DISCLAIMER - Nothing is mine, it all belongs to JK Rowling.
A thousand thank yous to all of you who have read my little series, to all of you who favourited the stories and who were so kind to take time to review.
The lines highlighted in bold are direct quotes from JKR.
Learning to Trust Year 7
The days were often long and always bleak. Today, the weather matched the atmosphere of gloom that hung like a pall over Hogwarts, the world's most famous wizarding school. The Headmaster, clad in black robes that flowed from his shoulders like liquid silk, watched the greying sky hang low over the castle's turrets.
He stood at a crenulated archway in one of the remote towers, his hands clasped behind his back, his spine rigid, the lines of his face as hard and unforgiving as the cold granite framing him.
Below him, the ranks of students filed in through the huge oak doors of the school, unaware of his scrutiny. The regimented formation of each house was a new innovation, one devised by his recently installed colleagues, the Carrows.
Siblings, they were as sinister as any other Death Eater Professor Severus Snape had encountered and just as lethal. Secretly, he was greatly sorrowed to behold the menace that stalked the once cheerful halls of the school. Outwardly, he enforced it without relent. He had a role to play and the fate of the world as he knew it rested upon his ability to play it well.
In truth, he knew that the despondency that skirted every corridor, every classroom, it was sourced in something other than the dark changes that followed in the wake of his predecessor's demise.
Though none but he could know it, he missed his mentor. Dumbledore had been a beacon to him in the dark night of his soul but more, he missed the boy. And he worried about him, every minute, every hour, another secret he hid from the world. So much was being asked of Harry, Snape railed against the unfairness of it, even as he recognised the need for it.
Harry was a boy, he should be preoccupied with sports and girls, exams and dreams for the future, Wizarding teens and their muggle counterparts were not that different. Instead, he was fighting an evil that grew more monstrous every day. Snape did not doubt Harry's capabilities. He had the courage of Godric Gryffindor himself, he had a thirst for justice and a sense of kindness and compassion that was undimmed even in these vicious days.
And he had his two friends, neither of whom had faltered at the idea of facing the gargantuan challenge facing him. They had walked way from everything they had held dear, just as Harry had, to stand with him and fight with him and do battle for him.
And with every ounce of his being, Severus willed them to succeed, to keep him safe, even when he could not. He shadowed Harry's search for the horcruxes, always from afar, a meticulously hidden guardianship, for none must suspect his hand at work.
In the weeks that Harry spent running, hiding, trying to figure a way to locate the horcruxes, he found himself biting back the frustrations that infused the nomadic days. Nights bled into days, yielding nothing except this poor imitation of freedom.
Harry also missed his guardian. The last time he had seen or spoken to Snape had been at Bill's and Fleur's wedding.
As the Weasleys and their guests had danced and made merry, defying the terror that was swelling all around them, Snape had apparated before Harry's very eyes.
He gripped Harry's arm and had dragged him away from the tent and into the darkness at the periphery of the candlelit celebration before his ward had found words.
"The Ministry has fallen. There are only moments, Harry. You must leave," he had whispered urgently, his dark eyes flaming.
Harry's heart kicked up a beat. He looked up into Snape's face and saw the haggard lines, the pallor.
"I'm ready."
That was all he had said, injecting his tone with every ounce of confidence he could muster. He wanted the Professor to know he wasn't afraid. He would not fail.
Severus reached out and with both hands, cupped his face in his hands. It was an uncharacteristically gentle and affectionate gesture. A deep frown cleaved his features.
"I couldn't save him, Harry."
Dumbledore. Harry saw the pain he felt to think of the Headmaster echoed in the inky eyes of Severus Snape.
He swallowed. Remembered the Professor's desperate climb up the stairs to the Astronomy tower. His sense of disbelief when he saw Draco point his wand and disarm the Headmaster. The sickening feeling when Dumbledore fell. The hatred that sizzled as Bellatrix Lestrange's maniacal laugh rang into the silence.
Just weeks ago, but it felt to Harry that a lifetime had already passed. And the only remnant of that life was this man, whose suffering mimicked Harry's own.
"I know. And I won't let him down. Or you. Believe me," the only thought that sustained Harry was putting an end to Voldemort.
He had not chosen this path but it was his, just the same and so many brave and noble people had died to help him walk it.
"Go. And my heart with you."
A swirl of black and Snape was gone.
And though Harry had no further contact with the Professor in the weeks of wandering, there were times he could almost feel his nearness, an invisible goodness that braced Harry's resolve, even though he knew he was imagining it. It was at its strongest on the night that Harry found the sword of Gryffindor, lying beneath the frozen surface of a pond deep in the Forest of Dean.
The night was a turning point. For one thing, it was the same night Ron returned, having left Harry and Hermione in a spill of bad feelings a few weeks before.
Inexplicably, Harry felt the presence of the Professor so keenly, he almost heard his voice, almost saw the midnight swirl of his robes as the shimmering and mysterious patronus of the doe that led him to the lake vanished.
Somehow, the reassurance of feeling his guardian closeby, no matter how impossible it was, gave Harry a surge of hope, of new determination. He had the sword, he had Ron's friendship and he was reminded that he had family. Even if his guardian was far away, even if Harry had no idea when he would see or speak to him again, he felt less alone knowing that he had someone to go home to.
That Ron had found them again was just as mystical as the discovery of the sword. He recounted his return with a tale of secret voices and a light from Dumbledore's last gift to him.
Harry could not have explained it, not even to his two closest friends but at that moment, he had found himself watching the flap of the tent, half believing Snape would enter.
The sword, Ron's wondrous return, the mysterious patronus, it felt as though Harry was getting help from beyond himself and though it made no sense at all, he felt unafraid, shielded and guided by the bravest man he had ever known.
This was what sustained him across a sprawling journey, that ultimately saw him lead Ron and Hermione back to where they began - Hogwarts. They had journeyed across an ever changing landscape, seaside cottages, the winter hardened Forest of Dean, London, the bowels of Gringott's, Harry's birthplace of Godric's Hollow, a forced stay at Malfoy Manor. In the end, it had led right back to the source.
They entered the school by following Neville Longbottom along a secret passage, greeted many old friends and for a few all too short minutes, could almost forget the events playing out around them.
Harry sensed that an end was coming, one way or the other. The search for horcruxes was finally yielding fruit and Voldemort knew it too. A confrontation was coming, Harry had to be sure he was ready when it did.
Severus Snape's finely honed battle instincts had also warned him that the endgame was approaching. He had maintained the façade of absolute loyalty to the Dark Lord in the time since Dumbledore's fall. He knew that he stood at the evil one's right hand. Voldemort trusted none but he still found Snape useful and so, the Headmaster stayed alive. It was a very fine line to walk. One misstep and all would be undone.
Snape knew that the core of his purpose was to deliver Harry to Voldemort. And when he assembled the entire school before him, stood at the Headmaster's podium, in the ghosts of the shoes of Albus Dumbledore, he left none in doubt that he intended to do just that.
Flanked by the Carrows, Snape looked out upon the sea of faces before him, read the restless tide of emotions on their faces - fear, defiance, admiration, loathing. From house to house, the moods shifted like sands beneath a writhing ocean.
"Harry Potter. If any of you know of his where abouts, you will tell me," he intoned the words quietly, fiercely.
"If any of you can provide information that proves helpful, you will be rewarded." His lips curled in a caricature of a smile.
"If you are found to be assisting him in any way, you will be punished," the last word rolled off his tongue as though he had caressed it with his breath.
It was the turn of Amycus Carrow to smile, if you could call the fiendish thirst that lit in his face at the thoughts of causing pain a smile.
"You seem to have a problem with security, Headmaster."
When the boy separated himself from the mass of students, to stand alone before Snape, there was a sudden hush in the great hall.
The Headmaster stood still, a dark sculpture, the livid flash of his eyes the only animation in his pale face.
Without having seemed to have moved at all, he drew his wand. In a move almost languid, he raised it.
Minerva McGonagall stepped forward with a rustling swiftness. She stood straight backed between Snape and Harry. Her own wand was in her hand, pointed straight at Snape's heart.
Behind her silver rimmed spectacles, her green eyes sparkled with a warning. To those watching this confrontation, it translated as hatred, hot and ready. The Headmaster alone read the message within.
"Make it look good, Severus!"
A jet of light spilled from his wand, his face an impervious mask of indifference. She blocked the curse with a counter hex of her own, sparks erupted in a golden flash as a floating candelabra was smashed to smithereens.
"I must talk to him. Help me."
"I can buy you a little time. They must not suspect. I will send him to the passage behind the hump-backed witch. Be there in one hour."
He met her stern set eyes, looked into her determined face for what he believed would be the last time.
"Thank you, Minerva."
His wand rose. His hand was perfectly steady and the curse that he cast flew towards her with deadly accuracy.
He did not wait to see it find its mark. He turned on his heel and in an eddy of black, he was gone, the glass of the great window shattering in his wake.
The revered Head of Gryffindor recognised the blinding curse as it left his wand. She, ought to, it was she who had taught it to him many years ago, during a temporary stint as Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. It had taken him three minutes to learn it. He had been one of her best students, yet he could never better her at blocking it
The great hall erupted in a deafening clatter as the sparkling shards of glass tumbled like bejewelled confetti before righting itself back in the window once more.
Students clamoured, Slytherins calling for Harry to be restrained. She snapped a peremptory order to have the entire house secured within their common room before walking to stand in front of the boy.
"Potter. If you are here, I assume there is something you need?"
Professor McGonagall was not a woman who wasted time with surplus words. Harry was grateful for that now.
"Time, Professor," he replied.
She nodded.
"I will do what I can,"
"The humped backed witch. Within the hour. He will be waiting. And Potter, good luck."
She spoke in an undertone and was turning away before he could respond. There was much to do and very little time to do it. And by the ancient ones, she itched to step into the fray, to honour the memory of Albus Dumbledore, to avenge him.
Harry understood and with an urgent appeal to Ron and Hermione to lead the search for Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem, he pushed his way through the tumbling body of students, winding his way to a quieter corridor, moving faster as the throng thinned out and finally, hastening along a deserted stretch to the stone figure of an old crone.
He tapped the hump with his wand, heard stone grinding as an opening appeared.
He stepped into the widening darkness.
"Lumos."
With light emanating from the tip of his wand, Harry followed the narrow passage downward.
Severus Snape stepped into his path, stopping just outside of the sphere of light. He may as well have been just another shadow but then he spoke.
"Harry."
There was a part of the Professor that delighted to see the boy back, a part that rejoiced when he stepped out before him in the great hall. There was another part that almost paralysed him with fear and dread. The danger Harry faced, it was immense, terrible.
"What are you thinking of? Here you are skipping along on your own, with light down an unprotected passage as if you are merely off to buy some sweets at Honeydukes!"
Snape stood, imperious, looking down his nose at the boy before him, his face devoid of expression, his eyes veiled, lips pursed in disapproval.
"Hello to you too," Harry said.
"Always with the cheek," Severus took a step forward, coming fully into the light from Harry's wand.
It was a bleak homecoming, yet Harry felt that the world was suddenly, safer, he was stronger.
"The horcruxes, Harry?"
"When we find the diadem, two will remain. I think the snake is one," Harry said.
"Voldemort knows, I think he feels, I don't know, weakened,"
"He is coming. And he will do anything to destroy you," Snape's warning was absolute.
"I know. I'll be ready," Harry's resolve was just as absolute.
"You have done well, Harry. You are the best hope there is of defeating him. But this is going to be a dark night, for all of us and when it is over, there will be loss. But you must finish it," Snape said.
His black eyes glittered and he looked into Harry's face, seeing the familiar stubborn set.
"He has the elder wand, Severus," Harry said.
"You have the sword, you have the cloak. In the end, the weapon is not what will win this war. Knowledge will tip the balance. Your mind is your greatest power against him. And your heart," the Professor looked down at Harry, wished he knew how to say all there was he wanted to tell him.
"I have to go soon. There is so little time, I wish I had told you so many things, Harry. I wish I there was time to tell you now."
Snape felt an urgency that was made acid in his blood by the feeling of helplessness. It was too late.
He reached into the pocket of his robe, withdrew a little glass vial. It looked to be filled with threads of silver. He pressed it into Harry's hand.
"Take this to the penseive. I am sorry that I did not tell you about some of the things you will see there. I have been a coward, Harry, believing that I could do it one day. Forgive me."
Snape's schooled expression laboured to hold beneath the rise of the pain of regret within him. Harry saw the spectre of it flit across his face, burn like a dying flame in the fathomless eyes,
"Forgive you? Severus. You more courage than anyone else I know. You have given me the only home I ever had. I just don't know how to thank you. But when this is done, I'll find a way," Harry looked up into the face of the man he loved as a father.
And Severus Snape almost crumbled. Terror could not break him, all of the ugliness he had witnessed, been part of could not undo the strength in him.
But this boy, the only son he would ever know, he filled Snape's heart and the fear of failing him was the one threat Severus could not face.
"Go now, Harry. Remember, know him, every secret and never let him see what you know. Do that and you will win," The Professor made to turn away.
"Severus. Just one thing… I'm not afraid of facing him, of what I have to do. But can you give me a hug?"
Snape paused, stood stock still and then, turned a graceful arc, opened his arms.
"Stupid boy. You do not need to ask."
He held the boy to him, let himself sink for several seconds into the old deception that if he did not let go, he could keep the boy safe, keep the darkness from him.
No more than it ever had, the tremulous dream did not hold. Snape stepped back, put the boy from him, kept his hands on his shoulders.
He looked deep into Harry's face.
"You have your mother's eyes."
This time, when Snape turned, he vanished into the shadows before Harry drew his next breath.
An unbearable sadness suddenly weighted on him and Harry felt like he was mourning, though he knew not for what. This, he reminded himself was not goodbye.
He wasted no time in retracing his steps, making hurried progress to the Headmaster's office, where he knew the penseive was stored. The magical staircase carried him upwards and Harry stood a moment on the threshold, taking in the stark difference in the room since the last time he was here.
Gone were the little spindle tables, the golden whirring implements. Instead, shelves were lines with heavy, ancient looking volumes of books, yellowing rolls pf parchment.
Behind the desk, from within his gilded portrait, Albus Dumbledore regarded him silently above his half moon spectacles.
Harry met the sapphire blue eyes for a moment then went to the stone podium, above which rested the basin shaped, rune encrypted penseive.
He emptied the vial Snape had given him into it, leaned over and as his face touched the wispy shimmer at the surface, he felt the familiar tug and the sensation of falling and then a scene unfolded before him, a girl of about ten, long haired, with dancing green eyes was laughing and a boy, wearing ill fitting clothes, his face half hidden behind a curtain of inky hair was holding out his hand to her.
His mother, Severus, Harry heard their laughter, listened as he told the young Lily Evens about Hogwarts.
The scene shifted and boy was older, in his teens, the dark hair still sweeping to his shoulders and the Harry's mother was still lovely, still laughing but this time, up into the face of a handsome boy Harry knew to be James Potter. Severus' expression was dark, his eyes flashing with malice. Harry heard the word 'mudblood' fall from his lips, saw temper spark in his father's eyes and the laugh die on his mother's face.
Then it was night and Snape, clad in robes of the deepest black stood silhouetted against charcoal clouds that scudded across the windswept sky. His face was twisted in distress and he was pleading with Albus Dumbledore who stood before him asking what Severus would give in return for his help. "Just keep them safe," Snape's words were almost lost as the memory blended to the next, a room with a low ceiling, eerily silent, Snape moving though it, pushing the debris of wrecked furniture out of his path. He climbed the stairs, entering a bedroom, a child was crying, a woman lay prone on the floor, her long hair a halo around her head. She was lying unnaturally still and Snape's face was anguished, tears shone on his face and he gathered the woman, Harry's mother against him, crying as though his heart was breaking.
Tears clouded Harry's own vision as a new scene opened, a familiar space, this one, except Dumbledore was in his chair, still Headmaster and Snape was standing before him, looking incredulous, then his expression turned to the deepest anger.
"You have kept him alive so that he could die at the proper moment. You have raised him like a pig for slaughter," the words came and the expression on the Professor's face changed. Loathing made the lines of his face severe, his eyes hard.
Harry listened as Dumbledore explained what should have terrified him. He had to die, let himself be murdered by Voldemort. Unlike his guardian, who exploded in a rage that made his lips white and his eyes blaze with something close to lethal ferocity, Harry felt strangely calm to hear this. It was as if he had been told something he always knew on some level.
The scene ended as Snape drew his wand and a silvery doe erupted from it. "After all this time?"Dumbledore was asking.
"Always."
On the sound of his guardian's voice, Harry fell from the memory, landing back on his feet in the Headmaster's office with a thud, his head spinning with the things he had seen.
Severus had loved his mother. His patronus was the same as hers.
It was the same doe Harry had followed to the sword that night. He had been right afterall, his guardian had been close, helping, watching over him.
And tonight, he had to die, he had to let Voldemort kill him.
The idea swam in Harry's head. He thought of all those who had already lost their lives trying to protect him, his parents, Sirius, Remus, Dumbledore. He thought of those who were fighting for him still, Ron, Hermione, Severus. He would cause no more death, no more grief.
He turned and walked back towards the enchanted staircase and was suddenly gripped with dread, as understanding flashed. A thought far worse than facing Voldemort had dawned on him.
What was it Snape had said in the tunnel tonight? There would be loss, that was it. He had chosen these memories, had them ready to impart, a deliberate whistlestop voyage through the past, meticulously mapped for Harry. He had not told Harry any of this, he said there would not be time.
Harry's blood ran cold in his veins, he felt that he almost had to tell his heart to beat through the paralysing chill that was gripping him like a virus.
The Professor's words played in Harry's head, over and over, a sickening soundtrack to the unravelling horror that he was coming to realise.
There is not enough time. Forgive me. There will be loss. I wish I had told you. Forgive me. No time. Loss. No time.
Harry's feet were moving, slapping a furious tympany along the stone flagged corridor, as the words pounded in his head, louder, pushing him faster.
He almost sent Ron Weasley spinning down the main staircase of the school as he rounded the top.
"We did it, Harry. The diadem. It was a horcrux. And Ron, he thought of the basilisk fang, brilliant isn't it?" Hermione's excited face barely swam into focus.
"Harry what's wrong? What's happened?" her expression was changing as anxiety spiked seeing Harry's pale face, sweat gleaming on his forehead, dripping into his eyes.
"The snake. Kill the snake. I have to go."
Harry stopped, looked into their worried faces, felt a swell of emotion almost choke him. Without them, he would have been lost, his life so much emptier, devoid of so much adventure.
Hermione seemed to read in his eyes the poisonous reality he was running to. Tears swam in her own eyes but she said nothing. Instead, she reached for him and pulled him into a tight hug that almost crushed the breath from him. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her back, looked up into Ron's bemused but nervous face. Saw him reach understanding.
"Harry. Mate," Ron's voice was full of regret but Harry could not say anything. There was nothing to say.
He let go of Hermione and turned, running towards the oak doors of the castle, left both of them standing on the stairs, watching him, neither moving for long minutes even after he vanished into the heaving tumult.
Students and teachers were running to find loved ones, to defend the castle as Voldemort's attack intensified, to find a safe place to hide. And Harry Potter entered the night alone, pausing in the solitude for a brief second, just long enough to open his mind a chink, just enough to see him, find out where he was.
The room was dark, shabby, dank. And familiar. The shrieking shack. Voldemort paced the scratched and dirty floorboards, barely disrupting the dust that coated the floor, a jungle cat circling his prey.
Severus Snape stood straight and attentive and Harry heard Voldemort's rasping whisper.
The wand, he was asking about the wand. Severus was issuing an assurance that the wand would not fail, his voice silky and unperturbed.
Harry closed his mind and raced across the springy grass, slowing only to strike at the knoll on the stubbly bark of the whomping willow. The flailing branches stilled and Harry found himself moving along a passage that was well known to him.
Please don't let me be too late. He didn't know whose intercession he was beseeching but he begged it over and over as he ran through the darkness. He reached into his pocket, an unconscious gesture and was surprised when he pulled out the golden snitch Dumbledore had given him. He had forgotten about it. He looked down, saw it fall open on his palm and a small, jewel shaped stone tumbled from it, dull as oxblood. The Resurrection Stone, Harry closed his fingers around it and pressed on.
Distant voices, getting louder, he was close. A glimmer of light at the top of the stairs, drawing him up. Silently Harry climbed the steps, no longer running, his wand drawn.
He reached out a hand and pushed the door. It opened inward with a sad little creak. The sound caused two faces to turn towards him, one a reptilian mask of pure hatred, the other more dear than words could say.
Voldemort's red eyes lit with a mad feral hunger, while Snape's face was wracked with torment at Harry's intrusion.
"Harry. Delighted you could join us," Voldemort's thin lips lifted in a travesty of a smile. Snape, looking like the world was caving in, set desperate eyes on the boy, the black depths pleading.
Leave. Go, now!
"We have been having a most scintillating chat, Severus and I. But it would be rude of me not to give you my full attention after you have been so good as to visit. Severus was just leaving,"
Voldemort turned slowly, rose his wand, a malignant look, a sickening relish on his face.
"Avada Kedavra," the words left his lips. There was a flash of green light and Harry was already in motion, feeling the green glow enter him, slowing his heart, his blood, dimming the dusty light of the shabby room.
"No!" the throat wrenching cry was the last sound he heard and he knew not whether Snape or Voldemort had screamed it.
He could not tell how long it was after when the light returned, different this time. Was he still in the strange demi-world of King's Cross station, vestal white and devoid of people, except for the weird, scalded baby thing and Albus Dumbledore?
No, the light was different, less intense, yet somehow stronger. More tangible.
Harry opened his eyes a fraction. There was so much white, he thought at first that he had been wrong, he was still in the other place afterall. Then, he heard ragged sobbing and realised that Hermione Granger was holding his hand and crying her heart out.
He was in the hospital wing, at Hogwarts. Which meant he wasn't dead. Hermione seemed to realise this fact at the same moment he had and her shriek had Madame Pomfrey moving hurriedly across the waxed floor.
"Harry! Oh my goodness, Harry! You are alive!" she launched herself at him, almost winding him as she landed on his chest, hugging his neck, laughing and crying all at the same time.
"Oh dear. Now, now young lady, restrain yourself, give him some air," Madame Pomfrey was fussing, Ron was lifting Hermione by the shoulders, his eyes wide with shock, too overwhelmed to speak.
Harry struggled to sit up, causing the little nurse to issue a further round of cautionary scolding.
The world looked hazy and he realised he wasn't wearing his glasses. He reached a hand in the direction of the locker by the bed, hoping to find them there and a small object fell from within his fingers onto the bed, landing silently. The stone. Harry placed his palm over it, despite having been in his hand, it felt cold.
"I have to go. Voldemort," he struggled to rise but the foggy outline of Ron was shaking his head.
"Dead, mate. Gone," he said.
"Gone?" Harry's mind felt as muggy as his vision.
"As in turned to dust. Nothing left of him. Neville killed the snake and then, there was like this huge tremor. At first we thought it was him, you know.. Voldemort, sensing her death," Ron said.
"But then the dark mark, it appeared in the sky and just sort of melted. His army, they just crumbled, faded, like they were evaporating back to whatever ruddy place they came from," Ron shuddered.
Harry could not take it in. Voldemort defeated? He frowned, then looked back at his two best friends, the last seconds in the shrieking shack coming back to him.
Then he knew. Voldemort had sent the killing curse at Snape. And though Harry would have willed with all his being for it to be otherwise, he knew he had succeeded.
If the Professor was alive, he would be here. But there was only Ron and Hermione and the sudden kerfuffle from the door was Molly Weasley, threatening allsorts if Madame Pomfrey did not let her in.
Voldemort could not kill him, it was as Dumbledore had known. His curse had rebounded, this time fatally on him, with no horcrux remaining to sustain him. Voldemort had destroyed the last one himself, the one that had lived in Harry until tonight.
But his guardian had no such shield. He had died even as Harry was prepared to give his own life to save him.
Harry turned his face away in a futile attempt to hide the tears that rose hotly beneath his eyelids. His heart ached, grief pressing like a leaden weight on his chest. If this was victory, it was sour, hollow trophy, devoid of promise, empty of joy.
"Now really! You must leave, all of you. This boy has been to death's door! He needs rest if he is to recover!" Madame Pomfrey's frustration was quickly mounting to irritation as Molly Weasley advanced determinedly towards Harry, muttering about his bravery.
"This boy has been breaking rules since the day he stepped foot into this school! Why break the habit now?"
Impatient, overbearing, sarcastic and almost seething with exasperation. Harry had imagined Snape's voice so well, it sounded as though he had conjured it.
"Headmaster! You should be in bed! You have had quite a nasty brush with death yourself. How are you to recover if you keep leaving your bed to hover over this patient?" Madame Pomfrey sounded torn between her instinct as a medic to boss unruly patients about and doubt as to the wisdom of being insubordinate of the authoritative and fierce master of this school.
Harry could not have imagined that and so, although he was truly afraid of what he would see, or rather of what he would not, he turned his head to look.
Severus Snape was standing at the foot of his bed, his face stony, inscrutable.
"Out. The lot of you,"
He did not look at any of them, anyone except Harry. Ebony eyes pinned him to the bed, far more effectively than any tactics Madame Pomfrey might have tried.
Harry's tears came faster, a surprising side effect of suddenly getting everything your heart was longing for. There was eight seconds of awkward silence and then Molly Wesasley took hold of her son's shoulder.
"Come along now, everyone. Plenty of time to visit Harry later," she said in a matter of fact tone. She shepherded Ron and Hermione and a reluctant Madame Pomfrey towards the door, her mother's heart recognising when a parent needed to be alone with their child.
"Cry all you want, young man. You will have no sympathy from me."
Snape's hands itched to hold him, to strangle him, to comfort him, to lift him clean out of that bed and wallop the living daylights out of him.
"And hello to you too," Harry sniffled.
Severus glowered at him. Leaned forward, gripped the ends of the bed with his hands, knuckles white.
"Why did you do it?" he gritted through clenched teeth.
"Save your life? I had to. You saved mine. Over and over. I had to try."
Harry's watery gaze met the flinty study of his guardian.
"There is no end to your arrogance! I did my duty. You deliberately, stupidly put yourself in harm's way. I thought you were dead! And everything I was fighting for was all for nothing!" Severus glared at him, his face ghostly white.
"Not for nothing. Voldemort is destroyed. I saw it in the pensieve. He had to kill me. But not you. He didn't have to kill you and I could not let it happen."
Harry's tears were hot, free and they hurt.
"I could not just let you die. I couldn't. If you died, then why, why fight? Why go through it all and still lose my family? How could I just stand by and let that happen again?" Harry was sobbing now, breaths torn and aching in his throat.
Severus's face twisted, agony and remorse flooding him, a heady cocktail mixing with relief and joy at finding the boy alive.
"Enough! Hush now. For Merlin's sake, take it easy. Are you trying to see yourself off?"
The Professor moved to the side of Harry's bed, lowered himself onto it, sitting on the edge of the narrow mattress and drawing the crying boy against his shoulder.
Harry clung to him, crying out a storm of tears, letting loose the burdens of the past hours.
"That's how I knew. My mother died to protect me. Her love saved me. I knew that he had to kill me and I figured that if I let him do it in order to save you the magic would work the same way. Destroy him but save you," Harry breathed in the soothing scents of spice and old parchment that clung to Snape's robes.
"You were willing to die to save me? Harry, foolish, brave boy! I went to the shack intending to die to save you!" Severus looked down at the dark head cradled to him and sighed.
"I know what Dumbledore said. But I do not have your gift of trust in those you love. So I intended to make sure Voldemort believed he needed command of the elder wand to defeat you," he went on.
"So long as he did not know the wand was useless against you, there was a chance. He would be preoccupied with having power over you, he would not think to look at you and see what Dumbledore did, that killing you would be killing himself," he said.
"Believing I had disarmed Albus that night on the tower, he thought disarming me would give him the ultimate weapon," Severus frowned.
"You told me already. Knowledge is what I needed to defeat him. Not the strongest arsenal," Harry said softly.
"I remembered. I used it."
"You did. The first time in your life you listened to me and it almost got you killed! You don't half pick your moments, young man!" Severus snorted.
"I don't care if you are angry with me forever. I am so glad you aren't dead. It's okay now" Harry said, reaching up to swipe at his tears with the back of his hand.
"I'm not angry at you. I am frightened out of my very skin, not knowing from one second to the next what foolhardy stunt your Gryffindor dimwittedness will lead you to!" Severus ground at him.
He held the boy from him, keeping a grip on his shoulders, dropping his head to meet the damp green eyes,
"And I never dreamed that I would have a second chance. I was quite prepared to die tonight. My only regret were the things I should have told you, should have said ," Severus said slowly.
"I know that you are tired, sore and ill. But there is still something I wish to suggest to you and I do not want to waste more time in the asking. But I do not expect an answer tonight. I want you to think about it, consider it when you are feeling better, understood?"
Harry nodded and watched the Professor, his eyes were deep, obsidian and unreadable.
"Harry, if you agree, I would like to adopt you , make you my son in the eyes of the law. I know that I am not James and I will understand if you refuse. I ask only that you give it some thought."
Snape's suggestion gave Harry a curious feeling, it was as though he was flying without aid of a broom.
Then he grinned, wide and silly and he could not help it.
His guardian did not smile.
"Harry. I want to name you as my son, formally, officially. I am aware you are almost eighteen and of age to make your own way in the world. But I would like nothing more than making us a family. Properly and legally," Severus watched the boy carefully.
"You are my family. So this makes it official. " Harry said.
Severus' brows knitted in a frown.
"As I said, you can take all of the time you want to consider it, think it through…." the Headmaster said again, afraid that in his weakened state, Harry was agreeing to something he would regret when he felt more like himself.
"My answer is yes. I don't need more time," Harry said simply.
"Already you are ignoring my advice. Don't think that because you are my son, you can get away with being disobedient and hard headed!" Severus laid a hand on Harry's unruly hair, a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth.
"No, Dad," Harry tested the word, let it hang between them and found it worked like the sweetest, most powerful healing spell he had ever known.
Snape too found the word worked a strange charm, bringing contentment to dark recesses in his heart he had believed long atrophied.
"You must rest, now, Harry. You are half asleep already. And having survived Lord Voldemort, I surely do not want to die at the hands of Madame Pomfrey, who, I have no doubt will tear me limb from limb if I impede her patient's recovery. " Severus eased him back on the pillow.
"Dad. If I fall asleep, will you be here when I wake up?" Harry's eyelids fluttered.
"Son, when you wake I will be here. I promise."
Severus lowered his tall frame into a chair at the side of the bed. Life was good. In fact, life had never been so full of things to look forward to.