A/N: Hey guys! Okay, so, let's get all the unpleasant stuff out of the way. This story is slash (male/male pairing), and the pairing is HP/SS. I may have to up the rating later in the story, but this more a blow-the-reader's-patience-with-tons-of-unresolved-sexual-tension story than a lemon.
Disclaimer: These things are useless. Does anyone really think I might be J.K? Yeah, that's right, I'm her. And the moon is made of cheese.
Oh, and I'm looking for a beta, so please forgive the egregious errors I'm sure to have made (Do please point them out, so I can fix them). Okay, without further ado, here's the story:)
"To the end of the war!" Ron cried, and then leaned closer to Harry and whispered, "The end at last, mate. Do you believe it?"
"To Harry Potter!" Colin, of course, would say that.
"To the fallen!" Hermione shouted, lifting her glass.
Harry considered, and then raised his very full glass, "To getting so plastered we forget our names!"
Laughter and shouts of, "Here, here!", and "Cheers!" filled the room. The Gryffindor common room was filled to bursting point with current and former inhabitants. All the Order had been living at Hogwarts for the past few days. Most of the Order were former students, and had been stuffed into their old dormitories. If there weren't enough beds, they transfigured the furniture. Or threw the first years out to sleep on the floor. Not there was much point to any beds at all—absolutely no one had slept much for three days. It was amazing, that they could go on drinking that long, really.
But the previous three days' celebrations were simple, sober affairs, in comparison to the school-wide party that started the moment Harry was released from the hospital wing. Harry had really been unbelievably lucky; he had been scratched and bruised all over, and hit by a few less-than-friendly spells, but he had survived irreparable damage. Harry barely believed it was over, really, truly over. And it had been so heart-stoppingly fast. The last battle, the battle Harry had spent his lifetime preparing for, was just a blur of spell-light and sound, and blood…
Harry shook his head to dispel those thoughts. It was over. Voldemort was dead. Gone. The world was safe from that menace, at least. He smiled and drained his glass of firewhiskey. It refilled itself. That, he thought, would explain the pile of catatonic first years on the floor.
He stepped over the slumbering children to sit down in one of the armchairs. Even now, he was still a little weak, but it was wonderful to be amongst all his friends, back at his first real home. He gulped down the second glassful and beamed at Dean Thomas, who was catering the party.
"The firwhiskey's good. And the canary creams." He wasn't slurring his words, but he did have to resist the urge to giggle.
Dean, sitting across from Harry, was apparently far drunker than himself, because his speech resembled parselttongue, it was so slurred. "Thank you. 'S very kind. I get only (hiccup) best (hiccup) stuff. Got a boy who (hiccup) chooses it out special. 'Is name is Ja.. Jac… Jacob."
They grinned at each other and sat in companionable silence until Ron insisted Harry get up and join the party.
It was several hours before Hermione and Ron (with about half the school following) escorted Harry, exhausted after even a few hours out of bed, and thoroughly drunk, back to his hospital bed. There they clumsily tucked him in, and were hurried out by a disapproving Madame Pomfrey. Harry also thought Colin snapped a final shot of him. Harry sincerely hoped he wouldn't show this one to his boss at The Prophet. It was bad enough being called The Chosen One. There was no need to add the dubious fame of having your picture in the paper when you were visibly drunk.
But, he thought philosophically, it wouldn't spoil his good mood. He was too happy to let anything dent that for a good long time. Everything was good, he decided. Even the plain cotton sheets beneath him felt just like silk, and Madame Pomfrey looked as beautiful as an angel. He wondered that he had never noticed it before.
Prosecutor Pyrites: Can you deny, Mr. Snape, that you killed Professor Dumbledore? You were seen performing the Killing Curse on him by several witnesses!
S. Snape: I do not deny I killed him. But there was far more to it than any of those fools could have known or imagined. I was an spy working for the-
Prosecutor Pyrites: But you don't claim innocence in his death, do you? To jury What else matters?
S. Snape: If you will ever let me finish a sentence, you would learn that there is a great deal more that matters. I was a spy working for the Order of the Phoenix, and as such I provided very valuable information. You were, doubtless, still hiding under the bed and pretending the Dark Lord had not risen-
Prosecutor Pyrites: That is neither here nor there!
S. Snape: He felt that my role in the Order was absolutely vital -- important enough that my cover was more important than his life.
Prosecutor Pyrites: Do you really expect us to believe that he told you to kill him rather than desert your role as spy?
S. Snape: fool! I have just said-
Judge Bones: Please, Mr. Snape, sit down.
S. Snape: Sits.
Prosecutor Pyrites: I repeat, do you claim that Dumbledore specifically requested that you murder him rather than stop associating with your Death Eater playmates?
S. Snape: Silence
Prosecutor Pyrites: Mr. Snape?
S. Snape: Yes.
Excerpt from the transcript of the trial of Severus Snape for the murder of Albus Dumbledore.
Harry was pretty sure he was going to die of this hangover. His head was going to split in two any second now, and the light streaming through the window above his bed seemed to be made of needles. He also had the distinct sensation that his socks had teeth, and were applying them – rudely, and with great enthusiasm – to his toes. That had never happened when Harry had gotten drunk before. But, he reasoned, firewhiskey was very strong, and was known to cause very strange effects for days after it had been drunk. No matter, he thought blurrily, he would be dead soon anyway. TheProphet would have a ball with that. He could almost see the headlines hanging above his head, like some sort of bizarre omen: Harry Potter, savoir of the Wizarding world, killed by firewhiskey. They would probably use Colin's photograph.
But his morbid haze was not destined to a very long life. Within a few minutes of Harry's waking, Madame Pomfrey, tight-lipped and glaring, drew back the curtain around Harry's bed.
"Drink this." She snapped, holding out a glass filled with something green, "It's a hangover potion. It'll help."
"Thanks, Madame Pomfrey." God, didn't she know he would die with or without the stupid green potion? Or was it blue? Harry squinted through the painful light, but the liquid flickered between royal blue and vibrant green and refused to stick with either.
Giving up, Harry swallowed the potion and felt almost immediately better. His socks were still attacking him, though. Not even Pomfrey's hangover potions could cure everything.
He tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Pomfrey that he was now perfectly capable of leaving the hospital wing, but she merely glowered and said, "Absolutely not." The next day though, he did manage to wring his freedom from her. So though she grumbled and looked stern, and though he did have to lean a little on Ron, he left the castle.
As Hermione, Ron and he crossed the grounds, it struck Harry how beautiful the world was. It was two weeks until Easter, and the grounds surrounding Hogwarts had that just-about-to-be-reborn feel to them. The grass stretched out, green and lush and beckoning. It was even unseasonably warm, as though the world was rejoicing in Voldemort's defeat by blowing warm breezes across the thick, beautiful fields.
Harry smiled contentedly, and tilted his head back to catch more sunlight.
"Oh, come on, mate. It's freezing." Ron griped.
"What are you talking about? It's perfect out here." But he was perfectly willing to be led along by his two best friends.
Life was good.
"Sir, you can't ask me to do that!" Snape's face was long and even paler than usual.
"But I can, Severus. I must." Dumbledore was a little pale himself.
Severus was silent and rigid for many moments, his eyes boring holes into Dumbledore's. Dumbledore gazed back in mild enquiry, unfazed. Eventually, Snape broke eye contact, scowled, and slumped a little in his chair. He looked around the office, as if he were unfamiliar with it, then hesitantly, haltingly, looked back across the desk to Dumbledore.
"I can't, you can't expect me to…" Snape's face twisted into an unhappy hybrid of fear and anger, "I can't kill you," he clenched his teeth, unclenched them, "Sir."
"But that is precisely what I expect and need you to do, Severus. And I am not asking you to kill me here, now. I am just asking that, should you find yourself faced with the choice of either revealing yourself as a traitor to Voldemort or acting as a Death Eater – which may mean you will have to attack me, even fatally – you must act the Death Eater. " Dumbledore's eyes had lost some of their twinkle, and lines of strain had spider-webbed around his mouth and eyes.
"But why are you asking me this?" Snape's hands twitched, the fingers gripping at something invisible.
"I have explained that." Dumbledore's voice was as light as if he was discussing quidditch, or the weather, but the tension in the room was noticeably thicker, "If you are in the company of Death Eaters, and there is not enough chaos to cover your lack of animosity, you must attack or be found out."
"I still don't understand why it's so-"
"Because, Severus, I will die anyway, and the Order will also lose a valuable spy." He leant forward, a vein of urgency threading through his voice, "You are going to be more important to the Order, to Britain, " more quietly, "to Harry Potter, than you can fathom right now."
Snape's face lost all expression when Dumbledore mentioned Potter. After a moment, though, his face twisted, and his black eyes grew blacker still with anger. He glared at his lap and spat, "Why are saying all this now? You and precious Potter are safe enough."
Dumbledore looked a little sad, but his voice was perfectly level and calm, "Sometimes, Severus, those without the gift of prophesy may see the future."
Snape looked up, wary. His eyes searched Dumbledore's. "Do you wish to swear an Unbreakable Vow?"
"No, your promise will be more than sufficient."
"I promise."
Stenographer's report on A. Dumbledore's memory-evidence, taken from his Pensieve.
Harry thought he might he might be going crazy. Or the world was.
For instance, he was wearing differently colored shoes. Not bizarre in itself – he got up so early for work, and was so tired in those morning hours, that it was not unheard of to forget shoes at all – but he had just this minute put on the shoes, and a split-second ago, they had matched. He glared at the offending purple shoe, willing to turn back to black. It didn't.
Frowning, he performed a color-changing charm on the shoe. Still, nothing. Sighing, Harry gave and began to root through the closet in his small-ish apartment. He had never been any good at color-changing charms.
Ten minutes later, a matching-shoed Harry strode across the Atrium, and boarded the elevator. He grinned at the calls of, "Here, here, Harry!" and, "How's our Savoir, then?" He ducked his head, red-faced, when his fellow passengers started clapping. He had come to work even earlier than usual to avoid this. He gave his co-workers an exasperated smile and a final wave before getting off the elevator.
He was walking to his office when he heard a voice from behind him call, "Wotcher Harry!"
Relieved it was not another admirer, he turned, "Hi Tonks. How's Remus?"
"All right. That hex LeStrange hit him with turned out to be totally reversible. Good thing too, he looked horrible in blue spots" Her voice, Harry thought, sounded a little lower than usual, as though she had been crying, or had a cold coming on.
Deciding not to comment on that, he said, "That's great."
She nodded, and excused herself.
Harry turned back to his office door, and opened it.
"For the love of Merlin!" Harry cried, clutching at the door frame and squinting, bedazzled, at the explosion of gold and red that had been his office.
Someone had apparently put an engorgement charm on his office – along with decorating it in Gryffindor colors – because at least half the Ministry was stuffed into it. When he entered the room, all its inhabitants started shouting and laughing, drunkenly. Random hands were shoved into Harry's, and there was a good deal of sloppy hugging and cheek-kissing. He thought he saw Colin snap a photograph (He reminded himself to tighten security on his office. It probably wasn't good if half the Ministry could slip, undetected, into it).
It took quite awhile, and there were a lot of disappointed cries, but eventually Harry got them all out of his office. Harry reversed the engorgement charm and spelled away the gold and red hangings, balloons, and – Harry squinted – yes, an Ice sculpture. He wonder how they had made it gold. He also wondered how much longer the country-wide drunkenness could last. It had all ready been five days.
Musing on this, Harry settled behind his desk. He looked blankly at the pile of unfinished forms and not-yet-started case files sitting, menacingly, on his desk. Nobody had told Harry the being an Auror would require this much paperwork. The pile towered a good two feet, and Harry was pretty sure it was growing. Resignedly, he bent his head over the looming pile, and pulled out his quill.
He couldn't seem to settle to it, though. His chair, never a princely throne, felt hard and uncomfortable as a piece of splintering wood. He wiggled around, settled into a not too excruciating position, and returned his attention to the scroll in front of him. The small, neat print on the scroll seemed to blur out of focus as Harry stared at it. He sighed, and set it aside. He pulled out a bottle of butterbeer (taken from the cash, hidden at the back of his desk drawer) and opened it. But it tasted sickly-sweet. Harry grimaced at the taste, and threw it away.
All morning, Harry tried in vain to work, but the world was unsettled, and some jarring sensation always distracted him. And now, he was fairly sure he was going crazy.
His ink turned bright magenta in the middle of writing a report on the rise of fraudulent amulet sales. He stared at the parchment. He frowned, and leaned in closer. It had been black just a second ago! He muttered darkly, and willed the ink to turn back to black. It stayed resolutely magenta.
Harry leant back in his chair, frustrated. There was also, he noted sorrowfully, an annoying buzzing noise in his ears. He shook his head to dispel it, but did not meet with success. He gritted his teeth and picked up his quill again, determined to ignore the buzzing and fix that damned report.
Kingsley Shacklebolt, his boss, entered his office just as Harry started to re-write his report in black ink (The color-changing charm had again failed. He'd have to get Hermione to teach him that one). He looked about six inches taller than when Harry had last seen him. Puzzled, Harry half- listened to Shacklebolt's lecture on public drunkenness (it wasn't him who needed it, he thought a little resentfully), and nodded politely. Shacklebolt finished, eventually, and turned to other subjects. Harry continued to listen half-heartedly, as he stared vaguely at Shacklebolt's head. It seemed pretty pointless for Shacklebolt to magic himself taller, Harry thought, he was so tall all ready. Finally, Shacklebolt deposited a few files on Harry's desk, (Harry nearly screamed) and left.
Despairingly, Harry turned yet again to the report on fraudulent amulets. He was beginning to hate amulets, the people who sold them, and especially the people who so stupidly bought them. He copied down a few lines, but was unable to focus because his trainers suddenly felt too tight. He bent over to loosen the laces, and groaned.
His shoes were different colors again.
Prosecutor Pyrites: Could you state your name and profession for the record, sir?
T. Smethwyk: My name is Tobias Smethwyk. To stenographer Make sure to spell it with an E, then a Y, dear. I am an expert on Pensieves and preserved memories. I studied under the great Crispin Crumb. Great man, great man…
Prosecutor Pyrties: I see, and you have examined the memories presented as Dumbledore's?
T. Smethwyk: That's right, young lad. I have.
Prosecutor Pyrites: And? They weren't genuine, were they? To jury They couldn't have been.
T. Smethwyk: Oh, no, they were quite all right. You needn't worry there, lad. They hadn't been tampered with.
Prosecutor Pyrties: Are you sure? How can you know? Memories are frequently tampered with, and can often fool even a very clever wizard. Can you be completely certain that these memories were real, and unadulterated?
T. Smethwyk: Now calm down, young man, there's really no need to get upset. The memories were quite real. Fabricated memories dissolve when hit with certain spells, and these ones passed all the tests. I even repeated all of them, just to make sure. As for the memories being altered –
Prosectuor Pyrites: Yes, isn't it at all possible that the memories were real, but had been changed?
T. Smethwyk: Now, now, let me finish, there's a good lad. The memories weren't in the least tampered with. To an expert eye, even the smallest and deftest change is as obvious as a troll at a Ministry ball.
Prosecutor Pyrites: But are you sure –
Judge Bones: I think we've had enough, Mr. Pyrites.
Excerpt from the transcript of the trial of Severus Snape for the murder of Albus Dumbledore.
"You've got to go to St. Mungo's." If Hermione said that one more time, he'd kill himself.
Hermione, Ron, and Harry were sitting at a table in The Three Broomsticks, cradling butterbeers in their hands, and chatting – not entirely amicably. Harry had told Hermione and Ron a couple of days ago about his color-changing shoes and buzzing ears and all that as a joke, but Hermione had got that thoughtful expression on her face, and she had taken it seriously. She had apparently spent the last two days researching his complaints.
"It's not that bad, Hermione," Harry said reassuringly, "I'm just a bit off it."
"Just a bit off it?" Hermione voice was rising in pitch, "You're having auditory, visual, and tactile hallucinations!"
"What's that?" queried Ron, well into his fourth butterbeer, "What did you say?"
"The world has gone all funny." Hermione snapped venomously, and then more soothingly, "If you won't go to St. Mungo's, why not go to Pomfrey? She'll be glad to help, and she's probably better than any healer at St. Mungo's"
Harry considered drowning himself in his butterbeer. He decided it would be a waste of good liquor. Instead, he answered, voice taut, "Drop it Hermione. I'm fine. I probably just have wizards' flu or something."
Since she still looked dogged, he added, "Tell you what, if I don't feel better in a few days, I'll go to Pomfrey. Deal?"
She nodded her head, a little reluctantly, and asked, "Are you having any now?"
"Any what?"
"Hallucinations."
"Oh, no."
That was a lie, though. Unless, of course, Hermione had actually died her hair pink. He could also feel water dribbling down his back, when he knew perfectly well there wasn't any water. It was a maddening sensation, and he kept surreptitiously checking his spine to make sure it was still dry. It felt so real.
They spent most of the evening at The Three Broomsticks, laughing and talking. It was so normal and safe, it was almost as if the war had never happened, as if they were students again. They parted in good cheer, and Harry returned to his apartment.
Jury Rebels!
Severus Snape, forty-five, has just been acquitted for the murder of Albus Dumbledore. The jury, in a shocking move, ignored all the witnesses who had seen the former spy kill Prof. Dumbledore. "I just couldn't convict him," said Alice Wimbledod, thirty-seven, and one of the jury members, "After all that Pensieve evidence, I just couldn't. Dumbledore wouldn't have wanted that."
Luna Lovegood, twenty-two, a fellow juror and junior editor at The Quibbler also voted to acquit Mr. Snape, though for different reasons. "Everyone knows," she told The Prophet, "That tootlefigs sometimes crawl into a person's brain and drive them berserk. My father just did an article on it. This looks like a classic case to me. It wasn't Snape's fault at all."
Severus Snape is of course thrilled to be free. In an exclusive interview with The Prophet, he said, "I am just so grateful to the jury. I can't believe they believed me, believed the truth." Snape, a handsome man with liquid black eyes and a dazzling smile, probably won the jury with his charm and light manners. But there is a serious side to Severus, which he revealed in the interview. His captivating eyes filled with tears when he spoke of Dumbledore, "Fulfilling my promise to him was the hardest thing I have ever done." A single tear slid down his sculpted cheek as he continued, "And that Harry Potter should witness the killing was the unkindest cut of all. I, like the rest of the wizarding world, revere and love Harry Potter, and I am sorrowful that his opinion of me was so lowered. I only hope I can make it up to him."
Excerpt from an article in The Prophet
"Harry!" Ron called after him, a note of seraphic joy in his voice, "Have you seen today's Prophet? There's another article about Snape!"
Harry, who was walking down the stairs from his office to the cafeteria (the elevators always had people cheering at him), turned his head at Ron's voice. He had loved the series on Snape's trial. Innocent he may be, but an unparalleled git he remained. Harry loved seeing him subjected to the same torture Harry had gone through all these years.
Unfortunately, as he turned his head to grin at Ron, he lost his footing. He felt his feet sliding out from underneath him. He didn't really realize he was falling, though, until he was half-way down the stairs, his body pummeled by the stone steps. By the time he had hit the bottom (with an unceremonious thunk and a loudish groan) a dozen witches and wizards were gathered round him, making sympathetic noises.
A camera flashed over him, and Harry saw Colin standing over him with ill-disguised glee (Why was Colin always there when he looking a bit foolish?).
"Oh, look at his arm, poor dear!" one of the witches squeaked, jarring Harry from his awful fantasies.
He looked down at his arms, and gasped. His right arm was bent at the elbow, but sickeningly askew, at a terrible, unnatural angle. That wasn't so worrying, though: Any healer worth her salt could fix it in a second. What was worrying, really, really worrying, was that it didn't hurt. At all. If anything, he felt a pleasant tickling sensation at the fracture point. He didn't feel it because he was having another damn hallucination.
"Let me through! Move over." The tiny witch in healer's robes said. She knelt next to Harry. "Here, now, let me see that!"
She silently flicked her wand over Harry's arm, and it instantaneously healed. The bones knitted themselves together, the upper arm and forearm now joined at a healthy angle.
"There, now, that'll be fine. Let's all move along, now, there's plenty of work to be done!"
The crowd dispersed, but Harry and Ron stood silently.
"You didn't feel that, did you? You were having a tac- tacti-. The World went funny again, right?"
"Yeah."
"We've got to get you to Pomfrey, mate."
Harry frowned at his arm, probed the joint with trembling fingers. "Yes," he said, "Yes, I think we do."