Title: Epiphany
Parings: Snape/Harry
Prompt: Quote, "Harry rose up out of the Pensieve, and moments later he lay on the carpeted floor in exactly the same room. Snape might just have closed the door." Chapter 33 The Prince's Tale UK Children's Edition, p. 553
Beta: IJ user alliekatgal
Dedicated to IJ user theminx17 Hope you are feeling better girl. Huggles
Disclaimer: The story herewith is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limit to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoat Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Harry rose up out of the Pensieve, and moments later he lay on the carpeted floor in exactly the same room. Snape might just have closed the door.
Shock was the first emotion that swirled through Harry's body.
He tried to sit up, to run away, but he couldn't. He was frozen, in shock, sitting down on the floor. All that he knew, all that he thought that he could hold true and believe in and have it be absolute and unchangeable, was now gone.
It was swept away in a single instance of a profound epiphany.
Nothing mattered, everything was forgotten. It didn't matter that he once more had broken into Snape's office and snooped around. It didn't matter that he couldn't afford to be caught, not with Umbridge hanging around; and it most certainly did not matter that if Snape caught him, he was as good as dead.
Nothing made sense.
As still as a stone covered in ice, Harry sat on that floor for what felt like hours.
Nothing made sense, not anymore.
Snape was supposed to be the evil bad guy. The one whom he could hate, absolutely. The one that he knew hated him, absolutely. The one whom had caused all those fights with the Marauders. Even if they were being giant prigs, surely, Snape had caused it somehow.
Even the insult thrown to his mum when she was just trying to help Snape, showed what everybody already knew, Snape was a bastard of the highest degree.
And yet, what he just saw, what he had just experienced, took all that he previously learned and knew, and turned it upside on its head.
All that Harry could make sense of was that nothing made sense, not anymore.
Everything kept running through his head. Over and over again, and the only conclusion, that he repeatedly came to, was that nothing could make sense.
How could Snape have known his mum before Hogwarts? How could they be so…so chummy?
It didn't make any sense.
Aunt Petunia knew Snape!
She had known him since they were both kids and she'd never said a word to Harry about it.
That first summer back from Hogwarts, before the Mason's incident, when Harry was complaining about not being able to do his homework, he'd mentioned Snape. He'd told Aunt Petunia that Snape was his horrible Potion's professor and that he had to be able to do his homework or Snape would cut him up and use him for potions ingredients.
There had been no reaction to the name. Not one word, not one sign of familiarity to the name, not one hint. Nothing.
As if the name had meant nothing to her. As if, she had never met the man, she hadn't known that he had been friends with his mother, and she hadn't grown up with him.
Nothing.
At the time Harry didn't know that Snape knew his mother, so it was perfectly normal for there to be no reaction. Now though, now it's different. She did know him, she knew all about the Wizarding World, knew all about Snape and his mother.
She knew, and she'd never told him, never given him a hint.
She knew the most important aspects of his life that he didn't know.
She treated him as if he was a freak of a nature, as if he was always an unloved, unwanted burden.
And she knew it was all a lie.
She knew about the Wizarding World from the get go, and she'd held all of this information back.
She and her husband knew what was going on with him and they didn't care.
She knew…
They'd never cared about him.
They'd never cared….
Harry knew that his father and Sirius were pranksters, but the degree that they went to…
They were stripping Snape! In public!
And for what, what reason did they have to do that?
What had Snape done to warrant that type of treatment? What had he done that been so horrible that he'd deserved to be held upside down and stripped in public?
Snape had done nothing to them. Absolutely nothing!
Earlier in the day, when he'd first looked into the forbidden Pensieve he'd thought that maybe, maybe Snape had done something to them earlier in the day, and that this was just revenge. But not anymore, no longer could he delude himself to believing that.
Fred and George were pranksters.
True pranksters.
They were indiscriminate to whom they pranked. They targeted anybody and everybody, even their friends with all their antics.
In some ways they were worse than Marauders ever were with their pranks, yet, they were never malicious about it. They would never do to Snape what his father and his friends just did, never.
Not even Ron would do it. Not even to their bane known as Malfoy and his goons.
It just crossed a line, from a joke, a prank, into… into something worse, malicious, and cruel.
Right now Harry came to the grim conclusion that his father and his friends had an awful lot in common with his cousin and his friends. They were nothing more than bullies.
And yet his mom had married him. Why?
Everybody spoke so fondly and happily of his father and his friends. There was never a bad word mentioned of his father or Sirius by anyone in the Order, except Snape.
It was always Snape who was in the wrong, it was always Snape who instigated things; it was always Snape who took the blame.
Even when it was Sirius who was provoking Snape, the Order always put the blame on Snape. They always looked at him as if he was distasteful, as if he was some wild dangerous animal who at any moment would turn on them and kill them.
They never trusted him.
They never took his side.
Even the times when Sirius would poke and prod Snape with all his remarks about dark wizards, Death Eaters, and traitors, and Snape would try to shut him up with a caustic remark that would cause things to disintegrate into a brawl, they always looked scornfully at Snape. They would make remarks about how he know better and yet to Sirius they would take it as he was justified in his behavior, as if he was just defending himself. Even when in reality it was the other way around.
Even Dumbledore was not immune to this prejudice.
After every fight Dumbledore would look towards Snape with such disappointment, as if he expected more from Snape, as if he was the one who instigated things.
Before, when Harry was blissfully ignorant of what he'd just learned, he hadn't minded that discrimination. He hadn't minded the preferable treatment to Sirius. In fact he'd reveled in it. He'd felt as if Snape was finally getting his, as if the bastard git was finally knowing how it felt to be hated and belittled.
Harry didn't care to see things from Snape's point of view, he didn't care to put himself in his shoes, and he didn't care to care about Snape.
It didn't matter that it was his godfather who was the one instigating things, it matter that more often Snape's malicious words were spoken from what seemed like hurt. It didn't matter that after every fight, every indignation that he'd suffered, that the greasy git always took off with a spin of his robes and went off somewhere to stew.
It didn't matter and he didn't care to make to it matter.
He didn't care.
He didn't care about Snape, not one iota, not then.
Harry wondered if anyone had ever cared for Snape.
Before, to Harry it looked like Dumbledore did. He was always promoting Snape's innocence and wanting Harry to trust him. Though, the more Harry thought about it, the more he looked back on the interactions, the more he realized that Snape was just a pawn to him. He was using his caring of Snape to control him. He saved Snape from Azkaban, he was using Snape as a spy even though everyone knew that Snape was a spy from the last war, every time Dumbledore defended him, it just made him more in debt.
This isn't caring about someone, this isn't trusting someone, this is exploiting someone's weaknesses to their own gain. This was Dumbledore controlling Snape's life.
Making sure he was tied down to Hogwarts, that he could never leave to pursue his own goals, that he could never forget his past, and that he could never achieve some peace and happiness.
He knew that Snape was remorseful of something that had to do with his parents dying. He told Dumbledore something that was supposed to save them, us, from Voldemort. Either Dumbledore didn't follow the information, or his great plan to save us from Voldemort was the Fidelis spell.
His mom was supposed to live, and he, Harry, was supposed to die?
Dumbledore had just stood there watching as Snape had broken down and cried. He'd actually cried, Snape had never cried before, not even when he'd been stripped in public, but with his mum's death Snape had cried. Dumbledore had just stood there watching it and manipulated it into having Snape promise to look after Harry's life, his life, and to save him from any danger.
He'd taken advantage of Snape's raw grief over his mum's death in order to manipulate Snape into a life time of servitude to Dumbledore's ambitions.
Snape had known it, he'd had to have known what Dumbledore was doing to him, making him swear that.
Yet, Snape had done it anyway. Known what was ahead of him and he'd done it anyway.
Why? Why had he done it?
Hadn't anyone ever cared for Snape? Hadn't anyone ever loved him?
From the way Snape turned out, Harry would have to say no. Only a person who has never known kindness from strangers or love from family could be such a cold, vicious, malicious, bastard as Snape was.
Not even his mum, Snape's friend, perhaps his only friend, stayed with him. She left him, over just being called a name!
Sure Mudblood is the most derogatory name a person can call a Muggle-Born, but wasn't it a situation of the pot calling the kettle black?
If Snape grew up with his mum but already knew magic, then that meant he was at least a half-blood like he was, right?
The truth of that revelation slammed into Harry and he gasped.
Just like he was.
Snape was like him. Not by looks or anything of that sort, but how they were raised, were treated, and how they looked at things.
There was also the Slytherin connection. The Sorting Hat did say that he would do well in Slytherin.
Harry thought about it, the what if, what if he had allowed himself to be sorted into Slytherin.
Slytherin wasn't where all the dark wizards came from, after all Wormtail, the worst of traitors, was a Gryffindor. There were Death Eaters from every house, other schools, internationally, it didn't seem to matter where they came from.
For the Slytherin, the real danger lay in its reputation. It was as if the Sorting Hat just confirmed some inner, hidden, secret evilness that the person had in them. Evil hiding in inside them like a snake in the grass, like a Slytherin.
Being sorted in the Slytherin house was as if the person was granted the mark of Cain or the Beast.
It didn't seem to matter who they were or where they came from, once you were marked as a Slytherin, you marked as a no-good-evil-Slytherin for life.
The rest of the school already had a preconceived notion that you were up to no good, that all you ever did was for the good of anyone but yourself and other Slytherins.
Logically speaking, if Half-Bloods could be Slytherins, like how Riddle and Snape (?) were and how he almost became one, then doesn't that mean that Muggle-Borns could be Slytherins too?
Doesn't that mean that, in all of the thousand plus years of Hogwarts, there could have, should have been Muggle-Borns slated for Slytherin? When they went to their new house, does that mean that the rest of Hogwarts already marked them as evil? That even though they themselves are Muggle-Born that they would hate and persecute Muggle-Borns as well? Or become evil dark wizards?
That doesn't make sense.
It's almost as if the greatest tragedy of Hogwarts is the continued and knowing persecution and degradation of the Slytherins.
Anybody could be sorted into Slytherin, it didn't matter their race, creed, or even their blood status, and automatically from whence the words were shouted by the Sorting Hat everybody had already made up their mind that they were evil.
Why?
Hagrid was a bit innocent in his persecution. Considering how he was treated, he probably has real claims towards his distrust of Slytherins, yet he stands by Snape.
Though it does call to Harry's mind how it was his and Ron's words about Slytherin that made him beg the Hat to put him in Gryffindor.
Why was Hagrid chosen to pick him that day? Was it another manipulation of Dumbledore's? Did he somehow know that Harry was going to be possibly sorted into Slytherin?
Harry was cunning and he was ambitious, but he'd had to be, in order to survive the Dursleys. The Dursleys that Dumbledore put him with. Even when Harry begged in his first year for Dumbledore to not send him back there, to them, he did.
Why didn't Dumbledore question him about why he was pleading him to let him stay? Why didn't Dumbledore investigate things?
He bet Dumbledore didn't even investigate to see why Harry stayed at Hogwarts during his holidays, nor why he never went home, or why he never received any mail from his so-called relatives, not in all the years that he's been at Hogwarts.
Then again, considering how Mrs. Figg was a spy that Dumbledore put near Privet Drive to keep watch over him, maybe he already knew how he was being treated.
Maybe he already knew how they treated him and that's why he never asked questions.
Maybe he never cared about it at all and he's just like Snape, a pawn in Dumbledore's war chest.
Snape didn't know, not about the Dursleys nor their treatment of their precious nephew. Snape may be a bastard but he's not a cruel heartless bastard, he wouldn't torture a student with accusations of a perfect life and preferable treatment if he known that they were being abused.
No, Harry bet that no one but Dumbledore knew what the Dursleys were really like and that put a sour taste in his mouth.
Harry wondered how much of his life was truly his own, and how much he actually controlled it.
Harry always did wonder how in all the years that he attended his primary school and all those days that he missed, sometimes full weeks at a stretch, how the Durselys were never investigated by the authorities for child abuse and neglect. Especially considering how Dudley was always able to go on school trips and he never went on any them and considering how big of a difference they were in girth sizes. A blind man could see that Dudley was getting fed lots of fattening food, was corpulent, and Harry was skin and bones like a starving African child. Not to mention how many times the teachers caught Dudley and his gang beating up or tormenting him, and how it continued for years with no change in behavior.
Harry guessed that he knew the answer now.
Dumbledore.
Harry felt his throat tighten and his eyes water.
It was true, his life was never his own.
He was starved by his relatives for most of life while Mrs. Figg looked on and knew, she was always giving him extra food anytime he visited. He was being beaten by his cousin, he did chores during the hottest days of the years since he was a toddler, and he was given no rest. Everybody else in the neighborhood always thought he was being punished for something he did, but he wasn't.
It was just another way to try to beat the magic out of him. Of course, no one but Dudley and his little gang ever beat Harry. The worst the older two Dursleys did was smack him around a few times and forcing him to duck when things were being tossed at his head.
With all the craftiness he picked up to survive the Durselys, be sane, and to avoid sanguinary thoughts about his dear relatives, is it any wonder that he was nearly a Slytherin?
With that thought, Harry pondered how things might have turned out if he was sorted as a Slytherin.
Ron would have abandoned him, he would've probably been a bit of an outcast in Slytherin, not to mention the rest of Hogwarts. The Prophet would've made him out to be the next Dark Lord…
It was eerily similar to Snape's childhood, except, for the part that Snape wouldn't have had to worry about the Prophet blasting him as a Dark Lord wannabe, since he wouldn't have been the reputed Boy-Who-Lived. The pressure alone would have killed Harry.
Especially considering how he would never have any friends.
The future he saw for his Slytherin self was grim, dark, and so Snape-like it took the breath out him. Tears prickled at his eyes again.
He wouldn't have had the confidence to do anything, he wouldn't have been able to handle all the Boy-Who-Lived pressure, he wouldn't have had any allies except for the Headmaster and maybe a few select others.
He was so needy back then, all it would take would be one friendly look and he would attach himself to that person for the rest of his life. Like he had done with Ron and Sirius.
He probably would have made himself more of a puppet to the Headmasters' manipulations, more of a willing sacrifice to bring honor his family name that he tarnished, or to bring the light back to the Slytherin house.
No one would have seen or cared about the real him. Because in order to survive he would have adopted the Slytherin image, just like how he adopted the Gryffindor image to survive in his house.
Everything he knew had changed.
He couldn't deal with this, not with the stupid Occlumency lessons failing, his headaches, his nightmares, his torture sessions with Umbridge, and… and it's all just too much.
Nothing made sense.
His entire foundation of what he believed in the world was crumbling in on him fast and he couldn't take it anymore.
Curling his head on his knees and his arms wrapping around his legs, Harry Potter did what he hadn't done in years; he cried.
He was so lost, so uncertain, so shaken by the revelations that he broke down and cried.
Harry hadn't cried in years. The last time he could clearly recall crying was when he was five or six, and Dudley had beaten on him for being a crybaby.
After years of being told by the Dursleys to be quiet, Harry couldn't even bawl his eyes out when he needed it. Instead all he could do was curl in on himself and have his tears streak his face as his entire world shattered around him.
So deep into his desolate thoughts, Harry never even heard the door slam open, as the person in question who had indirectly caused Harry's breakdown, barged into his offices to find out who had broken into his office.
He never heard the loud footfalls as Snape came close to where Harry was. He never heard the sharp exclaim Snape made when he found his huddled form. He never heard the spiteful, bitter, torrent of words that spoke of his disdain, spew forth from his mouth. He heard nothing and saw nothing, he was too absorbed into his crushing, desolate, consuming thoughts.
It wasn't until he felt a strong hand grab his shoulder forcibly causing his attention to switch to switch to that of the intruder that he realized that Snape had found him.
Whatever Snape was about to blast into his face fell away as he took a look at Harry's tear streaked face. Harry could literally see the anger melt away into confusion and worry. As heartless as Snape could seem even he couldn't further berate an already broken person, even if that person was a Potter.
Harry looked into Snape's black eyes and he felt his breath catch. He was in trouble, he was in serious trouble and he knew that, but he couldn't care.
He couldn't care about any of that. Everything that he'd just learned came rushing back to him. Everything he knew about the world, about his life, about his father's and mother's lives was wrong. He didn't even know where he stood anymore. The things he'd learned broke him a way that the Dursleys would have paid money to see. He was broken and he didn't think he could ever be healed or fixed.
He was the embodiment of the Humpty Dumpty Nursery Rhyme, he fell from a great height and broke into millions of pieces and now no one, not even all the King's men and all the King's horses could put him back together again.
Harry started to shake and shiver, his tears streaked down his face, and his breath quickened to the point that he was gasping for breath.
He couldn't focus on anything, not his strangling thoughts, not the sight of Snape's pale and panicked face, nothing registered.
To Harry all that mattered was the fact that he couldn't breathe. He couldn't get any air in lungs. It felt like his throat has closed up on him. He was dizzy and his head was spinning and he couldn't focus on anything.
His hands were shaking and he was grasping desperately for anything and everything to hold on. His fingers were scraping at his trousers cutting woundless rivulets and dents into his flesh.
He started to see black spots appear in front of his eyes like his vision was dimming. His hearing deadened off. He could see Snape's face screaming something, maybe his name, but he couldn't hear any of it.
All he could feel was the lack of air in his lungs. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't grasp the air long enough to breathe. He was gasping short shallow breaths as if his lungs couldn't hold anymore oxygen.
Harry's hands moved away from being wrapped around his legs and he quickly grabbed at his throat. It felt as if he grasped at it hard enough, as if he scraped it hard enough to make it bleed, that some way, somehow air would return to his body.
He was getting lightheaded. The black spots were now great big caverns in his sights, a spreading plague taking away everything. All he could hear was his own racing, pounding heart thudding like a jackhammer in his chest.
His hands slipped away from their desperate grasp at his throat for air. He felt his weak body start to tip backwards towards the hard dungeon stone floor.
Harry felt at that very moment as if time had frozen or slowed down immeasurably and in that instance he felt as if he was going to die, that he was dying, that this is what death feels like.
His body was weak, he couldn't breathe, and he was losing all his senses.
He knew with great certainty and lucidness that he was going to die.
He was dying, his was gasping his last breaths, and Harry knew he couldn't go out like this. He couldn't just die in front of Snape like this, not with all the hate between them. Harry didn't hate him anymore, he couldn't not after what he had seen. He couldn't let things end like this.
Harry needed to tell him something, he needed to try to explain how sorry he was about everything that had happened to Snape because of his mother, his father, and himself. He needed to convey this to Snape, somehow.
He needed to, but he didn't have enough time, he didn't have enough breath to speak his speech of compunction.
With what Harry thought of as his last strength of his body, by will alone, he began to speak. At first it was so shallow it could barely be heard over Harry's deep gasps for breath. But eventually a litany of words passed forth from his mouth loud enough to be heard.
"I'm sorry."
Over and over and over and over again, like a child being reprimanded Harry spoke those words. Harry spoke those words as his body finally collapsed and his head started to fall backwards to the stone floor.
After what had seemed like hours of torture of being denied his breath, his body couldn't handle it anymore, and was starting to shut down.
All he could see with his plague sight of blackness was a tiny pin prick of light. He could feel nothing, hear nothing, and it felt as if Death himself was calling him to the grave. Harry felt his body answer the call and everything fell away.
Just before his eyes finally shut, just before his head crashed deafeningly loud into the stone floor, just before his body crashed, he felt something, heard something.
He felt his arm being yanked, as if someone was pulling him away from the call of Death and Charon's boat, away from his grave.
He felt his back collide with something warm and firm, and he felt the object that braced his back move up and down as if it breathed and he swore he felt a heartbeat behind him.
He had the sensation of warm, clothed covered thin objects encircle his body and entrap his arms. He felt something squeezing him tightly to his brace and felt cold fleshy objects, hands the thought came to his mind, touch his clammy sweat and tear soaked faced.
He finally registered sound, words being spoken to him in quiet whispers at his ear.
"Breathe."
He was being embraced.
Snape was embracing him.
His litany of apologies started up again.
"I'm sorry."
He felt a cold hand lay itself on his forehead, brushing his hair back. He felt, no, that couldn't be right, a kiss, to the back of his head.
Snape voice whispered into his ear, "Shhh. That's it. Breathe. Big deep breaths, come on, Harry, you can do it. Breathe."
Harry felt compelled to follow the instructions, and started to take deep breaths of air. Finally, it felt like he was no longer being suffocated. He was finally able to start to breathe again.
Harry sat on the ground, his body embraced and protected by Snape. Snape's arms wrapped around his body, keeping his back tightly glued to Snape's front. For every deep breath that Snape took, Harry felt it and reciprocated. It was as if he was miming Snape's breathing.
He focused on breathing, following Snape's example, and Snape's whispered words in his ears, the touch of his hand carding itself through his hair, and the kisses being pressed to the back of his head.
For what seemed like an endless amount of time Harry sat there with Snape. His breathing had tapered off from its panic induced suffocation. He was finally breathing normally, there were a few hitches in his breath, but overall he was breathing on his own again.
Harry had a half-thought that Snape would rear back and leave him, abandoned on the ground. His breath started to hitch up again at the thought being abandoned, of being alone.
His tears started to fall anew and he started to have great deep heaving breaths quicken into short gasps again.
His panic attack was cut short, however, by Snape squeezing him even tighter to his chest completely engulfing him.
"Shhh, it's okay. Breathe."
Harry didn't think it was okay, it wasn't okay at all, he was going to be abandoned, again. He was going to be left alone, again.
Harry felt so afraid, so helpless, so shaken.
Snape couldn't understand what he was feeling, he couldn't understand the anguish he was feeling and he was going to leave him, like everyone else always leaves him.
How could he tell him it would be okay when Harry knew it wouldn't.
His panic started to eat at him, his tears were burning his eyes and his cheeks, and he gave great shaking breaths.
Harry felt a great need to express his fears. With his body bent over, his hands grasping at Snape's arm that was enclosing his body, Harry with a shaking, quiet whisper spoke, "Don't leave me."
At first, the decibel was so low that it was barely greater than an exclaiming sharp breath, but with each shaking breath that Harry took his voice got louder and louder until he was practically screaming it.
In response, Snape grasped Harry with both of arms, wrapping his body around Harry's. Snape, the coldest man in Hogwarts was comforting Harry like no one else ever had. Harry had never felt such safety in someone else's arms, he never felt so loved.
His tears continued down the river bed that were his cheeks, falling down on Snape's tear soaked arms.
Harry whispered, "Don't leave me, please don't leave me."
Snape's arms tightly squeezed Harry once more. He released one of his arms from around Harry's middle and embraced Harry's head. Tilting Harry's head, he whispered calming words into his ear. "Shh… Everything's going to be alright, Harry. I'm here, I'm here. I'm never going to leave you. Shhh."
Wrapped up in Snape's arms, his face and hair being caressed, calming words being whispered in his ear, the emotion of feeling loved and cared for erupted in his chest, and Harry eased into a calm, tranquil, serene state of mind.
His tears finally stopped and Snape quietly wiped his wet face dry.
Through-out all of this Snape never pushed him away, he held him tightly to his chest, and continued to whisper his words of comfort into his ears. Even after, Harry had fully calmed down and seemed to have eased into a tired sleepiness, Snape continued to hold him tightly, whispering into his ears, caressing his hair, and kissing his head.
Harry lay there in Snape's arms, his breathing tapering off, Harry slowly started to fall asleep in Snape's arms.