I open at the close

I open at the close

By tearsofphoenix

Standard disclaimer applies – it's all JKR's

The ending of my last fan fiction, Be sure to act your part convincingly, was only very slightly open to hope, because more than ever I felt, while writing it, that sadly there wasn't any. But after some time that little light required to be pursued, regaining trust, in thoughts and wishes, if not elsewhere.

Starting from a possible loose end in the official story, and searching for other openings there, without pretence but with gratitude for what these openings might allow, this tale went on, longer than usual.

Many, many thanks to Whitehound, who always helps with friendly editing of the language, sharing ideas, and support during the difficult moments.

The new section breaks are borrowed from a very useful and detailed guide to the know-how of FFnet that Whitehound has written in her homepage, and they are available to everyone at this link:

www. whitehound. co. uk/Fanfic/ffn underscore how-to. htm (remember to remove the spaces after all the dots, and put in a real underscore).

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1- Still Open

"All was well" said the woman, fondly.

"He did it" answered her husband proudly.

Their most faithful friends smiled, and serenity was the only thing that shone through the expressions on their nearly living faces.

Death was too busy collecting her prey on the battlefield to remember that she could retrieve and own again one of her precious presents to the Peverells, and thus it seemed that, thanks to that temporary forgetfulness, the four presences, which had vanished from Harry's sight when he had let the little stone fall, could stay around for a little bit longer.

Walking through the woods, as if savouring the flavour of the place that had hosted their flourishing youth, they resembled even more their living selves, and at their best. Approaching the location of their most dangerous mischiefs and pranks, though, one of them stopped.

"We have seen everything, we can't turn our heads and pretend we didn't," he said, adding, even if only as a mere thought addressed to himself: "As I always did ".

Now his eyes wore a hint of regret, and it was weird, in a sense, to see it on a face that hadn't shown such feeling when he had been asked about the loss of a family that had barely begun to live its life.

"Not this time, I concede it," replied the most graceful and elegant one, with only a small trace of the carelessness with which he had confronted even his untimely demise.

The pleased and relieved parents, too, halted and, nodding seriously, agreed. They would try, concealed from the world and powerless as they were, knowing without any doubt how much they owed it to make this attempt.

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"Harry… dear, it's not yet the time to rest. The closure is still opened. Please…hurry… And don't forget your Cloak!"

The young wizard, exhausted after the victory, and finally left alone thanks to Luna's wonderful help, blinked. She had gone forever, hadn't she? When he had approached the end. So, what was happening? Was he dreaming?

Then, looking into her green eyes, Harry remembered: the little stone that had fallen from his hand, approaching Voldemort; it was still there, and perhaps, from now on, it was undetectable forever. Could it mean that…

"You'll stay?" his heart seemed to beat faster "As I asked? You all will stay forever with me?"

"Only a little longer, Harry. Until all will really be well."

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"Severus…" whispered three voices, together. "Severus, wait, don't go." His eyes, opened but fixed and empty, showed no sign of response.

Their chance to stay couldn't last forever, they knew it and went on, louder: "Come on, Snape, you are still your old self, not yet changed like us, as surely you don't want to be…"

He remembered dizzily those to whom the voices belonged, and once more felt emotions overwhelming him. He couldn't see their presences, that, besides, were becoming more and more translucent and insubstantial as the time was passing, but he recognized them.

"And, you know what? Harry is alive, he won, Voldie is dead and gone forever, everything will be different if you'll stay."

"You don't want to be stuck with us, yet, do you?"

"You can't give up, it isn't fair."

He didn't answer, he had neither a voice nor any word left, but even if until this moment he had given himself over, finally, to peace, rest, and silence, the sound of those voices wasn't disturbing as it should have been.

After a short indefinite time, a fourth, sweeter and pleading tone had joined the chorus.

The strange cadence, that alternated from murmurs of fondness to huffs of aggravation, went on, and he felt that perhaps he hadn't been the only one who had for a long time been burdened by chagrin and regret. And yet he didn't answer, he couldn't and wouldn't, even if a sort of pleasure warmed his cold body, because in a sense this was an answer, a closure, belated though it was.

Yes, it wasn't fair; it had never been fair. It was strange to feel, though, that the sense of unfairness, that had ruled all his existence until this moment, stung less, as if lowered by the weakness that was overwhelming him or, maybe, as if gone among the afterglows of his life.

The presences couldn't last long, they must go back where they came from, and from now on they would, and could, only watch what would follow, as they had ever done, with hope, from their heavenly places. Severus sensed their departure, and instantly, approaching, another voice, louder and alive.

He began to place confidence in the possibility that, perhaps, the next thing he endured would not be his own passing.

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Lying on a plain, immaculate sheet, immobile and pale, Severus Snape was, a week after the fateful night of the last battle, still unconscious, and that little light that Pomfrey's wand had spotted around his throat every time she had checked him seemed to the few visitors to be the only sign of a remaining breath of life.

To that young witch who was standing in front of him this was the most challenging and inexplicable situation among a series of events which otherwise were to her, on the contrary, very well known and immediate, as if printed in a book read and re-read a hundred times.

It had all started just a few pages before the supposed end…

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Remembering wasn't difficult, per se, but if the reminiscence was sparked by a particular moment in the present, or by a gesture, that very ease of recollection began to assume troubling features, for it freely recalled sensations which were not easy at all and that struck the mind more often than one could wish, with every remembrance that came: places, objects, similar situations, relatives… Hermione Granger had experienced this when looking at George, or at the living, demanding reminder of the Lupins, that was so touching and beautiful… while every elf that she met suggested the moving remembrance of Dobby, the little, big, brave hero… But in such memories the living forms of the deceased were no longer present: there were only dazed visions, that faded more and more as the time went by.

Well, in the wizarding world there were the pictures and the paintings that, by showing people moving, and speaking, could give back the essence of those missed, of something more than a fleeting vision, but, actually, to the onlookers they were often more of a poignant reminder than a relief from grief. When Harry told them about Snape's memories, and led them to speak with Dumbledore's portrait, for example, the appearance of the old wizard, moved and smiling, had resembled his living self, but his words, and the feeling of closure, of finality, hanging in the air, had renewed their awareness of their great loss.

Then Harry had explained to his old mentor what he wanted to do with the Hallows, and everything seemed rightly settled. Only Ronald, close to Hermione, had shown a shadow of desire for the powerful stick and she, who had already begun to feel a sense of unease when her boyfriend had commented on Peeves' song, felt a bit uncomfortable.

That little embarrassing interlude, too, was easy to relive: "So now let's have fun" might really have been the best response the Poltergeist could come up with to celebrate the victory, but she couldn't help but compare the disillusionment and sarcasm of Ron's words – "Really gives a feeling for the scope and tragedy of the thing, doesn't it?" - to the same sentiments she had heard for six years from another man, the master of bitterness, the same man who hadn't left her thoughts for hours, and the analogy hadn't been reassuring.

That uneasy feeling, then, had grown higher while the three of them were putting the Elder Wand back in its place, and at that point she had realized with an amazing clarity what wasn't right.

"What has happened to Professor Snape?" she had asked. "His portrait wasn't on the walls of the Headmaster's office, and I haven't seen his body among those of the heroes in the Great Hall. He can't be still rotting in the Shrieking Shack, surely?" she had ended with a very alarmed tone.

Harry had almost grinned.

"It's a secret…. No, really! Trust me. I promise. You're right to worry, Hermione, but please don't ask more, don't do anything else."

She would have differed, but her words were cut off by Ron's voice, complaining as if Harry's tale about the truth discovered in the Pensieve hadn't been told: "I don't understand. There are a lot of them, people that we liked, still on the ground. Why should Snape be different? Why bother?"

"They had a chance at happiness, every one of them had it. He is the only one that never had it, ever," answered the Boy, not less tired than his friend but with the colour of a passion in his voice, that reminded the other two of his most determined moments.

"And it was about time to fix things" slipped out of him, then, in a relieved sort of way which somehow lessened Hermione's wish for further queries. After that he kept silent, and even if he had told his best friends everything that mattered about the many discoveries of that night, it had been impossible to make him more talkative on the subject.

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Lost in her reverie, Hermione remembered how the following morning, when they were wandering through the Castle, the place that at least two among them had missed so much during their flight, at some point they had reached the Hospital Wing. There, before entering, Harry had added a bit of explanation, as if he could do so, now that the night had passed.

He revealed that, as soon as victory was assured, hours even before calling them to their last common task in the Headmaster's office, he, hidden from everyone else under his Invisibility Cloak, had alerted Madam Pomfrey to go to the Shack.

What the mediwitch had done, and how she had succeeded in bringing the dying wizard - actually not yet dead - to Hogwarts, had to remain a mystery. Ron and Hermione had had to accept, without further questions, the fact that Poppy had found a man still living, not a corpse as they had believed when they left him. Harry had been very firm about this secrecy, as if to break it could mean the end of a miracle.

But, of course, the young witch couldn't leave all this alone. After some initial inconclusive attempts, Madam Pomfrey had given up all pretence of sending the persistent Miss Granger away, and accepted her presence: after all there wasn't much that could be done for Severus, other than wait and see, and the old matron had other patients to assist.

A few people knew that Harry had been through an unbelievable experience, suspended between life and death. He had called it "King's Cross" and it had confirmed the popular belief about the Boy's uniqueness in a world of exceptionalities. What mattered to Hermione, who had begun to come back daily to the Hospital Wing, was the fact that such a singular anomaly was, actually, the widest of exceptions and therefore it wasn't of help in classifying or better understanding Severus Snape's condition.

And thus she went on going daily to visit him, out of curiosity, because - after seven years during which every reference to the mystery of death had been accompanied by the knowledge that a world of magic could fix many things but not that - she simply couldn't believe in what her eyes saw that morning. This had remained the case until after the first week, during which nothing had happened, when she had managed to change a bit of Harry's resolution, convincing her friend that her wish was well-intentioned, and he had finally led her, too, to see Snape's memories in the Pensieve. Then:

"Thank you, Harry. He is still so… so blank, and perhaps there is something more to be done for him, I can't stand the waiting and doing nothing. These scenes of his life will help me to understand, to guess… I hope." These were the words with which she made her farewell to reality before the journey into remembrance.

When she resurfaced, later, curiosity and the thirst for knowledge was no longer the main emotion she felt.

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To see again the living man, acting, speaking, walking with his usual elegance, fighting and even crying, after the recent days spent looking at his motionless and limp body, had been a shocking experience, but not the most shocking one. The glimpses of his youth, so unexpected and so poignantly retained by the man throughout his life, had been the most touching and disconcerting thing, and now it was clear to her that she had to reassess what she had thought she had known about Professor Snape, integrating all the events he had lived through and the notions she had acquired about him into a picture which was more confused than cleared by this increased awareness of his whole existence.

What she knew for sure, however, was that she didn't need to make the same revision towards the young boy seen in the first sequences. He was a boy that she would have liked to have had the possibility to meet, shabby, resentful and unpleasant though he was. She would have made a difference to him, like nobody had ever done. She would have been his friend, the never ever deserting one.

To keep a caring eye on him, waiting to see what had lasted of the proud teenage Slytherin student after all those events and after all those years, was, since that moment, her way to seek the real closure she still waited for. She realised now that when Harry had put his end to the matter of the Deathly Hallows the closure had only just begun.

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Hermione's wonderings and reminiscences halted.

Ordinarily she would have begun to speak quietly to him, now, as she had done since the first day of her vigil, attempting, as in the Muggle world, to provide constant stimulation to which he might react, if it reached his senses. And for the same reason she was keeping Snape's left hand between hers, feeling that, wherever his mind was in his present condition, it would be good for him to have the sensation of a human contact; his long and slender fingers were lying still and only slightly warmed by the feeble beat of life that kept him alive.

But today she didn't begin to speak, because something new was happening: she stared at him, wishing to be sure of what could have been only a joke by her imagination, an illusion created by her hopes. And yet she felt it again and saw it, the slight tremble of his thumb, as if he wanted to reciprocate her grip, while the light that had been their hope until then seemed to move, as if brightening.

Luckily Madam Pomfrey was only a short distance away, and Hermione was able to call her without leaving her place. Both continued to watch him, searching for other signs of changes, or sudden improvements.

Both called him, with different names, many times:

"Severus..."

"Professor, Sir, please..."

He showed no further signs of interaction, though.

Madam Pomfrey tried to reassure the younger witch:

"He will be fine, we arrived just in time, then. It's just that it seems it will take longer than we expected. But he will. And this first hint is very encouraging, really!"

Hermione nodded, unable to say more: she couldn't know that, right at that moment, it had felt good to him, to hear again the sound of voices, speaking aloud.

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A/N: During the period before Harry's victory, it seems impossible that anyone could have found the time to see to Snape's body, and thus my start delays the beginning of an attempt to mend our hero until after Voldemort's death, even though that may seem like a stretch; but I've chosen to believe that the words with which JKR describes his last moments weren't definitive, and that that atonement towards the cold desertion that he suffered until the end could be possible. Thanks to this licence, I hope that all the other things that will follow will make sense.