Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling, and not to me. I do not make any money off of this; I merely use it as a means to stave off the madness until book 6 is published.
This was written in an attempt to explore the possibilities for reconciliation between Severus Snape and Harry Potter. At least until I know the real way in which JK Rowling plans to bring them to an understanding.
An Understanding
It was not until he heard the faintest chatter of drying leaves underfoot that he suspected he was not alone. The sound was so quiet that the walker must have been far away. The skin around Harry's eyes tightened almost imperceptibly. He had not come here for lack of company. Why was it they could not leave him alone? As silently as he could he shifted himself into a more secluded position within the branches of the tree he had climbed. It would not be Ron; Ron would not speak to him again so quickly. Hermione would know better than to come for him now. Perhaps, whoever it was, they would not see him.
He pulled his thin red cloak close about him, his brooding silence more invisibility than any magic. A bitter chill nibbled at his face as the autumn wind breathed harder. His scar played a harsh counterpoint to the wind's melody—a constant burning tingle that never left him alone. The contrast between the chill and the heat made him suddenly intensely aware of the scar's presence. Voldemort. Slithering just out of his sight, at the edge of his thought, on the threshold of his dreams.
These days there was little joy left for them. This was meant to have been Harry's 7th and final year at Hogwarts. He was 17. His bones had finished growing and his lanky body had thickened only slightly. He found himself feeling oddly out of place within it. He was slowly settling into his flesh as it would be until age began to take over. He wondered if he would get that far.
He had not heard the footsteps for a while. Perhaps they had passed him by. His muscles loosened at the thought of his reverie continuing undisturbed.
It was this that caused the change in posture that brought into view in the corner of his eye a spot of black that had not been there before. Startled, he turned his head until the spot grew and came into focus, coalescing into a figure draped in layers of ebony. Harry's hand had moved instinctively to his wand but halted, still wavering, as he realized who the figure was. The last person he wanted to see, and, he was sure, the last person who wanted to see him.
Snape was not looking at him. He was, like Harry had been, looking off through the thinning trees at the shadow on the horizon that obscured the rising sun. Hogwarts.
Tall and severe, rigid, and absolutely still, he could have been one of the trees, ancient and dreaming. How long had be been there?
His robes and cloak had soaked up enough dew that they hung from his narrow frame almost as limply as his hair, which a sudden breeze whipped into his eyes.
Harry had not seen Snape look at him, but he knew that the man would know he was there, and was looking at him now.
"I don't care what you have to say," Harry said and meant it. There was nothing Snape could say to him that would be of value.
Snape did not move except for a momentary, and Harry was sure, deliberate curling at the edges of his lips. He was silent for a moment longer than Harry was accustomed to before he replied. "You're mistaken if you believe that I assumed differently."
Harry did not flinch in anger or react in any way to these words meant to sting him, other than to look away again. He waited silently for the next snide rebuttal. Tell me off for whatever you like, you vulture, I won't care anymore, he thought. When no more words came he risked another glance at the Potions Master. If the man was even breathing Harry could not tell. Perhaps he didn't need to breathe.
"Shall I find another tree, sir?"
He had not long ago finally come across a position upon the branch that didn't cause his behind any great deal of discomfort, but now the contours of the bark pressing into his skin were aggravatingly apparent. He was sure it was the company. When silence continued between them he began to swing his legs as gracefully as he could manage off of the branch: the climb down would be worth resumed solitude.
"You may keep your tree, Potter. I have no desire to climb it myself. And, as I know your desire to leave has more to do with my presence than anything else, I will assure you that I will not ... bother ... you for long."
"Then I am required to hear whatever you have to say to me, sir?"
Snape shifted slightly and the curl reappeared on his lips, but this time it seemed not to be directed at Harry so much as at the surrounding world in general.
"Perhaps your grammatical education is lacking more than I had imagined, but as I said "may" and not "shall" that should imply that the decision to stay or leave is entirely up to you. You are not required to listen to anything I have to say. As the Headmaster has permitted you to move about the grounds freely, much against my better judgment, you are not currently breaking any school rules. He has, thankfully, not absolved you of your required coursework, but as I have nothing new to say regarding your still lacking potions abilities you are again released from any obligation to endure my presence at this time. I would, however ...," and here he faltered and Harry, caught suddenly astonished that his professor would admit to his current lack of any authority over him, noticed this momentary glitch in his elder's ever calculated demeanor and became even more amazed when Snape continued.
"request that you remain if only long enough to hear my words whether you care for them or not." He was silent after that and poised, as if balancing upon the edge of a great chasm, waiting to be told—be told!—whether he should jump or turn back and forget the great dark vistas before him entirely.
It was this strange set of actions and reactions that made Harry forget then the reason he had come to this quiet and secluded spot to begin with. Suddenly, the disgust that shown so clear in Ron's eyes faded along with Hermione's glittering tears. It had begun because of how much time he had spent alone, away from his two good friends, wandering to this tree and making them promise, very harshly, that they would not come looking for him.
He had been cruel to them, telling them his solitude was none of their business. Telling them that he was the one who was prophesied to defeat Voldemort and that he deserved what time alone he wanted. After all, who knew if he would make it out alive or dead? Couldn't they give him this one thing? To make matters worse his ever darkening demeanor had bleed through the school and through the house on Privet Drive before that, washing the walls red. Even Peeves avoided him, to say nothing of the other Hogwarts students.
They, of course, did not know the "truth," the "whole story." Their version of events was, as usual, the pieced together end result of half truths and misheard rumors. An amalgamation of nonsense. But what it came down to was, inevitably, that he was "Harry Potter: the Boy Who Lived." The cruelest joke he could imagine, and it was being played on him.
He is Harry Potter: the Boy Who Lived and he thinks he is better than us and so does Dumbledore. He is Harry Potter: the Boy Who Lived and he has privileges we don't. If Harry Potter: the Boy Who Lived is so great why are my aunt and uncle dead? If he is Harry Potter: the Boy Who Lived why are so many people dying again at the hand of Voldemort? Why hadn't Harry Potter: the Boy Who Lived stopped Voldemort? Why was Harry Potter: the Boy Who Lived brooding about when people were dying? Why was Harry Potter: the Boy Who Lived given free reign of the place when they were hiding, afraid of what might come sliding into their bedrooms at night to burn their retinas with green light before they died? Harry Potter: the Boy Who Lived. The Boy Who Lived.
It had been hard enough listening to such things knowing the truth could not be said, knowing the answer to all of those questions. But when Ron and Hermione had finally demanded to know what had caused his darkening temperament—a temperament that had made him an outcast in his one true home, and no longer welcome past graduation in the house of his youth—he had told them.
The freedom to sit out here so early of a morning was little remuneration for what he and Dumbledore had, together, realized at the end of last year. And with the knowledge of it, a look he had never seen before passed over Ron's face, distorting his features into something terrifying to see. Hermione had been stone-faced, caught in flux, unable to placate the irony with reason, until tears formed silver threads down her white cheeks.
Harry suspected there were more than four persons that knew; and he suspected who at least one of them was.
"I will interpret your silence and the rather askew set of your face as, at least, disturbed acquiescence." Snape's silky voice slithered through the cold. It was not until he had said this that he turned and looked Harry in the eyes, having seemingly been given the order to make the jump.
And eleven year old could not read that expression, Harry knew. An eleven year old would have distilled the subtleties down into something more manageable, more threatening, less sincere. But the eyes of a seventeen year old, especially eyes that had witnessed death, were far more acute when it came to dissecting what was different at the end of those dark tunnels. And though those tunnels still harbored resentment, it was somehow being tempered in this strange moment beneath the trees.
"I imagine you are old enough now to know that the likelihood of your fate does not console me, and that if there were a draught that would change that fate I would not require an order form the Headmaster to brew it."
Harry snickered, disappointed. "If you're telling me this to clear your conscience you shouldn't waste your time."
"You would make life for those around you much easier if you did not jump so quickly to convenient conclusions!" the professor snapped. His jaw and his fists were clenched and his eyes were burning. He seemed uncomfortable looking up at Harry, his head craned back and his oily hair falling away from his face and revealing the pale skin more clearly in the red morning sun than Harry had ever seen it. Harry had rarely seen him in light so bright, struggling to see against the sudden glare. From above he seemed far less threatening than Harry remembered him: a dark figure towering over Harry with a piercing distain in his eyes. From above he was just a man, his imposing presence lessened by his struggle against a sudden gust of wind, small and pathetic.
"I'm sorry for what your father did," the words slipped out before Harry could stop them. Snape's eyes were suddenly filled with such terror that he looked ready to flee out of a sheer desire for self-preservation. "And I'm sorry for what my father did." Harry had not planned those words but his mouth had formed them before he could notice. And he was surprised to realize that, though stunned he had spoken them, he did not regret them.
Snape looked as if he was trying to say something but could not give voice to the words, his mouth working silently and his eyes overflowing with suspicion. "How dare you. How dare you!" was what he was finally able to spit out. He looked like he was ready to climb the tree and tear Harry apart like some feral animal.
Something was welling inside of Harry now. New doors were opening in his mind and the passages through them were becoming clearer. "I wish you had died and not Sirius."
The words were not meant to harm but were plainly and starkly true. Snape was visibly trembling now, the emotion in his deep eyes had passed beyond hate and fear into something like a terrible uncertainty. He began pacing around the base of the tree, his steps threateningly erratic. But Harry had not finished. "Why are you here then if Dumbledore didn't send you?"
Snape's voice practically screeched with rage. "If it were up to me I would h ...."
"Have me expelled," Harry barreled over him. "Yes, I know. You've mentioned that."
"I have respected Dumbledore's wishes; I have not inquired as to your whereabouts; I have refrained from acting in what I believe to be the most appropriate way regarding you. If that insufferable know-it-all of a Head Girl who does all of your thinking for you hadn't been trying to force her way in to see the Headmaster at four in the morning in a temper fit to bring Merlin himself crawling back from six feet under, I would not have spared a second thought for you, Potter! You can freeze to death out here for all I care but for the sake of the common cause I would rather see you survive long enough ...."
"To die." Harry did not blink.
Snape was finally beginning to control his breathing. "If that is what must happen. I would rather that than years of Voldemort's reign."
Harry had locked eyes with his professor many words ago and did not break that contact now. "Have you told me yet what you came to tell me yet?"
Snape seemed to measure the consequences of his next action. Harry continued to stare into Snape's eyes, awaiting an answer. Snape's stare was shrewd, as if he were calculating Harry's next hundred moves before he made his. Well, Harry could be just as determined, just as stubborn. So long as there was no acceptable outcome beyond checkmate for either of them, they would have to continue the game.
"I suspect you will interpret this in whatever way best suits your current disposition. However, I want to impart to you the fact of my agreement with the Headmaster. Often, that which is "right" is not also that which is "easy." Knowing the Headmaster for some years now, I am sure he will leave the coming decision up to you. And out of respect for him I will not attempt to force your decision either way. Though I am sure you are aware of what decision I would advise, I also know ... what pain it was for me to make that decision for myself 18 years ago."
The professor broke eye contact at this point, and his taught frame relaxed, the strain of speaking those words seeming to have passed out of his body along with them. He looked again at the outline of Hogwarts Castle upon the horizon and tucked his hands beneath his outer layer of robes. His breath curled lazily upwards from his lips as he exhaled slowly.
Harry would have expected Snape to march back towards the bitter solitude of his dungeons at this point, but he seemed more taken with examining the feelings that purging himself of those words had created. Or maybe he was waiting.
Harry took this moment to tuck his own hands into the warmth of his cloak. The sun had risen high enough now that its upper rim had passed above the outline of the school. It couldn't hurt to ask.
"What do I do if neither is easy?" Harry asked.
Snape turned and looked at Harry again.
To be continued. This isn't truly meant to be the end of this chapter, but I am not sure how to connect this portion to the end I have in mind for their conversation just yet and would like to get responses and suggestions on it as soon as possible. If you don't already know why it is that Harry might have to die, it will be explained more thoroughly towards the end as will the motivation behind Ron and Hermione's actions.
In the meantime, please let me know what your thoughts are on what exists so far. And if you are good at correcting verb tense shifts please let me know where I've gone wrong so far J
-ZR