Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Harry Potter or any of its publishers or distributors. I am just a fan. A fan with a plan.
Some more info: This is a short oneshot where the Trio is assigned to clean out Snape's house. A little Snape tribute set after the Battle.
For a moment, he had almost tried knocking on the door. Those sorts of things had happened frequently in the weeks following the Battle; moments where he had wandered along, barely aware, barely even awake. He had raised a fist to knock on the door, but caught himself and lowered his hand before his company noticed, because nobody was there to answer.
Harry couldn't even imagine Severus Snape answering the door for Ron, Hermione, and himself; it would be too normal, and Harry had imagined Snape as a sort of storybook villain for far too long to picture him exercising any sort of normality.
The street in front of Snape's house—Snape's street, Harry thought bizarrely—was best described as grey. The pavements were grey and looked like glossy, wet cement in the light rain. The neighborhood houses were a pale shade of off-white and were as grey as could be but for actually being grey. The windows of Snape's house were dusty and smoky to the point of being opaque, and most definitely grey. And the sky above? Grey. Harry could not think of a more fitting residence for his late professor, except perhaps a cave.
Harry had seen a Muggle film on television once while the Dursleys were attending a special luncheon event for Grunnings Drill Company's upper management. Harry had seen half of the film before the Dursleys returned, Uncle Vernon's great puffy face puce with anger as he berated Dudley for eating the entire Mexican spread before his boss had even arrived (Dudley was punished, and Harry was punished double.). The film was in greyscale, and that contributed to its spooky atmosphere, but in one scene where a sort of alien tube-monster crawled out of the main character's toilet, the monster alone was in color.
Ron's hair reminded Harry of that effect, as it shone a coppery red that contrasted violently with all the grey around them. Ron and Hermione were holding hands and looking serious, and every time Harry caught Ron's eye, Ron would give him an encouraging sort of smile. Harry knew logically that Hermione had been his most loyal and caring friend, but she couldn't get to him like Ron. Before the trio, Harry and Ron were the duo. Double trouble. Perhaps it's just that Hermione is female—though, Ron's not complaining about that.
Harry had not yet forgiven Snape for everything over the years, but his anger dropped a notch when he realized that Snape never had this. He never had real friends. Perhaps that made all the difference.
It was one of the few ways Harry could relate to Snape, that they had both gone to Hogwarts and left nearly nothing behind. There were four such people at Hogwarts that fought in the Second Wizarding War. Voldemort was evil and Snape was suspect; the friendless. Far from the Dark side, Harry and Hagrid had many great friends to support them throughout.
Or, thought Harry, perhaps they just weren't the type to make friends, and it couldn't have been helped at all.
"Harry?"
Harry was shook from his thoughts by Hermione's tentative voice. He nodded to her, then stepped up to the door and tried the knob; it was locked. With quick glances left and right to check for Muggles, Harry flicked his wand at the door and its lock clicked open.
Harry entered Snape's home followed by Ron and Hermione and found himself in a tiny sitting room that had a faint dusty odor. It was small and cramped, chiefly due to the bookcases that covered every inch of the walls. Ron whistled impressively, rotating on the spot, his eyes roving over the brown and black leather-bound books.
"How'd you two never get along?" said Ron, smirking at Hermione, who was scanning the room in similar fashion.
"I'd never even go near half of these books," said Hermione gravely, reading the gruesome-sounding titles of the ancient tomes; Somewhat Forgivable Curses, Poisonry in Potioneering, Violent and Vicious Vapors, and the like.
A few moments' silence passed, then Hermione turned to Harry, looking concerned.
"But we can't allow these books in Hogwarts, can we?" she asked. "I know he's willed everything to the school, but, some of these, Harry... I mean, that one's simply titled Dark Arts!"
"You're right," said Harry, "but we'll bring them anyway, for the headmaster—"
"Headmistress."
"For McGonagall's office." Harry looked annoyed at being corrected, but Hermione merely smiled innocently. "Those books on Horcruxes helped Dumbledore, didn't they? Sometimes you've got to know what the enemy's capable of."
"Spoken like a true Mad-Eye," said Ron. "Or, well, a fake Mad-Eye..."
"Shall we then?"
Hermione still looked worried, but she nodded to Harry and planted her black beaded bag on the pale hardwood floor of Snape's sitting room, then reached into the bag with both hands, screwed up her eyes to brace herself, and gave a great pull, withdrawing a large black trunk.
"So we've brought a trunk in a bag that's smaller than the trunk, and we're going to" — Ron faltered as Hermione dropped the trunk on the floor with a heavy thud — "we're going to fill it with all of Snape's stuff. Exactly how many Undetectable Extension Charms are involved in this?"
"Just two," said Hermione plainly as she undid the trunk's buckles and opened it; looking inside it was like looking down into a small room that was perhaps half as big as the room they were in. "It's basic Arithmancy. The only difficulty is the weight, but there are charms for that as well, of course."
"Right, of course." Ron shook his head with a sort of wistful smile and got to work.
They started with the books, as they were stackable. While Ron chucked old withered books into the trunk with all the concern of a toddler playing with wooden blocks, Harry handled Snape's possessions with care. He felt indebted to Snape similar to how Snape was indebted to his father, and, at that, he also felt he understood Snape even more, because he really didn't like owing Snape anything.
One wall of books done and no conversation except for Ron suggesting that Hermione stop reading the titles if she's going to tut at them. They were half way through the next wall when there was a loud rumble of several books being dropped, and Hermione cried "OUCH!"
Hermione had cut her thumb on something on the bookshelf, but when she inspected the shelf, there was nothing there but dust and a vacant spiderweb.
"Give me your hand," said Ron, holding up his wand. Hermione stuck out her thumb and Ron pointed his wand at it and said, "Episkey!"
"Thank you," Hermione said with a grimace as the skin on her thumb mended. She then took out her own wand, pointed it at the shelf, and said, "Aparecium!"
A wave of rippling air like that over a bonfire swept over the seemingly empty shelf and an invisible object was revealed. It was a magical photograph of two people standing in the unmistakable corridors of Hogwarts, beside a statue of a winged boar. A sharp corner of the picture's steel frame had a splotch of Hermione's blood.
But Hermione seemed to forget about her injury when she murmured "Oh, Harry..."
Harry narrowed his eyes, then took the picture from the shelf, huffed a quick breath to blow dust off its surface, and inspected it. The two students in the picture were very young, possibly in their first year. One of them was Snape, who apparently hadn't changed his hairstyle from this point until the day he was buried, and the other was Harry's mother Lily.
Harry found out very quickly that he hated the image of his mother smiling and waving next to Snape, and dropped the picture into the trunk with everything else, as Ron and Hermione looked on apprehensively. Admittedly, Harry was only interested in cleaning out Snape's house to find out more about his mother—perhaps more correspondence and discussions about his father—but, truly his father's son, Harry just didn't like seeing Snape alongside his mum.
"I knew it!" called Ron's voice from another room.
Harry turned to find Ron coming out of the loo, on the verge of laughter.
"There's not a drop of shampoo in there!"
Hermione sighed in an oh-honestly-Ron sort of way, but Harry grinned, and then they went back to work.
More Revealing Charms on the shelves unveiled a few more of Snape's precious pictures. Harry noticed they all seemed to be from Snape's first year at Hogwarts. Harry wondered if Snape was being incredibly risky in keeping these pictures in his sitting room when he was supposed to despise Muggle-borns, but then perhaps he had enchanted them somehow so that only he could see them, and—perhaps he needed to see them?
That's what kept him going, isn't it? thought Harry as they polished off the bookshelves and moved on to the next room. Harry thought of the flashes of Snape's life he had seen, and how Snape could stand to carry out his seemingly impossible task of hoodwinking such a skilled Legilimens and powerful Dark wizard as Voldemort. Was it all really out of unrequited love for Lily Potter? Perhaps revenge towards Voldemort played a part—and guilt that he, Snape, had his hand in her death as well.
The kitchen was more or less empty except for some mouldy bread on the counter. Hermione waved her wand over the open cupboards, vanishing any food that remained, and they moved on to the next room.
Harry thought Snape not particularly noble, but brave, though ultimately selfish. He wanted her for himself, and that's all it was. He didn't care if she lost everything, as long as she was alive, and he'd have a chance at her. But then Harry pictured Ginny very clearly, and his anger towards Snape cooled a bit more. Fine, okay, love is one area where selfishness is understandable.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione braved the cellar, which contained all manners of Dark artifacts, gruesome instruments, and even more books. It wasn't nearly as bad as Grimmauld Place, though there was a small Doxy infestation, and Ron scrambled up the stairs as fast as his long legs could take him when a spider dangled down from the ceiling on its web and collided with his cheek. Harry cracked another grin when Hermione ran dutifully after him and could be heard consoling him at the top of the stairs.
After clearing the rest of the cellar up, Harry magicked the heavy trunk back up the stairs, but stopped on the last step as he heard Ron and Hermione whispering in the next room.
"Seeing all this," Hermione was saying, "it's just—it could have happened to—to us. We're so lucky with having—with being alive and—whatever we are now."
"We're together, that's what we are," Ron replied. Harry walked into the room in time to see Hermione hug him, her eyes welling up. Harry thought they were being rather revoltingly soppy, but it made him consider his own luck.
Ron and Hermione. Harry had been considering how he felt about them together for a while now, and came to the conclusion that he liked them very much together. Why shouldn't they be? The fighting is over. It's all over but for the living. Living of the 'happily ever after' sort. Though it seemed odd to be living happily ever after at age eighteen, but the Wizarding World was old-fashioned that way—Molly and Arthur did it—and that was Harry's world now.
Pondering things again, Harry didn't think he could ever come to like Snape. While levitating jars of frog spawn, fleshy human eyeballs, and rat spines from the racks of Snape's storeroom and carefully dropping them in the trunk, Harry decided that he could eventually forgive Snape, knowing all he had done, but that it would come in time.
Harry was largely disappointed with the house cleaning until he found himself in Snape's bedroom, staring at the motherload: a small shoebox-sized crate with a stack of letters. They appeared to be letters Snape had received mainly from Albus Dumbledore and Lily Potter.
But, as he stared down at the box of old letters, he imagined how furious Snape would be if he saw Harry snooping through them. He thought of the stern glare he would have likely received from his mother, and the stern glare he was receiving at that moment from Hermione.
Maybe he didn't want to read them. Maybe it's a lot better not knowing how close they were. Maybe his mum and dad were watching over him at that very moment, and his dad really wanted Harry to read them, and his mum was just hoping her son wasn't as much of a prat. It turned out he wasn't.
"Let's burn them," Harry finally said. Hermione nodded, but Ron looked incredulous.
"Are you mad?" he barked. "When are we ever going to get a chance like this again?"
"It's an invasion of privacy," said Hermione. "After what he did, he doesn't deserve it—"
"He was the worst!" groaned Ron. "All those years' torment—torment, Hermione!"
"What did you have in mind?" said Harry, narrowing his eyes.
"We read them, of course!"
"What, and laugh at him for loving my mum?"
"Well, no, I didn't say that..."
"We're burning it, as a tribute," said Harry, prodding the open crate with his foot to move it off the rug and onto the wooden floor. He raised his wand and took aim, and so did Ron and Hermione.
"To Snape," said Hermione.
"To Snape," grumbled Ron. Harry smiled weakly.
"To Professor Snape."