Always a Hurricane – Looking for Alaska & Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

"… Part of Lord Voldemort lives inside Harry and it is that which gives him the power of speech with snakes, and a connection with Lord Voldemort's mind that he has never understood. And while that fragment of soul, unmissed by Voldemort, remains attached to, and protected by Harry, Lord Voldemort cannot die."

Snape was far away from Dumbledore's study in that moment.

"Look me in the eye and tell me this doesn't turn you on, Sev."

I couldn't. She laughed. It was fine, she said. Healthy. And then she got up, stopped the tape, lay down on her stomach across the couch and mumbled something.

"So the boy… the boy must die?" asked Snape, quite calmly.

"And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential."

Another long silence. Then Snape said, "I thought… all these years … that we were protecting him for her. For Lily."

"What did you say?" I asked, walking to her, putting my hand on the small of her back.

"Shhhh," she said. "I'm sleeping."

Just like that. From a hundred miles an hour to asleep in a nanosecond.

"We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, to raise him, to let him try his strength," said Dumbledore, his eyes still tight shut. "Meanwhile, the connection between them grows ever stronger, a parasitic growth: sometimes I have thought he suspects it himself. If I know him, he will have arranged matters so that when he does set out to meet his death, it will, truly, mean the end of Voldemort."

Dumbledore opened his eyes. Snape looked horrified.

"You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?"

"Don't be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?"

"Lately, only those whom I could not save," said Snape.

The night that destroyed my life rushes before my eyes.

"Last night, Lily Potter was in a terrible accident."

"And she was killed. Lily has passed away."

He stood up.

"She's … she's just playing a dumb prank," Severus told him.

"No, Severus, no, I'm sorry." His eyes were red from crying. "I saw her, Severus. I talked to the Ministry. It was instant. The curse went through her chest. I'm so sorry."

"You have used me."

"Meaning?"

"I have spied for you, and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be about keeping Lily Potter's son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter – "

"But this is touching, Severus," said Dumbledore seriously. "Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?"

And her face comes swimming back to me.

I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase.

"For HIM?" shouted Snape. "Expecto patronum!"

From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe: she landed on the office and soared out of the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears.

I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

"After all this time?"

"Always," said Snape.