that moment, the ghost vanished from sight. Harry traded a helpless look with his friends and the image of Dumbledore looking on sadly from the wall.
“That, I'm afraid, is not so unforeseen,” Dumbledore said.
“Dirty, rotten coward,” Ron spat.
“No,” Harry said. “Think about it, Ron. He's seen stuff that makes all our nightmares look tame. I wouldn’t want that back, either.”
“And without his memories, he’s missing the part of him that found the courage to bear all those horrible experiences, at the time and later, in his memories,” Dumbledore added gently. “Do not judge him too harshly, my children. He is little more than a child himself, at the moment.”
“But how're we gonna find him now?” Ron fumed.
“Look, you two go back to Davey. I'll find Snape. It'll be okay.”
Ron looked as if he might argue, as he so often did, but Hermione touched his arm and said, “All right, Harry. Good luck.” She hugged him close, and Ron clapped him bracingly on the shoulder. Then, they were gone.
Harry stood there a long moment in the silence, gathering his thoughts around him. He realized, looking at the wall, there was an empty frame next to Dumbledore's.
“That would have been his, wouldn't it, Sir?” he asked, pointing. Dumbledore nodded solemnly.
“Best headmaster Hogwarts ever had, and they never knew it. Poor boy. Do you know, he is the only headmaster ever to have had no students die on his watch? Oh, assuredly, many died in that final battle, but by then he himself was dead. School crawling with Death Eaters and those horrible Carrows, and somehow he kept them all alive. And neither side ever suspected a thing. I watched him through it all, and I still have no idea how he managed it.”
“You've known about him, all these years, haven't you, Professor?”
“Yes, Harry. He never joined me here, you see. When he dies properly, he may. If he can bring himself to do so. It is very hard for him, you understand. He feels so many things, but he has no memory to help him make sense of any of it.”
Harry felt a deep sadness for the man. “Isn't there some other way? To leave Snape in peace and still save David?”
“No, Harry. I wish there were. He has had a small respite, more than many are fortunate enough to receive. But now, he has to make a choice. And so, for that matter, do you.”
“Me, Sir? What choice do I have? I have to save Davey. I'm responsible for him.”
“And you love him,” the old man smiled kindly. “And Severus was once responsible for you.”
“He never loved me, though,” Harry replied, a little confused by the non-sequitur.
“No. I don't believe he was capable of it, by then. Too many old hurts and horrors, piled up year upon year. But without all of that in the way, he has always possessed an extraordinary capacity for love. And he does love your young cousin, in his way. Severus is an... honorable man. I think you have had a chance, over the years to come to understand him, much better than you think. Go to him, Harry. He is very frightened, with good reason. But only you can give him peace.”
***
Harry found his way back to the dungeons easily enough. Now that he was conscious of a part of Snape’s soul inside him, it was not hard to let that guide him. He stepped across the threshold of the lab and held his wand aloft to cast its light further through the darkness. He saw one of his cousin’s globe lamps on a table and lit it, then turned his eyes to the ghost who was seated at another table, one strewn with bits of glass and metal and wire. Ghostly hands trembled as they busied themselves fitting the components of another such lamp together.
Without turning, the ghost growled, “Go away.”
Harry came over instead and slid himself onto the stool at the work table across from his old professor. He reached casually for a wire filament, which he connected to its base with a tap of his wand, seemingly absorbed by the task. Then he spoke, keeping his voice light and casual.
“Davey’s quite a kid, isn’t he? My father-in-law adores him. He’s been waiting all his life to find someone who understands Muggle technology and is as fascinated by it as he is.”
Snape picked up a wire and threaded it through another bit of metal. “No, here,” Harry said. “This way.” He demonstrated with an identical wire and piece of metal. Snape looked, then copied the motion awkwardly.
“He’s shown me that a hundred times,” the ghost said finally. “I always get it backwards.”
“Yeah. Kind of strange, isn’t it, Sir? You were so precise as a potions brewer. Why is this more difficult?” The ghost stiffened at the mention of his past, but Harry continued to work steadily, not looking up.
At length the ghost responded, “I can still brew quite adequately. I believe it is a different set of skills. Knowing how ingredients fit into a potion, and how to prepare them, is quite different from knowing how these-- physical components-- fit together.” After a pause, Snape added, “I suspect the one ability cancels out the other. The boy is rubbish at potions. I only continue to work at this to....”
Harry glanced up as the silence lengthened. “To what, Sir?”
The ghost reached for another piece of glass. “To give him no excuse for not trying. I am willing to practice at something I clearly am rubbish at, so that he will take heart and do the same.”
“I did notice his potions marks had improved last term. He’ll never be a Neville.”
“Who?”
“Someone you taught, years ago. Melted a gross of cauldrons in a single term,” he added, quoting what the ghost had told David in the memory.
The ghost’s lips twitched in an almost smile, but then all expression left his face. “We haven’t much time, have we?”
“No.” Harry sensed that to push now would be disastrous, but it was hard for him to hold himself calm, to continue to assemble the lamp on the table before them as if nothing at all were the matter. But he saw the ghost struggling with himself, the tremors of its translucent hands becoming more pronounced.
“I do not believe I can.... I never asked for any of this. I do not want that old life back.”
“Yeah. I don’t blame you,” Harry told him honestly. “The memories I carry-- I know they’re incomplete. Which means you must have some, under the surface. You lived through some terrible things, Professor.”
“I caused them,” the ghost corrected, bitterly.
“Perhaps. But until you take all your memories back, you can’t know that for sure.”
The ghost thrust the pieces in his hands away from him impatiently and burst out, “What is that boy to me? I never asked him....”
“To be your friend?” Harry's voice was gentle. The scenes with David in the mirror had reminded him of something, but it wasn’t until that moment he figured out what. In a pensieve, years ago, he had seen this man’s friendship with another child. With his mum.
“I have no friends.” The ghost said it flatly, as if it were some kind of immutable truth.
“I know of at least two. The woman in the mirror was my mum. You were close, as children. Until you had a falling out, one she still might have forgiven you for, in time. But she married my dad, and the despair... led you to make some terrible choices.”
“I do not remember any of that,” the ghost said unsteadily. “Nor do I wish to.”
“The other was that man in the portrait you met tonight. Albus Dumbledore. I know he cared for you quite deeply, and you for him. Enough to carry out his final wishes, at a terrible cost to yourself.”
“I do not wish to hear this....”
“I know. But we don’t have much time. Davey is very weak, Sir. If we don’t do something soon, he will die.”
The ghost flinched at that. Then he said, almost as if to himself, “I was not a brave man. I am certain of it.”
“You are the bravest man I've ever known, Sir. All those things you did as a spy, all the ways you helped us, helped me....”
“I never had a choice!” the ghost cried out suddenly, as if the terrible truth were being drawn from him, like poison from a wound. “Never! I never had a choice about any of it!”
Harry gazed at the man kindly for a moment, then said, “You always had a choice, Sir. And you still do. If you care about David, help him now.” He stood then and opened his arms to the ghost in invitation.
Snape struggled with himself a moment longer, then rose in the fluid motion Harry had seen hundreds of times as a boy, an easy grace he had never noticed or admired, until that moment.
The ghost stepped around the table and looked at him uncertainly. Harry was surprised then to realize they were now almost the same height. “What will you do without all those counter-curses of mine?” Snape asked, finally. Harry grinned.
“I've been an Auror for over twenty years, Professor. If I haven't learned enough counter-curses by now on my own, I probably ought to retire.” He sobered, then added, “I'm scared, too, Professor.”
The ghost nodded solemnly, then opened his own arms. Steeling himself against the cold he was expecting, Harry moved forward and felt a remarkably solid body wrap its arms around him. It was cool, but not cold. Harry closed his eyes, resting his chin on the other’s shoulder, feeling the scratchy cloth of the Potion Master’s phantom robes against his own unshaven cheek. He realized with a pang of regret, that he would be losing the memories of his mum he’d been holding on to all these years. But then he thought of Davey, and how few really good memories this man had accumulated in life, and he let go of them all. They were his, and Harry did not begrudge him any of them.
***
It hurt. The ghost was surprised, how painful it was, when his memories began flowing back into him, like liquid fire. It was overwhelming, to have the pieces of his soul reassembling themselves, jagged and broken like the pieces of the lamp on the table beside them. He pulled the man closer, to keep himself from pulling away, and fixed his thoughts firmly on the plight of his young friend. And slowly, he began to remember other young people who had relied on him, as surely as young David Dursley did now. Then he felt the regrets, that he had failed so many of them....
And then he felt another presence, pushing other memories at him. Of a boy on a broom whom he had saved from certain death, muttering a desperate counter-curse to counteract another’s attempt to kill him, a child far too small to be playing Quidditch. Of interposing his body between three frightened children and the beast he feared more than any other, sure he was about to be killed along with them, regardless. Of himself deliberately playing a double game Merlin knew how many times, with Voldemort, Umbridge, Lucius Malfoy, Pettigrew, the Carrows.
And then Snape realized with a start that the boy he had so hated was the man holding on to him so fiercely now. Giving him back his memories, and something more, besides. Something not done solely for his young cousin, but for Severus Snape. Death Eater. Hated Potions Master. Greasy Bat of the Dungeons. As everything came flowing back in an overwhelming torrent of rage, and fear, and horror, he felt Harry holding on through it, when he did not have to. Sharing the pain, and the shame, of memories he himself had carried for so many years. Long enough to have, not pity, but compassion for an old enemy. Perhaps even to understand, a little.
And then, it was over. The ghost remembered everything. He stepped back and looked into the eyes of the boy he had once hated, his hands still on the other's shoulders. He struggled with himself for a long moment. Then, slowly, his features relaxed. He gave Harry's shoulders a final squeeze and stepped back.
“Well, Potter,” he said finally, a little unsteadily. “Shall we go see to that cousin of yours, then?”
The irritating boy, now a man, grinned at him, and oddly, it wasn't so irritating anymore. “Yeah. I mean, yes, Sir.”
Part 13 - Consequences
Part 1 - Visions of the Afterlife
Part 2 - Little Boy Lost
Part 3 - Detention
Part 4 - An Intruder
Part 5 - Conversations with the Dead, Part 1
Part 6 - Conversations with the Dead, Part 2
Part 7 - Another Life
Part 8 - A Sudden Illness
Part 9 - Spectres of the Past
Part 10 - The Pensieve
Part 11 - The Headmaster’s Portrait
Title: Lost Boys, 12/14 - Choices
Rating: FRT (PG)
Distribution: Sure. Let me know where it’s going. Written for the
snape_after_dh ficathon.Feedback: Makes me write more. Or feel guilty for not writing more. Flames make me toasty.
Thanks to
lady_clover, rainkatt emmessann and Wee Hob for fantastic beta work. Remaining mistakes are, of course, my own. DISCLAIMER: The characters are the property of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Books, and whoever else may have a hold on them. I own nothing in the Potterverse, or anywhere else, for that matter. Strictly for entertainment, and no profit is being made. Please sue somebody else. David Dursley, however, is mine. Please ask before you borrow him.
”And what became of those memories, Harry?”
***
“I just-- I didn't want to leave them lying around where anybody might stumble across them. Wouldn't, um, be the first time that's happened. So-- I took them. Into myself.”
“Harry!” Hermione gasped. “Are you crazy? That was terribly dangerous!”
Harry looked away, but said defensively, “They've saved me quite a few times. Knowing counter-curses I didn't know I knew. And-- they're the only memories I have of my Mum. I just wanted-- I've kept them safe.”
“So, do you have... you know, all Snape’s memories?” Ron sounded horrified.
Harry thought about how to answer that. Finally he said, “I have some clear memories of the things I saw that night in the pensieve-- about my mum, and the things Professor Dumbledore wanted him to make sure I knew before I faced Voldemort. Everything else is really... hazy.”
Dumbledore’s portrait looked at Harry over his painted spectacles much as his model had in life, when he’d suspected Harry was not telling him everything. The expression on his old Potion Master’s face was also familiar-- a disbelieving sneer. To Harry’s relief, neither one challenged his story openly. And Ron and Hermione looked too shocked to question it.
“Ah. This is quite unforeseen,” the portrait said. “Harry, the Mirror feeds on the desires of the living. It would seem that your taking these memories into yourself has kept part of Severus alive inside you all these years. While he shunned the living and had no contact with them, this posed no difficulty. But something has kindled a spark in him again, now-- his friendship with your young cousin.”
“So what do we do?”
“You shall have to restore Severus' memories to him. Once they reside in his dead soul instead of your living one, the connection between you and the mirror and the boy should be broken.”
Harry thought for a minute. “But I've tried, over the years, to pull those memories back out, into a Pensieve. You know, to really be able to see my Mum again, not just in the memory of it. I've never been able to do it. It's like, those patterns aren't really mine, but they've entwined around memories and thoughts that are mine. I can't separate them out anymore.”
“They cannot be restored as they were removed, not now. You both must consent to the transfer, and it may be quite painful. You will probably want to anchor each other for it-- I believe you, Severus, are able to manifest as a solid form, when you wish? Yes, then. An embrace, I think, would be best. The memories will then flow back where they truly belong.” The old man cocked his head as if listening, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Then he added, “But you had better do this soon. I fear the boy does not have much time at all.”
***
At that moment, the ghost vanished from sight. Harry traded a helpless look with his friends and the image of Dumbledore looking on sadly from the wall.
“That, I'm afraid, is not so unforeseen,” Dumbledore said.
“Dirty, rotten coward,” Ron spat.
“No,” Harry said. “Think about it, Ron. He's seen stuff that makes all our nightmares look tame. I wouldn’t want that back, either.”
“And without his memories, he’s missing the part of him that found the courage to bear all those horrible experiences, at the time and later, in his memories,” Dumbledore added gently. “Do not judge him too harshly, my children. He is little more than a child himself, at the moment.”
“But how're we gonna find him now?” Ron fumed.
“Look, you two go back to Davey. I'll find Snape. It'll be okay.”
Ron looked as if he might argue, as he so often did, but Hermione touched his arm and said, “All right, Harry. Good luck.” She hugged him close, and Ron clapped him bracingly on the shoulder. Then, they were gone.
Harry stood there a long moment in the silence, gathering his thoughts around him. He realized, looking at the wall, there was an empty frame next to Dumbledore's.
“That would have been his, wouldn't it, Sir?” he asked, pointing. Dumbledore nodded solemnly.
“Best headmaster Hogwarts ever had, and they never knew it. Poor boy. Do you know, he is the only headmaster ever to have had no students die on his watch? Oh, assuredly, many died in that final battle, but by then he himself was dead. School crawling with Death Eaters and those horrible Carrows, and somehow he kept them all alive. And neither side ever suspected a thing. I watched him through it all, and I still have no idea how he managed it.”
“You've known about him, all these years, haven't you, Professor?”
“Yes, Harry. He never joined me here, you see. When he dies properly, he may. If he can bring himself to do so. It is very hard for him, you understand. He feels so many things, but he has no memory to help him make sense of any of it.”
Harry felt a deep sadness for the man. “Isn't there some other way? To leave Snape in peace and still save David?”
“No, Harry. I wish there were. He has had a small respite, more than many are fortunate enough to receive. But now, he has to make a choice. And so, for that matter, do you.”
“Me, Sir? What choice do I have? I have to save Davey. I'm responsible for him.”
“And you love him,” the old man smiled kindly. “And Severus was once responsible for you.”
“He never loved me, though,” Harry replied, a little confused by the non-sequitur.
“No. I don't believe he was capable of it, by then. Too many old hurts and horrors, piled up year upon year. But without all of that in the way, he has always possessed an extraordinary capacity for love. And he does love your young cousin, in his way. Severus is an... honorable man. I think you have had a chance, over the years to come to understand him, much better than you think. Go to him, Harry. He is very frightened, with good reason. But only you can give him peace.”
***
Harry found his way back to the dungeons easily enough. Now that he was conscious of a part of Snape’s soul inside him, it was not hard to let that guide him. He stepped across the threshold of the lab and held his wand aloft to cast its light further through the darkness. He saw one of his cousin’s globe lamps on a table and lit it, then turned his eyes to the ghost who was seated at another table, one strewn with bits of glass and metal and wire. Ghostly hands trembled as they busied themselves fitting the components of another such lamp together.
Without turning, the ghost growled, “Go away.”
Harry came over instead and slid himself onto the stool at the work table across from his old professor. He reached casually for a wire filament, which he connected to its base with a tap of his wand, seemingly absorbed by the task. Then he spoke, keeping his voice light and casual.
“Davey’s quite a kid, isn’t he? My father-in-law adores him. He’s been waiting all his life to find someone who understands Muggle technology and is as fascinated by it as he is.”
Snape picked up a wire and threaded it through another bit of metal. “No, here,” Harry said. “This way.” He demonstrated with an identical wire and piece of metal. Snape looked, then copied the motion awkwardly.
“He’s shown me that a hundred times,” the ghost said finally. “I always get it backwards.”
“Yeah. Kind of strange, isn’t it, Sir? You were so precise as a potions brewer. Why is this more difficult?” The ghost stiffened at the mention of his past, but Harry continued to work steadily, not looking up.
At length the ghost responded, “I can still brew quite adequately. I believe it is a different set of skills. Knowing how ingredients fit into a potion, and how to prepare them, is quite different from knowing how these-- physical components-- fit together.” After a pause, Snape added, “I suspect the one ability cancels out the other. The boy is rubbish at potions. I only continue to work at this to....”
Harry glanced up as the silence lengthened. “To what, Sir?”
The ghost reached for another piece of glass. “To give him no excuse for not trying. I am willing to practice at something I clearly am rubbish at, so that he will take heart and do the same.”
“I did notice his potions marks had improved last term. He’ll never be a Neville.”
“Who?”
“Someone you taught, years ago. Melted a gross of cauldrons in a single term,” he added, quoting what the ghost had told David in the memory.
The ghost’s lips twitched in an almost smile, but then all expression left his face. “We haven’t much time, have we?”
“No.” Harry sensed that to push now would be disastrous, but it was hard for him to hold himself calm, to continue to assemble the lamp on the table before them as if nothing at all were the matter. But he saw the ghost struggling with himself, the tremors of its translucent hands becoming more pronounced.
“I do not believe I can.... I never asked for any of this. I do not want that old life back.”
“Yeah. I don’t blame you,” Harry told him honestly. “The memories I carry-- I know they’re incomplete. Which means you must have some, under the surface. You lived through some terrible things, Professor.”
“I caused them,” the ghost corrected, bitterly.
“Perhaps. But until you take all your memories back, you can’t know that for sure.”
The ghost thrust the pieces in his hands away from him impatiently and burst out, “What is that boy to me? I never asked him....”
“To be your friend?” Harry's voice was gentle. The scenes with David in the mirror had reminded him of something, but it wasn’t until that moment he figured out what. In a pensieve, years ago, he had seen this man’s friendship with another child. With his mum.
“I have no friends.” The ghost said it flatly, as if it were some kind of immutable truth.
“I know of at least two. The woman in the mirror was my mum. You were close, as children. Until you had a falling out, one she still might have forgiven you for, in time. But she married my dad, and the despair... led you to make some terrible choices.”
“I do not remember any of that,” the ghost said unsteadily. “Nor do I wish to.”
“The other was that man in the portrait you met tonight. Albus Dumbledore. I know he cared for you quite deeply, and you for him. Enough to carry out his final wishes, at a terrible cost to yourself.”
“I do not wish to hear this....”
“I know. But we don’t have much time. Davey is very weak, Sir. If we don’t do something soon, he will die.”
The ghost flinched at that. Then he said, almost as if to himself, “I was not a brave man. I am certain of it.”
“You are the bravest man I've ever known, Sir. All those things you did as a spy, all the ways you helped us, helped me....”
“I never had a choice!” the ghost cried out suddenly, as if the terrible truth were being drawn from him, like poison from a wound. “Never! I never had a choice about any of it!”
Harry gazed at the man kindly for a moment, then said, “You always had a choice, Sir. And you still do. If you care about David, help him now.” He stood then and opened his arms to the ghost in invitation.
Snape struggled with himself a moment longer, then rose in the fluid motion Harry had seen hundreds of times as a boy, an easy grace he had never noticed or admired, until that moment.
The ghost stepped around the table and looked at him uncertainly. Harry was surprised then to realize they were now almost the same height. “What will you do without all those counter-curses of mine?” Snape asked, finally. Harry grinned.
“I've been an Auror for over twenty years, Professor. If I haven't learned enough counter-curses by now on my own, I probably ought to retire.” He sobered, then added, “I'm scared, too, Professor.”
The ghost nodded solemnly, then opened his own arms. Steeling himself against the cold he was expecting, Harry moved forward and felt a remarkably solid body wrap its arms around him. It was cool, but not cold. Harry closed his eyes, resting his chin on the other’s shoulder, feeling the scratchy cloth of the Potion Master’s phantom robes against his own unshaven cheek. He realized with a pang of regret, that he would be losing the memories of his mum he’d been holding on to all these years. But then he thought of Davey, and how few really good memories this man had accumulated in life, and he let go of them all. They were his, and Harry did not begrudge him any of them.
***
It hurt. The ghost was surprised, how painful it was, when his memories began flowing back into him, like liquid fire. It was overwhelming, to have the pieces of his soul reassembling themselves, jagged and broken like the pieces of the lamp on the table beside them. He pulled the man closer, to keep himself from pulling away, and fixed his thoughts firmly on the plight of his young friend. And slowly, he began to remember other young people who had relied on him, as surely as young David Dursley did now. Then he felt the regrets, that he had failed so many of them....
And then he felt another presence, pushing other memories at him. Of a boy on a broom whom he had saved from certain death, muttering a desperate counter-curse to counteract another’s attempt to kill him, a child far too small to be playing Quidditch. Of interposing his body between three frightened children and the beast he feared more than any other, sure he was about to be killed along with them, regardless. Of himself deliberately playing a double game Merlin knew how many times, with Voldemort, Umbridge, Lucius Malfoy, Pettigrew, the Carrows.
And then Snape realized with a start that the boy he had so hated was the man holding on to him so fiercely now. Giving him back his memories, and something more, besides. Something not done solely for his young cousin, but for Severus Snape. Death Eater. Hated Potions Master. Greasy Bat of the Dungeons. As everything came flowing back in an overwhelming torrent of rage, and fear, and horror, he felt Harry holding on through it, when he did not have to. Sharing the pain, and the shame, of memories he himself had carried for so many years. Long enough to have, not pity, but compassion for an old enemy. Perhaps even to understand, a little.
And then, it was over. The ghost remembered everything. He stepped back and looked into the eyes of the boy he had once hated, his hands still on the other's shoulders. He struggled with himself for a long moment. Then, slowly, his features relaxed. He gave Harry's shoulders a final squeeze and stepped back.
“Well, Potter,” he said finally, a little unsteadily. “Shall we go see to that cousin of yours, then?”
The irritating boy, now a man, grinned at him, and oddly, it wasn't so irritating anymore. “Yeah. I mean, yes, Sir.”
Part 13 - Consequences
